tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/j-edgar-hoover-54212/articlesJ. Edgar Hoover – The Conversation2020-06-24T12:16:42Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1287302020-06-24T12:16:42Z2020-06-24T12:16:42ZPresident Trump revives J. Edgar Hoover’s tyrannical playbook<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343029/original/file-20200620-43187-1yl76bv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=134%2C67%2C3539%2C2298&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">J. Edgar Hoover testifies before the House on Un-American Activities Committee.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/edgar-hoover-points-his-finger-while-testifying-before-the-news-photo/2696354?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/17/donald-trump-barack-obama-coronavirus-criticism">denounced his critics for the same claims made against him</a>, attacking their credibility and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-president-as-the-persecuted-donald-trumps-strategy-of-self-victimization/2018/06/03/14bdd450-65b4-11e8-99d2-0d678ec08c2f_story.html">portraying himself as a victim of conspiracies</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/14/president-trump-made-18000-false-or-misleading-claims-1170-days/">His lies</a> are <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/">well documented</a>, yet he accuses reporters of perpetual deception. He was impeached for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, yet he accuses Joe Biden of corrupt practices in Ukraine. </p>
<p>By employing these tactics, Trump is lifting freely from former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s playbook. Hoover, for example, lived a closeted gay life yet <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html">networked with Nazis</a> who murdered people for being gay, and he <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/J_Edgar_Hoover/Tu86exHKPvMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=blackmail%20material">blackmailed gay people</a> to amass power. </p>
<p>In 1969, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1969/12/28/archives/what-have-they-done-since-they-shot-dillinger-incredible-as-it-may.html?searchResultPosition=1">The New York Times surmised</a> that Hoover “wielded more power longer than any man in American history.” The FBI director used his power to undermine presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, as well as the New Deal, when he incited the “Red Scare” to keep his job in 1947. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Manufacture_of_Consent/cXjDDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=law%20and%20order">Copying Hoover’s playbook</a>, Trump made a perennial claim for power when he recently tweeted “<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1269400770472001539">LAW & ORDER!</a>” in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. </p>
<p>Both Trump and Hoover, moreover, employed the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wheres-My-Roy-Cohn/dp/B082RMWBRC/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1C3JIRAZUHHI1&keywords=where+my+roy+cohn&qid=1576684796&sprefix=where+my+roy+%2Caps%2C225&sr=8-3">controversial political operative Roy Cohn</a>. It was Cohn who <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-stone/trump-adviser-roger-stone-self-proclaimed-dirty-trickster-guilty-on-all-charges-idUSKBN1XP1VT">introduced Trump to Roger Stone</a> after Cohn served as <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Citizen_Cohn/cwesxAPx4RkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=defamatory%20items%20Roy%20planted%20in%20the%20media%20for%20Hoover%20were%20sometimes%20true%20and%20sometimes%20not,%20but,%20either%20way,%20Hoover%20was%20able%20to%20attack%20his%20enemies%20by%20this%20means%20without%20fear%20that%20his%20hand%20would%20be%20revealed">Hoover’s mouthpiece for decades</a>. In light of this, Trump’s appeal for alternative facts, his urge to mask improprieties, comes as no surprise. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://marshall.academia.edu/StephenUnderhill/CurriculumVitae">professor of communication studies</a> who has written about <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/fbi/classifications/094-research-matters.html">Hoover’s propaganda</a> and who was a lead archivist for declassified FBI records at the National Archives, I find the similarities between Hoover and Trump especially troubling as the U.S. faces historic challenges to its democracy.</p>
<h2>Conspiracy stories</h2>
<p>Trump often portrays himself on Twitter as a victim of conspiracy. He tweeted about a “<a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1175492022662287361">Crooked and Demented Deep State, and a probably illegal Democrat/Fake News Media Partnership</a>.” His complaint of an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-100/">“illegitimate impeachment hoax”</a> echos several other false claims of victimization.</p>
<p>Similarly, Hoover used warnings of the “fifth column” to suggest that the New Deal was a conspiracy. The term was coined by a general under Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War who boasted that four columns of nationalist rebels surrounded Madrid while a <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1936/10/17/issue.html">“fifth column”</a> plotted within. </p>
<p>Hoover warned in 1950 that <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/05/16/how-communists-operate-an-interview-with-j-edgar">“Communist fifth columns”</a> sought the “violent and complete destruction of the American Government.” He called the New Deal an “international conspiracy,” a “revolutionary movement,” and referred to it as Communism. </p>
<h2>Delegitimizing the opposition</h2>
<p>Trump often suggests that appearance betrays reality, casting opponents as fake, deceitful and subversive – people who should be discredited.</p>
