Studies in American Political Development cambridge.org/sap Research Article Cite this article: Blain H (2021). No Gestapo: J. Edgar Hoover’s world-wide intelligence service and the limits of bureaucratic autonomy in the national security state. Studies in American Political Development 35, 214–222. https:// doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X21000031 Received: 30 March 2020 Revised: 14 August 2020 Accepted: 15 February 2021 Keywords: bureaucracy; national security; intelligence Corresponding author: Harry Blain, Email: hblain@gradcenter.cuny.edu © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press No Gestapo: J. Edgar Hoover’s world-wide intelligence service and the limits of bureaucratic autonomy in the national security state Harry Blain Political Science Department, City University of New York, Graduate Center, New York, New York, USA Abstract How powerful are national security bureaucrats? In the United States, they seem to be more than mere administrators, while remaining subordinate to elected politicians. However, despite a rich literature in American political development on bureaucratic autonomy across a variety of policy areas, national security remains undertheorized. Although the origins and evolution of the national security bureaucracy have received substantial scholarly attention, the individuals within this bureaucracy have not. In this article, I examine a case study of how one of these individuals bluntly ran up against the limits of his power. After the Second World War, J. Edgar Hoover’s plans for a “World-Wide Intelligence Service” were swiftly shot down by the Truman administration, which adopted a sharp distinction between domestic and global intelligence instead. I pin this abject defeat on three interrelated factors: the resistance of President Truman, the array of bureaucratic competitors emerging from the Second World War, and deep aversion among key decision makers to the prospect of an “American gestapo.” While tracing this historical narrative, I also challenge accounts of Hoover as a near-omnipotent Washington operator, question the extent to which war empow- ers national security bureaucrats, and foreground the role of analogies in shaping the national security state. 1. Introduction In his half-century Washington career, J. Edgar Hoover lost few bureaucratic battles. He com- manded the respect and, not infrequently, the fear of politicians, generals, journalists, and fel- low bureaucrats. He infiltrated the civil rights movement and the Ku Klux Klan, authorized raids and wiretaps, built vast databases of dirt on his enemies, and crafted an indelible public image as a puritanically dedicated crimefighter. The Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation could barely cobble together a reliable team of agents when it hired Hoover dur- ing the First World War; by the time death removed Hoover from public service in 1972, this formerly obscure federal agency was infamously powerful. Scholars of American political development (APD) have compiled an increasingly long list of epoch-shaping bureaucrats. By any measure, Hoover must rank among the foremost. Yet Hoover’s career has received surprisingly little attention in studies of the American bureaucracy. To some extent, this relative neglect can be put down to the literature’s search for generalizable theories. The overarching question of who or what ultimately controls the bureaucracy is not easily answered through biography. Still, the literature boasts rich accounts of the individuals who founded and drove the modern administrative state—from Dorman B. Eaton and George William Curtis to Gifford Pinchot and Harvey Wiley. Although individ- uals—especially those bearing the unglamorous label of “administrators”—are constrained by social and political forces, they may be capable of maneuvering and harnessing such forces to attain some degree of autonomy. These autonomous bureaucrats might, in turn, leave lasting imprints on American political development. To be sure, Hoover’s story is exceptionally well documented, despite his own attempts to censor it. 1 However, this story has been only sparsely connected to wider studies of bureau- cratic autonomy in the United States. What, if anything, does Hoover’s long and influential career say about the ways in which bureaucrats build, retain, and expand their power? What were the principal sources of Hoover’s power? How was this power limited? Was this power 1 U.S. Congress, House Subcommittee on Government Information and Individual Rights, Hearings on Inquiry into the Destruction of Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s Files and FBI Record Keeping, 94th Congress, 1st Sess. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X21000031 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. CUNY Graduate Center, on 05 Dec 2021 at 18:41:56, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.