Summers, Anthony. Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1993. 528 pages.

After 850 interviews and "hundreds of thousands of documents" over a five-year period, Anthony Summers, based in Ireland and best known for his JFK assassination research, has produced an eye-opening biography of Hoover. Soon after the PBS production "Frontline" highlighted some of his research on February 9, 1993, this book, which had just been released, headed for the bestseller lists.

Comedian Jay Leno keeps hammering on Hoover's coffin with references to his cross-dressing, but there's much more to Summers' research. Hoover is depicted as perhaps the most powerful politician in Washington, feared by every president who served over him. The only players who were immune to Hoover's secret files were those who had secrets of their own about his personal life -- namely, the Mafia. Hoover's homosexuality was known to the Mafia, who apparently had photographs, and Hoover's frequent gambling junkets were paid by his Mafia friends. Meanwhile, Hoover's anti-Communism was self-serving. "If it were not for me," Hoover is quoted as saying in 1963, "there would not be a Communist Party of the United States. Because I've financed the Communist Party, in order to know what they are doing."
ISBN 0-399-13800-5

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