BOOKMONGER
Th e man who knew all the secrets
Library of Congress
Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in his offi ce on April 5, 1940.
Shop locally online
AND GET
GREAT
DEALS!
Gift certificates
on sale now at a
20% discount
RESTAURANTS • LODGING • FURNITURE • SHOPPING
Hurry! Limited quantities available
Gift certificates mailed within 3 days of online purchase
discoverourcoastdeals.com | dailyastorian.com
chinookobserver.com | seasidesignal.com
coastweekend.com | discoverourcoast.com
14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
As director of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation for nearly half a century, J.
Edgar Hoover was respected, feared and
reviled perhaps more than any other man in
Washington, D.C.
Although several books have been written
about Hoover, including books by his assis-
tant directors, no one from Hoover’s own
offi ce has ever spilled the beans about their
boss — until now.
Paul Letersky was 22 years old and
a fl edgling FBI employee when he was
assigned to clerk on the director’s personal
staff . For the next two years, he served at the
demanding beck and call of Hoover and his
loyal personal secretary, Helen Gandy.
After that unique trial by fi re, Letersky
went on to become an FBI special agent, but
stayed in touch with his former colleagues in
the director’s offi ce.
Now retired and living in Nehalem, Leter-
sky — with the help of co-author Gor-
don Dillow — shares what it was like to
work just steps away from Hoover’s inner
sanctum.
Letersky confessed that a few years
before he found himself in that position ,
he’d simply been seeking a way to pay for
law school. That’s when he fell into conver-
sation with an FBI recruiter. Back then, the
bureau had exacting requirements for poten-
tial hires: candidates had to be male, have
a college degree and an assertive personal-
ity. And, as missives from FBI headquarters
frequently admonished, “long-hairs, beards,
pear-shaped heads… etc.” need not apply.
“(A)pparently my cranial conforma-
tion wasn’t disqualifying,” the author notes
wryly. He took the job as a bit of a lark.
Letersky does a fi ne job of describing
that era, a time when social mores were rap-
idly evolving from conventional to anti-es-
tablishment. But up on the fi fth fl oor of
the FBI headquarters, Hoover was deter-
mined to hold strong against what he called
the “kooks, misfi ts, drunks and slobs.” He
regarded these as an existential threat to the
American way of life, and he wasn’t going to
let it happen on his watch.
The FBI’s resulting COINTELPRO pro-
gram was a widespread undercover opera-
tion aimed at infi ltrating and disrupting all
kinds of domestic political dissent — and,
ultimately, it was an illegal assault on funda-
mental First Amendment rights.
Hoover also amassed fi les on all sorts of
political fi gures and celebrities that detailed
everything from their business liaisons to
their sexual partners.
Letersky notes that his boss used this
The cover of ‘The Director,’ a book by retired
FBI employee Paul Letersky, who now lives in
Nehalem.
This week’s book
‘The Director,’ by Paul Letersky, with Gor-
don Dillow
Scribner — 320 pp — $28
information to ensure his own power — the
director was never a political hack for any of
the eight presidents he worked for during the
course of his long career.
Rejecting the more salacious claims about
Hoover — that he was a cross-dresser, for
example — the author does share plenti-
ful insights about his boss’s meticulously
guarded routine, his opinionated outbursts
and his occasional meting-out of kindness.
This book is fi lled with interesting anec-
dotes and several extensive conversations.
(Regarding the latter, some readers may
wonder at Letersky’s capacity to recall those
long-ago conversations in such detail, but
this is never explained.)
“The Director” is a fascinating, eminently
readable account of the man who shaped
America’s primary law enforcement agency.
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMi-
chael, who writes this weekly column focus-
ing on the books, authors and publishers of
the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at bar-
baraLMcM@gmail.com