<p>Similarly, Hoover told <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-CRECB-1940-pt15-v86/">Drake University</a> students in 1940 that “fifth column methods” worked by “falsehood and fakery … America may not withstand the fakers.” In 1947 he told Congress that liberals were “<a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/hoover-speech-before-the-house-committee-speech-text/">hoodwinked and duped</a>” by the “deceit, the trickery, and the lies of the American Communists.” </p>
<p>Trump uses similar tactics against journalists, portraying journalism as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/11/politics/enemy-of-the-people-jim-acosta-donald-trump/index.html">“fake news</a>.” He complains about the <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1202792805753597952">“Fake Whistleblower” and “phony informer”</a> and the <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1199352977934487553">“phony Impeachment Hoax.”</a> </p>
<h2>Rats abound</h2>
<p>Conspiracy stories and vermin metaphors pair well. The trope was used against <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=zkvY1-t3VxMC&pg=PA46&dq=nazi+propaganda+vermin&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis3MDa57LmAhVILKwKHdHhC-IQ6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=nazi%20propaganda%20vermin&f=false">ethnic minorities</a> in Nazi Germany and by <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-calls-cohen-rat/story?id=59862349">U.S. mafia crime families against mob informants</a>.</p>
<p>Hoover used animal metaphors to attack his enemies, something Trump deploys frequently to belittle his critics.</p>
<p>In a 1936 speech to the Boys Club of America, Hoover described New Dealers as “<a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-CRECB-1936-pt7-v80/GPO-CRECB-1936-pt7-v80-12-2">scuttling rats</a> in the ship of politics, gnawing at its timbers, besmirching its ideals, and doing their utmost to wreck our system of government.” </p>
<p>In 1950 he wrote in <a href="https://www.elks.org/magazinescans/1950-10E.pdf">The Elks Magazine</a> that “Communists are interested in infiltrating into the most vital industries of the nation…. It is the old story of once a rat comes into a house through a hole in the floor, another rat is sure to follow.” </p>
<p>Similarly, Trump tweeted that Democrats “don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-and-the-pursuit-leadership/201909/human-beings-are-not-insects-vermin-parasites-or">pour into and infest</a> our Country” like vermin or insects. </p>
<p>Trump described Elijah Cummings’ congressional district as a “disgusting, <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155073965880172544">rat and rodent infested</a> mess.” He tweeted that his former operative “<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1074313153679450113">Michael Cohen only became a ‘Rat’</a> after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable.” As for journalists, Trump has called them “these <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-09-26/trump-at-private-breakfast-who-gave-the-whistle-blower-the-information-because-thats-almost-a-spy">animals in the press</a> … some of the worst human beings you’ll ever meet.” </p>
<h2>Americanism</h2>
<p>Hoover was America’s chief promulgator of Americanism, the doctrine of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant nationalism. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=rBUOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236&dq=theodore+roosevelt+%22what+americanism+means%22&source=bl&ots=UGqrywkBGl&sig=ACfU3U2sB0eCeqNf3nxkZnsGaEI2auAT_w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi87ffio4XqAhUknq0KHRX-DMkQ6AEwBnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=theodore%20roosevelt%20%22what%20americanism%20means%22&f=false">Leaders like Theodore Roosevelt</a>, anxious to establish Anglo-American dominance at home and abroad, popularized the term <a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/true-americanism-the-forum-magazine/">beginning in 1894.</a> By the Cold War, it was primarily used by Republicans to associate patriotism with conservative values and cast liberals as un-American.</p>
<p>Hoover frequently used the term. In 1947 he told Congress that the “best anecdote to Communism is vigorous, intelligent, old fashioned <a href="http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/hoover-speech-before-the-house-committee-speech-text/">Americanism</a> with eternal vigilance.” The House un-American Activities Committee soon afterwards held public trials to accuse liberals of Communism, costing them their jobs and livelihoods. </p>
<p>Trump also calls his credo Americanism. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, he said that the “most important difference between our plan and that of our opponents, is that our plan will put America First. <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/full-transcript-donald-trump-nomination-acceptance-speech-at-rnc-225974">Americanism</a>, not globalism, will be our credo.” </p>
<p>And in June 2016, Trump tweeted the following: “Hillary says things can’t change. I say they have to change. It’s a choice between <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/745693029089034240">Americanism</a> and her corrupt globalism.” </p>
<p>When Hoover appealed to law and order, it was not the social contract but the laws of scientific racism that he invoked against the other. Similarly, Trump often expresses contempt for liberal democracy, and he often references his dominance over critics and marginal groups. </p>
