0
SPEAKER_02
Guess what, Will?
0
SPEAKER_02
What s up, Mango?
0
SPEAKER_02
I ve been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we ve done over 250 episodes, we don t really talk about murders or cults.
0
SPEAKER_02
I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy.
0
SPEAKER_02
We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money?
0
SPEAKER_02
And then, of course, can you game a dog show?
0
SPEAKER_02
So what you re saying is everyone should be listening.
0
SPEAKER_02
Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
0
SPEAKER_01
A new season of Bridgerton is here.
0
SPEAKER_01
And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m your host, Gabby Collins.
0
SPEAKER_01
And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.
0
SPEAKER_01
Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
0
SPEAKER_01
Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0
SPEAKER_01
Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.
0
SPEAKER_00
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0
SPEAKER_04
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0
SPEAKER_04
I m Josh and there s Chuck and Jerry s here too.
0
SPEAKER_04
And this is Stuff You Should Know, G-man edition.
0
SPEAKER_04
Oh, yeah.
0
SPEAKER_04
Gee, man.
0
SPEAKER_04
That s right.
0
SPEAKER_04
That s exactly what I meant.
0
SPEAKER_04
Gee, man, what a crummy person J Edgar Hoover was.
0
SPEAKER_03
Uh, yeah, I got, I got a couple of things to say at the beginning if, if I may.
0
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
0
SPEAKER_03
About J Edgar Hoover.
0
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, let s hear it.
0
SPEAKER_03
Uh, firstly, if you want to feel old, um, just realize that you were alive when J Edgar Hoover was still running the FBI like I am.
0
SPEAKER_04
OK.
0
SPEAKER_03
I was like, oh, my God.
0
SPEAKER_03
Nineteen seventy two.
0
SPEAKER_03
Is that real?
0
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_03
So it makes me feel old, but also a testament to his staying power.
0
SPEAKER_03
No, I think it s more just you being OK.
0
SPEAKER_03
Number two, just quickly want to point out that J. Edgar is not related to Herbert Hoover.
0
SPEAKER_04
Okay.
0
SPEAKER_04
Hadn t even crossed my mind.
0
SPEAKER_04
What about the Hoover vacuum clamp?
0
SPEAKER_03
I don t know about that, but it crossed a lot of people s minds about Herbert because he was, each of them were constantly having to sort of deflect that answer or whatever.
0
SPEAKER_03
Say that answer s not correct.
0
SPEAKER_04
Are you two twins?
0
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_03
And third, just like, it s fascinating to study this guy that I knew, I feel like a little bit about just from all the various things over the years, but
0
SPEAKER_03
Like what a enigma this guy was.
0
SPEAKER_03
I think because he operated in such secrecy, it s kind of impossible to know a lot of stuff.
0
SPEAKER_03
about him privately because he held such power and sway over people as far as like fear of blackmail and stuff like that, that it s really interesting to like, you know, you read five different historians and they may have five different takes on aspects of his, of who he was in his private life and stuff like that.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s really interesting.
0
SPEAKER_04
Right.
0
SPEAKER_04
And for those of us who were born into a world where J. Edgar Hoover wasn t running the FBI,
0
SPEAKER_03
Hmm, lucky you.
0
SPEAKER_04
We came along at a really different period in how people looked at him.
0
SPEAKER_04
Like, essentially from his death onward, he s been looked at as like an American villain.
0
SPEAKER_04
Before that, basically all the way up to his death from essentially the day he started at the FBI, America looked at him as a hero, essentially.
0
SPEAKER_04
As a competent, nonpartisan, above the boards,
0
SPEAKER_04
not in any way, shape, or form corrupt head of the FBI, a technocrat who believed in applying science and detection over things like hitting a guy with a rubber hose to get answers out of him.
0
SPEAKER_04
He was a sea change and helped America fight off the Red Menace more than once.
0
SPEAKER_04
And like you said, it was really difficult to kind of discern who he was, even at the time when he was in the news all the time.
0
SPEAKER_04
He served eight presidents, four Democrats, four Republicans, three Green Party, and he was the head of the FBI for like 48 straight years.
0
SPEAKER_04
I also saw him described as the most powerful civil servant America has ever seen.
0
SPEAKER_03
Oh, easily.
0
SPEAKER_03
I think by a long shot.
0
SPEAKER_03
And the reason he was able to serve those
0
SPEAKER_03
eight presidents without getting fired.
0
SPEAKER_03
We ll talk a little bit about the fact that part of that has to do with people were legit sort of afraid of what this guy had on them, as in everybody, including presidents.
0
SPEAKER_03
But a lot of it was because of that popularity.
0
SPEAKER_03
I mean, I ve seen most people say, oh, it s because he had dirt on all the presidents.
0
SPEAKER_03
And that s part of it for sure.
0
SPEAKER_03
But I also saw that a lot of it was because he was so popular.
0
SPEAKER_03
that firing J. Edgar Hoover would have been very bad for you politically because people loved him so much.
0
SPEAKER_04
That was part of it.
0
SPEAKER_04
He also seemed to prove to be too great a temptation for presidents to not use and ultimately get into cahoots with him.
0
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_03
Even left-leaning progressives.
0
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_03
Even FDR.
0
SPEAKER_03
That s the guy I was talking about.
0
SPEAKER_04
Even LBJ.
0
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_04
Even JFK.
0
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_04
So yeah, there s a lot to talk about with this guy.
0
SPEAKER_04
And a lot of it, like you said, is unsubstantiated because he did the smart thing and had all of his personal records destroyed upon his death.
0
SPEAKER_04
He had a very dedicated secretary.
0
SPEAKER_04
And so we ll just never know a lot of it.
