J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-Interventionists: FBI Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State, 1939-1945

Administration lawyers argued that the prohibition in the Communications Act on intercepting and divulging phone conversations came into effect only if the government divulged the intercepted conversations (which it had no intention of doing), and FDR himself maintained in a May 21, 1940, letter to...

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Veröffentlicht in:The Journal of American history (Bloomington, Ind.) Ind.), 2008, Vol.95 (2), p.586-587
1. Verfasser: Powers, Richard Gid
Format: Review
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Administration lawyers argued that the prohibition in the Communications Act on intercepting and divulging phone conversations came into effect only if the government divulged the intercepted conversations (which it had no intention of doing), and FDR himself maintained in a May 21, 1940, letter to Attorney General Robert Jackson not quoted by Charles that the 1939 Nardone v. United States Supreme Court decision was "never intended ... to apply to grave matters involving defense of the nation" (quoted in Richard Gid Powers, secrecy and Power, 1987, p. 237). Since there was seemingly plausible evidence of a nexus between the isolationists and Nazis, the FBI could have and would have argued it was justified in investigating whether such links really existed. [...] it is not altogether clear just how significant Hoover's efforts against the isolationists were, since events, the isolationists' own ineptitude, and FDR'S masterful polemical skills (demolishing the leading congressional isolationists with the mocking refrain, "Martin, Barton, and Fish") probably would have done them in without any assistance from Hoover and his G-men.
ISSN:0021-8723
1936-0967
1945-2314
DOI:10.2307/25095741