J Edgar Hoover sacked March 1933

Derek Jackson

I understand that FDR's first choice for Attorney general did NOT like Hoover. He died - slightly misteriously I think- before taking office.

If Hoover had been sacked as director of the Bureau of Investigation would his talents have still allowed him to be a malevalent influence on America?

Without Hoover's PR would there be anything like the FBI. Would that have hurt America in the spy war both against Hitler and Stalin?

Without Hoover with there have been the anti communist hysteria that America experienced (Noting that European states under far more threat did NOT experience anything resembling "McCarhthyism"?
 

Prunesquallor

There doesn't seem to have been anything especially mysterious about the death of Roosevelt's preferred Attorney General- he was 74 and was just coming back from his honeymoon. There was some swithering about whether Hoover should be kept on but he did have some influential supporters inside and outside the Democratic Party. Sacked, Hoover would have sunk without trace. An obsessive record keeper, a fussy personality, limited, more of a Himmler than a Beria or Heydrich. Without Hoover, I doubt there would have been an FBI as we know it. How important that is though, is a matter for conjecture. Just how effective the FBI was as a spy catcher (or indeed crime fighter) is doubtful. It has been said that its most important role was in keeping the American Communist Party going through the membership dues of the FBI agents who joined it to infiltrate. As for McCarthyism, that was more to do with domestic politics than Hoover.
 

Guiman

No Hoover

There are some interesting possibilites. Would efforts against organized crime have been more effective in the 30s. Hoover denied the existance of the cosa nostra despite evidence to the contrary? How about no syndicate? Perhaps less influence of drugs? When the FBI was denied the role of what would become the CIA for his agency, he burned all his records rather than turn them over. Would a more effective intelligence arm be available as a foil to the KGB during the cold war? Hoover definitely left his mark.
 

Straha

Banned
hoover started the whole McCarthyism thing going ful lsteam without him its jsut a fringe thing. which IMO is bad.
 

Prunesquallor

Hoover was no more than a filing clerk with strange obsessions and the power of the state behind him. If you want to sum up his career, you could note that the file on Chaplin came to 1,900 pages. McCarthyism was the product of a junior senator worried about his re-election prospects and desperate for an issue who was made use of by people like Taft who should have better but wanted to damage the Democrats. Hoover was peripheral.
 

Straha

Banned
but Hoover made McCarthyism's effect be worse than it was by cooperating with the McCarthyutes
 
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