Page 74 - All About History - Issue 08-14

HOOVER’S WAR ON CRIME

THE US ESTABLISHMENT

BUSINESS
POLITICS Hoover’s had deeply rooted connections with
business and he had a file on the entire Ford
Adlai Stevenson was the Democratic
Motoring Company. It was widely known that
rival to Republican Dwight Eisenhower in Henry Ford opposed US involvement in World
the 1952 presidential elections. Hoover
War II and Hoover suspected that one of Ford’s
saw him as a liberal reformer; a threat employees, Fritz Julius Kuhn, was a Nazi and
that had to be dealt with. Agents started
actively working to overthrow the government.
investigating Stevenson and came back As it transpired, Kuhn became the leader of the
with claims of sexual misconduct with
main Nazi political group in America, a group
Bradley University president David Owen, Hoover boasted he had fully infiltrated through
also claiming they had found evidence of
paid informants. Hoover also used Ford’s
communist sympathies. When Stevenson right-hand man, Harry Bennett, to look for
announced his candidacy for president,
communist activities in the disruption of labour.
a rumour was started by Hoover’s Bennett was in charge of destroying worker
suspected collaborators detailing all of this ADLAI STEVENSON
unions and breaking up strikes with force and
so-called Ôevidence’. To Hoover’s delight, DOB: 1930 so was perfect as far as Hoover was concerned
Eisenhower won a landslide victory. to act as an extra pair of eyes within the US’s
SUSPECTED CRIMES: car industry.
As far as he was concerned, Chaplin was poisoning America with Opposing US involvement in WWII
Sexual misconduct, communist and
Ôanti-American’ leanings
HENRY FORD
DOB: 1863
HOLLYWOOD
RIVALS
SUSPECTED CRIMES:
By the Forties, Charlie Chaplin was at the height of his acting career,
his films and theatre shows were adored by everyone. Except Hoover.
wife Eleanor began when she started
his pro-communist movies and leftist political views and had to be Hoover’s distaste for president Roosevelt’s and employing Nazis
speaking openly about civil rights for African-
stopped. He was also more popular than Hoover and had stolen his
limelight as America’s hero. FBI agents were dispatched to interrogate Americans during her time as first lady.
Hoover’s secret file on her amounted to
Chaplin’s friends, colleagues and servants. As background check after
background check turned up nothing incriminating, Hoover threw the 449 pages, FBI agents put her under heavy
surveillance but rather than accept this
entire weight of the FBI behind hounding out a man who, not long ago,
had stumbled around a film set playing a penniless happy-go-lucky invasion of privacy she publicly humiliated
Hoover by writing a letter saying: ÒThis type
tramp. In 1952 Hoover finally succeeded in persuading the Attorney
General that Chaplin should be deported back to England on the of investigation seems to smack too much
grounds that he was an Ôunsavoury character.’ of the Gestapo.Ó He was forced to apologise
in public, which angered him almost beyond
comprehension. In 1943, a surveillance
report landed on Hoover’s desk, claiming
Eleanor was having a sexual relationship with
Democrat supporter Joseph Lash. An uneasy
stalemate developed between Hoover and
the first lady; Hoover could not act on the
information he had obtained for fear of
angering the president and Eleanor could not
ask for the information from Hoover because
it would implicate her even more.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
DOB: 1884
SUSPECTED CRIMES:
Open advocate of civil rights, openly
critical of FBI methods

CHARLIE CHAPLIN
DOB: 1889
SUSPECTED CRIMES:
Advocating communist politics,
Ôunsavoury behaviour’
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