The Director

May 17, 2021
Former FBI special agent Letersky debuts with a fond look back at his law enforcement career, which included a two-year stint on the personal staff of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who led the bureau from 1924 until his death in 1972. Letersky portrays Hoover as a perfectionist who “never backed down from anybody” and outlived the age he helped to define. Though the criticisms of Hoover are mild and somewhat grudgingly offered (“By today’s standards I suppose he was a racist”), Letersky provides insight into how the agency’s “top brass,” including “Watergate leaker” W. Mark Felt, vied for power and influence, and sheds light on the day-to-day workings of the bureau as he recounts airplane hijackings, kidnappings, and other cases he worked on as a field agent in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Alexandria, Va. Letersky also offers intriguing profiles of FBI associate director Clyde Tolson and Hoover’s longtime assistant Helen Gandy, who exerted her influence to protect a young Letersky after Hoover berated him for an early misstep. Ultimately, Letersky’s unique vantage point and colorful anecdotes are undermined by his unwillingness to provide more than a superficial critique of Hoover’s abuses of power. This rose-colored reminiscence disappoints.

May 14, 2021

Don't expect scandal-mongering in this reflection on legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who served with--not under--eight U.S. presidents from 1924 until his death in 1972. In this conversational, favorable evaluation of Hoover, written for non-specialists, former FBI agent Letersky (criminal justice, Tillamook Bay Community Coll.) draws on his eight years in the agency (1965-73): three as a civilian clerk, often in the front office with Hoover and the devoted senior assistant Helen Gandy; and five as an agent in the field. In addition to his personal observations and experiences, Letersky uses contemporary newspapers, histories of the FBI, and declassified official FBI files. Regarding rumors of Hoover's sexual relationships with men, Letersky maintains that Hoover's personal values and control make it unlikely that anyone knew real details of his personal life. The author argues that Hoover, a closed-minded, often vindictive bureaucrat, strongly objected to Franklin D. Roosevelt's World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, and that he treated domestic radicals, whether of the right or the left, equally harshly; these claims call for more investigation and verification. VERDICT Readers should compare Letersky's book with Hoover's FBI by Cartha DeLoach, a 25-year FBI veteran who became number three in the agency (outranked only by Clyde Tolson); The Real J. Edgar Hoover by former assistant FBI director Ray Wannall; and the controversial book J. Edgar Hoover by Curt Gentry.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2021
An admiring but not uncritical account of Letersky's years in the FBI's innermost circles. J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) has long been supposed to have been a closeted gay man who was vigorous in suppressing other gay men out of shame. If not that, then he is alleged to have been seen wearing women's clothing and calling himself "Mary." As to the first charge, Letersky, Hoover's former assistant, notes that all of American society seemed to be arrayed against gay people in Hoover's day. "It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, but that was the tenor of the times, and you can't single out Hoover for being part of it." But what of Hoover's apparently close relationship with assistant director Clyde Tolson? Just two bachelor friends, Letersky maintains. The author is right to insist that the question is no one's business--unless, that is, it has any bearing on how Hoover conducted his criminal investigations. In this regard, Letersky allows that Hoover "could be vindictive, closed-mined, hypocritical, a man of intense hatred and eternal grudges" who just happened to keep private files that may or may not have contained blackmailworthy material. We won't know because "Miss Gandy," the author's colleague, destroyed those private files after Hoover died. Letersky presents himself as a loyal member of the FBI who disagreed then--and now--with some initiatives, such as COINTELPRO, the campaign to discredit leftist and anti-war organizations. The author also sheds light on Hoover's well-known antipathy for Martin Luther King Jr. "Much of what the Bureau did regarding King was unethical," he writes, "some of it was only quasi-legal, and some of it was illegal as hell." Elsewhere, Letersky calls W. Mark Felt, the "Deep Throat" of Watergate, "a notorious sycophant and an insatiable schemer" while William C. Sullivan, another senior executive, was "the source of many of the most vicious stories about the Director," stories that are fascinating in their own right. A fly-on-the-wall portrait of Hoover's last years as America's top cop, of interest to students of crime--and rumor.

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