Special Report
The Devil Made LBJ Do It
When Democratic presidents violate civil liberties, J. Edgar Hoover is always to blame.
Don’t blame President Lyndon Johnson for digging up salacious gossip on future Motion Pictures Association President Jack Valenti. The devil made him do it.
“Previously confidential FBI files show that [J. Edgar] Hoover’s deputies set out to determine whether Valenti, who had married two years earlier, maintained a relationship with a male commercial photographer,” a page-one Washington Post story revealed last week. “Johnson initially blocked the FBI from obtaining a sworn statement from Valenti or approaching the photographer, asserting that Valenti was ‘attracted to the women and not to the men,’ files show. But under FBI pressure, the president relented and approved an investigation of his close friend.”
The investigation evidently concluded that the ad-man-turned-Johnson-aide-turned-Hollywood-lobbyist was not a homosexual. “Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members,” the Post further reported. “Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.”
The Washington Post’s scoop, and Moyers’s non-denial denial, regurgitates a familiar excuse: Hoover did it. In this time-worn script, the FBI director plays the role of Mephistopheles, with various liberal presidents cast as the innocent with the pesky devil upon his shoulder.
Don’t blame President John Kennedy, or his attorney general brother Bobby Kennedy, for sleazily bugging Martin Luther King’s hotel rooms. The devil made them do it.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. contended in Robert Kennedy and His Times that tapping King’s phone “had been on Hoover’s agenda for some time.” “The Bureau kept up its pressure,” Schlesinger wrote, and “Kennedy finally assented.” Schlesinger pled with the reader to understand “the dilemma in which Hoover had placed the Kennedys”: “If Robert Kennedy refused a tap on King and anything went wrong, Hoover would have a field day. On the other hand, a tap might end the matter by demonstrating King’s entire innocence, even to the satisfaction of the FBI.” The Kennedys’ motives, Camelot’s court historian implied, were entirely benign. “The Kennedys authorized the taps for defensive purposes—in order to protect King, to protect the civil rights bill, to protect themselves.”
Don’t blame Harry Truman for ordering suspected Communists out of federal government jobs. The devil made him do it.
Biographer David McCullough noted that Hoover had pushed for more stringent measures weeding out loyalty and security risks from federal jobs, claiming that the “whole concept troubled” Truman and the “political pressures bore heavily” upon the 33rd president. Truman didn’t want to do it. Alas, the devil made him do it: “On Friday, March 21, 1947, nine days after his address to Congress, Truman issued Executive Order No. 9835, establishing an elaborate Federal Employees Loyalty and Security Program. And he did so with misgivings.” As a postscript to the affair, the Truman biographer notes: “Truman’s concern over J. Edgar Hoover continued to trouble him.”
Don’t blame Woodrow Wilson for jailing (e.g., Eugene Debs, Kate Richards O’Hare, and “Big” Bill Haywood) and deporting (e.g., Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman) radicals. The devil made him do it.
A 2007 book by Kenneth Ackerman places much of the blame for the first “Red Scare” on J. Edgar Hoover, despite being just 24, fresh out of law school, and a low-level bureaucrat, and makes excuses for Woodrow Wilson, despite being president of the United States. “J. Edgar Hoover had been [attorney general A. Mitchell] Palmer’s special assistant when the raids began on November 7, 1919, and he had his fingerprints all over them,” contends Young J. Edgar: Hoover, The Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties. How did the young mastermind escape notice from contemporaneous chroniclers? “Edgar carefully kept his name out of the all the press releases and news accounts of the day; Palmer wanted all the headlines for himself. But no one could deny this was Edgar’s job from start to finish.” Tying Woodrow Wilson to the policies of the Wilson administration proved more problematic for Ackerman. “And what did Woodrow Wilson think? Nobody quite knew, because the president never quite said.” As Ackerman would have it, “the president’s mind was elsewhere,” making it difficult to connect him to his own policies.