<p>Today, the Black Lives Matter movement embodies a challenge to the political order that nationalists have sustained through propaganda and <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/10/17/william-barr-trumps-new-roy-cohn/">law enforcement</a>. That order crystallizes Trump’s power, and he will likely attempt to consolidate it in the turbulent times ahead.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen M. Underhill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the US faces historic challenges to its democracy, Trump is mirroring tactics used by the former FBI director to smear his critics and consolidate power.Stephen M. Underhill, Associate Professor of Communication, Marshall UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1402212020-06-11T12:27:07Z2020-06-11T12:27:07ZDuring Floyd protests, media industry reckons with long history of collaboration with law enforcement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340985/original/file-20200610-34710-1ogk0h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3282%2C2292&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Actors Dennis Franz and Jimmy Smits on the set of 'NYPD Blue.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actors-dennis-franz-and-jimmy-smits-while-taping-nypd-blue-news-photo/635761517?adppopup=true">Mitchell Gerber/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a recent interview, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison <a href="https://crooked.com/podcast/mpd-unplugged/">was asked</a> why it’s so difficult to prosecute cases against police officers. </p>
<p>“Just think about all the cop shows you may have watched in your life,” he replied. “We’re just inundated with this cultural message that these people will do the right thing.”</p>
<p>While two of those shows, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/business/media/cops-canceled-paramount-tv-show.html">Cops</a>” and “<a href="https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/live-pd-a-e-javier-ambler-austin-black-lives-matter-1234630742/">Live PD</a>,” have just been canceled, Americans have long been awash in a sea of police dramas. In shows like “Hill Street Blues,” “Gangbusters,” “The Untouchables,” “Dragnet,” “NYPD Blue” and “Law and Order,” audiences view the world from the perspective of law enforcement, in which alternately heroic and beleaguered police fight a series of wars on crime. These shows – and countless others – mythologize the police, ensuring that their point of view has dominated popular culture. </p>
<p>This didn’t happen by accident.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=V5AVWDwAAAAJ&hl=en">As a media historian</a>, I’ve studied how, beginning in the 1930s, law enforcement agencies worked closely with media producers in order to rehabilitate their image. Many of the shows proved to be hits with viewers, and this symbiotic relationship spawned numerous collaborations that would go on to create a one-sided view of law and order, with the voices of the policed going unheard.</p>
<h2>The FBI’s PR machine</h2>
<p>For FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, police served a primary role: to protect a “<a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3632">vigorous, intelligent, old-fashioned Americanism</a>” that was threatened by what he saw as unreasonable demands for civil rights and liberties. </p>
<p>Hoover wanted his agents to reflect his vision of “Americanism,” so he hired agents with an eye toward whether they fit the mold of what he deemed a “<a href="https://archive.org/details/foia_Kirkpatrick_Theodore_1">good physical specimen</a>”: white, Christian and tall. They couldn’t suffer from “physical defects” like baldness and impaired vision, nor could they have “foreign” accents.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, Hoover also established a public relations arm within the agency called the <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2305-1.html">Crime Records Division</a>. At the time, the image of the police was sorely in need of rehabilitation, thanks to high-profile federal <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1931/01/21/archives/full-text-of-the-wickersham-commission-report-on-prohibition.html">crime commissions</a> that documented widespread violence, suppression and corruption within police departments.</p>
<p>Hoover realized that broadcast media could serve as a perfect vehicle to disseminate his conception of law enforcement and repair the police’s standing with the public.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2305-1.html">Crime Records Division</a> cultivated relationships with “friendly” media owners, producers and journalists who would reliably endorse the FBI’s views. In 1935, the FBI partnered with Warner Brothers on the film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026393/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">‘G’ Men</a>.” A “G-Men” <a href="http://martingrams.blogspot.com/2012/10/g-men-radio-program.html">radio series</a> followed, made in collaboration with producer Phillips H. Lord and reviewed by J. Edgar Hoover,“ who "checked every statement” and made “valuable suggestions,” according to the series’ credits. </p>
<p>A year later, the FBI worked with Lord again on the radio series “Gang Busters,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=th6JgbyxDfQ&feature=emb_logo">whose gunshot-filled opening credits</a> boasted of the show’s “cooperation with police and federal law enforcement departments throughout the United States” its status as “the only national program that brings you authentic police case histories.”</p>
<p>Although Hoover and Lord notoriously <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/calling-all-cars">clashed</a> over the details – Hoover wanted to emphasize the science of policing and the professionalism of law enforcement, while Lord wanted more drama – the focus on the police as protagonists went largely unquestioned.</p>
<p>The FBI’s collaborations continued into the 1970s, with the long-running series “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_w_zmSj-RI&list=PLlUoyloCGlWypL3sNtSw1xG9uhH_ycrGS">This is Your FBI</a>” (1945-1953) and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058801/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The FBI</a>,” (1965-1974). Like “G-Men” and “Gang Busters,” these programs were based on solved police cases and made the most of their ripped-from-the-headlines realism. </p>
