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Author: Douglas M. Charles
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700618252
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
What do pop artist Andy Warhol, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, and cinematic comedians Abbott & Costello have in common? They all found a prominent place in the FBI's "Obscene File." In this startling new study Douglas Charles reveals how, for more than seventy years, FBI officials placed obscenity, pornography, and the politics of morality among their topmost concerns. Illuminating this largely neglected aspect of FBI history, Charles charts the evolution of the Bureau's efforts to combat the spread of obscenity and its perceived insidious effects. He contends that, especially during the five decades under J. Edgar Hoover, these efforts became a surprisingly high priority and at times were expressly wielded for political ends, even as Hoover hid the file from public view in order to preserve the Bureau's squeaky-clean image. Charles recounts how the "Obscene File" was conceived and organized by Hoover and describes its contents, which included magazines, films, and artwork in addition to dossiers on offenders. He examines the FBI's targeting of 1940s and '50s "race music" with its depictions of "lewd and licentious acts in obscene and foul language." He describes how the FBI collected photos of activities at gay bars and prosecuted businesses that published "obscene" pro-gay magazines, and how it participated in the "Lavender Scare" that targeted gays in the federal government. He also details the FBI's efforts to short-circuit the distribution of the film Deep Throat and disrupt the pornographic movie industry. On the political front, Charles tells how Hoover found a fellow crusader in Richard Nixon, who hijacked the obscenity issue to rally an electoral base weary of an "anything-goes" decade. But as changing mores and laws redefined obscenity, subsequent directors moved away from Hoover's approach and focused more on mob control of pornography, kiddie porn, and the war on drugs. Subsequently, the "Obscene File" mostly fell into disuse during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the latter president unable to gain any traction with his own obscenity initiatives. Taking in the whole scope of these operations, Charles's insightful history offers a previously unseen look at a major facet of FBI activities and contributes significantly to our understanding of Hoover and his legacy.
Author: Douglas M. Charles
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700618252
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Get Book Here
Book Description
What do pop artist Andy Warhol, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, and cinematic comedians Abbott & Costello have in common? They all found a prominent place in the FBI's "Obscene File." In this startling new study Douglas Charles reveals how, for more than seventy years, FBI officials placed obscenity, pornography, and the politics of morality among their topmost concerns. Illuminating this largely neglected aspect of FBI history, Charles charts the evolution of the Bureau's efforts to combat the spread of obscenity and its perceived insidious effects. He contends that, especially during the five decades under J. Edgar Hoover, these efforts became a surprisingly high priority and at times were expressly wielded for political ends, even as Hoover hid the file from public view in order to preserve the Bureau's squeaky-clean image. Charles recounts how the "Obscene File" was conceived and organized by Hoover and describes its contents, which included magazines, films, and artwork in addition to dossiers on offenders. He examines the FBI's targeting of 1940s and '50s "race music" with its depictions of "lewd and licentious acts in obscene and foul language." He describes how the FBI collected photos of activities at gay bars and prosecuted businesses that published "obscene" pro-gay magazines, and how it participated in the "Lavender Scare" that targeted gays in the federal government. He also details the FBI's efforts to short-circuit the distribution of the film Deep Throat and disrupt the pornographic movie industry. On the political front, Charles tells how Hoover found a fellow crusader in Richard Nixon, who hijacked the obscenity issue to rally an electoral base weary of an "anything-goes" decade. But as changing mores and laws redefined obscenity, subsequent directors moved away from Hoover's approach and focused more on mob control of pornography, kiddie porn, and the war on drugs. Subsequently, the "Obscene File" mostly fell into disuse during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the latter president unable to gain any traction with his own obscenity initiatives. Taking in the whole scope of these operations, Charles's insightful history offers a previously unseen look at a major facet of FBI activities and contributes significantly to our understanding of Hoover and his legacy.