J. Edgar Hoover is necessary to square the soaring liberal rhetoric on civil liberties with the atrocious civil liberties records of liberal presidents. With an ideology extolling civil liberties crashing into its record of smashing civil liberties, ideologues reshape the facts to fit the ideology. The blame-Hoover template asks readers to believe that the president takes orders from the director of the FBI rather than the reverse. It portrays the world-class arm-twister Lyndon Johnson as a man prone to crying uncle, Woodrow Wilson as secretly opposing his administration’s policies, and the Kennedys acceding to electronic surveillance on Martin Luther King only for his own protection.
The familiar narrative of the FBI director making liberal presidents go against their better judgment is convenient but false. J. Edgar Hoover’s posthumous ability to make liberal academics and journalists to go against their better judgment, on the other hand, grows ever more powerful with every revisionist biography and page-one scoop.
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The War on Football: Saving America’s Game, blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (35) | Leave a comment
Related Articles
More Articles by Daniel J. Flynn
More Articles From Special Report
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/02/23/the-devil-made-lbj-do-it
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- Self-Righteous Republic
- Eugenic Abortion 2.0
- Ailes: A Voice for the Silent Majority
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
stu.b.con| 2.23.09 @ 7:30AM
Classic! I will be tracking down a copy of Mr. Flynn's book, I also recommend reading Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" if you haven't already.
They even lie to themselves. Right Mikey?
Alice Moore| 2.23.09 @ 7:33AM
So what will we have next? Will Hoover be blamed for the Alien and Sedition Act by President John Adams? We might also have the true culprit in the Suspension of Habeas Corpus by President Lincoln. There will be the stubborn fact that Hoover wasn't around at that time. This has never bothered the mad dog set.
EasTexan| 2.23.09 @ 7:35AM
That Hoover had such power as a young bureaucrat is of course problematic, but after he became director of the FBI it may have been another matter. He seems to have such an interest in the salatious that he may well have had compromising, or at the minimum unflattering, material on private file for every president under which he served.
Pingback| 2.23.09 @ 8:19AM
The Indispensable man « DaTechguy’s Blog links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Alan Brooks| 2.23.09 @ 8:26AM
LBJ was an absolute egomaniac, our worst president.
Gerard E. | 2.23.09 @ 9:22AM
Alan, you forgot Jimmeh Carter. Our current President is well on his way. Besides, savor the delight of Public TV's Number One Sanctimonious Scold- making millions, let's check his IRS tax returns- exposed as someone who helped Hoover with his dirty work.
ValricoJoe| 2.23.09 @ 9:57AM
I recommend the Verona Files and the Untold Story of Senator Joseph McCarthy in addition to Liberal Fascism. It's all George Bush's fault... LOL
Philip | 2.23.09 @ 10:36AM
Back in 1993, as a sleepless Hillary Clinton was up late getting a glass of cold milk and cookies, she was approached by the ghost of J Edgar Hoover, who told her to tell Bill they needed to dig up several hundred raw FBI files on their political enemies. They did.
Another victim of Hoover's baleful influence, from beyond the graaaaaaaaaave...
I gotta get Mr Flynn's book.
JTS| 2.23.09 @ 10:46AM
You Neocons think Americans can’t see the evil your side has wrought on America. We Liberals have known for years that Hoover kept secrets from FDR about the Japanese invasion to get us into war; hired double secret agents from Area 51 to kill JFK; blackmailed poor Bill Moyers to spy on people to see if they made any sudden moves in the men’s room and wore women’s clothing under his KKK robes – which is not to say that a man wearing women’s clothing is a bad thing. But under his KKK robes! Really, how gauche! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a graduate class on “Transgender Afro-Centric Woman’s Studies on the White Male Conspiracy to Use All the Air On Purpose So Women and Minorities Are Hit Hardest” at Yale to teach! Unlike you Neo-Fascists, we have productive things to do!
PS: Bill Moyers is dreamy and don’t even get me started on our Savior, Barack!
Pingback| 2.23.09 @ 10:47AM
Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Jack Valenti’s Sex Life links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Doctor Right| 2.23.09 @ 11:17AM
I wonder who Obama will blame in 2012 when, due to his inept handling of the economy, his approval ratings are at single digits, and he suspends the election "...SO a struggling nation can focus on what's important.." ??
