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Dink fy on J. Edger Hoover and the FEI The failure of the FBI in ‘the Coplion, case “was, by no’ ,Means unique or even unusual, { cannot speak of the. record of the F&I in checking crime in the United States. - With that side of its activities | had nothing to do. But § , had a great deal to do with its counter-espionage work, , and its record in that field was more conspicuous for failure than for success. Hoover did not catch Maclean | or Burgess; he did not catch Fuchs, and he would not have caught the rest if the British had not caught Fuchs © and worked brilliantly on his tangled emotions; he did "not catch Lonsdale; he did not catch Abel for years, and then only because Hayhanen delivered him up on a plat- ter; he did not even catch me. If: ever there was a bubble reputation, it is Hoover's. _ But Hoover is a great politician. blanket methods “for the subtle world of intelligence. But they,h “and futhless authoritarianism are the wrong weapons uses. They enable Hoover to collect and file amount of information about the personal lives of mil- lions of his fellow countrymen. This has jong been com-. mon knowledge, and it has brought Hoover rich divi- dends ‘from the purse of the American taxpayer. There are few people in the world without skeletons in their cupboards which they would prefer to remain decently forgotten, The overt record shows that a distressing umber of American congressmen have pasts that do not bear ‘minute scrutiny. And what about the covert record held by Hoover? The mere existence of the huge FBI filing system has deterred many from attacking Hoover's totalitarian empire. firs)