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"He going to spread his wings," one of my studio sources tells me now that Leonardo DiCaprio is set to play J Edgar Hoover in the still untitled biopic. Already getting early Oscar buzz for Chris Nolan's Inception, Leo will be directed in the epic FBI drama by Clint Eastwood who's producing with Brian Grazer and Rob Lorenz through Imagine and Malpaso. Scripted by Dustin Lance Black, production begins later this year. The project began at Universal, where Imagine is based, but came together at Warners, where Eastwood's Malpaso has long called home. Imagine had been developing the Dustin Lance...

For the better part of six decades, Paul Harvey spun tales on the radio in his staccato baritone, entertaining up to 24 million listeners a day with folksy vignettes ending in unexpected twists. And now, the rest of the story. Previously confidential files show that Harvey, who died last February at 90, enjoyed a 20-year friendship with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, often submitting advance copies of his radio script for comment and approval. Harvey wrote Hoover and his deputies regularly. Hoover, in turn, helped Harvey with research, suggested changes in scripts and showered the broadcaster with effusive praise. But...

After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoover’s “red” paranoia. The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security – documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret. Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s. He justified the move as necessary for protection from “treason, spies and sabotage”. For now there is no evidence...

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be...

WASHINGTON - Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention and arrest up to 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, according to a newly declassified document. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, less than two weeks after the Korean War began. But there is no evidence to suggest that President Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of Hoover's proposal to house suspect Americans in military and federal prisons. Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against...

A 1950 Plan: Arrest 12,000, Suspend Due Process By TIM WEINER A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially...

On This Day In History July 22, 1934 John Dillinger Gunned Down By FBI During the 1930s Depression, many Americans, nearly helpless against forces they didn't understand, made heroes of outlaws who took what they wanted at gunpoint. Of all the lurid desperadoes, one man, John Herbert Dillinger, came to evoke this Gangster Era, and stirred mass emotion to a degree rarely seen in this country. Dillinger, whose name once dominated the headlines, was a notorious and vicious thief. From September, 1933, until July, 1934, he and his violent gang terrorized the Midwest, killing 10 men, wounding 7 others, robbing...

•Wiretap and intimidation stories have hurt bureau founder's reputation WASHINGTON - Every year for the last three years, Republican Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana has introduced a bill to strip J. Edgar Hoover's name from the FBI's huge headquarters building — an initiative that has been largely ignored. Once widely admired for founding the modern-day FBI on principles of strict probity, Hoover later became identified with invasive eavesdropping and bureau efforts to discredit the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Hoover has also been accused of using...

Black Organization Responds to Ad Hominem Attack from People for the American Way Front Group Project 21 Members Reassert That John Roberts's Civil Rights, Constitutional Views Are Closer to Views Publicly Expressed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Than King's Are to the Left For Release: August 26, 2005 Contact David Almasi at: (202) 543-4110x11 or Project21@nationalcenter.org Responding to an ad hominem attack from a left-wing front group, members of the black leadership network Project 21 defend the assertion that the beliefs of civil rights legend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are more in line with the record of U.S....

Who knew that all those years we were watching men in gray felt hats on The FBI catching the bad guys, their agency was really a house divided between, as it turns out, Mr. Gray and Mr. Felt? Now we are being treated to the spectacle of a public joust between these two gentlemen. Mr. Gray is saying that he was never really a louse but that louse Felt was leaking to make him look like a louse. Mr. Felt says that he may have been a louse but only because that louse Gray was lousing things up and to...

L. Patrick Gray, the FBI chief during the Watergate break-in, says he believes deputy W. Mark Felt became the anonymous source known as Deep Throat because he was angry at being passed over as J. Edgar Hoover's successor and wanted to sabotage Gray. "I think there was a sense of revenge in his heart, and a sense of dumping my candidacy, if you will," Gray told ABC's "This Week" during an interview for its Sunday broadcast. Gray, who was selected to lead the FBI the day after Hoover's death on May 2, 1972, also says he refused White House demands...

One by one, the landmark epics of the 1970s are tying up the loose ends -- alas, not always in ways that quite support the great mythic power invested in them. In ''Revenge of the Sith,'' George Lucas brings the ''Star Wars'' cycle to a close by revealing how Anakin Skywalker went over to the Dark Side, transformed himself into Darth Vader, destroyed the Republic and consigned it to the mad imperial ambitions of Chancellor Palpatine -- all because, er, he was a bit worried his beloved Senator Padme might die in childbirth. If Senator Padme had been like Senator...

In 1965, Dr. James D. Bales, a professor at Harding College in Searcy Arkansas contacted the FBI to inquire into whether or not J. Edgar Hoover would object to Bales' compiling statements made by Hoover about Communism and publishing them in book form. J. Edgar Hoover rejected the idea. In June of 1967, the idea was resurrected by representatives of the John Birch Society (JBS). Douglas C. Morse, Managing Editor of the JBS publishing arm, Western Island Publishers, contacted the Boston FBI office to again propose the idea. FBI Assistant-Special-Agent-In Charge Troy Coleman met with Mr. Morse and JBS founder...

The FBI HQ main file on the John Birch Society is 62-104401 and it consists of about 12,000 pages. In addition, almost every FBI Field Office opened a main file on the Birch Society and those field files often were hundreds or thousands of pages. The primary FBI Field Office file is Boston 100-32899. Another major file is the Los Angeles field file (100-59001) which totals approximately 1800 pages. It is almost impossible to specify the total number of pages of FBI documents pertaining to the JBS because there are so many separate JBS-related files totalling many thousands of pages...

On our nation's birthday, it is appropriate to honor the five men who did the most to defend our freedom in the last century. The names are easy to remember – they are the five men most loathed by liberals: Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, Whittaker Chambers and Ronald Reagan. McCarthy died censured and despised at 48 years old, his name a malediction. Hoover is maligned for having been a mad spymaster and is lyingly smeared as a cross-dresser – by people who admire cross-dressers. Nixon was forced to resign the presidency in disgrace. Though persecuted in his...

The ladies of "The View" apparently were highly displeased yesterday morning when guest co-host Ann Coulter brought her pal Matt Drudge into the dressing room before the show. The aggrieved television personalities -- who later gave Coulter a hard time on the air for everything from her right-wing political views to her micro-miniskirt -- were "View" regulars Meredith Vieira, Star Jones and Joy Behar.

The MRC's Jessica Anderson took down a hunk of the gabfest at the beginning of the June 25 The View, ABC's daytime show created by Barbara Walters, for whom Coulter was filling in. Meredith Vieira explained: “In your last book you said liberals have been wrong about everything in last half century. You ticked us off over that one, alright. And now in this new bok you say that liberals hate freedom...I want to talk about your politics because in Treason you say, yes, that liberals hate America." Ann Coulter: "Right." Vieira: "Well, it's stupid. What do you mean liberals...