Free Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner

complete story … of the bomb plot which broke out in a dozen cities a year ago today,” Palmer said. Buried deep within this report were a few plaintive paragraphs revealing that, in retrospect, the government might have been wrong to blame the bomb plots on the Communists. But the attorney general did not read a word of it. “It would take up too much time,” he said. “It is a story which might beguile an hour or so.”
    Palmer’s public image had been scarred by his warnings of threats that never materialized. By the time he arrived at the 1920 Democratic National Convention, which opened in San Francisco at the end of June, his political reputation was plummeting and his dreams of nomination disappearing. Hoover, making his first trip to the West Coast, was one among many Justice Department aides who gathered at Palmer’s suite in the St. Francis Hotel, holding out hopes that he could still win. But after forty-four ballots, Palmer withdrew. His life in politics was over.
    Palmer and Hoover were called once more to the Capitol, in the last days of the Wilson administration, to testify about the Red raids of January. Palmer insisted he was unaware of the details. Not even how many search warrants had been signed? asked Senator Thomas J. Walsh, a Montana Democrat. “I cannot tell you, Senator,” Palmer replied. “If you would like to ask Mr. Hoover, who was in charge of this matter, he can tell you.” The senator turned to the young crusader.
    Hoover said he had no idea. “You know nothing about it at all?” Senator Walsh asked. AndHoover said: “No, sir.” For the rest of his life, he disavowed his role in the raids. He was learning that secrecy and deception were essential to political warfare.
    “W E’LL GET THEM ”
    Hoover prepared a report to Congress claiming that the raids had resulted in “the wrecking of the communist parties in this country”—a premature boast. A total of 591 aliens had been ordered deported. The United States held 178 Americans convicted under the espionage and sedition laws. Hoover’s own records showed that at least nine out of ten people jailed in the January 1920 raids were now free. He had set out to remove thousands of radicals from the American landscape, and he had fallen short.
    Hoover determined that it was time to revamp the Radical Division.
    He renamed it the General Intelligence Division. This was not a cosmetic change. Hoover now intended to cover “not only the radical activities in the United States” but also those “of an international nature,” and not only radical politics, but “economic and industrial disturbances” as well. His ambitions were expanding. So was his understanding of what it would take to protect America.
    In a word, it was intelligence. He wrote that it was better to fight subversives in secret; the government could not handle “the radical situation from a criminal prosecution standpoint.” The law was too weak a force to protect America. Only secret intelligence could detect and disrupt the threat from the left and protect America from attack.
    Shortly after noon on Thursday, September 16, 1920, as Hoover was putting the final touches on his plans for the General Intelligence Division, a horse-drawn wagon exploded at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in Manhattan. It had been a pleasant day, and hundreds of people had left their desks for a lunchtime stroll, a brief respite from the great money machine. A bomb turned the center of American capitalism into a slaughterhouse. Blood ran in the streets where the first Congress of the United States had convened and the Bill of Rights had become law. Shrapnel scarred the walls and shattered the windows of J. P. Morgan and Co., America’s most formidable bank. The scars are still there, graven into the cornerstones facing the sidewalk.
    The bomb killed thirty-eight people and injured roughly four hundred. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United