who has written a book about the grimkes a family that included most slaveowners and abolitionists. joining us now is beverly gage. her newest book is "genius: j

edgar hoover and the making of the american century." you won the los angeles times book award for biography last night. >> i did. ask and you have already won the bancroft prize. >> correct. >> in your speech last night you referred to j edgar hoover as complicated and terrible. why do you use the word terrible? >> i think one of his main influences over this vast swath of time that he was director of the fbi were real invasions and violations of people as individuals, social movements, people engaged in perfectly legal activity. a lot of that came from his own ideas and desire to control what was happening. i think there are some of the worst things he did and major features of his legacy. >> how did he get started with the fbi and when? >> it was almost fainted that j

edgar hoover would end up doing this. he was born in washington in 1895 and he came of age in a government service tradition, a civil service family. he graduated from college in 1917 when the u.s. was entering world war i. he went straight to the justice department and rose through the ranks to become head of the bureau at the ripe old age of 29. he stayed there the rest of his life. >> what was the bureau's chief role when he was 29? >> first, it was a tiny organization. one of the reasons they appointed a 29-year-old was nobody can for see what it would become. this massive institution. they did a few things. they had gotten in trouble for deportation rates and attacks on left-wing radicals. hoover had been instrumental in

that but he survived those scandals. then they had a grab bag of other things to do. it was an institution without an identity at that point scandal ridden and corruption ridden. he gave it an identity and cleaned it up and professionalized and assented forward into the future. >> should we look at those points as positive? >> i think so. one of the goals of the book, though, who averred in many ways has a terrible legacy, i think he has been treated as a really one-dimensional villain in most popular culture certainly since his death. one thing i wanted to do was present a more balanced picture to look at the good ideas he had and some of the amazing talents he had. you don't get that promotion and then stay for 48 years in your job without having some real talent and vision.

the book looks at that. >> talent, vision and files. >> files, for sure. did he have that in the entirety of his career over the last years? >> the files started the moment he entered the justice department. when he was a very young man, 22 coming straight out of law school he was thrust into a justice department doing some of its first federal experiments in political surveillance. his great talent and skill at that moment was he worked at the library of congress to work his way through college and had library and administrative skills. but the files everybody thinks about on major political figures was later in his life beginning in the 40's into the 50's, 60's, and 70's. they really mattered, in part

because nobody knew they really existed. it does not really matter if you have the files or if everybody just thinks you have the files. because, they will behave accordingly. >> when he died in 1969 what happened to those files? >> well, he died in 1972. >> sorry. >> that was one of the big questions at the time of his death. what will we do here? there were a couple sets of files people were concerned about. one where his official and confidential files. those were, as we have learned, things about john f. kennedy's sex life, wiretaps and bugs on martin luther king. there were files cap in his office separate from other files to keep them safe. others said there was another purpose. then he had an extensive file

collection called his personal files. those were destroyed. he asked his secretary to destroy them and she did. they were birthday cards and such she says. some think there was other material in there but we do not know. >> he was under seven presidents. what was his relationship with some of them? >> mostly, he was very useful to them and he liked them a lot. the three princes -- presidents that interested me the most were one, franklin roosevelt because it was roosevelt who made the modern fbi. the new -- the fbi turned out to be a new deal alphabet agency. he pushed law enforcement in a big way and pushed hoover into political intelligence during the war. that was fascinating for me. then the last two presidents

lyndon johnson and richard nixon were also fascinating because they had very long-term relationships with them. he lived on the same block as lyndon johnson from the 40's onward and had decades of relationships with nixon. then when they were in office they both cooperated and were at odds with one another in interesting ways. >> our guest is yale history professor beverly gage author of "g-man: j edgar hoover and d making of the american century." if you live in the central time zone 202-748-8201. mountain and pacific time zones. you can send professor gage a text message 202-748-8903. if you send a text please include your first name and your city.

how many of those presidents wanted to fire hoover but he wasn't too politically potent to fire? >> i would say three. none of them did it. he died in his beloved job. the first was truman, who, coming out of the roosevelt years really thought the fbi had acquired too much power and who averred himself had it much power. he was skeptical but did not fire him. then john kennedy really did not like hoover and hoover really did not like on. but he especially did not like robert kennedy, the attorney general, his ostensible boss. in that case hoover knew an awful lot about the kennedys and they were concerned it would cost them the support of a southern democrats in their party. finally, richard nixon, by far his close this friend among the presidents. but as hoover started to get old and it defies some of what nixon wanted him to do, there are some

funny moments where hoover says, that is illegal. j edgar hoover is the civil libertarian there. there is a moment where nixon sits down with hoover and says, edgar, you are in your mid-70's wouldn't it be fun to go? and it nixon says, ok and kind of gives in to hoover. who is more powerful the fbi director or the president? >> the fbi headquarters is the j edgar hoover building still today. what was his reputation among agents? >> i think the agents really respected hoover. he built the institution in his own image. really in the early years especially, hand selected agents that represented him and his views, a very particular image. when we think of an fbi agent or