0
SPEAKER_04
But there is stuff that s so
0
SPEAKER_04
close to being confirmed, that it s like you can essentially say this is true.
0
SPEAKER_04
Then there s other stuff.
0
SPEAKER_04
It s like, what?
0
SPEAKER_04
Where are you coming up with that?
0
SPEAKER_04
That seems totally false.
0
SPEAKER_04
And then in the middle, there s the stuff where it s like, really?
0
SPEAKER_04
Is it?
0
SPEAKER_04
It s entirely possible it s true, but we just don t know.
0
SPEAKER_04
And it s great for speculation.
0
SPEAKER_04
Either way, the stuff we do know about turned him into a reviled figure for sure.
0
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, absolutely.
0
SPEAKER_03
And as you ll see during a lot of this, the guy was also sort of a walking conundrum in a lot of ways by
0
SPEAKER_03
doing things on one hand that would seemingly fly in the face of things he s doing on the other hand.
0
SPEAKER_03
And that ll all kind of come out as we go.
0
SPEAKER_03
But big shout out to Livia, who did a bang up job on this one.
0
SPEAKER_03
And also to a writer in this, Livia got some information from this great book, a historian named Beverly Gage from Yale University wrote a book in 2022 called G-Man, colon,
0
SPEAKER_04
Mm hmm.
0
SPEAKER_03
J. Edgar Hoover and the making of an American century.
0
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, pretty great stuff.
0
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_04
So, yeah, Beverly Gage is essentially like the definitive source of J. Edgar Hoover information right now.
0
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I mean, there s a lot of Hoover bios and they all, some of them fly in the face of each other with what they claim.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s pretty interesting.
0
SPEAKER_04
For sure.
0
SPEAKER_04
So let s start at the beginning.
0
SPEAKER_04
Let s start when he was born back in 1895.
0
SPEAKER_04
That s right.
0
SPEAKER_04
That s a long time ago.
0
SPEAKER_04
And one thing to know about J. Edgar Hoover is he was a D.C.
0
SPEAKER_04
boy born and bred his entire life.
0
SPEAKER_04
He was born in that city and he died in that city.
0
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, he was born Capitol Hill and Seward Square and comes from a came from a long line of family that worked for the government.
0
SPEAKER_03
His dad in particular, one Dickerson Naylor Hoover.
0
SPEAKER_04
Great name.
0
SPEAKER_03
Worked for something called the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, which was a scientific organization.
0
SPEAKER_03
And, you know, he had siblings.
0
SPEAKER_03
He had a sister that died when he was three.
0
SPEAKER_03
It seems like his father suffered from some mental illness and depression, which would ultimately be the cause of his death in 1921.
0
SPEAKER_03
And, you know, we can get into some sort of armchair speculation on Hoover s mental condition maybe at the end.
0
SPEAKER_04
Sure.
0
SPEAKER_04
Can t wait.
0
SPEAKER_03
But when he was a kid, he he was pretty shy.
0
SPEAKER_03
He was known as a mama s boy, had a very sort of overbearing, doting mother.
0
SPEAKER_03
He had a stutter.
0
SPEAKER_03
Apparently, the stutter was so bad that he.
0
SPEAKER_03
He went about correcting it by just talking really fast, and that kind of ran through his life.
0
SPEAKER_03
I think there were court stenographer, just stenographers, period, that couldn t keep up with him on the job.
0
SPEAKER_03
He was so fast.
0
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, no, he had that very quick delivery if you ve ever seen like a newsreel or any news footage of him speaking or reading a speech or something.
0
SPEAKER_04
But yeah, he kind of took that on.
0
SPEAKER_04
He joined the debate team.
0
SPEAKER_04
He forced himself to do public speaking engagements.
0
SPEAKER_04
And he did not like that kind of stuff.
0
SPEAKER_04
But he did it anyway, because as we ll see, he was a master of PR, which served him quite well.
0
SPEAKER_04
One of the other things about him is that his mother impressed upon him a moral uprightness that actually kind of converted into a moral righteousness where there was a specific way to be an American in jail.
1
SPEAKER_07
J. Edgar Hoover s mind.
1
SPEAKER_07
And anybody who ran afoul of that, thought otherwise, was an enemy of America and should be treated accordingly.
1
SPEAKER_07
And unfortunately, there s plenty of people walking around.
1
SPEAKER_07
That s the definition of a fascist.
1
SPEAKER_07
So he was a total fascist if you hadn t figured that out by now.
1
SPEAKER_07
But he had the power to actually make enemies out of the people he considered un-American who were still Americans.
1
SPEAKER_07
They just didn t see America exactly the same way J. Edgar Hoover did.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_04
His mom s name was Annie, and Judi Dench played her in the Clint Eastwood movie that starred Leo DiCaprio.
1
SPEAKER_04
Did you see it?
1
SPEAKER_04
I never saw it.
1
SPEAKER_04
It got pretty bad reviews, so it just didn t draw me in.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, Leo played Hoover, Dinch played his mom, and as we ll see, Armie Hammer played his... Well, let s just save that one, I guess.
1
SPEAKER_07
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_04
Even though it s no big secret, we ll just save it.
1
SPEAKER_04
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_04
His co-worker, let s just say that.
1
SPEAKER_07
Yeah, his close associate.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_07
So yeah, so he had this view of America that he carried with him his whole way and what it meant to be an upright American.
1
SPEAKER_07
He also was really, really good at organizing.
1
SPEAKER_07
So like the way you think of like a government bureaucracy today, where there s tons of files and all sorts of like people whose job it is to access those files and they do it to varying degrees of success.
1
SPEAKER_07
J. Edgar Hoover actually kind of built that what s called the administrative state.
1
SPEAKER_07
You can actually thank him for that.
