7. Eleanor Roosevelt and J. Edgar Hoover were long-time enemies at arm’s length
One of the thickest files compiled by the FBI – both officially and if the investigative journalists are to be believed in Hoover’s personal files – was dedicated to Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt. Eleanor was a vocal opponent of Hoover, decrying what she called his “American Gestapo” tactics of collecting information, including through the use of visual surveillance and wiretaps, even as her husband requested FBI taps of political opponents and his own aides. Her position as First Lady and her deference to her husband’s agenda kept her silent, for the most part, while FDR was alive, but in the years after his death, she became increasingly strident in her complaints about Hoover and the FBI. President Truman, no fan of Hoover’s, complained about Eleanor’s comments but was powerless to silence them.
In his personal files, Hoover collected data regarding Eleanor’s lesbian relationships, as well as male lovers during her marriage to FDR and her subsequent widowhood. Files referred to lovers, “both male and female, white and black” according to at least one scholar of Hoover’s files. In Hoover’s files, and in some official FBI files available to the public, Eleanor was supportive of some communist organizations and was an overly enthusiastic supporter of desegregation, both positions which Hoover found threatening to the country. Eventually, Eleanor’s official FBI file grew to include over 3,000 pages, which included FBI detected threats to her life by right-wing organizations – including the Ku Klux Klan – as well as her suspected affiliations with communist groups.