<p>Other writers and producers pursued similar collaborations with law enforcement. The iconic series “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043194/">Dragnet</a>,” for example, was written with the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-20-mn-602-story.html">approval</a> of Los Angeles police chief <a href="https://auislandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/thesesdissertations%3A3293">William H. Parker</a>, who notoriously headed the LAPD during the 1965 Watts riots.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340996/original/file-20200610-34674-5ue047.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340996/original/file-20200610-34674-5ue047.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340996/original/file-20200610-34674-5ue047.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340996/original/file-20200610-34674-5ue047.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340996/original/file-20200610-34674-5ue047.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340996/original/file-20200610-34674-5ue047.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340996/original/file-20200610-34674-5ue047.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Los Angeles Police Chief William H. Parker testifies in 1966 during an Assembly Criminal Procedure Committee Hearing on an anti-riot bill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-CA-USA-APHS325969-Anti-Riot-Bill-1966/59be7fae4c574bfbbe3b2a64cc1fd6ff/6/0">AP Photo/Walter Zeboski</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reactionary retaliation</h2>
<p>The FBI didn’t just collaborate on media production. My research on the television <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/broadcast-41">blacklist</a> – a smear campaign to silence anti-racist progressives in the media industry – reveals how the agency routinely retaliated against its critics. </p>
<p>When journalist John Crosby criticized the FBI during a 1952 television broadcast, Hoover <a href="https://archive.org/details/foia_Kirkpatrick_Theodore_2/page/n119/mode/2up?q=Crosby">scrawled a note</a> on the report of the incident: “This is an outrageous allegation. We ought to nail this. What do our files show on Crosby?” </p>
<p>Shortly afterwards, Crosby was denounced in <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=%22they%27ve+moved+in+on+TV%22&oq=%22they%27ve+moved+in+on+TV%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.5864j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">American Legion Magazine</a> as someone who supported supposedly communist performers and artists.</p>
<p>When lawyer and government official <a href="https://search-proquest-com.libproxy.uoregon.edu/openview/892fbc91db898d00692c7cc26a4221a1/1/advanced">Max Lowenthal</a> was completing a book critical of the FBI in 1950, the Bureau wiretapped his phone and planted stories so disparaging that few copies of the book sold, ending Lowenthal’s government career. The Bureau even succeeded in getting at least one writer fired from “This is Your FBI” merely because it believed his <a href="https://broadcast41.com/biography/fitch-louise">wife</a> was not a sufficiently “loyal American citizen.” Worse was always visited on black performers, journalists and activists, who were <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-police-have-been-spying-on-black-reporters-and-activists-for-years-i-know-because-im-one-of-them?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature">subject to far more intense spying, surveillance and police abuse</a>. </p>
<p>Law enforcement’s efforts to control its image through production and repression helped create police dramas that seldom questioned their built-in bias. Meanwhile, <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/05/new-study-underrepresented-writers-continue-to-face-bias-discrimination-tv-writers-rooms-diversity-inclusion-representation-1202932567/">the dearth of diversity</a> in writers’ rooms reinforced this formula.</p>
<p>Of course, some notable exceptions dulled the police drama’s sheen, including David Simon’s “<a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-wire">The Wire</a>” and “The Corner,” and Ava DuVernay’s recent miniseries “<a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80200549">When They See Us</a>.” These dramas upend the traditional police point-of-view, asking viewers to see the police through the eyes of those most often policed and punished.</p>
<h2>Time’s up for the police drama?</h2>
<p>Periodically, Americans have been made aware of the one-sidedness of these media depictions of police conduct. In 1968, for example, the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/1968-kerner-commission-got-it-right-nobody-listened-180968318/">Kerner Commission</a> explored the causes of uprisings in black communities. Its report noted that, within these communities, there was longstanding awareness that “the press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men’s eyes and white perspective.”</p>
<p>Changing that perspective requires more than recognizing the role police dramas have played as propaganda for law enforcement. It means reckoning with the legacy of stories that gloss over police misconduct and violence, <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force?fbclid=IwAR2zK-Cej-aMk5V7wBIwZ4P-D9UxS-60VL7KF-6dvV31RePNlU3dM5IR4Ak">which disproportionately affect people of color</a>.</p>
<p>“We want to see more,” Rashad Robinson, the executive director of the civil rights advocacy organization Color of Change, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/business/media/cops-canceled-paramount-tv-show.html">told The New York Times</a> after the cancellation of “Cops.” “These cop reality shows that glorify police but will never show the deep level of police violence are not reality, they are P.R. arms for law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn’t need P.R. They need accountability.”</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol A. Stabile does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For decades, there’s been a concerted effort by law enforcement to ensure their perspectives – and not those of people being policed – dominate prime-time television.Carol A. Stabile, Professor, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1180262019-05-30T23:02:34Z2019-05-30T23:02:34ZJ. Edgar Hoover’s revenge: Information the FBI once hoped could destroy Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been declassified<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277266/original/file-20190530-69067-gdsosc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., addresses marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/March-On-Washington-Photo-Gallery/799f8d9c3371479b9e7d6be2b80b2ae2/3/0">AP/File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An article just published by the U.K.-based <a href="https://standpointmag.co.uk/">Standpoint Magazine</a> alleges that civil rights icon Martin Luther King witnessed and even celebrated a woman’s rape. </p>