1
SPEAKER_07
He not only built the FBI, he made the federal government this kind of administrative power like it is.
1
SPEAKER_04
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
1
SPEAKER_04
He learned a lot of that at one of his first jobs after high school.
1
SPEAKER_04
I got a job at the Library of Congress.
1
SPEAKER_04
And that s where he really got into just sort of categorizing stuff, collecting information.
1
SPEAKER_04
He got a master of law degree from GW, from George Washington University, in 1917.
1
SPEAKER_04
And the only reason we mention this is because it sort of plays into his massive amount of cronyism.
1
SPEAKER_04
He was a K-A, joined the K-A fraternity there, which is a very Southern, you know, it was like a,
1
SPEAKER_04
they celebrate the Confederacy.
1
SPEAKER_04
It was like a Robert E. Lee thing.
1
SPEAKER_04
I remember even at Georgia, the KAs were, and I imagine still are, just very Confederate.
1
SPEAKER_07
Yeah, that s a great word for it.
1
SPEAKER_04
They re just like Confederate pride, that whole thing.
1
SPEAKER_04
Those are the KAs.
1
SPEAKER_04
And as we ll see, a lot of those KAs and people that he knew ended up getting jobs from him directly.
1
SPEAKER_04
So lots of cronyism happening.
1
SPEAKER_07
Yes, for sure.
1
SPEAKER_07
So also, he became a clerk at World War I, at the DOJ, and that kept him out of the draft.
1
SPEAKER_07
But it also was his true first step into his government service.
1
SPEAKER_07
Library of Congress, yeah, that was essentially the beginning.
1
SPEAKER_07
But this was the true beginning, because very quickly, he was assigned
1
SPEAKER_07
pretty substantial duties, including overseeing what was called the General Intelligence Division.
1
SPEAKER_07
This was a part of the Department of Justice.
1
SPEAKER_07
If those three words, the General Intelligence Division, don t run a chill down your spine, you re not listening closely.
1
SPEAKER_04
It s like something out of Brazil.
1
SPEAKER_07
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_07
Right.
1
SPEAKER_07
So he was the head of this.
1
SPEAKER_07
And this guy at the time, he was, let s see, 24 years old.
1
SPEAKER_07
And he s running the General Intelligence Division for the DOJ.
1
SPEAKER_07
And the whole point of the G.I.D.
1
SPEAKER_07
was to investigate radicals, leftists, anarchists, communists.
1
SPEAKER_07
There was a big red scare from 1919 to 1920.
1
SPEAKER_07
And his whole jam
1
SPEAKER_07
was to apply everything he d learned and developed at the Library of Congress to everything he wanted to do in law enforcement.
1
SPEAKER_07
And he created massive files on immigrants to America.
1
SPEAKER_07
And basically, it was like, this is an immigrant.
1
SPEAKER_07
They are loyal or disloyal.
1
SPEAKER_07
They like communism or like capitalism.
1
SPEAKER_07
And just amassed all of these files, and they eventually turned them into what were known as the Palmer Raids, where they just went into these people s homes and said, J. Edgar Hoover and the G.I.D.
1
SPEAKER_07
thinks you re disloyal.
1
SPEAKER_07
Come with us.
1
SPEAKER_07
We re deporting you.
1
SPEAKER_07
Forget your civil liberties.
1
SPEAKER_07
Forget the fact that you re a naturalized American citizen now.
1
SPEAKER_07
It doesn t matter.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, this was a big deal.
1
SPEAKER_04
Maybe we can do something on the Palmer raids in full at some point.
1
SPEAKER_04
But just kind of in a nutshell, the attorney general, a Mitchell Palmer, had his house was bombed.
1
SPEAKER_04
There was a guy named an anarchist named Carlo Valdanochi.
1
SPEAKER_04
who the bomb went off early, so it kind of blew up the front of his house along with the bomber himself.
1
SPEAKER_04
There were other bombs mailed to mayors and senators and business leaders.
1
SPEAKER_04
So there was a real sort of anarchist, you know, mail bombing cookbook.
1
SPEAKER_04
thing happening.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_04
Cookbook going on.
1
SPEAKER_04
But the response was the Palmer raids, which was just a nightmare of an operation.
1
SPEAKER_04
It was really kind of an unconstitutional disaster.
1
SPEAKER_07
Right.
1
SPEAKER_04
Where, like you said, a lot of these high profile deportations, like straight to Russia, when many of these people are just like didn t even know what they were talking about.
1
SPEAKER_07
Right.
1
SPEAKER_07
I make bagels.
1
SPEAKER_07
Leave me alone kind of thing.
1
SPEAKER_07
Right.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_04
I mean, I think his list was four hundred and fifty thousand long.
1
SPEAKER_04
And like how many how many real leftist radicals were there?
1
SPEAKER_07
Exactly right.
1
SPEAKER_07
And there were also tons of cases of mistaken identity.
1
SPEAKER_07
Like it was a catastrophe.
1
SPEAKER_07
The Palmer Raids so ran afoul of civil liberties, they actually created things like the ACLU and other civil liberties groups to defend against stuff like that ever happening again.
1
SPEAKER_07
But what s miraculous is that the head of all this, the guy who was in charge of actually executing the Palmer Raids,
1
SPEAKER_07
was J. Edgar Hoover and he survived politically and went on to actually step upward from that point on.
1
SPEAKER_07
Some people are like, you need to keep that guy away from the levers of power because of what he just did.
1
SPEAKER_07
And other people are like, I don t like the cut of that guy s jib.
1
SPEAKER_07
And the people who like the cut of his jib, they want out.
1
SPEAKER_04
I was about to say that s a good cliffhanger, but you made it an even better cliffhanger.
1
SPEAKER_07
Oh, thanks.
