Once upon a time in this country, it was blasphemy to suggest that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was not a great hero and a man of unblemished integrity. Since then, ol' J. Edgar's rep has suffered a lot with accusations of ignoble spying, the framing of political enemies, and an occasional tendency to lounge about his home in a pink taffeta gown with matching wrap. And there's one more blight on his record that's worth noting, if only to remind us that government officials can and will do such things…
As explained before on this website (and here in a better and longer article done for Atomic magazine by James Gordon Meek) Hoover went after MAD magazine. In 1958, he took umbrage at what now seems like an utterly harmless article in that silly publication, and dispatched agents to intimidate and dig up dirt. Nothing came of it, of course, but it adds to the long list of things we pretend can't happen in this great land of ours.
I know I mentioned this before but I wanted to link to the Meek article, and I wanted to mention that the new issue of Mad XL (which goes on sale next week in most areas) has a nice piece on the whole matter. Mad XL is a sister magazine to MAD that is mostly composed of reprints. But every issue, they whip up a few new features, often of a historical nature. This one reprints some of the FBI internal memos (available online here) and some of Mad's replies. It's amazing that Hoover became a hero — especially to Americans who profess to believe in "law and order" — when he spent so much of his time on trivia unrelated to the actual breaking of laws. You listening, Mr. Ashcroft?