Author: Douglas M. Charles
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700621199
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472
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Book Description
At the FBI, the “Sex Deviates” program covered a lot of ground, literally; at its peak, J. Edgar Hoover’s notorious “Sex Deviates” file encompassed nearly 99 cubic feet or more than 330,000 pages of information. In 1977–1978 these files were destroyed—and it would seem that four decades of the FBI’s dirty secrets went up in smoke. But in a remarkable feat of investigative research, synthesis, and scholarly detective work, Douglas M. Charles manages to fill in the yawning blanks in the bureau’s history of systematic (some would say obsessive) interest in the lives of gay and lesbian Americans in the twentieth century. His book, Hoover’s War on Gays, is the first to fully expose the extraordinary invasion of US citizens’ privacy perpetrated on a historic scale by an institution tasked with protecting American life. For much of the twentieth century, when exposure might mean nothing short of ruin, gay American men and women had much to fear from law enforcement of every kind—but none so much as the FBI, with its inexhaustible federal resources, connections, and its carefully crafted reputation for ethical, by-the-book operations. What Hoover’s War on Gays reveals, rather, is the FBI’s distinctly unethical, off-the-books long-term targeting of gay men and women and their organizations under cover of “official” rationale—such as suspicion of criminal activity or vulnerability to blackmail and influence. The book offers a wide-scale view of this policy and practice, from a notorious child kidnapping and murder of the 1930s (ostensibly by a sexual predator with homosexual tendencies), educating the public about the threat of “deviates,” through WWII’s security concerns about homosexuals who might be compromised by the enemy, to the Cold War’s “Lavender Scare” when any and all gays working for the US government shared the fate of suspected Communist sympathizers. Charles’s work also details paradoxical ways in which these incursions conjured counterefforts—like the Mattachine Society; ONE, Inc.; and the Daughters of Bilitis—aimed at protecting and serving the interests of postwar gay culture. With its painstaking recovery of a dark chapter in American history and its new insights into seemingly familiar episodes of that story—involving noted journalists, politicians, and celebrities—this thorough and deeply engaging book reveals the perils of authority run amok and stands as a reminder of damage done in the name of decency.
Author: Athan G. Theoharis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0929587677
Category : Anti-communist movements
Languages : en
Pages : 397
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Book Description
During his forty-eight years as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover scrupulously maintained secret office files and arranged for special filing procedures to safeguard "sensitive" information.
Author: William J. Maxwell
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 1628727381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 766
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Book Description
Available in book form for the first time, the FBI's secret dossier on the legendary and controversial writer. Decades before Black Lives Matter returned James Baldwin to prominence, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI considered the Harlem-born author the most powerful broker between black art and black power. Baldwin’s 1,884-page FBI file, covering the period from 1958 to 1974, was the largest compiled on any African American artist of the Civil Rights era. This collection of once-secret documents, never before published in book form, captures the FBI’s anxious tracking of Baldwin’s writings, phone conversations, and sexual habits—and Baldwin’s defiant efforts to spy back at Hoover and his G-men. James Baldwin: The FBI File reproduces over one hundred original FBI records, selected by the noted literary historian whose award-winning book, F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature, brought renewed attention to bureau surveillance. William J. Maxwell also provides an introduction exploring Baldwin's enduring relevance in the time of Black Lives Matter along with running commentaries that orient the reader and offer historical context, making this book a revealing look at a crucial slice of the American past—and present.
Author: Ronald Kessler
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 0307719707
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
New York Times bestselling author reveals the FBI’s most closely guarded secrets, with an insider look at the bureau’s inner workings and intelligence investigations. Based on inside access and hundreds of interviews with federal agents, the book presents an unprecedented, authoritative window on the FBI's unique role in American history. From White House scandals to celebrity deaths, from cult catastrophes to the investigations of terrorists, stalkers, Mafia figures, and spies, the FBI becomes involved in almost every aspect of American life. Kessler shares how the FBI caught spy Robert Hanssen in its midst as well as how the bureau breaks into homes, offices, and embassies to plant bugging devices without getting caught. With revelations about the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, the recent Russian spy swap, Marilyn Monroe's death, Vince Foster’s suicide, and even J. Edgar Hoover, The Secrets of the FBI presents headline-making disclosures about the most important figures and events of our time.