1
SPEAKER_04
With that last line.
1
SPEAKER_04
So let s come back, A, and we ll talk about where the FBI comes into play.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah?
1
SPEAKER_07
I can add some more lines if you want me to make it even better.
1
SPEAKER_04
No, I think you made it just perfect.
1
SPEAKER_07
OK.
1
SPEAKER_06
Guess what, Bango?
1
SPEAKER_06
What s up, Will?
1
SPEAKER_06
So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius.
1
SPEAKER_05
I know, that s why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion.
1
SPEAKER_05
It s about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it s called Earthquake House.
1
SPEAKER_06
Mango, I m going to cut you off right there.
1
SPEAKER_06
Why don t we just tell people about our show instead?
1
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, that s a better idea.
1
SPEAKER_05
So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world s most important questions.
1
SPEAKER_05
Things like, when did America start dialing 911?
1
SPEAKER_05
Is William Shatner s best acting work in Esperanto?
1
SPEAKER_05
Also, what happened to Esperanto?
1
SPEAKER_06
Plus, we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food?
1
SPEAKER_06
How do dollar stores stay in business?
1
SPEAKER_06
And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese?
1
SPEAKER_05
There absolutely is.
1
SPEAKER_05
And we are risking our lives by talking about it.
1
SPEAKER_05
But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune in to Part-Time Genius.
1
SPEAKER_06
Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_03
Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception.
1
SPEAKER_03
I m Andrea Gunning, and now we re sharing an all-new story of betrayal.
1
SPEAKER_03
Stacey thought she had the perfect husband.
1
SPEAKER_03
Doctor, father, family man.
1
SPEAKER_03
It was the perfect cover for Justin Rutherford to hide behind.
1
SPEAKER_02
They led me into the house, and I mean, it was like a movie.
1
SPEAKER_02
He was sitting at our kitchen table.
1
SPEAKER_02
The cops were guarding him.
1
SPEAKER_03
Stacey learned how far her husband would go to save himself.
1
SPEAKER_02
I slept with a loaded gun next to my bed.
1
SPEAKER_00
He did not just say, I wish he was dead.
1
SPEAKER_00
He actually gave details and explained different scenarios on how to kill him.
1
SPEAKER_02
He, to me, is scarier than Jeffrey Dahmer.
1
SPEAKER_03
Listen to Betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_01
A new season of Bridgerton is here.
1
SPEAKER_01
And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m your host, Gabrielle Collins.
1
SPEAKER_01
And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the
2
SPEAKER_00
ton.
2
SPEAKER_00
Colin Bridgerton has returned from his travels abroad.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is Betrothal written in the stars for the eligible Bachelor?
2
SPEAKER_00
Meanwhile, the ton is reverberating with speculation of who holds Lady Whistledown s pen.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re discussing it all.
2
SPEAKER_00
I sit down with Nicola Coughlin, Luke Newton, Shonda Rhimes, and more to offer an exclusive peek behind the scenes of each episode of the new season.
2
SPEAKER_00
Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_00
Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.
2
SPEAKER_02
All right, so we promised talk of the FBI initially, and we ve said this on other episodes.
2
SPEAKER_02
It was called the Bureau Investigations at first.
2
SPEAKER_02
It was formed in 1908, basically to say, hey, U.S.
2
SPEAKER_02
Attorney General, you need some teeth.
2
SPEAKER_02
Here s your own law enforcement organization.
2
SPEAKER_02
Became the FBI in 1935, and early on was kind of interested in like corporate criminals, radicalism, and a real
2
SPEAKER_02
kind of from the beginning, a real crackdown and obsession with sex work.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the Mann Act.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Big deal.
2
SPEAKER_02
And it was also very corrupt and didn t have the best reputation until Coolidge came along in 1924 and hired a guy named Harlan Fisk Stone to reform the DOJ and kind of just clean house and get the FBI in good standing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, which is amazing that they re like, Hoover, why don t you take over?
2
SPEAKER_01
But that s exactly what they did.
2
SPEAKER_01
They made him acting director of the Bureau of Investigation starting in, I think, the same year Harlan Stone came in, 1924, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and they got rid of that GID, by the way.
2
SPEAKER_01
They did, but it just went away essentially in name, not spirit by any measure.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And again, just like at the GID, J. Edgar Hoover set about applying the principles of bureaucracy, of organization, and of science, too.
2
SPEAKER_01
He was a true believer in science.
2
SPEAKER_01
to this nascent Bureau of Investigation.
2
SPEAKER_01
And one of the stunning statistics I ran across that really gets across just how much of an impact he had on the FBI when he took it over, over the course of 10 years, I think, up to 1936, they amassed a huge collection of fingerprints.
2
SPEAKER_01
something like 100,000 fingerprints.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they had people whose entire job it was to go look up the fingerprints and bring them for analysis, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
10 years later, in 1946, they had 100 million sets of fingerprints.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there was only 140 million people who lived in America at the time.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s crazy, man.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_02
He also created like a forensic lab.
2
SPEAKER_02
He created the FBI Academy.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like he really,
2
SPEAKER_02
not only kind of brought their reputation back, but like you said, he organized them in a way where they operated like a humming machine.
2
SPEAKER_01
And people respected it, they admired it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It really fit in with FDR s New Deal thing of like, hey, your government is big and for a reason.
2
SPEAKER_01
We can do all sorts of amazing, competent, capable stuff to make the life of the average person greater.
2
SPEAKER_02
Look at all these fingerprints.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if it necessarily fit in with the New Deal, but one of the other things that J. Edgar Hoover did was he instituted this
2
SPEAKER_01
these policies that when you put them all together basically made, it required every FBI agent to be Ned Flanders essentially.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he did that because he wanted his people to seem above reproach.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because at the time, the idea of law enforcement was that if they weren t incompetent, then they were crooked, or maybe they were both.