<p>Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian <a href="https://www.davidgarrow.com/">David Garrow</a>, one of <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060566920/bearing-the-cross/">King’s biographers</a>, the claim relies upon <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release%22%22">recently declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation documents</a> that summarize tape recordings of King’s extramarital affairs.</p>
<p>The allegation that King witnessed a rape and did not stop it is a serious one. Its impact on how we understand and tell U.S. history, and King’s role in it, is likely to be debated for years. </p>
<p>It’s important to reevaluate King’s legacy in light of this new information. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://independentresearcher.academia.edu/TrevorGriffey">as an historian</a> who has done substantial research in FBI files on the black freedom movement, I believe that it’s also important to understand how this information came to be public. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, before testifying at a hearing in Washington, D.C., Sept. 18, 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-DC-USA-APHS104014-J-Edgar-Hoover-1968/aaeceee62552400d93b3707e6c04be2e/60/0">AP/File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Targeting black activism</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/directors/j-edgar-hoover">director of the FBI from 1924-72, J. Edgar Hoover</a> had an outsized influence on the organization. <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about">The FBI operated within the Department of Justice</a> and was tasked with investigating violations of federal law and developing intelligence on foreign agents operating on U.S. soil. </p>
<p>At various points in the 20th century, both Congress and the president instructed the FBI to investigate not just foreign agents but also “radicals” and “subversives.” Hoover interpreted that mandate to also develop what the FBI called <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-2e.html">“racial intelligence.”</a> </p>
<p>From the 1910s to the 1970s, the FBI treated civil rights activists in general, and African American activists in particular, as either disloyal “subversives” or “dupes” of foreign agents. The FBI’s predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, sought to <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?isbn=978-0-253-10923-1">“compel black loyalty” during World War I</a> and <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/marcus-garvey">investigate “negro radicalism” in the 1920s</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1940s and 1950s, the FBI amassed 140,000 pages of documents as part of its investigation of what it called “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/fbis-racon-racial-conditions-in-america-during-world-war-ii/oclc/64083849">foreign inspired agitation</a> among American Negroes.” That didn’t even include its files on individual black “subversives” such as civil rights activist <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807856161/ella-baker-and-the-black-freedom-movement/">Ella Baker</a>, <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/E.%20B.%20%28William%29%20Dubois">the renowned scholar W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, and the singer and actor <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/Paul%20Robeson%2C%20Sr.">Paul Robeson</a>. </p>
<p>And from the late 1930s through the 1970s, the FBI and the <a href="https://www2.gwu.edu/%7Eerpapers/teachinger/glossary/huac.cfm">House Un-American Activities Committee</a>, through official reports like “<a href="https://archive.org/details/americannegroinc00unit">The American Negro and the Communist Party</a>,” popularized the notion among conservatives that communists were always trying to use the struggle against racial segregation as a “front” for the “subversion” of individual American liberty. </p>
<h2>Focus on King</h2>
<p>As Martin Luther King ascended in prominence in the late 1950s and 1960s, it was inevitable that the FBI would investigate him, like it did every other civil rights movement activist, for what it called “<a href="https://archive.org/details/lazarfoia?and%5B%5D=%22communist+influence+racial+matters%22&sin=&sort=titleSorter">communist influence in racial matters</a>.” </p>
<p>King did consult with former members of the Communist Party, among many others. One of his advisers – <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/levison-stanley-david">Stanley Levison – maintained closer ties to the party than he admitted to King</a>, and the FBI knew it. </p>
<p>But it was the civil rights movement’s growing influence that inspired Hoover to become increasingly alarmed about these connections. </p>
<p>Two days after King delivered his famous <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/i-have-dream-address-delivered-march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">“I Have a Dream” speech</a> at the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom</a>, William Sullivan, the FBI’s director of intelligence, <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-Neutralize-King">famously responded by writing</a>, “We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.” </p>
