6. The focus of some of Hoover’s secret files was on controlling and protecting the White House
Hoover’s secret personal files were developed around several individuals and their families, with an eye on how those people could influence the White House during Hoover’s tenure at the FBI and for the foreseeable future. As author Curt Gentry wrote in 1991 put it, they “included blackmail material on the patriarch of an American political dynasty and his sons, their wives, and other women”. It does not require a great deal of speculation to arrive at a reasonable conclusion as to what family was the focus of Hoover’s attention. They also contained information of illicit homosexual relationships conducted by an “urbane Democratic presidential candidate” which Hoover leaked in a manner to help bring about his defeat in the election. The shaded reference was undoubted to Adlai Stevenson, twice defeated in Presidential elections by Dwight David Eisenhower.
The rumors regarding Adlai Stevenson II’s sexual orientation (he had been divorced in 1949) were spread by FBI agents, a fact confirmed in the official files released to the public years after Hoover’s death, though many specifics were redacted from the records. In dealing with potential blackmail over sexual preferences Hoover was often subtle. One tactic he practiced was to inform the person personally, as he did when visiting a congressman whose homosexual orientation became known to the FBI. Hoover reassured the congressman that the public would never learn of it through leaks from the FBI, thereby letting the gentleman know that Hoover had the information, and in the repressed atmosphere of the day assuring Hoover and his agenda of at least one vote in the halls of the Capital. When information was leaked to the public, Hoover ensured that rumors were leaked as rumors rather than fact, secure in the knowledge that salacious rumor is often more readily spread than harsh truth.