Young J Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties – Book Review
O
n its face, this book is about the young Edgar Hoover (the ‘J Edgar’ came later), and his ascent, in 1924, at the age of 29, to the directorship of the Bureau of Investigation, later the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI. Hoover, as is well known, is synonymous with the FBI in the twentieth century, remaining director for 48 years until his death in 1972. But the book is much more than a biography of the youthful Hoover.
Rather, Kenneth Ackerman, a Washington historian and practising lawyer, delivers a lively history of the attempted assassination of the US Attorney-General, A Mitchell Palmer, just after 11pm on 2 June 1919, through to what became known as the Palmer Raids across America on 2 January 1920, the ‘largest single-day police roundup in American history’1, and the immediate aftermath.
In doing so, he describes a nation faced by a clear, but undefined, terrorist threat and how ‘rational, well-informed, well-intentioned people … acting under stress in the heat of events, found it so easy to be seduced down the spiral from “doing something” to “doing anything”, making a civil liberties catastrophe seem reasonable and acceptable.’ And Ackerman cautions: ‘Whenever any government in any country tries to crack down on an internal threat, especially a poorly defined one, it affects real people, and often the wrong ones.’
The years following the end of the First World War on 11 November 1918 were tumultuous ones in the United States, and elsewhere. Having come to power in Russia as leader of the Bolsheviks in 1917, in March 1919, Lenin called delegates to the Third Communist International to dedicate themselves to world revolution.
Many miles away, in an era before internet, television or radio, even Australia was not immune. By 1918, Queensland ‘was an intensely polarised society.’ In Brisbane, the ‘Red Flag riots’ of March 1919 involved thousands of armed participants in a frontal assault on the South Brisbane Russian community. And, in Townsville, on 29 July 1919, police fired into a crowd of 1,000 protesters singing ‘The Red Flag’.2
In the United States, tensions increased throughout 1919. In January, a work stoppage by 35,000 Seattle dockworkers escalated into a general strike involving 110 unions. In February, a plot to assassinate President Wilson was broken up. In April, a mail bomb was delivered to the home of a United States Senator, severely injuring a maid. Mail bombs intended to be delivered on 1 May to, amongst others, five Senators, four Cabinet Ministers and Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, were discovered when they came to the attention of a postal clerk for not having sufficient postage. On 1 May, riots erupted and ‘blood flowed in a dozen American cities — much of it from reactionary violence.’
In 1919, 3000 strikes pulled 4 million workers off the job. ‘Barely a week went by’, according to Ackerman, ‘without another big strike bringing another major industry to a halt.’
On the night of 2 June 1919, US Attorney-General, Mitchell Palmer’s house was attacked, and his wife and daughter almost killed. Palmer was not alone in being subject to attack. ‘A frightful picture began to emerge from reports reaching Washington, DC, that night. Eight other bombs had exploded across America, all at about the same time, just after 11.00 PM, each having been delivered to the home of its intended victim, men all connected with recent crackdowns against socialist radicals.’
Palmer identified the ‘horde of alien radicals living on American soil and spouting Bolshevik, anarchist rhetoric as posing a continuing danger.’
His solution — the Federal immigration laws.
In 1918, Congress had strengthened the Immigration Act ‘to allow the government to deport any alien, that is, any immigrant who had not become a citizen, who was an anarchist or who belonged to any group that advocated the violent overthrow of the United States government.’ All dangerous radical aliens would be deported.
In order to implement his plan, Palmer created a new Division within the Justice Department devoted to searching out Communists. This Division — named the Radical Division — was to be located in the Bureau of Investigation, and the young Hoover was appointed to head it.
Ackerman traces the actions of Palmer, Hoover and the Radical Division, including their involvement in the deportations of Emma Goldman, the most outspoken anarchist in America, and Ludwig Martens, the Bolshevik Russia’s emissary in New York, to the Palmer Raids on Friday 2 January 1920.
On 2 January 1920, Palmer’s Justice Department detained over 2,500 suspected of being Communists and, by the end of the weekend, this figure had risen to about 5,000.
Under the Immigration Act, responsibility for deportation cases rested with the Secretary of Labor, not with Attorney-General Palmer and, in March 1920, that was Louis Post.
Post was concerned that, while thousands of deportation warrants had been issued during the Palmer Raid, only a few dozen cases were awaiting his decision. Post discovered that the files were not being forwarded to his office and, in this way, detainees were being held indefinitely.
Finally, after obtaining the files, Post formed the view that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, those detained were not anarchists or politically dangerous in any sense. Post then cancelled thousands of the warrants. He cited Thomas Truss, a Polish immigrant, as an example.
Truss lived with his wife and three children in Baltimore and worked as a coat presser. He joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1911 so he could be employed but resigned two years later. He had joined a Russian workers’ education and mutual benefits society but, when it merged with the Union of Russian Workers, he left. He attended an organisational meeting of the Communist Party in 1919 and permitted an organizer to include his name on a list of prospects. That was it.
Ackerman concludes: ‘The large majority of these prisoners had nothing to do with radicalism and posed no threat to anyone. They had been arrested solely based on guilt by association, their supposed connection to one of the newfangled Communist parties, even though the bulk of them had no idea what the parties stood for and often had no idea they were even members. Many thought they had joined a neighbourhood social club to enjoy musical concerts, English language classes, or the chance of a pleasant night out with people like themselves — no small thing for new arrivals in a strange land.’
In making decisions about deportation, Post would require membership of the Communist Party to be ‘real, conscious and knowing.’ This is not altogether unlike the conclusion of the Full Federal Court in Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v Haneef that the ‘association to which s 501(1)(6)(b) [of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth)] refers is an association involving some sympathy with, or support for, or involvement in, the criminal conduct of the person, group or organisation.’3
While initially viewed as a success, the Palmer Raid, and Mitchell Palmer’s strategy to deal with the Red Scare, ruined his reputation and cost him the 1920 Democratic presidential nomination. Given Post’s singular efforts in canceling thousands of deportation warrants at the height of the Red Scare and fighting Congress, when it attempted to impeach him for so doing, Ackerman laments that Post is now almost entirely forgotten, without even a full biography.
Hoover, however, survived and prospered, notwithstanding the significant role he played in the events of 1919-1920. Among the many tributes paid to him, in 1951, the Big Brothers of America named him ‘Big Brother of 1951’!
Ackerman’s Young J Edgar is history as it ought to be written — highly readable, engaging and with an eye to contemporary issues and concerns.4
Max Spry
Footnotes
- All quotations, except where identified, are from the book under review.
- See: Raymond Evans, A History of Queensland, Cambridge University Press (2007) at 159-163.
- Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v Haneef (2007) 163 FCR 414 at [130].
- Published in Australia in paperback by The Perseus Books Group, June 2008. It appears that Carroll & Graf was an American publishing company founded in 1982 and centered in New York City and an imprint of the Avalon Publishing Group. However, the company was purchased by the Perseus Book Group. This information comes from the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_&_Graf. Meanwhile, according to its official website, The Perseus Books Group is an independent company committed to enabling independent publishers to reach their potential whether those publishers are Perseus-owned, joint ventures or owned by third parties. The Perseus Books Group is also the leading provider of sales, marketing and distribution services to independent publishers. See http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/perseus/about_us.jsp.
