The FBI Story: A Report to the People

New York, NY: Random House, 1956 Random House, New York. 1956. Hardcover. Book Club Edition. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Very Good; light bumping to head and tail; light shelfwear to head, tail, and tips. No DJ. Black paper over boards with gray cloth overlay on the spine with gilt and black lettering on the spine in a black shadowbox; FBI seal embossed on the front board. Gold endpapers. Clean internals; internal hinges are sound and not split. 368 pp 8vo.This is the story of the FBI and its chief, J. Edgar Hoover, as Mr. Hoover would like to have it told. After a foreword by J. Edgar Hoover, the book begins by illustrating the FBI in action in the apprehension of the despicable criminal Jack Gilbert Graham who planted a time-bomb in a United Air Lines plane in order to kill his own mother on whose life he had placed high insurance. Then Mr. Whitehead reverts to the FBI’s beginning. That was in the original Federal Bureau of Investigation of 1908, which was mostly the creation of Theodore Roosevelt in his fight to halt the outrageous thievery of public lands in the Western states. This Bureau almost from the beginning was handicapped by politics. When appointed, Hoover’s first business was to clean house, and in the process he served notice on Congress that the FBI was no longer a dumping ground for patronage appointments, and that he would not welcome political suggestions about promotions. From these first days onward, J. Edgar Hoover, as Mr. Whitehead tells the story, while frequently involved in the politics of Washington, was mostly engaged in them in order to keep politicians and partisan politics out of his Bureau. The author gives the story with warts and all telling the achievements and downfalls of the Bureau. A clean very presentable copy.