13. Harry Truman directly attacked Hoover, though he made no move to fire him
During World War II Hoover and the FBI conducted investigations and surveillances against American citizens suspected of supporting the Nazis, as well as those suspected of being communists supportive of the Soviet government. Harry Truman was a Senator from Missouri through most of the war, and chaired a committee tasked with unmasking and correcting waste within the military contracting systems. When Truman became President, he brought his growing distaste for Hoover to the White House with him, delegating an aid to meet with Hoover when the FBI director requested an audience with the White House, keeping Hoover at arm’s length. At one time Truman, upset when he learned FBI wiretap surveillance included listening to the phone of the hairdresser of a former FDR advisor, Tom Corcoran, ordered FBI surveillance discontinued. He used a scatological reference to describe Hoover’s work in his note directing it stopped.
It wasn’t long though before Truman, as had FDR before him and Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and others, learned the political value of wiretaps, as long as their existence remained secret. FBI wiretaps are too often assigned to Hoover, disregarding the many which were ordered by Hoover’s boss, the President of the United States. That Hoover retained the information which he acquired through the wiretaps, many of which were illegal, is not surprising, given his long-established penchant for acquiring all the information he could on anyone. As the extent of Hoover’s surveillance became obvious to presidents, the question naturally arose in their minds regarding the nature and extent of information which may have been in FBI files regarding themselves and their closest aides.