This book could have been a fascinating history of our nation from the perspective of the FBI. It was not. The story was told without much context to what was happening politically or culturally in our nation or the world.

In fairness to the author, had that been included it would have made for a much longer book. It was long enough.

The book was mostly a very long list of crimes. Some of those crimes were committed by the FBI. It did not lower my esteem for the organization or my opinion about the challenges they face today. ( )

Here's a quick summary of why you might want to read this: it's a well-researched and documented history of the FBI, including all the good and they bad, about Hoover in particular, but the good-bad stuff didn't end with him of course. Hoover led the FBI for 55 years (about 2/3 of its existence) and so there's a lot about him and his relationships with the many presidents who came and went over during his tenure. The last third of the book takes on the post-Hoover decades: how it slowly rose from the disgrace of Hoover's decline and the Nixon years, through the shock of the terror attacks of the 90s and early aughts. It ends around 2010, so our man Comey hasn't come along yet (except in a fascinating vignette as the Deputy Attorney General).

This book gave me a lot more context in which to place the FBI (and Comey) today, to say nothing of simply being a well-written (the author won a Pulitzer for his history of the CIA) and fascinating history. ( )

Mér fannst bæði fróðlegt og gaman að hlusta á þessa hljóðbók um starfsemi FBI eftir Tim Weiner. Upphafsár og starfsemi bandarísku alríkislögreglunnar undir stjórn J. Edgars Hoovers er ævintýri líkust. Bæði hvernig hann mótaði hana eftir sínu höfði og gerði hana að ríki í ríkinu.
Hann beitti sér miskunnarlaust gegn þeim forsetaframbjóðendum sem hann taldi ekki þess verða að setjast í forsetastólinn. Njósnaði takmarkalítið og faldi upplýsingar fyrir þeim sem voguðu sér að reyna að rannsaka starfsemi stofnunarinnar. Hann gekkst sömuleiðis fyrir ofsóknum á hendur öllum vinstri mönnum og samkynhneigðum sem hann virðist hafa talið jafn slæma.
Hoover var hins vegar ekki alslæmur. Hann hélt uppi aga og gæðum innan stofnunarinnar og þegar Nixon krafðist þess að hann njósnaði um pólitíska andstæðinga sína þá neitaði Hoover. Hann var nógu séður til að átta sig á því að tímarnir voru að breytast og FBI yrði fyrir óbætanlegu tjóni ef stofnunin yrði uppvís að slíkri starfsemi.
Við fráfall Hoovers tók við langt hnignunartímabil innan FBI og starfsemi þess styrktist ekki fyrr en hernaðurinn gagnvart hryðjuverkamönnum hófst fyrir alvöru. Þá er fróðlegt að sjá átökin sem verða á milli CIA og FBI þegar þeim síðarnefndu ofbýður harkan og pyntingarnar hjá CIA.
Weiner fjallar nokkuð hlutlaust um starfsemi FBI í bókinni sem er vel gert og hann virðist hafa haft góðan aðgang að leyniskjölum og heimildamönnum. Hann bendir hins vegar á hve erfitt hlutverk FBI sé að mörgu leyti. Stofnunin eigi að gæta öryggis ríkisins og þegna þess innan ramma laganna - en til þess að geta sinnt þessu hlutverki þurfa starfsmenn hennar oft að fara á svig við lögin í hlerunum og innbrotum svo eitthvað sé nefnt. Erfiður línudans sem krefst þess líka að eftirlitsnefndir þingsins geti fylgst vel með en nokkuð sem yfirmenn FBI eru ekkert alltof hrifnir af. ( )

An excellent history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this book gives a balanced and fair — if discouraging — account of the Bureau's genesis, its development, and, most importantly, its basic purpose. To sum things up at the very outset, the book demonstrates that the FBI was never intended to be, primarily, a law enforcement agency (although its successes and failures in actual crime-fighting are well known). It was, rather, established as an internal security force, dedicated to monitoring the activities of foreign agents and American citizens alike — suspected or alleged "enemies of the state," hence the book's title.

