"RACIAL MATTERS"
The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972
Kenneth O'Reilly
New York: Free Press, 1989
443 pp., $24.95
THE LIBERALS AND J. EDGAR HOOVER
Rise and Fall of a Domestic Intelligence State
William W. Keller
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989
215 pp., $25.00
A DEATH IN THE DELTA
The Story of Emmett Till
Stephen J. Whitfield
New York: Free Press, 1988
193 pp., $19.95
WE ARE NOT AFRAID
The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney
and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi
Seth Cagin and Philip Dray
New York: Macmillan, 1988
500 pp., $24.95
For over a half century the American public was subjected to an assiduous and self-serving public relations campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to convince us that it was the world's finest law enforcement agency. Since the 1930s, popular culture pictured the "G-man" as an incorruptible, brave, and infallible soldier in the war against crime and communism. The FBI encouraged the production of radio programs such as The Lucky Strike Hour of the 1930s; television shows such as The FBI Story, which ran for nine years on ABC; books such as Don Whitehead's The FBI Story (1956), which was made into a movie starring Jimmy Stewart; and magazine and newspaper articles presenting a flattering view of the bureau. Conversely, the bureau strenuously discouraged works that conveyed a less sycophantic picture of the agency.
This public relations campaign was led by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's director for nearly half a century beginning in the 1920s. Sen. George Norris Nebraska described Hoover as "the greatest publicity hound on the American continent," while President Kennedy believed Hoover to be one of the three masters of public relations of the twentieth century, along with financier Bernard Baruch and CIA Director Allen Dulles. From the beginning of his tenure, Hoover took great pains to cultivate influential Americans, particularly congressmen, senators, and members of the print media, including William Allen White, Walter Winchell, and David Lawrence. He assigned special agents the responsibility of disseminating the agency's message that the FBI was the nation's major weapon in the war against crime and communism. An important aspect of this public relations campaign began in the 1930s when the FBI initiated guided tours of its building. These tours, which recounted the bureau's exploits, soon became a highlight for Washington tourists.
Hoover was, as Richard Gid Powers notes in his recent biography, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1987), arguably the greatest
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