FBI
To the Editor:
Some weeks ago you gave me an opportunity to review Don Whitehead’s The FBI Story. Your readers will observe in this issue my fairly complete acceptance of the author’s picture of that important institution.
However, since the book was published and I reviewed it, I have been much concerned at the increasing tendency of J. Edgar Hoover to set himself up as an infallible interpreter of facts. Mr. Hoover’s long letter to Senator Eastland wasn’t an appropriate letter for the best police official. It was an attempt to play judge or Sir Oracle. Mr. Hoover departed from the facts as well as from his function; for instance, when he denounced A. J. Muste in that letter as fronting for the Communists. What Mr. Muste did as an American citizen interested in truth and civil liberties was to agree to get non-Communist observers at a convention. It isn’t the province of the FBI to pass on this sort of service.
Norman Thomas
New York City
_____________