2
SPEAKER_01
There was not a lot of public regard for law enforcement.
2
SPEAKER_01
So he wanted to make sure that his particular agency
2
SPEAKER_01
separated itself from that, like, put itself head and shoulders.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, like the way that in any movie the FBI agents come in and just completely take control of, like, the investigation or the crime scene or whatever?
2
SPEAKER_01
That was essentially... That came from Hoover.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, he created this image of the FBI agents as so uber-competent that no one would challenge them if they did walk into a crime scene and take over.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
And if you remember seeing a lot of movies that had FBI agents portrayed as like tall, handsome white guys, it s because FBI agents were largely almost roundly tall, handsome white guys.
2
SPEAKER_02
He hired a lot of his again with the cronyism.
2
SPEAKER_02
a lot of his alums from GW, a lot of KAs.
2
SPEAKER_02
He kept the FBI from being classified as civil service, so he didn t have, you know, he could basically flout any rules that would have forced him to have like a, to look at any kind of diverse applicant.
2
SPEAKER_02
So he wanted white men that were
2
SPEAKER_02
good looking.
2
SPEAKER_02
Again, as a PR move, it was it was a popular thing at the time.
2
SPEAKER_02
Ironically, in the 40s, Ebony magazine did a feature on like black employees of the FBI.
2
SPEAKER_02
And then Hoover even helped them with this because it was a PR thing.
2
SPEAKER_02
But they were all valets.
2
SPEAKER_02
None of them were agents because there were no black agents.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And like you said, the way he got around that was to accept the FBI from civil service.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, how did he do that?
2
SPEAKER_01
And how did he get away with that?
2
SPEAKER_01
And there s something called accepted service.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s where you don t, you re not, that agency is not subject to the same laws and requirements as a civil service agency is.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the reason he was doing is he was saying, like, some of these laws are letting people in government who are just really slack keep their jobs.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I can t have that in the FBI.
2
SPEAKER_01
I have to have top-notch crack people who I m able to fire if they don t meet our standards.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think that s how he was able to get the FBI out of civil service classification.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
And you mentioned Ned Flanders.
2
SPEAKER_02
He wanted them to be
2
SPEAKER_02
Like you said, sort of beyond reproach and morally upright.
2
SPEAKER_02
So he he insisted that they not drink alcohol, at least sort of on the job, like, you know, have the martinis at lunch kind of thing.
2
SPEAKER_02
Apparently he was a big martini guy.
2
SPEAKER_02
But as the story goes, only after work, only two martinis.
2
SPEAKER_02
And then later in life, when he was in, you know, sort of older and not in the best of health, his doctor said he can t drink martinis anymore.
2
SPEAKER_02
And he was like, well, that s not going to happen.
2
SPEAKER_02
And he said, all right, cut down to one martini then.
2
SPEAKER_02
And he said, sure.
2
SPEAKER_02
And as legend has it, he had his staff buy larger martini glasses and then dropped it down to one.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that was something I saw.
2
SPEAKER_01
There was a frontline episode from years and years ago called The File on J. Edgar Hoover.
2
SPEAKER_01
And a lot of it seems totally off the rails and unbelievable for good reason.
2
SPEAKER_01
But some of the stuff that he had the FBI staff do for him was so above and beyond what any agency staff should be doing for the director.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like they replaced his grass once because he didn t like the color green.
2
SPEAKER_01
Just stuff like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I totally believe that he had his FBI staff buy bigger martini glasses for his home.
2
SPEAKER_01
That was totally in line with how he treated the Bureau.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was his own kingdom.
2
SPEAKER_01
And little by little, he made it so.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not like he came into it and somebody handed him the keys and said, good luck, go make this agency that s so powerful, it is essentially a fourth branch of government.
2
SPEAKER_01
He built it little by little, bit by bit, dirt by dirt, favor by favor, and it got to the point fairly quickly where he could do stuff like that and no one would say anything about it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_02
All right, so let s go to the 1930s.
2
SPEAKER_02
This was, as Livia called it, we love our golden ages.
2
SPEAKER_02
And this may have been the golden age of the FBI.
2
SPEAKER_02
This is when through PR and as we ll see through movies and television and through sort of him helping to control the news machine, the FBI were heroes.
2
SPEAKER_02
They had fans, like people love these G-Men.
2
SPEAKER_02
And we ll get to that.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, you might as well say I think G-Men was supposedly coined
2
SPEAKER_02
by Machine Gun Kelly, who in – is either one of them good?
2
SPEAKER_02
All right.
2
SPEAKER_02
In 1933 yelled, don t shoot G-men like government men.
3
SPEAKER_02
sort of formed in the 1930s, this image that actually like, you know, there were little little boys and maybe some girls, but definitely little boys running around the schoolyard like playing G-Men.
3
SPEAKER_02
They wanted to be G-Men.
3
SPEAKER_02
They were they were sort of superstars because they would bust high profile bank robbers.
3
SPEAKER_02
And he just you know, he jumped in on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, which, you know, horrified a nation.
3
SPEAKER_02
He apparently didn t have any legal jurisdiction.
3
SPEAKER_02
But like you said,
3
SPEAKER_02
J. Edgar Hoover walks onto the scene is like, we re taking over now and no one s going to stand in his way.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, not at all.
3
SPEAKER_01
But in doing those kind of things, he just built the reputation for the FBI by leaps and bounds.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of the things that he did that was so masterful in taking on the gangsters was to not try to dissuade the public from glorifying them.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the gangsters were just amazing folk heroes, but the FBI was even greater because they re the ones taking down these amazing folk heroes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like the gangsters are here, but man, your average FBI agent is head and shoulders above them because he s going to get them sooner or later and probably kill them in a shootout in front of a house or a theater or something like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so he was able to play off of the public s fascination with gangsters and use that to kind of parlay FBI, the FBI s reputation above it.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
This is kind of called the public enemy era as well, because he would use that term for people like John Dillinger.
