Opinion: Leave It to Experts

As the longtime boss (38 years) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Edgar Hoover is a rare fixture in Government. He is serving under his sixth President, always gets the money he wants without a murmur from Congress, has built an international reputation as a G-man who rounds up Communists with the same efficiency that he tracks down criminals. But every so often, Hoover comes in for criticism—Nebraska's Senator George Norris once called him "the greatest hound for publicity on the American continent." And last week, out of a clear blue Democratic sky, came one of the most blistering denunciations ever.

The critic Was W. H. (for Wilbur Hugh) Ferry, a vice president of the Fund for the Republic. A bristly liberal, who is the son of Hugh J. Ferry, onetime board chairman of Packard Motor Car Co., "Ping" Ferry,* an ex-newsman, ex-publicity man and former labor union official, got up before the Western states Democratic conference in Seattle to blast what he called some of the myths of modern America. Among the myths, said Ferry, was the one that pictured Communists as "nine feet tall, craftier than Satan, the most expert managers the world has ever seen, not human beings like ourselves but a race apart, determined to put man and God into jail forever."

Poltergeist & Poppycock. "The legends," said Ferry, "shrink in the washing." But J. Edgar Hoover, "the indubitable mandarin of anti-Communism in the U.S.," is "as responsible as any person" for "keeping the Red poltergeist hovering in the national consciousness." Hoover's constant warnings against Soviet espionage in the U.S. are right off "an old line . . . and its success year after year is a tribute to the trance into which his sermons throw Americans, not excepting Congressmen. Mr. Hoover is, after all, our official spy swatter. In these persistent reports about espionage and sabotage, is he delicately telling us that he isn't up to the job, that Red spies are running loose despite his best efforts? If in fact we are as infested with these rascals as Mr. Hoover intimates, it might occur to many people that the country needs a more efficient spy swatter. There is, Mr. Hoover says, an advance detachment of Communists within our borders with the 'capacity to pervert our thinking and destroy the spiritual supports which form the foundation of our freedom.' This is sententious poppycock. Our institutions are nowhere nearly so fragile as Mr. Hoover thinks they are."

Next day Hoover's boss, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, answered Ferry. Said Kennedy: "A major reason for the numerical weakness and lack of broad influence of the Communist Party in the U.S. is the dedication and effort of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Those who dismiss the problem of Communist espionage perform a disservice to the nation. I also have said many times that I think those who see a Communist under every chair are similarly misled. I say to those on both extremes of this question: leave the job to the experts. Mr. Hoover is my expert." As for John Edgar Hoover, he followed his usual policy—and said not a word in his own defense.