Publishers Weekly
05/17/2021
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. (July)
From the Publisher
There has never been an account quite like The Director...Letersky has mined his experience to draw a vivid, foibles-and-all portrait of the fabled scourge of gangsters, Klansmen, and communists.”
—Wall Street Journal
“[Recounts] Letersky’s years in the FBI’s innermost circles....A fly-on-the-wall portrait of interest to students of crime—and rumor.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A fascinating and long overdue look, from the inner sanctum, at J. Edgar Hoover’s decades-spanning dictatorial grip on the FBI. Paul Letersky takes you deep inside the psyche of the man who knew all the secrets and played them like a card shark. With a fistful of aces, Hoover imposed his will while protecting his own mysterious inner life.”
—Tom Brokaw, Special Correspondent for NBC News and bestselling author of The Greatest Generation
“There have been plenty of books about J. Edgar Hoover but this one brings new meaning to the term, ‘the devil is in the details’.... Letersky is a fine writer and storyteller and he told me things I never knew about the man—love him or hate him—who was a major figure in American history.”
—Bob Schieffer, CBS News
“Fascinating and engaging... Letersky brings to life a bygone era of G-Men, galoots, and molls—and, delightfully, Hoover's motherly gatekeeper “Miss Gandy,” who plays Moneypenny to the author's Bond.”
—Chris Whipple, New York Times bestselling author of The Gatekeepers and The Spymasters
“I have been writing about the FBI for a quarter century, and as a kid I even trick-or-treated at J. Edgar Hoover’s house. Even so, I discovered in former Special Agent Paul Letersky’s The Director new and fascinating insights...Neither a paean nor a hatchet job, this clear-eyed and compelling account of the author’s years with the director, followed by his adventures as a street agent, is a welcome contribution to the history of law enforcement and the culture of its most famous agency.”
—Mark Olshaker, coauthor of Mindhunter, The Killer Across the Table, and The Killer’s Shadow
“I entered the FBI under Mr. Hoover who turned out to be the best Director I served under in my twenty-seven years at the Bureau. This book is an honest and accurate portrayal of Hoover's personality and acts of kindness as well as the control he had over not just the FBI but politicians. A must read.”
—Joe Pistone aka Donnie Brasco, former FBI Special Agent
“Folksy and fascinating. Letersky had unusual personal access to Hoover and he documents many of his boss’ worst instincts and rigid eccentricities, but also debunks some of the pointless and nasty rumors.”
—Sanford J. Ungar, former Director of Voice of America and host of “All Things Considered,” and author of FBI: An Uncensored Look Behind the Walls
“For a span of decades that defies belief, J. Edgar Hoover wielded more power than any other lawman in American history. Paul Letersky’s rich eyewitness stories of a supercop who could be both steel-fisted and strangely soft makes this by far the most illuminating portrait of Hoover I’ve read.”
—Don Brown, former prosecutor and bestselling author of Travesty of Justice
“Though I worked for the FBI for a quarter century, I found many of the things Letersky talks about in The Director shockingly new, simply because no one dared speak them until now. The book rounds out what we know about J. Edgar Hoover. Yes, he was demanding, odd at times, secretive, and vindictive, but he was far more complex than most people imagine. Only could a person working by his side, who answered his phone and read his mail and dealt with his fits of pique and bursts of enthusiasm, give us this insight.”
—Joe Navarro, former Special Agent and author of Three Minutes to Doomsday
“Letersky draws back the curtain of history to offer a rare, cinematic glimpse into the psychology and motivation of the Bureau’s first Director, J. Edgar Hoover....A must read for anyone interested in the most celebrated of American law enforcement agencies.”
—Robert K. Wittman, Founder of the FBI Art Crime Team and New York Times bestselling author of Priceless and The Devil’s Diary
“Anyone interested in American history will find fascinating what the book reveals about ‘The Director’ and his agents. As a former member of Special Operations who learned to make maximum use of intel, I found entertaining what Letersky shows about the power of secrets.”
—Tom Satterly, author of All Secure and, also, retired Delta Force operator whose life was portrayed in Black Hawk Down
Library Journal
05/14/2021
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
Kirkus Reviews
2021-05-19
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.
