Like the tin says, your challenge is to have infamous FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover become President of the United States at some point before his death in 1972.
It's easier to get J. Edgar into politics -- he was a law student at Georgetown, and certainly moved in the right circles to get into politics from a young age. Getting him into the White House is harder given the timing...
J. Edgar, while at Georgetown, finds work as a clerk at a Senator's office rather than as a messenger and file clerk at the Library of Congress. This starts him down a career of politics: in 1920, he gets elected over in Delaware as a Congressman on Harding's coattails. "Fast-Talking J. Edgar" spends the rest of the 20s climbing the party ranks, becoming increasingly indispensable: at least one wit in a column contrasts J. Edgar's rapid-fire manner of speech with Coolidge's reticence, for instance. In 1928, J. Edgar is appointed to complete DuPont's term in the Senate, where he gets re-elected. He's named as the Vice Presidential candidate in 1936 to Landon, but that of course goes nowhere. However, he has the last laugh, as the headlines blare "Hoover Defeats Truman" in 1948; he serves from 1948 - 1956.
Does he have to have been FBI Director still? Because otherwise, I did this one for a previous AHC, where we swapped Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover's career paths.
And how did Herbert Hoover became Director of the FBI?
Getting Herbert into law enforcement requires some odd shifts, presumably in his earlier years. I'm not as well acquainted with Herbert Hoover's early life; does anyone know if there was a point where instead of geology, he demonstrated any interest in law and order? Reading this brief biography suggests that Herbert was always a math and science sort of fellow from a young age.
But let's give it a try...
Herbert lived with his uncle in Portland during the 1880s. Let's say that the Oregon land fraud scandal captures his attention, and, in a fit of moral disgust, he helps expose it, coming into contact with the United States Attorneys in the region. Instead of studying geology, he studies accounting, bookkeeping, and finance harder, and becomes one of the fathers of modern forensic accounting, such that when Teddy Roosevelt stands up the BOI (in no small part in response to that same land fraud scandal!) Herbert Hoover is a natural choice to be hired to come to Washington in 1908, being one of the men Stanley Finch wants to join as an examiner along with A. Bruce Bielaski. Instead of Bielaski, it's the slightly older and more famous Herbert who takes over as head of the Bureau of Investigation in 1912, where he continued to lead the Bureau into the thirties.
Get the FBI in on the proposed 1934 Smedley Butler coup, have it succeed, and the military permits a 'strong civilian' rule under a Hoover they think they can control? Maybe with serious revenues coming in through state-controlled liquor outlets and bootlegging still a common theme even into the 50s and 60s?The only way I can think of a way is an ASB FBI coup
America, meet Pakistan!Get the FBI in on the proposed 1934 Smedley Butler coup, have it succeed, and the military permits a 'strong civilian' rule under a Hoover they think they can control? Maybe with serious revenues coming in through state-controlled liquor outlets and bootlegging still a common theme even into the 50s and 60s?
...Of course, Truman defeated Dewey and Hoover's plan failed. Now at first glance Justice (or Chief Justice) J. Edgar Hoover would be a troubling prospect given Hoover's awful record on individual liberties and civil rights. However even if Dewey had won and appointed Hoover, 7 out of the 9 Justices would be Roosevelt/Truman liberals. The one remaining Justice would almost certainly be a liberal Republican. So if Hoover decides to push his regressive views into judicial decisions, he'd likely fail and be condemned to the fate of a lone wolf crying out in the wilderness. Better for America, but a sad anti-climax to Hoover's career.
Do you think it likely that Hoover had or would have tried to gain the same kind of blackmail on the other Justices, and then force them to rule with him?