Re: Most researchers, including many hostile to Hoover, say this story [about Hoover's cross-dressing] is ludicrous.
I concur. Even if J. Edgar Hoover had been a closet cross-dresser, I don't think such "hot info" could have been used to blackmail him... Times were different... not that US public opinion would have countenance an FBI Queen --quite the opposite-- but the media/police/politics nexus wouldn't have fed upon a sex scandal as it would today. Besides, in Hoover's time, the media were already the property of a few business moguls WHO THEMSELVES were filed and profiled by the FBI Director. After all, an IRS inquiry would have been enough to put any would-be blackmailer out of business, would it not? Another important, if overlooked, point is that the FBI Director wasn't/isn't an ELECTED official, which means that he never relied upon public opinion to get his job or to keep it --to some extent, of course....
As for Hoover turning a blind eye to the Mob, I guess the reason is that the so-called Mob --organized crime-- is not made up of a few thugs in grey suits operating in a social vacuum... The Mob, be it Italy's maffia, Japan's yakuza, or the US's mob, consists of a web stretching out into society's "clean quarters" as well. Hence law enforcement's dilemma: how deep can you snoop into organized crime without ending up indicting mayors, governors, senators, corrupt cops, bankers, businessmen, you name it. In a bourgeois society, the chief duty of law enforcement is to protect private property and social peace, not fomenting subversion and revolution by exposing the worst foibles and crimes of the powerful.... The late J. Edgar Hoover understood as much....
Gus |