<p>In late 1963, FBI leaders met to discuss ways of “<a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-Neutralize-King">neutralizing King</a> as an effective Negro leader and developing evidence concerning King’s continued dependence on communists for guidance and direction.”</p>
<p>One of those ways for “developing evidence” involved <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/614/2821.pdf?1559244520">bugging hotel rooms</a> and other places to record King’s conversations with colleagues.</p>
<p>The recordings did not provide evidence of “communist influence” on the civil rights movement. Instead, they recorded King’s extramarital affairs. FBI officials, who already planned to “neutralize” King before they recorded his infidelities, shifted the rationale for their campaign to “morality” without missing a beat.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Screenshot from a 1966 FBI memo regarding surveillance of King.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/613/2820.pdf?1559244493">National Archives via Trevor Griffey photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Obscene file’</h2>
<p>Perhaps surprising to a 21st century reader, policing sexuality had long been part of the FBI’s mission. </p>
<p>The agency had a history of <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674368118">selectively enforcing the Mann Act</a>, the 1910 law that aimed to stem interstate transport of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” The FBI did this by prosecuting African American men for traveling across state lines with white women. Its “sex deviates” investigation from 1951 through the 1970s produced over 300,000 pages of files as part of what one historian has called “<a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2119-4.html">a war on gays</a>.” </p>
<p>FBI agents regularly collected “obscene” materials as part of their investigations, which were then deposited in an “<a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781566630719/J-Edgar-Hoover-Sex-and-Crime-An-Historical-Antidote">Obscene File</a>” that contained thousands of books, photographs and films by the mid-1960s. </p>
<p>And longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s “Personal and Confidential” files contained what Attorney General Edward Levi <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1975/02/28/archives/levi-details-wide-scope-of-hoovers-secret-files-levi-details-wide.html">described to Congress in 1975</a> as 48 folders on “public figures and prominent persons… Presidents, executive branch employees and 17 individuals who were members of Congress.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t clear, however, how the FBI could circulate information about King’s affairs without also raising questions as to why the FBI was bugging King’s hotel rooms in the first place. When FBI Assistant Director Courtney Evans <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-MISUR-Martin-Luther-King">recommended in September 1964 that the tapes be destroyed</a>, Hoover overruled him. </p>
<p>Instead, in late 1964, following the passage of the Civil Rights Act and King’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize, the FBI sent excerpts of the recordings to King’s wife, Coretta, along with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html">a letter that encouraged King to commit suicide</a> to avoid having exposure of his extramarital affairs ruin his life.</p>
<p>The stunt failed. In <a href="https://www.baylorpress.com/9781602580732/an-easy-burden/">his autobiography</a>, civil rights leader Andrew Young described his and Coretta and Martin Luther King’s responses to the tape that accompanied what he called the “sick letter”: “It was a very poor quality recording. … There was no question in our minds that this scurrilous material was coming from the FBI … few people had the capability of bugging hotel rooms except the FBI.” </p>
<p>Undeterred, the FBI continued to bug King’s hotel rooms from 1965 to 1968, and occasionally circulated <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-MISUR-Martin-Luther-King">memos to the attorney general</a> about the results of the recordings, including both political and sexual topics. </p>
<p>But the FBI didn’t release the tapes themselves, because doing so may have generated the same suspicions raised by the one sent to King.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King arrives with his wife Coretta Scott King, to deliver the traditional address of the winner of Nobel Peace Prize at the University of Oslo, Dec. 11, 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-I-NOR-APHS341546-Nobel-Prize-MLK-1964/4d4387d816794f62ab1277f1e67ddbb0/7/1">AP/File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Context matters</h2>
<p>The preservation of the FBI’s tapes so that they could someday come to light was a political decision made through acts of omission. </p>
<p>When J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972, his secretary <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001203mag-chart.html">Helen Gandy destroyed the FBI’s “Personal and Confidential”</a> files on public officials and celebrities. At the same time, according to Athan Theoharis’ <a href="https://www.amazon.com/FBI-Comprehensive-Reference-Guide/dp/089774991X">“The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide,”</a> Acting Director Mark Felt incorporated the Bureau’s “Official and Confidential” files into the FBI’s central records system, subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Files on King’s private life were placed in this latter set of records rather than destroyed, and some were <a href="https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2005/nr05-89.html">transferred to the National Archives in 2005</a>. </p>
<p>Litigation by Bernard Lee from King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference sought to compel destruction of the recordings and transcripts. But the judge in the case, John Lewis Smith Jr., rejected the request, and instead <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/01/archives/fbi-ordered-to-send-king-tapes-to-archives.html">ordered them sealed for 50 years until 2027</a>. </p>
