If Trump’s pick for F.B.I. head gets confirmed, the Bureau could be politicized in ways that even its notorious first director would have rejected, Beverly Page writes.
Hoover, for all his many faults and abuses of power, was nevertheless an institution builder; he believed in the F.B.I. ’s nonpartisan independence. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., he grew up imbued with the idea that career-long government service was one of life’s noblest aspirations. As a D.C. resident, Hoover could not vote, and though he was a staunch conservative, he never joined a political party. Patel’s chief goal, by contrast, is to weaponize the F.B.I.
Within a few years, the Bureau was bugging King’s hotel rooms, recording his sexual encounters, and using what it found to threaten King and attempt to discredit him in the press. But at no time did anyone think, or even suggest, that King had committed any sort of serious crime. The King investigation stands out for its sheer outrageousness, but a similar defense of the status quo drove the F.B.I.’s investigations of the Black Panthers, the antiwar movement, and the New Left.
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