This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we return to our American stories.

Up next, the story of the most important lawman of the 20th century, the first director

of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. Although he himself never arrested anybody, his influence over his

bureaucracy took what would become the FBI from a corrupt and nearly powerless body to the

investigative behemoth that it is today.

Here to tell his story is Beverly Gage, author of G-Man, J. Edgar Hoover,

and the making of the American century.

Take it away, Beverly.

Well, I found him really interesting as a person, in part because I thought that he had become such a kind of caricature in our own time, this sort of one-dimensional villain.

And when I saw him pop up in history, he was a little more complicated than that.

He was actually really popular for most of his life. And then I also thought he was just a

great vehicle for talking about some of the big themes of the 20th century. He became FBI

director in 1924, and he never actually retired. He just died on the job without ever being

forced out of office. And that meant that he was there under eight different presidents. Four were

Democrats and four were Republicans, which I think is a lot harder to do now and almost impossible

for people to imagine in our own kind of partisan world.

So what that really meant is that he got the job under Calvin Coolidge.

Taxes take from everyone.

A part of his earning.

He then stayed on through Herbert Hoover and the dawn of the Great Depression.

It is a contest between two philosophies of government.

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