a g-man, there are very specific ideas about who that is. will it be a tall white guy in a suit with a hat and shiny shoes and a certain set of political views. during his lifetime, i do not think agents loved him. he was a hard boss to work for. they had a lot of respect for him. right now my sense is the fbi has an ambivalent relationship with hoover. on one hand he did build the institution. on the other hand i think some of the most outrageous things the bureau did in the 60's and 70's do not make them great firm they want to be now. >> let's see what callers have to say. skip with waterbury connecticut. you are on with offer beverly gage. >> i read your book and it took me three days and three nights and then i had to reread it for a week. here is what i am wondering

about. how much did the fbi change? they were unarmed and it then they started with guns. >> it is a really dramatic moment at a great question. in the 1930's you are right. the fbi goes from being what hoover thought it would be, this white-collar professional organization that hired lawyers and accountants and they were going to collect statistics and do antitrust work. suddenly they were thrust into this world of violence law enforcement, facing down people like john dillinger. they had to learn really fast how to do things like carry weapons consistently, shoot them, really go toe to toe with, you know, pretty well armed criminal forces. in some ways it is a triumphant

story. they did figure out how to do it. in another way it is a tragic story. not only because it changed the institution but because a lot of agents lost their lives because they were not ready to do that kind of work. it was a profound change in their culture of the fbi that is still with us. >> i would like to know if skip's opinion changed after spending three days and three nights reading 800 pages of your book. >> i should have just said thank you. >> could you have written 1600 pages? >> there were longer versions of this book for sure. i think the great challenge of this book was hoover was there for so long and had his fingers in so many things and he was the head of the barack or see what he wanted everyone to write everything down. so you have great sources. i did not get into the details of a lot of the cases. i relied heavily on case studies

that other people had done where they could do those details. >> andrew, alexandria, virginia. please, go ahead with questions or comments for beverly gage. >> good afternoon. i have read that j edgar hoover i was wondering, did politicians rather people have information on him? he had a lot of information on other people. i am wondering, did other people in politics have information on him that would paint him in a bad light? >> the answer is yes, though, hoover tended to one up them on that front.

there were lots of people in the press particularly towards the end of his life that were trying to dig up information on him. reporters like drew pearson, jack and big figures in the washington scene. there is some evidence of the soviet intelligence authorities were trying to gather information about hoover particularly. about hoover's sex life. about his alleged homosexuality. then there is some evidence that people who were at political odds with him, robert kennedy from other attorneys general did not like him so much did try to gather material about him. one of the interesting things is the press until the very end of his life was usually not willing to print anything like that. the press coverage of hoover was almost uniformly adulatory and knowing. he was more popular than we tend to think of him being.

>> was he good at working with congress politically? >> he was a genius working with congress politically. one of my favorite chapters in the book. which on the one hand is a little wonky, but i think really key to his power is in the 40's congressional committees got professional fast for the first time to do new forms of investigation. they started looking for qualified people. they said, hoover, your agents are qualified for that. he staffed the house un-american activities committee and a lot of big ones that were engaged in communist investigations. he was very good about everything from congratulating congressman on reelection to doing favors touching up things they needed touched up. >> cornelius, alexandria, louisiana. hello. you are on book tv.

>> beverly, i have a good question for you. i am an african-american. i was a military police officer and i had top-secret clearance. one of my questions. how much did it j edgar hoover have on the kennedys and martin luther king? thank you peter and beverly. have a blessed day. >> thank you, cornelius. >> wonderful question. the very quick answer is a lot. but i think we can divide those two. on the kennedys, a lot of things came into the fbi that were rumor, conjecture, particularly about john kennedy's sex life and the kennedy family history. they cap -- cap that in their files. on martin luther king day were more aggressively seeking both

information and is the ability to damage king and damage the civil rights movement. it was an investigation that estimated overtime. it started with investigations of people in martin luther king's orbit that were thought to be communist and then extended to wiretaps on martin luther king's offices and home phone and extended to bugs in kings hotel room, his sex life, then into his active disruptive threatening attempt to push king out of public life. to try to get him to commit suicide. that was a or aggressive campaign. the kings were in large part colluding with the fbi in that campaign as opposed to opposing it. robert kennedy signed the orders for the fbi to wiretapped king. >> next.

ne-yo in ocean borough, new jersey. >> thank you for taking my call. my question is, what influence did j edgar hoover how was international police? >> international policing was something that the international -- the fbi did some of the wanted to do a lot more of. one of the greater mistakes of hoover's career came at the end of the second world war. franklin roosevelt had given the fbi not only jurisdiction over domestic surveillance and espionage and all those things, but also, jurisdiction over all of basically the western hemisphere. when the war came to an end hoover's said we will need a big intelligence establishment after the war ended the fbi should be

in charge of it. in effect in a bid to also become the seat in -- the cia harry truman rebuffed the bid we have separation there. but the fbi continues then and, i think coming out to bring in police officers around the world to the fbi academy where they trained local law enforcement officials in the u.s. and they do a lot of international law enforcement training. >> i wanted to ask the caller if he came away with a different impression after spending three days and three nights with your book. what about you? after how many years of resource -- research did you come away with a different impression of jericho hoover? >> i started writing the book in 2009, so it was more than a decade immersed in this man's life, that world he created and inhabited. i didn't change my opinion.