Author: Athan G. Theoharis
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
Was J. Edgar Hoover a homosexual? And did organized-crime leaders, knowing this, blackmail the FBI director into leaving them alone? These charges won almost instant popular acceptance when they were aired not long ago in a sensational biography of Hoover. But Athan Theoharis, our foremost authority on Hoover and the FBI, here shows that the accusations are spurious, and that the story of Hoover's real approach to sex and organized crime is far more intriguing. The chilling portrait that takes shape in these pages is that of a moralistic bureaucrat who would not hesitate to use sex-related information against his political enemies - but only when it could not be traced to FBI investigations. And the FBI's ineffectiveness in pursuing organized-crime leaders had nothing to do with Hoover's vulnerability; it resulted from the director's lack of accountability, his use of illegal investigative techniques, and his focus on political activities. Punctuating his narrative with case materials drawn from Hoover's secret files - on presidential candidates, senators, congressmen, artists and writers, college presidents, and others - Theoharis unravels the brilliantly devious means that Hoover used to accomplish his political ends. And he shows how they contributed to a culture of lawlessness within the FBI itself. J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime is a useful corrective to our history as well as a fascinating exploration of one of the twentieth century's most sinister minds.
Author: Betty Medsger
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307962962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609
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Book Description
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS & EDITORS (IRE) BOOK AWARD WINNER • The story of the history-changing break-in at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, by a group of unlikely activists—quiet, ordinary, hardworking Americans—that made clear the shocking truth that J. Edgar Hoover had created and was operating, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, his own shadow Bureau of Investigation. “Impeccably researched, elegantly presented, engaging.”—David Oshinsky, New York Times Book Review • “Riveting and extremely readable. Relevant to today's debates over national security, privacy, and the leaking of government secrets to journalists.”—The Huffington Post It begins in 1971 in an America being split apart by the Vietnam War . . . A small group of activists set out to use a more active, but nonviolent, method of civil disobedience to provide hard evidence once and for all that the government was operating outside the laws of the land. The would-be burglars—nonpro’s—were ordinary people leading lives of purpose: a professor of religion and former freedom rider; a day-care director; a physicist; a cab driver; an antiwar activist, a lock picker; a graduate student haunted by members of her family lost to the Holocaust and the passivity of German civilians under Nazi rule. Betty Medsger's extraordinary book re-creates in resonant detail how this group scouted out the low-security FBI building in a small town just west of Philadelphia, taking into consideration every possible factor, and how they planned the break-in for the night of the long-anticipated boxing match between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, knowing that all would be fixated on their televisions and radios. Medsger writes that the burglars removed all of the FBI files and released them to various journalists and members of Congress, soon upending the public’s perception of the inviolate head of the Bureau and paving the way for the first overhaul of the FBI since Hoover became its director in 1924. And we see how the release of the FBI files to the press set the stage for the sensational release three months later, by Daniel Ellsberg, of the top-secret, seven-thousand-page Pentagon study on U.S. decision-making regarding the Vietnam War, which became known as the Pentagon Papers. The Burglary is an important and gripping book, a portrait of the potential power of nonviolent resistance and the destructive power of excessive government secrecy and spying.
Author: Bryan Burrough
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110103274X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 644
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Book Description
In Public Enemies, bestselling author Bryan Burrough strips away the thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full story—for the first time—of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling and drawing on a remarkable amount of newly available material on all the major figures involved, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover’s G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI’s rise to power.
Author: Mark North
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1616082135
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 689
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Book Description
Examination of how J. Edgar Hoover knew President Kennedy would be assassinated and the coverup that followed the assassination.
![The Federal Bureau of Investigation [2 volumes] PDF](https://books.google.com/books/content/images/frontcover/V7vOEAAAQBAJ?fife=w80-h100)
Author: Douglas M. Charles
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440871612
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 739
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Book Description
This authoritative set provides a one-stop resource for understanding specific FBI controversies as well as for those looking to understand the full history, law enforcement authority, and inner workings of the nation's most famous and important federal law enforcement agency. This authoritative two-volume reference resource uses a combination of encyclopedia entries and primary sources to provide a comprehensive overview of the FBI, detailing its history, most famous leaders and agents, institutional structure and authority, law enforcement responsibilities, reporting relationships to other parts of government, and major events and controversies. Today the FBI sits squarely at the intersection of major controversies surrounding the presidential campaign and administration of Donald Trump, foreign interference in U.S. elections, and politicization of law enforcement. But the FBI has always been in the political spotlight—its history is dotted with episodes that have come under heavy scrutiny, from its surveillance of civil rights leaders during the 1960s to the methods it employs to combat domestic terrorism in the post-9/11 era. And all the while, FBI agents and offices across the country continue to investigate a wide range of lawbreaking, from organized crime (in all its facets) to white-collar crime and corruption by public officials.
