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J. Edgar Hoover served as Director of the Bureau between 1924 (then the Bureau of Investigation, renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935) and his death in 1972. Even after all these years and the numerous biographies written about this enigmatic man, he remains a contradictory mystery to the American public, with his sexual orientation and stance towards African-Americans subjects still open to hot debate. To many, Hoover was a lawman of the highest order, dedicated to bringing wrongdoers to justice and keeping America strong. To just as many, he represented all that was wrong with a system that entrusted too much power in the hands of one man. They saw him as a tyrant who rode roughshod over individuals' rights and freedoms in the name of safeguarding the country. What there is little debate about, however, are the numerous petty abuses he unthinkingly subjected subordinates to. Hoover ruled with an iron fist and was seldom questioned even when his way of doing things was suspect. He viewed the department as his and everyone in it as there to do his bidding, and he often failed to separate his away-from-the-office needs with his requirements as director of the FBI. Bureau personnel were routinely used to write his speeches, run his errands, and even fill out his personal income tax returns. His private concerns became departmental concerns as Hoover regarded the department as an extension of himself. One incident in particular highlights this attitude: Upon going on a diet to battle his own bulge, he issued a Bureau-wide directive that henceforth agents would conform to the suggested weight standards of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company or else. A round of crash diets quickly followed, with every overweight agent in the field offices and at headquarters hastily shedding extra pounds they'd accumulated ... everyone but Hoover, that is, who despite his diet remained at the same weight as before. Hoover was famous for penning instructions and comments in distinctive blue ink in the margins of FBI memos, then routing them back to the sender for action. Perhaps it was this habit which fueled his insistence that all memos have generous white space left around their text — he needed a place to scrawl his notes after all, and in Hoover's mind his needs were the department's needs. That insistence of Hoover's led to a legend about a misunderstanding it allegedly created, with rather outsized consequences: Cartha DeLoach was Hoover's assistant from 1965 to 1970, making him the #3 man in the Bureau at that time. He recalled the borders incident thusly: Through the magic of retelling, a few phone calls made to see if something was up with America's northern and southern neighbors was transformed into coveys of G-men being sent scurrying to defend the nation's shared borders. Is any of this story true, though? It's a great tale to get across the image of Hoover as the tenaciously autocratic bureau head so feared that even his most trusted lieutenants dared not question any command he issued, not even to clear up a potential misunderstanding, but whether it's a real account of an actual incident or simply a concocted anecdote may forever remain as much a mystery as Hoover himself.
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