Free J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets by Curt Gentry Page A

thought he recognized him, but no, it was impossible. Of all the agencies in Washington, his was the one the late FBI director hated most.
    The neighbor couldn’t be sure—he hadn’t gotten that good a look—but, as he later told several acquaintances, he at least resembled a man who, in his own, much quieter way, was almost as legendary as the director. He thought he looked like James Jesus Angleton, chief of counterintelligence at the CIA.
    On returning to the White House after Hoover’s funeral, the president announced that he would name the still-unfinished new FBI Building the “J. Edgar Hoover Building,” thus taking credit for what the Congress had already voted two days earlier.
    Still three years from completion at the time of Hoover’s death, the structure had been under construction nine before that. Even before it was rumored that one of the companies which constructed it was Mafia owned, the edifice itself was an embarrassment to architecture-conscious Washington. When it was finished, its total cost was $126 million, making it the most expensive building ever constructed by the federal government. Twice the size of its bureaucratic parent, it covered an entire city block on the opposite side of Pennsylvania Avenue, its buff-colored walls looming up eleven stories, easily overshadowing the Department of Justice’s dignified but squat seven. While architecture critics agreed it was the least attractive building on the avenue, they disagreedwhether it most resembled a prison, its enclosed courtyard seeming to dare anyone to riot, or a medieval fortress, complete with a moat and unscalable blank walls. Wolf Von Eckardt of the Washington Post called it “a contradiction in concrete” and “a perfect stage set for a dramatization of George Orwell’s 1984, ” but then, he added, “what the government tried to build here was not offices but an image.” 13
    Hoover himself had spent hundreds of hours fussing over the blueprints. For years it had been speculated that Hoover wouldn’t retire until after the building was completed; his frequent changes in the design, it was suggested, being his own insurance that this wouldn’t happen.
    Hoover heard the talk and joked about it, in one of his last public appearances. Addressing a chapter of the Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he observed, “There are some who maintain that the only reason I am staying on as director is to be present at the dedication. That is absolute nonsense. At the rate the building is going up, none of us will be around by the time it is completed.” 14
    The actual dedication occurred September 30, 1975, with a new president, a new attorney general, and a new FBI director in attendance, and the Marine Corps Band playing a new song, the “J. Edgar Hoover March.” Above the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance huge gold letters proclaimed this the J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING.
    Five years later Congress considered a bill calling for the removal of Hoover’s name.
    Just as Hoover did not live to see the building completed, neither did he live to see his legend fall. But he anticipated it. The fear that his carefully constructed image would come tumbling down obsessed him most of his life, and especially during his last years. Ironically, like the embezzling bank clerk who never takes a vacation, because he fears that during his absence his secret will be discovered, Hoover in his final years became a victim of his own files. He couldn’t retire, because he couldn’t trust his successors to keep their secrets. But neither could he destroy them (he tried, seven months before his death), because by then even he had come to believe that they were the source of his power. This was doubly ironic, for this was a myth he’d personally fostered over the years, even though he knew quite well that they were only one of its sources, and quite possibly not even the most important.
    As if the building were not memorial