Bøger af Matthew Cecil

On August 25, 1938, Ben Dickson and his wife Stella Mae robbed the Corn Exchange Bank in Elkton, South Dakota. Two months later they hit a bank in nearby Brookings. Retrieving the Dicksons from the fog of history and the hype of the FBI's "Most Wanted" narrative, this volume tells the story of a damaged small-town girl and her petty criminal husband and their low-key crime spree.

Hunting down Americas public enemies was just one of the FBIs jobs. Anotherperhaps more vital and certainly more covertwas the job of promoting the importance and power of the FBI, a process that Matthew Cecil unfolds clearly for the first time in this eye-opening book. The story of the PR men who fashioned the Hoover era, Branding Hoovers FBI reveals precisely how the Bureau became a monolithic organization of thousands of agents who lived and breathed a well-crafted public relations message, image, and worldview. Accordingly, the book shows how the public was persuadedsome would say connedinto buying and even bolstering that image.Just fifteen years after a theater impresario coined the term public relations, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover began practicing a sophisticated version of the activity. Cecil introduces those agency PR men in Washington who put their singular talents to work by enforcing and amplifying Hoover's message. Louis B. Nichols, overseer of the Crime Records Section for more than twenty years, was a master of bend-your-ear networking. Milton A. Jones brought meticulous analysis to bear on the mission; Fern Stukenbroeker, a gift for eloquence; and Cartha Deke DeLoach, a singular charm and ambition. Branding Hoovers FBI examines key moments when this dedicated cadre, all working under the protective wing of Associate Director Clyde Tolson, manipulated public perceptions of the Bureau (was the Dillinger triumph really what it seemed?). In these critical moments, the book allows us to understand as never before how America came to see the FBIs law enforcement successes and overlook the dubious accomplishments, such as domestic surveillance, that truly defined the Hoover era.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was an agency devoted to American ideals, professionalism, and scientific methods, directed by a sage and selfless leaderand anyone who said otherwise was a no-good subversive, bent on discrediting the American way of life. That was the official story, and how J. Edgar Hoover made it stickrunning roughshod over those same American idealsis the story this book tells in full for the first time. From Hoover's first tentative media contacts in the 1930s to the Bureau's eponymous television series in the 1960s and 1970s, FBI officials labored mightily to control the Bureau's imageefforts that put them not-so-squarely at the forefront of the emerging field of public relations. In the face of any journalistic challenges to the FBI's legitimacy and operations, Hoover was able to create a benign, even heroic counter narrative, thanks in part to his friends in newsrooms. Matthew Cecil's own prodigious investigation through hundreds of thousands of pages from FBI files reveals the lengths to which Hoover and his lackeys went to use the press to hoodwink the American people. Even more sobering is how much help he got from so many in the press. Conservative journalists like broadcaster Fulton Lewis, Jr. and columnist George Sokolsky positioned themselves as "e;objective"e; defenders of Hoover's FBI and were rewarded with access, friendship, and other favors. Some of Hoover's friends even became adjunct-FBI agents, designated as Special Service Contacts who discreetly gathered information for the Bureau. "e;Enemies,"e; on the other hand, were closely monitored and subjected to operations that disrupted their work or even undermined and ended their careers. Noted journalists like I. F. Stone, George Seldes, James A. Wechsler, and many others found themselves the subjects of FBI investigations and, occasionally, named on the Bureau's "e;custodial detention index,"e; targeted for arrest in the case of a national emergency. With experience as a political reporter, a press secretary, and a scholar and professor of journalism and public relations, Matthew Cecil is uniquely qualified to conduct us through the maze of political intrigue and influence peddling that markand often maskthe history of the FBI. His work serves as a cautionary tale about how manipulative government agents and compliant journalists can undermine the very institutions and ideals they are tasked with protecting.