J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was a darkly authoritarian figure. During his 48-year reign at the FBI and its forerunner, he exercised personal oversight over decisions large and small, from wiretaps to dress codes. Control bred unthinking obedience. When Hoover once scrawled “Watch the borders” on one of the memoranda that passed across his desk, agents were reportedly dispatched to America’s frontiers with Mexico and Canada. It turned out that he was in fact concerned about the width of the margins on the document.
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