Stan redmond| 2.23.09 @ 11:37AM
Doctor Right:
Obama has already set up who he will blame. His "calling out" demand on local mayors gives him complete cover for the obamboozle of a stimulus package. And of course, the media will cheerfully find every instance of waste and abuse (the whole package is waste and abuse anyway) to distract from the fact that the economic failures are Pelosi's, Reid's, and Obama's exclusively. And you can bet your leftover change from your new taxes, that the entire media and Obama mudslinger corps will be watching the Specter, Snowe, Collin's states like hawks for every single waste to show just how the economy is bad because evyil republicans didn't oversee the spending correctly.
AND while I'm lecturing, there's the innevitable "Bush's Fault" default response to everything under the sun.
ccc| 2.23.09 @ 11:41AM
Democrats will blame Obama's problems on W. just like republicans blamed W's problems on Clinton. It won't be Obama's fault becuase he inherited the mess and did his best to clean it up, just like it wasn't W's fault because he iheited the mess and tried to clean it up.
In the end it doesn't matter, the next guy will do the same again.
Doctor Right| 2.23.09 @ 1:53PM
I utterly reject the notiuon that each new President blames the guy who came before him out of political expediency.
Certainly Democrats do this - nothing is EVER their fault. If Harry Reid was caught on video-tape beating a child he would blame Republicans.
But to say that it goes both ways as a "tit-for-tat" is abject nonsense.
When Republicans are bold enough to blame Democrats for anything ("bold ENOUGH" being the operative phrase - hardly ever happens...), they usually have good reason to do so, with ample evidence.
For example, pointing out the Clinton administration's complicity in evvents leading up to m9/11 was historical fact, not innuendo. And to my liking, it was not done forcibly enough by the over-affable George W. Bush, who ALWAYS gave Democrats the benefit of the doubt right before they spit in his face...But I digress.
Conversely, the Democrats will blame Bush and Republicans for anything and everything because they know that:
a) Most of the public isn't paying attention, and if they are, they're too lazy to seek the truth, and...
b) They have a complicit media that also isn't paying attention, and if they are, they're too lazy to seek the truth...
So we're not really talking about the same thing, here.
Doctor Right's rules to Dem-Speak are instructive:
1. Anything a Democrat says is a prima-facie lie.
2. A Democrat always criticizes others for doing EXACTLY the things that they do, or seek to do themselves.
Obama is the PERFECT example.
He call's cutting taxes "old fashioned" while he chamions socialism. He says he wants to decrease the budget deficit just days after passing the most massive spending bill in US history...
...Lies and obfuscations...While the media asks for another spoon to lap it all up...
Real American| 2.23.09 @ 2:11PM
Maybe Truman's sign actually stated "The Buck Passes Here."
ccc| 2.23.09 @ 3:16PM
Deservadly or not, each administration blames the one before.
Further, after some period of accomadation to the policies of a previous administration the present administration ust be considered to tacitly agree with those policies.
Eric Rasmusen| 2.23.09 @ 4:08PM
Good article. Let me point out something in defence of LBJ and Hoover over Valenti, though. It isn't plausible that LBJ was intendng to blackmail his own employee. Rather, he was doing defensive investigation, to know about problems before the Republicans or anyone else did. That mus have been Hoover's motive too-- or why talk to JOhnson about it first?
fred edwards| 2.23.09 @ 7:11PM
Real American
How about "The buck starts here".
Pingback| 2.23.09 @ 10:43PM
Liberal fascist blame Hoover « Dirty Democrats links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 2.24.09 @ 3:04AM
links for 2009-02-24 | FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Alan Brooks| 2.24.09 @ 9:30AM
it is difficult to decide who was worse, LBJ or Carter.
you can't put a cigarette paper between them.
Alan Brooks| 2.24.09 @ 10:15AM
... nevertheless it was LBJ who prepared the way for Watergate, and the voters punished...
I guess they were punishing themselves...
by voting the Smarmeister in in '76.
iuyuy| 11.25.09 @ 8:56PM
MOV Converter Mac,
MOV Converter Mac
asdfa| 1.5.10 @ 4:36AM
Capture Streaming Video,iPhone To Computer Transfer