J. Edgar Hoover was named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation, which later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He'd occupy the position of the agency's head until May 2, 1972, the latter being the date of his death.
Hoover was a lawyer who had graduated from Georgetown with an LLB in 1916 and obtained a LLM from the same institution in 1917. That year, he went to work in the Justice Department War Emergency Division at age 22. He was 77 when he died, the mandatory Federal retirement age having been waived in his case. His extremely long retention is peculiar, and has given rise to speculation that various Presidents were afraid of what he might have on them in his files.
Hoover was foundational for the FBI, as might be suspected. As an individual personality he was peculiar and notably never married, and lived with his mother into his 40s and was extremely close to assistant director Clyde Tolson, who inherited his estate, all of which has given rise to speculation about his sexuality but nothing has been proven one way or another about it.
Personally, I suspect that Hoover was the source of information used by Joe McCarthy on Communists in the US government, something that the Truman Administration early on had attempted to keep the lid on, but I've never seen that speculated upon elsewhere.
It was a Saturday.
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