THE ADMINISTRATION: The Long Reign of J. Edgar Hoover

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His body lay in state in the Capitol rotunda—the first civil servant ever to be so honored. The next day, in Washington's National Presbyterian Church, not far from the house where Hoover was born, Richard Nixon did him the additional honor of delivering the funeral eulogy. The two men had had a mutual admiration ever since the days when Nixon, a freshman Congressman from California, had begun his pursuit of Alger Hiss and "the Communist conspiracy." Hoover, said Nixon, "was one of the giants, a man who helped keep steel in America's backbone and the flame of freedom in America's soul."