Hoover | The Library Clerk Who Became All Powerful | 1
Legacy
Wondery
3.9 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2024
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a young boy, J Edgar Hoover strives for perfection and control. After a stint working at the Library of Congress he embarks on a career in law enforcement. But it's not long before his perfect image is threatened, and he needs to find someone to blame when things goes wrong. What happens next will set him on the path to becoming the founding director of the FBI - and one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Follow Legacy on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. We've updated Wondery Plus with |
| 0:05.9 | new and improved features just for our UK members. If you haven't already, please join Wondry |
| 0:11.0 | Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts to elevate your listening experience and discover your |
| 0:16.8 | next obsession. |
| 0:26.4 | Hello and welcome to a new series of Legacy. |
| 0:31.3 | Today we're going to be talking about a man who, according to the New York Times, wielded more power for longer than any man in American history. |
| 0:35.4 | He's a man whose shadow falls dark and deep onto us here in |
| 0:39.7 | 2024, more than half a century since he died. It's no exaggeration to say that he created |
| 0:46.4 | the dark arts of modern politics, wrote Donald Trump's playbook, for example, embracing |
| 0:52.2 | conspiracy theories, using techniques like discrediting opponents, |
| 0:56.2 | clinging to patriotism. And ironically, he was the architect of the deep state, the idea so |
| 1:03.3 | successfully weaponized by candidate Trump. I suppose if you had to think of a single figure who |
| 1:08.5 | shaped America in the 20th century, I think you could do a lot |
| 1:12.8 | worse than thinking about this man. He has a difficult and complicated legacy too. He is now as |
| 1:18.9 | unpopular as he was popular during his lifetime. He was able to control his image, his identity, |
| 1:25.6 | his power, without any problems at all. But today, you're hard |
| 1:29.7 | push to find anybody who'll say a kind word about him. And yet he is a man who had the ear of eight |
| 1:34.9 | presidents. Ronald Reagan, in fact, said that no 20th century man has met more to this country. |
| 1:41.5 | We are, of course, talking about J. Edgar Hoover. |
| 1:45.9 | He led America's Law Enforcement Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, for 48 years. |
| 1:53.7 | And he was, and this is one thing we can all agree on, a master of intelligence gathering. |
| 1:58.5 | He knew everybody's secrets, and when he died, the paranoia |
... |
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