12. Did Hoover keep secret files to control the activities of American Presidents?
One of the oft-repeated rumors – some call them myths – about J. Edgar Hoover is that he kept secret personal files in order to prevent his bosses, the Presidents of the United States and the Attorney Generals who worked for them, from firing him as director. Those who subscribe to such beliefs find it possible that Hoover kept Kennedy on a short leash through files documenting his own extramarital affairs, as well as his father’s links to organized crime (despite Hoover’s repeated denial that organized crime existed in America). FDR was kept under control through Hoover’s awareness of his wife’s infidelities and indiscretions; Truman because of his connections with the Missouri political machine run by Tom Pendergast. According to the theorists, Hoover had dirty secrets on everyone, salted away in his personal files, hidden even from the FBI which collected the dirt for him. After all, Hoover had dirt on the FBI too.
Whether such secret files existed, and whether they were the documents destroyed by Gandy and her helpers in 1972 is a matter of speculation, never proved nor disproved. Given the nature of the official files kept in many areas, now a matter of public record, any personal files retained by Hoover would have likely been redundant. Several presidents are in fact considered firing Hoover, but it was the political kickback from conservatives that made them hesitate, given Hoover’s widely believed but largely false reputation, self-created as it was. Only Nixon stated that he was afraid of personal reprisals, perhaps not surprising given the nature of his administration’s contempt for the law. Undoubtedly the FBI’s retention of records which would have been personally embarrassing to many congressmen and other Washington personages strengthened Hoover’s political position, but his ability to directly blackmail American presidents has never been established, though it remains widely believed.