<p>People will rightly debate the trustworthiness of FBI sources, and Garrow’s interpretation of them. No figure, no matter how revered, should be immune from scrutiny over their potential support for violence against women.</p>
<p>But those weighing the evidence and its veracity should not forget that the tapes being used to facilitate this discussion were created and preserved with the goal of destroying Martin Luther King’s reputation. The FBI’s intent was to demoralize and fragment the coalition of supporters King brought together in his life, the people who find common purpose by honoring his memory. </p>
<p>In this respect, revealing these materials could be considered “Hoover’s revenge.”</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the name of the litigant from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who sought to compel destruction of the recordings and transcripts.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Trevor Griffey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Publication was justified of information from the FBI that Martin Luther King Jr. witnessed and celebrated a woman’s rape, writes a historian, who warns the FBI had long wanted to destroy King.Trevor Griffey, Lecturer, Labor Studies, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/972002018-05-25T10:48:47Z2018-05-25T10:48:47ZInformants aren’t spies – they’re essential FBI tools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220472/original/file-20180525-51102-5g97th.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C15%2C3107%2C2153&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The FBI Building in Washington, DC</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>President <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/998256454590193665">Donald Trump tweeted</a> this week that he would order the Department of Justice to investigate whether the FBI, under President Barack Obama, had “infiltrated or surveilled” his presidential campaign “for political purposes.” </p>
<p>Trump was referring to the FBI’s use of an informant to gather information in its probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. </p>
<p>The president described this informant as a <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/999096011174924289">“spy” who was “placed”</a> in his campaign. Trump also framed the entire episode employing a Watergate suffix, calling it “spygate.” He has claimed it could be <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/999626347361206274">“one of the biggest political scandals in history</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://sites.psu.edu/dougsite/">As an FBI historian</a>, I believe an examination of how the FBI has handled and used informants in the past will shed light on this current controversy.</p>
<h2>Informants get the information</h2>
<p>Informants — an informal term for what the FBI really calls <a href="https://twitter.com/Comey/status/999286616744124416">Confidential Human Sources</a> — are, and always have been, one of the most basic sources of information in FBI and police investigations. As sources of information they are what counterintelligence professionals sometimes call “assets,” not spies.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/may/22/informants-infiltration-and-spying-some-definition/">The FBI does not “place” or insert informants</a>, as it would do with undercover FBI agents. Informants are people who are already in a position to know or learn information and who willingly cooperate with the FBI. Most often, informants cooperate because they’re concerned with something they’ve seen or heard.</p>
<p>In writing my book <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2119-4.html">“Hoover’s War on Gays: Exposing the FBI’s "Sex Deviates” Program,“</a> I <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/132/Donald_Webster_Cory_or_Edward_Sagarin_FBI_file.pdf?1527269830">uncovered the identities</a> of many FBI informants. Sometimes, they seek out the FBI and offer their services to an FBI agent handler out of concern for what they’ve seen. Such was the case with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/02/obituaries/alfred-a-gross.html">Dr. Alfred Gross</a>, who had previously worked with the FBI and who in 1952 regarded a gay civil rights group he met as threatening because he viewed them as mentally ill. </p>
<p>Others became informants because they were strong anti-communists during the Cold War, like <a href="http://www.outhistory.org/exhibits/show/hoovers-war-on-gays/essay">Warren Scarberry</a>, an informant I uncovered who believed he saw in the Mattachine Society of Washington the work of Communists. He called and visited the FBI about this. </p>
<p>Still others acted out of a personal sense of patriotism or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/05/22/4-surprising-facts-about-stefan-halper-the-professor-and-top-secret-informant-on-russia/?utm_term=.6d7e80fd0f2d">were criminal conspirators</a> looking for a deal with prosecutors. Informants run the spectrum of motivations, from selfless to selfish.</p>
<h2>A well-placed informant</h2>
