Hoover's Ghost

J. Edgar Hoover passed in 1972 but his ghost may recently have paid us a visit and somehow taken control of current FBI Director James Comey.

This past Friday, Comey announced that he had reopened the FBI investigation of Sec. Clinton use of a private email server, even though the FBI had not reviewed nor obtained a warrant to investigate emails obtained from the personal laptop computer of the estranged husband of one of Sec. Clinton’s assistants. He is under investigation in an entirely unrelated case.

Oddly, neither the FBI nor the Clinton assistant know how the emails ended up on that computer let alone the information included within them.

Director Comey, previously a registered R, said the FBI might get around to reviewing the mysterious emails sometime in the future. He wouldn’t say when. Additionally, news sources revealed that Comey made his email announcement despite direction not to do so from his boss, the Attorney General of the United States, and in violation of Justice Department policy.

So, a few days prior to the election, voters are left with many “unknowns” and Mr. T, the R candidate, has been handed a miraculous “leg -up” for his bid to become Leader of the Free World. Unsurprisingly, Mr. T wasted no time putting his miraculous gift to work.

As I reflected on this mystical turn of events, a few spotlights began to brighten the dark for me. I remembered how the FBI and other “secret” organizations had “planted” information in the past in order to discredit or otherwise cast aspersions upon a patsy or fall person.

Lee Harvey Oswald is an example. Freedom of Information Act disclosures have shown that he was an informant and paid by both the FBI and the CIA prior to the murder of the President of the United States. You may recall that within hours of JFK’s assassination, Hoover himself declared Oswald the sole assassin. Later, Hoover also said that Oswald had absolutely no connection with the FBI.
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During his 48-year reign as Director of the FBI, Hoover was known to maintain in his office "personal and confidential" files on every important person he deemed significant. When it served his purpose he would threaten to publicly disclose information from his files to embarrass, threaten, bully or otherwise “compromise” the person into doing whatever he wanted them to do.

Hoover was an expert at this form of blackmail and no one, no matter his/her position, was exempt from his abusive reach.

It was Hoover who created the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) through which he marshaled the resources of the USA via his FBI agents and conducted a series of covert, illegal investigations designed to discredit and disrupt a plethora of civic movements, political organizations and otherwise “legal” organizations. Hoover conducted his own personal vendettas against many people, including Dr. Martin Luther King, for instance, using COINTELPRO as his cover.

As FBI Director, he ordered around-the-clock surveillance of Dr. King, looking for evidence of Communist influence or sexual deviance. “Using illegal wiretaps and warrantless searches, Hoover gathered a large file of what he considered damning evidence against King.”

“J. Edgar Hoover shaped the F.B.I in his own image of discipline and patriotism. He also directed the bureau into secret and illegal domestic surveillance spurred on by his conservative patriotism and paranoia. His nefarious tactics had been suspected for decades by government officials, but presidents from Truman to Nixon seemed unable to fire him due to his popularity and the potentially high political cost. In 1975, the Church Committee (named after its chairman, Senator Frank Church [D-Idaho]) conducted a full investigation of COINTELPRO’s operations and concluded that many of the agency’s tactics were illegal and, in many, cases unconstitutional.” *

You know… it’s Halloween… Do you think it’s possible that Mr. Hoover’s ghost has taken over Mr. Comey? Just askin’.

Oh, by the way, lest we have forgotten, there was a time when at least some FBI agents did conduct honest investigations... at least on TV. Check how FBI Inspector, Lewis Erskine, (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) handled an investigation: The F B I, Season 1, Episode 14 Pound of Flesh, 1965. Sorry, the episode is no longer available for free on YouTube. You may be able to view it through Netflix or Amazon. Here is a link to download the episode.

*J. Edgar Hoover Biography, Biography.com
http://www.biography.com/people/j-edgar-hoover-9343398#fbi