3
SPEAKER_02
I mean, this guy.
3
SPEAKER_02
Dillinger was robbing banks.
3
SPEAKER_02
He was a bank robber.
3
SPEAKER_02
But to call someone a public enemy, like it almost elevated them in his own way to folk hero status, but also like folk villain status, I guess, is a better way to say it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, for sure.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like is a bank robber really a public enemy?
3
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it s not a great thing to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, supposedly in 1933, 34, there was a massive crime wave and there were a lot of murders going on.
3
SPEAKER_01
People were like gangsters were shooting each other in the streets over turf like it was shots.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, yeah, I mean, yeah, just a straight up bank robber, probably not.
3
SPEAKER_01
But these guys were doing any and all crime.
3
SPEAKER_01
They were like criminals of all trades, from what I could tell.
3
SPEAKER_02
OK.
3
SPEAKER_02
Public enemies, in other words.
3
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, but at the same time, yes, there was a huge publicity thing too, this public enemy number one, you know?
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, number one was Dillinger.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there were other public enemies number one, but he was the first public enemy number one, I think.
3
SPEAKER_02
Oh, so there was never a two?
3
SPEAKER_02
He just kept moving the number one mantle around?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, he d just kill off the number one and whoever was below them would come up and become number one, I guess.
3
SPEAKER_02
I guess that makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_01
So one of the ways that he shaped public opinion too was directly by working with journalists, by working with film and TV producers and writers, and he actually created a branch in the FBI called the Crime Records Division, which sounds very innocuous, but it turns out that they were the ones who were in charge of generating pro-FBI propaganda and making sure it got out there in the media.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I mean, this this is where it gets truly sort of nutso.
3
SPEAKER_02
He had at one point sort of de facto final cut on movies that were being produced.
3
SPEAKER_02
He had approval or denial of casting choices, like literally he approved Jimmy Stewart, you know, as I can t remember what movie it was even.
3
SPEAKER_02
in a movie as like the lead in the movie after like interviewing him.
3
SPEAKER_02
He interviewed Jimmy Stewart, gave him the job or gave him the stamp of approval.
3
SPEAKER_02
It apparently didn t like that Jimmy Cagney was portraying gangsters.
3
SPEAKER_02
So he said, you can do it as long as you, quote, get killed.
3
SPEAKER_02
in the end.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_02
And make sure that you re dead because no gangsters were supposed to live in any of the movies or TV shows.
3
SPEAKER_02
And he even has three writer credits and one.
3
SPEAKER_02
No.
3
SPEAKER_02
One acting credit.
3
SPEAKER_02
I think the writing credits were generally stuff based on cases that he was involved in.
3
SPEAKER_02
So they gave him he may have insisted on a credit.
3
SPEAKER_02
I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_02
But he does have one actor credit.
3
SPEAKER_02
He was a narrator on a film called The Next of Kin.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_02
So he was he was deep in
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, oh, he was deep into everything and anything that was going on in American life, above or below the boards, from what I can tell.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, or the line.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the gangster era kind of went away in the mid to late 30s.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there are plenty of gangsters still, but there was a changeover.
3
SPEAKER_01
It went from like bank robbing, cow murdering bandits like John Dillinger and started to become organized crime, the mafia, the mob.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at that point, as it started to kind of branch out and become, well, as legitimized as the mafia can be and organized, J. Edgar Hoover stopped paying attention to the gangsters and instead turned his attention to political surveillance again instead.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think his whole deal did a little more research into the mafia thing.
3
SPEAKER_02
The mafia was a problem, but he didn t see the mafia as a threat to the American way of life as he defined it.
3
SPEAKER_02
Communism, for sure.
3
SPEAKER_02
rabble rousing civil rights leaders, for sure, as we ll see the gay and lesbian community for sure.
3
SPEAKER_02
All of that threatened this sort of idyllic, old fashioned way of American life as he saw it.
3
SPEAKER_02
The mafia didn t necessarily.
3
SPEAKER_02
So he was never as concerned with them as he probably should have been.
3
SPEAKER_02
He was like, let the cops handle that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, OK, that totally makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_01
And because it s the simplest explanation, it s probably correct.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there is such a thread of thought that the that J. Edgar Hoover was either compromised and the mafia had him in a compromising position and or he was
3
SPEAKER_01
friends with, if not actual mobsters, friends of mobsters.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was in their world, him personally.
3
SPEAKER_01
Publicly, he was the head of the FBI and he carried out all of the crime fighting and leftist rousting and all that stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
But privately, if these, even half of these stories are to be believed, he was
3
SPEAKER_01
a total crook with a gambling problem and who was in the pocket of the mafia because they had dirt on him.
3
SPEAKER_01
I saw another explanation that said, yes, he actually purposely ignored the mafia.
3
SPEAKER_01
not because they had compromising pictures of him, but because they were in cahoots with a lot of elected officials and he didn t want to lose his position going after the mafia and having them get all of their elected official friends turning on him because he didn t know if he could survive that kind of thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was another explanation I saw.
3
SPEAKER_01
But whatever the interpretation is,
3
SPEAKER_01
Historically speaking, he ignored the mafia and actually denied for a decade after it was clear there was such a thing as a national syndicate of mafioso.
3
SPEAKER_01
Mafioso?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, mafiosi.
