Skip to main content

A Law Unto Itself

By
 
Tim Wiener's new book, Enemies: A History of the FBI sounds very promising, as he seeks to lay the federal bureau of investigation bare,

Under J Edgar Hoover’s 48-year reign, the FBI was a law unto itself, and more than one president compared it to the Gestapo. “No holds were barred,” admitted Bill Sullivan, the bureau’s head of counterintelligence during the late Fifties. “Never once did I hear anybody, including myself, raise the question: ‘Is this course of action which we have agreed upon lawful? Is it legal? Is it ethical or moral?’ ” Another agent put it more succinctly: “Nobody knew what was right or wrong.” The FBI was the closest thing that America had to an Eastern European-style secret police. 

This book follows up on his award-winning book, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.

Comments

  1. avrdsFebruary 29, 2012 at 2:43 AM

    I could go with this one, too.

    I'm about to leave for a few days and am taking the Devil in the White City, which comes highly recommended by my original history mentor. Hopefully will have it read by early next week if anyone wants to discuss that one. Otherwise, have to stick to 2012 options.

    Escape Artists might be an interesting one to discuss.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonFebruary 29, 2012 at 7:48 AM

    If Di Caprio can play Hoover, I don't see why Pitt can't play Gingrich in a movie.

    ReplyDelete
  3. James FergusonFebruary 29, 2012 at 7:48 AM

    That said, this book does appeal to me more.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rick DiguetteMarch 2, 2012 at 11:20 PM

    This reminds me of a book I read when I was ten or eleven years old, Don Whitehead's "The FBI Story: A Report to the People." I remember checking it out from the local library and reading it with fascination. Did I ever want to become an FBI agent.

    ReplyDelete
  5. avrdsMarch 5, 2012 at 6:03 AM

    The power of a book to (almost) change lives.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more