<p>In President Trump’s self-described "spygate,” the FBI’s informant was a retired international affairs professor at Cambridge University named <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/who-is-stefan-a-halper-the-fbi-source-who-assisted-the-russia-investigation/2018/05/21/22c46caa-5d42-11e8-9ee3-49d6d4814c4c_story.html?utm_term=.92546391bb2d&wpisrc=nl_fix&wpmm=1">Stefan Halper</a>. Halper had established GOP connections. He worked variously for Republican presidents including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He was also a man who long served the U.S. intelligence community as a source. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220393/original/file-20180524-51091-dqdvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220393/original/file-20180524-51091-dqdvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220393/original/file-20180524-51091-dqdvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220393/original/file-20180524-51091-dqdvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220393/original/file-20180524-51091-dqdvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220393/original/file-20180524-51091-dqdvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220393/original/file-20180524-51091-dqdvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stefan Halper has been identified as the informant who helped the FBI’s Russia investigation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s unsurprising, then, the FBI used Halper in its counterintelligence probe. Most significantly, he happened to have been in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-fbi-source-for-russia-investigation-met-with-three-trump-advisers-during-campaign/2018/05/18/9778d9f0-5aea-11e8-b656-a5f8c2a9295d_story.html?utm_term=.c92b386fb4fb">unique position where he had connections to Trump campaign officials</a> who all had different types of Russian contacts. These included Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis and Trump foreign policy advisers Michael Flynn, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. </p>
<p>Today’s FBI does not practice political espionage at the behest of presidents or anyone else, and informants are not part of anything like that. There are investigative guidelines and congressional oversight mechanisms to prevent it. That was not always true: During the tenure of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972), the FBI conducted unchecked <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2147_reg.html">political surveillance</a> operations. The Hoover FBI also used informants in these efforts to monitor, for example, FDR’s <a href="https://ohiostatepress.org/books/Book%20Pages/Charles%20Edgar.html">foreign policy critics</a>, civil rights leader <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129884068">Martin Luther King Jr.</a>, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250033383">student radicals and the anti-war movement</a>, and to keep tabs on the <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2119-4.html">LGBT community</a>.</p>
<h2>Hoover’s abuses forced reforms</h2>
<p>Hoover’s actions were violations of Americans’ civil liberties and the trust placed in law enforcement. Precisely because of these Hoover-era abuses, special investigative regulations were put into place <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/may/22/informants-infiltration-and-spying-some-definition/">about the use of informants</a> in the 1970s. </p>
<p>If an FBI probe is particularly sensitive and potentially involves “<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3416775-DIOG-Redactions-Marked-Redacted.html">a greater risk to civil liberties</a>,” then FBI agents are required to seek higher levels of authorization for their use. In the Hoover era, there was little to no oversight in the use of informants, let alone more intrusive investigative techniques. Today’s FBI is not the Hoover FBI.</p>
<p>Yet even during the Hoover years, informants were key to more standard FBI national security investigations. </p>
<p>The FBI captured Russian spy <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-34870934">Rudolf Abel</a> — who was portrayed in the 2015 Tom Hanks film “Bridge of Spies” — <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Bureau.html?id=Pnp6oNw13GAC">because an FBI informant</a> within Abel’s circle, named Reino Haynaham, talked. In 1965, the FBI quickly apprehended the murderers of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo in Alabama <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300184136/informant">because it had a paid informant</a> within the Ku Klux Klan, Gary Thomas Rowe Jr.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220394/original/file-20180524-51135-1fqj1jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220394/original/file-20180524-51135-1fqj1jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220394/original/file-20180524-51135-1fqj1jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220394/original/file-20180524-51135-1fqj1jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220394/original/file-20180524-51135-1fqj1jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220394/original/file-20180524-51135-1fqj1jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220394/original/file-20180524-51135-1fqj1jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The FBI captured Russian spy Rudolf Abel with the help of an informant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is no surprise, then, that FBI officials used a confidential human source in its counterintelligence probe about Russian election meddling. </p>
<p>The informant was in a position to gather information early in the FBI investigation. That basic information undoubtedly was then further developed and enhanced with more traditional documented sources, as is evidenced by the fact that both <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/us/politics/michael-flynn-guilty-russia-investigation.html">Michael Flynn</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-campaign-adviser-george-papadopoulos-pleads-guilty-lying-n815596">George Papadopoulos</a> pleaded guilty and are now cooperating with the Mueller investigation.</p>
<p>What we see in today’s example is less about spying than a glimpse into how FBI national security investigations operate and unfold – and how they can sometimes be politicized.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97200/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Douglas M. Charles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An informant gathered information from Trump campaign staffers for the FBI’s Russia probe. An historian writes that informants are one of the most basic ways the FBI and police investigate.Douglas M. Charles, Associate Professor of History, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.