3
SPEAKER_01
He kept denying it, like actively denying it, and apparently moved to kind of thwart some of the federal and congressional investigations into the existence of the mafia.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like he personally was trying to not, at least not help, if not actively disrupt that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So there s something weird going on.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly what was behind it, though, we ll probably never know.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, what s interesting is that when I was reading through interviews with different biographers, and you would see two that were just so diametrically opposed in what they thought, like, oh, and they re all very convinced that they re right.
3
SPEAKER_02
But it almost seems like some of these biographies are either written by literal fans of his still, or then, or people that hated him.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like if you start looking into like some of the more salacious charges about him and like why the mafia was allowed to just operate, you mostly have to take the word of old mafia guys.
3
SPEAKER_02
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
who were like there for sure, like this guy really was the right hand man to Meyer Lansky.
3
SPEAKER_01
But can you believe him when he sits for an interview talking about how Meyer Lansky had pictures that he used to show his friends for fun of J. Edgar Hoover, you know, having sex with his partner?
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, like it s you really kind of have to stop and say, where s this where s this source coming from and what all what acts do they have to grind?
3
SPEAKER_02
So here s what I say.
3
SPEAKER_02
This is
3
SPEAKER_02
This is going so good, and it s going long, so why don t we take another break, come back and do a little more, but let s make this a two-parter.
3
What?
3
SPEAKER_02
Should we?
3
SPEAKER_01
You just totally sprung this on me out of the blue.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let me think about it.
3
SPEAKER_02
Okay, we ll think about it over the break, and we ll be right back.
4
SPEAKER_06
Guess what, Mango?
4
SPEAKER_06
What s that, Will?
4
SPEAKER_06
So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius.
4
SPEAKER_07
I know, that s why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion.
4
SPEAKER_07
It s about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it s called Earthquake House.
4
SPEAKER_06
Mango, I m going to cut you off right there.
4
SPEAKER_06
Why don t we just tell people about our show instead?
4
SPEAKER_07
Yeah, that s a better idea.
4
SPEAKER_07
So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world s most important questions.
4
SPEAKER_07
Things like, when did America start dialing 911?
4
SPEAKER_07
is William Shatner s best acting work in Esperanto.
4
SPEAKER_07
Also, what happened to Esperanto?
4
SPEAKER_06
Plus, we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food?
4
SPEAKER_06
How do dollar stores stay in business?
4
SPEAKER_06
And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese?
4
SPEAKER_06
There absolutely is.
4
SPEAKER_07
And we are risking our lives by talking about it.
4
SPEAKER_07
But if you love mind blowing facts, incredible history and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune in to Part Time Genius.
4
SPEAKER_06
Listen to Part Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
4
SPEAKER_04
Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception.
4
SPEAKER_04
I m Andrea Gunning, and now we re sharing an all-new story of betrayal.
4
SPEAKER_04
Stacey thought she had the perfect husband.
4
SPEAKER_04
Doctor, father, family man.
4
SPEAKER_04
It was the perfect cover for Justin Rutherford to hide behind.
4
SPEAKER_05
They led me into the house, and I mean, it was like a movie.
4
SPEAKER_05
He was sitting at our kitchen table.
4
SPEAKER_05
The cops were guarding him.
4
SPEAKER_04
Stacey learned how far her husband would go to save himself.
4
SPEAKER_05
I slept with a loaded gun next to my bed.
4
SPEAKER_00
He did not just say, I wish he was dead.
4
SPEAKER_00
He actually gave details and explained different scenarios on how to kill him.
4
SPEAKER_05
He, to me, is scarier than Jeffrey Dahmer.
4
SPEAKER_04
Listen to Betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
4
SPEAKER_01
A new season of Bridgerton is here.
4
SPEAKER_01
And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m your host, Gabrielle Collins.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.
4
SPEAKER_01
Colin Bridgerton has returned from his travels abroad.
4
SPEAKER_01
Is Betrothal written in the stars for the eligible bachelor?
4
SPEAKER_01
Meanwhile, the ton is reverberating with speculation of who holds Lady Whistledown s pen.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re discussing it all.
4
SPEAKER_01
I sit down with Nicola Coughlin, Luke Newton, Shonda Rhimes, and more to offer an exclusive peek behind the scenes of each episode of the new season.
4
SPEAKER_01
Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
4
SPEAKER_01
Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.
4
SPEAKER_03
OK, Chuck, I ve decided that is a fine idea.
4
SPEAKER_02
So should we chat a little bit?
4
SPEAKER_02
I think you sort of teased and then I got us off topic about the mafia.
4
SPEAKER_02
You tease a little bit about going into sort of the beginnings of the surveillance and working tightly with presidents, right?
4
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I think I said something like that, but like there was at the end of the gangster era, he kind of swapped over to from like continuing on with gangsters, which would make total sense for the FBI to do this, to instead turning his attention back to political stuff.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_03
To disrupting any kind of political thought that goes against the American way as envisioned by J. Edgar Hoover.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
And one of the ways he did this was by allying himself closely with different presidents.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, you said at the beginning, he worked for eight different presidents.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I think as it s generally thought that he was super tight and kind of close to two of them.
4
SPEAKER_02
Two of them didn t like him.
4
SPEAKER_02
And four just sort of played ball because they felt like they had to.
4
SPEAKER_03
So I can I can guess Kennedy definitely didn t like him and that was reciprocal.
4
SPEAKER_03
Who is the other one who didn t like him?
4
SPEAKER_02
I think it was Kennedy and Johnson.
4
SPEAKER_03
I thought Johnson loved the guy.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, I know Nixon did.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, he was personally friends with with Nixon.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I know they were actual friends.
4
SPEAKER_02
FDR, I don t know how much he liked him, but the fact that they ended up, you know, working closely with one another is maybe one of the bigger surprises of the episode, because they were pretty diametrically opposed as as humans go.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, but this is kind of like touching on what I was saying before, that there were presidents who saw him and what he could do as too useful to resist.
