Secrecy and Power

"I had to throw that in there because I am an FBI guy! There have been so many books on Hoover I thought I had better put it in. Of the ones I have read this one was by far the best researched book and is probably the most accurate on a very difficult life to understand, of a very unusual person. You have to remember he was the director of the FBI for close to 50 years. Think of one person doing that for 50 years. First of all, it is way too long, but as a result he became iconic to American culture. He became a thorn to many presidents. He had an incredible amount of power in US political circles because of the information he possessed on other people. When he finally died in 1972 things changed in the FBI dramatically. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Females were hired for the first time; the job became much more open to minorities, priorities changed. We really began to take a hard look at organised crime in a team-like concerted way for the first time ever."