In July 1916, German saboteurs bombed the munitions factory on Black Tom Island in New York Harbor. Killing four people and destroying an estimated $20,000,000 in military goods, the "Black Tom bombing" served as a catalyst for the establishment of an intelligence gathering group within the Justice Department, aimed at preventing such attacks by spies and others in the future. Authorized by President Woodrow Wilson, the War Emergency Division of Justice beefed up its Alien Enemy Bureau, which had the power to arrest, imprison, and deport suspected foreign nationals who were up to no good. The leader of the Alien Enemy Bureau was J. Edgar Hoover, aged 23: by 1919, Hoover headed up the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation.

In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a legitimate "Red Scare" in America, following the Russian Revolution, which led to the famous Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920. Far from being an unjustified case of "mass hysteria", this "Red Scare" was prompted by numerous acts of murder and bombing by Communist and Socialist factions, mostly in New York and New Jersey. By 1921, Hoover became Acting Director of the Bureau of Investigation, and its Director in 1924. (It was not called the "Federal" Bureau of Investigation until 1934.) Hoover remained Director until his death in 1972, at age 77.

This is not to say, of course, that the FBI wasn't involved in actual crime-fighting; the '20s and '30s were famous for the pursuit, capture, or killing of such miscreants as Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and many more, although Hoover (contrary to publicity) did not participate in these activities, but stayed in Washington. The FBI carried the battle to both organized crime and "lone wolf" criminals, and was successful in most of its efforts. However, it had been fashioned as a domestic security agency, and it used the tools appropriate to such an agency: wiretapping, eavesdropping, interference with the mails, and other tactics, which would only become more sophisticated, and greater in number, over the years. Sometimes, these methods were ignored by presidents and Congress; often, they were explicitly ordered, so that by the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy were both authorizing taps and "dirty tricks" on Martin Luther King Jr. and many others. Sometimes, the targets of the Bureau's antics were legitimate threats, such as Soviet spies and domestic terrorists; usually, however, they were not. J. Edgar Hoover, in the popular understanding, WAS the FBI, and his "secret files" were the terror of many Washington politicians and ordinary civilians alike.

"Enemies" is a rare example of a truly balanced account. The author doesn't deny that Soviet agents were infiltrating the government (from Alger Hiss to Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen); if there was ever a "witch-hunt" in the 1920s or 1950s, it's because "real witches" existed. (This was proven by the disclosure of the Venona Files, following the collapse of the Soviet Union: records of Soviet agents and their correspondents in America.) Liberals who claimed that Soviet agents were the stuff of myth and paranoia learned better from the Venona Files.

The fact remains, however, and it is an infuriating fact: throughout the decades of anti-espionage activities and legitimate crime-fighting, Hoover's FBI used tools that were utterly inimical to American civil liberties. They still do it today: in fact, they've done it a lot more since 9/11 and the so-called "Patriot Act," although this book was published before those events.

The author is also to be commended for avoiding the cheap, tawdry gossip and joking that followed Hoover throughout his career. Specifically, the author discounts the rumors that Hoover was a transvestite or a homosexual. (In fact, Hoover despised homosexuals to an almost fanatical degree.) Anyone wishing to read tales of Hoover cross-dressing or seducing pool boys will not find them in this book. If anything, it appears that Hoover was, most likely, completely asexual.

The book is fascinating in many other matters, especially in hindsight. As we all watched the investigation of President Trump by Robert Mueller, how many recalled that Mueller had been Director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013? Hoover was long gone, but the power of his organization has only increased, especially since 9/11. It is, for all its crime-fighting, the American equivalent of the Soviet KGB: it is, in fact, an internal version of the CIA. What the Founding Fathers would have thought of such a "federal intelligence force" can only be imagined.

Very, very highly recommended. ( )

This was a great book, a very easy to read history of the FBI from it's inception as an investigative force in the Department of Justice to today. The history of the FBI has been and will continue to be a struggle between security and civil rights. Dominated by a single man hunting for subversives for so many years (J. Edgar Hoover) the FBI floundered after he passed away and Watergate exposed many FBI tactics and seems to have found a new lease on life back in counterterrorism. The FBI has also been tied up in a power struggle to determine who controls America's intelligence gathering with the other agencies charged with information gathering, law enforcement and spying. I really enjoyed this book and the way history has repeated itself when it comes the FBI, not to mention the amount of entanglement with American politics that the FBI has had with both sides of the political spectrum.
( )