i thought from the very beginning there was a more complicated story to tell about j edgar hoover. but i found myself surprised about some of the better things he did. his opposition, for instance, to japanese mass internment and incarceration during the second world war. he has one of the few officials that spoke against that. his more aggressive campaigns against the ku klux klan even when he is going after king. those moments were interesting to me. what surprised me the most, because he is such a villain in our own world in our own time was how popular he was. how widely supported he was. whether it was the white house or congress, or public constituencies he built on his own agents. that told me something interesting. what hoover was doing, somewhat

secretive but a lot of it -- a lot was very open to priorities and a lot of it had support. at many levels of americans authority -- american society. when we think about him we cannot just make him the scapegoat. we have to think about ourselves and our history too. >> beverly gates, was the king of vendetta racial? or because he thought king was a communist? >> i think both. one thing i wanted to do in the book was figure out where hoover's views on race and his racism came from. because it is so famous from the investigations into king and the panthers all those years. very early on in his life he grew up in dcaa segregated city where racial lines were rigidly drawn. in college he was a member of a for trinity called kappa alpha and explicitly white southern

segregationist fraternity. he had a deep-seated racism but was also a passionate anti-communist. these worked together and were kind of confused in the case of kanga. >>g-man. g standing for government. a text message from mark in salem, oregon. was there a hoover mormon connection? >> was actually. hoover early on was trying to make the fbi in the image he wanted. in his early years that meant mainly hiring young protestant college-educated men. he himself was a lifelong presbyterian. after the war it shifted a little bit. he started to hire many more catholics and many more mormons.

even in the early years in the 1920's, there were pretty high-ranking mormon officials, many of whom came out of george washington university, his alma mater. >> steve in fredericksburg, virginia, go ahead with your question or comment on jan groover. >> steve? >> yes. please, go ahead with your question or comment. >> thank you very much for this very informative interview. what was j edgar hoover is connection with the fascination of the black panther and a chicago fred hampton? did he order it or was he informed about it? >> that was one of the darkest periods of fbi history in the late 60's and 70's. looking at groups like the panthers. in the case of fred hampton it

is very clear that the fbi had an informant next to him and that informant made a map of where hampton would be and the map guided the chicago police. and, who grew -- hoover approved of all of it after chicago police went in and killed fred hampton and used in corrodible -- extraordinary violence. it hoover know? there is no hard evidence i have seen over the course of doing this. but, hoover orchestrated a deliberately deadly raid and he was aware of the contours of what was happening with the panthers in a place like chicago. he had no objection to it in the end. there is still evidence out there and coming out on big

cases like that. i would not be surprised if we find something more there. >> beverly gage's first book was the date walls -- today wall street exploded. >> hoover was a very young man running the radical division of the justice department. >> the next call is from baltimore. this is arthur in baltimore. hello, arthur. >> hey. can you hear me? hello? >> go ahead, arthur. we will have to move on arthur. >> hello? >> we will go to robber in littleton, colorado. we will talk to robert. hello, robert. >> yes. you often see j edgar hoover in

the second or third row of a major prize fighting film. what did he do to get those tickets? why did he not investigate the mafia until after robert kennedy was attorney general? >> j edgar hoover loved going to fight, razors, baseball games -- races, baseball games, and broadway shows. he was well-connected not only in washington but among lots of culture makers. i cannot guarantee it every time. but i would suspect those were all free tickets. the mafia question is interesting. hoover has a reputation as somebody who tried to deny the

mafia existed until it was undeniable. there is a lot of truth to that. he did not like his agency being close to things that might corrupt them. he saw the way prohibition corrupted law enforcement. he was skeptical on that front. it is also true that by the mid-1950's he was acknowledging the existence of the mafia, of organized crime. and before robert kennedy was there they were doing work. a lot of it was so secret. but they cannot claim public credit for it. they got a plug into the headquarters of the chicago mob in the late 50's. they were proud of this but they were not going around trumpeting it. >> beverly gage, what where hoover's hobbies? >> hoover was a man of leisure

as well as hard work. so, there were some social activities that i was just talking about. he liked broadway. in the 30's and 40's he spent a lot of time clubbing in new york. in quieter moments he was a big antique collector. if you see the shop of his home it is filled with all sorts of tchotchkes and antiques. he likes to go to auction houses , jade statuaries were one of his big things. >> we could spend another half-hour with you. thank you for your time. beverly gage. g-man j edgar hoover and the making of the american century has already won the bancroft prize in american history and the los angeles times award for biography. a leader of the

american revolution. host: author stacy schiff