WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

This is On Point. I'm Megna Chakrabardi.

Jay Edgar Hoover was the first and thus far most notorious director of the FBI.

He was first appointed as director of what was then known as the Bureau of

Investigation in 1924. He helped found what became the FBI in 135. Death was the only thing

that could remove Hoover from that post. When he did die in 1972, he had a combined leadership role in both

bureaus for 48 years. And across those decades, communism remained one of Hoover's greatest fears.

Communism in reality is not a political party. It is a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life.

It reveals a condition akin to disease that spreads like an epidemic.

And like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting this nation.

Jay Edgar Hoover there testifying at a congressional hearing on March 27, 1947.

He goes on to say that the Communist Party was, quote, far better organized than the Nazis, end quote.

He claims communists were trying to overthrow the government, and Hoover's goal was to destroy them.

Hoover used his massive political power in that effort.

In fact, he abused that power, violated some of the very laws the FBI was sworn to uphold,

collected files on private citizens using illegal surveillance and harassed and sabotaged political dissidents.

Well, we're now 101 years after Hoover's rise to the pinnacle of American law enforcement.

And the FBI's newest director, Cash Patel, seems struck from the same paranoid political mold.

But Patel doesn't fear communists.

He wants to go after the very government he recently swore to serve, or what he calls the deep state.

They have put their army on the ground in government agencies and departments from the

DoD to the FBI to the DOJ.

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