4
SPEAKER_03
Exactly.
4
SPEAKER_03
And FDR was like, he had this vision for America, too, and it was much more inclusive and it cared much more about the average person who didn t necessarily think exactly the same way as everybody else.
4
SPEAKER_03
But he also didn t want it disrupted by communists or at the time Nazis either.
4
SPEAKER_03
So he saw it as a useful thing to do, like to kind of keep tabs on it.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I guess from, you know, this idea of J. Edgar Hoover and presidents working in cahoots, it seems like FDR is the first one that this really begins with.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think in 1936, in August that year, they met together at the White House and they they ginned up a plan for surveillance, kind of the first big surveillance launch of, like you said, people who they thought might be communists.
4
SPEAKER_02
people who they thought might be fascists.
4
SPEAKER_02
A few years later, Roosevelt was like, hey, turns out you re pretty good at this surveillance thing and keeping secret files.
4
SPEAKER_02
So why don t you, why don t we resurrect that General Intelligence Division that was scuttled?
4
SPEAKER_02
And Hoover probably laughed and was like, you know, we ve still been doing it this whole time.
4
SPEAKER_02
We just didn t have a formal name.
4
SPEAKER_03
Oh, I don t know if I ll be able to get the gang back together.
4
SPEAKER_02
But they secretly reformalized, at least, the GID.
4
SPEAKER_02
And Hoover said, all right, I appreciate that.
4
SPEAKER_02
And you know what I m going to do for you?
4
SPEAKER_02
I ll just, not even at your direction, I ll just keep an eye on your political enemies.
4
SPEAKER_02
And just, if I need to let you know anything, I ll let you know.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, so supposedly that is one of the ways that he kept power.
4
SPEAKER_03
He never blackmailed anybody.
4
SPEAKER_03
But if one of his agents came across some juicy tidbit, he would send them to, you know, say the senator s office and be like, Senator, we were investigating this other thing and this tidbit about you came up and we really thought it was the kind of thing you d want to know.
4
SPEAKER_03
We re keeping a lid on it.
4
SPEAKER_03
Don t worry about it.
4
SPEAKER_03
But we thought you d want to know.
4
SPEAKER_03
And now the senator s like, oh my God, this guy knows, the FBI knows that I have this.
4
SPEAKER_03
I m on this committee that funds them.
4
SPEAKER_03
I should probably give them whatever they want whenever they ask for it.
4
SPEAKER_03
That s apparently how he operated.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s very passive aggressive, strong arming.
4
SPEAKER_03
Right.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
He did have a, we should mention though, since we re talking about FDR, he had a, very famously had a file on Eleanor Roosevelt, which supposedly had nude pictures
4
SPEAKER_02
of Eleanor Roosevelt that were given to J. Edgar Hoover by W.C.
4
SPEAKER_02
Fields.
4
SPEAKER_03
What?
4
SPEAKER_02
He had a tremendous collection of pornography.
4
SPEAKER_03
Right.
4
SPEAKER_02
Was well known for it.
4
SPEAKER_02
And to J. Edgar Hoover, he would say, well, I ve got I got to know what s out there in order to fight this stuff.
4
SPEAKER_02
Everyone else is like, OK, sure, whatever.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
But he supposedly had a very large collection of of
4
SPEAKER_02
nudes of famous people.
4
SPEAKER_02
Marilyn Monroe was among them, but apparently Eleanor Roosevelt was one.
4
SPEAKER_02
And old W.C.
4
SPEAKER_02
Fields gave it to him.
4
SPEAKER_03
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t know how he got it.
4
SPEAKER_03
I don t either.
4
SPEAKER_03
So, okay, Chuck, do you want to put part two here and come back and pick up at the
4
SPEAKER_03
beginning of the Cold War, because now J. Edgar Hoover s fighting, you know, communists, but more often Nazis.
4
SPEAKER_03
America s entering World War II, and America s really cool with the idea of the FBI rooting out Nazis.
4
SPEAKER_03
But World War II came to an end.
4
SPEAKER_03
Believe it or not, the Nazis went away.
4
SPEAKER_03
Now they needed a new enemy to investigate.
4
SPEAKER_02
That s right.
4
SPEAKER_02
The commies.
4
SPEAKER_02
And that seems like a great place to stop.
4
SPEAKER_03
I guess.
4
SPEAKER_03
So yeah, we ll see you guys in part two.
4
SPEAKER_03
And if you want to send us an email in the meantime, send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
5
SPEAKER_00
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
5
SPEAKER_02
Guess what, Will?
5
SPEAKER_02
What s that, Mango?
5
SPEAKER_02
I ve been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we ve done over 250 episodes, we don t really talk about murders or cults.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy.
5
SPEAKER_01
We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money?
5
SPEAKER_01
And then, of course, can you game a dog show?
5
SPEAKER_01
So what you re saying is everyone should be listening.
5
SPEAKER_01
Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
5
SPEAKER_03
A new season of Bridgerton is here.
5
SPEAKER_03
And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast.
5
SPEAKER_03
I m your host, Gabby Collins.
5
SPEAKER_03
And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.
5
SPEAKER_03
Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
5
SPEAKER_03
Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
5
SPEAKER_03
Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.
5
SPEAKER_00
Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m Andrea Gunning, and now we re sharing an all-new story of betrayal.
5
SPEAKER_00
Justin Rutherford, doctor, father, family man.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was the perfect cover to hide behind.
5
SPEAKER_03
Detective Weaver said, I m sure you know why we re here.
5
SPEAKER_03
I was like, what in the world is going on?
5
SPEAKER_00
Listen to Betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.