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I have heard from several different sources on the web that J. Edgar Hoover had a private collection of personal files. Is there any truth to it? Did his secretary burn all the files? Or are there still some out there? Have any FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests been successful in finding this out recently? Please explain.
Technically speaking there were at least three separate sets of files that constituted J. Edgar Hoover’s “private” or “secret” files. The first were those which Hoover had designated be marked as “Official and Confidential”. These records, which Hoover referred to as “various and sundry items believed to be inadvisable to be included in the general files of the Bureau” consisted of 164 folders of documents. They contained information, almost entirely negative in nature, about well known individuals, primarily politicians or high ranking government officials, who could conceivably pose a threat to Hoover or his position. These files were turned over to FBI Associate Director, Mark Felt, for indexing and placement into the FBI’s main files, and the majority have been made public through “Freedom of Information Act” requests.
The second files, labeled “Personal and Confidential”, were maintained by Hoover’s personal secretary, Helen Gandy, and held under lock and key in her office. The only people permitted to access the files were Helen Gandy, Assistant Director Clyde Tolson, and Hoover himself. When Hoover died on May 2, 1972, Gandy, per Hoover’s express instructions, began the process of destroying the “Personal and Confidential” files. Starting on May 4th and for approximately a week thereafter, Gandy placed the contents of thirty-two file drawers into cardboard boxes and had them shipped to Hoover’s residence and placed in his basement. She also sent at least six, possibly as many as twenty-five, fully loaded file cabinets to his home.
During testimony in 1975 before a congressional “Inquiry into the Destruction of Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s Files”, Helen Gandy stated that in the two months after Hoover’s death, she went through every document in the “Personal and Confidential” files, verifying that none dealt with official FBI business. She tore up the papers as she went along, threw them into cartons, then had them taken to the FBI’s Washington D.C. field office where they were shredded. Under questioning, Gandy testified that the contents of the thirty-two file drawers were “Mr. Hoover’s personal correspondence” and the file cabinets merely held Hoover’s tax returns, oil and stock certificates, and the like. Some suspected Ms. Gandy was not being entirely truthful, but there was little proof to refute her story. Gandy had destroyed not just the files but also the only existing index of the file’s contents. And the two people besides Helen Gandy who had ever seen the files (Hoover and Tolson), were dead.
The final of the three sets of files were in reality just standard FBI files that Hoover had a personal interest in and kept close at hand. However, it is unknown which specific files these were because after Hoover’s death, all of them were returned to the FBI’s central archive. Two additional sets of files are sometimes included in discussions of Hoover’s “secret” files. These are the so-called “Clyde Tolson Personal File” and the “Louis Nichols Official and Confidential File”. Hoover had decreed in March 1953 that all memoranda contained in the files of FBI Assistant Directors were to be destroyed every six months. However with both the Tolson and Nichols files, this was not done for some reason. In the case of Assistant Director Tolson, those documents he accumulated between January 1965 and May 1972 were left intact. Though not particularly earth shattering in their content, they do provide a good look at how Hoover ran the FBI during this time period and how he related to Presidents Johnson and Nixon. The file compiled by Assistant Director Nichols deals mainly with FBI activity during the 1940’s and 50’s, including an investigation into former President Herbert Hoover which had been requested by the Roosevelt administration. Like the “Official and Confidential” file, the full content of the Tolson and Nichols files can be obtained by the public.
Hoover's name should possess one huge Asterisk,his name should be removed from many streets,buildings,and all his "Secrets" (dishonesty) revealed.
In many ways, you could say Hoover was an arbitrary figure at the FBI, at the time.
Not too long after the invention of that privacy-stealing device, called the telephone, the dreaming had already started as how to tap a telephone, curiosity as to what X was saying to X, and creating files.
In the 20's, the technology was finally created to invade the privacy of anyone, with bugs, tapping's, wiring, and if it hadn't been Hoover, it would have been someone else?
It's that curiosity factor, and that and that alone, would have created it and someone else like Hoover?
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