J. Edgar Hoover

John Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator. He was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. He is credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception. He died in 1972 at the age of 77 at the home of his wife, Edith, in suburban Washington, DC.

About J. Edgar Hoover in brief

Summary J. Edgar HooverJohn Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator. He was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception. He is also credited with establishing and expanding a national blacklist, referred to as the FBI Index or Index List, renamed in 2001 as the Terrorist Screening Database which the FBI still compiles and manages. Hoover was a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface. He amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others, including multiple sitting presidents of the U.S. Hoover lived in Washington, D. C. his entire life. He attended Central High School, where he sang in the school choir, participated in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, and competed on the debate team. Hoover stuttered as a boy, which he later learned to manage by teaching himself to talk quickly. Hoover obtained a Bachelor of Laws from The George Washington University Law School in 1916, and an LL. M. in 1917 from the same university. He accepted the clerkship on July 27, 1917, when he was just 22 years old. He became the head of the Enemy Bureau, authorized by President Woodrow Wilson at the beginning of World War I to arrest foreigners without trial and jail allegedly disloyal foreigners. Hoover’s first assignments were to carry out the First Red Scare and one of his first assistants was Palmer Palmer, one of America’s first Red Scare agents.

In August 1919, 24-year-old Hoover became head of Bureau of investigation’s new General Intelligence Division, also known as the Radical Raids Division, because its goal was to monitor and disrupt the work of domestic radicals. He died in 1972 at the age of 77 at the home of his wife, Edith, in suburban Washington, DC. His funeral was held at the Washington National Cathedral on January 11, 1973. He leaves behind a wife, four children, a son, and a daughter-in-law. He also leaves a wife and a step-son, John Edgar Hoover, Jr., a retired FBI agent. The Hoover family is buried in a plot of land near the Capitol Hill neighborhood of D.C. where he once lived with his wife and their three children. Hoover died on January 10, 1974 at age 77 at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He left behind a widow, Edie Hoover, a former FBI agent, and two step-children, John and David Hoover, both of whom are still living in Washington. Hoover also leaves behind his son, David, who was born in 1941 and served in the Army during the Second World War. Hoover and his wife are survived by their daughter, Mary Hoover, and their son, Timothy Hoover, who served as a United States Air Force officer in World War II. The couple had three children, David Hoover Jr. and Mary Hoover Hoover, III.