REVIEW & OUTLOOKFEBRUARY 21, 2009 J. Edgar Moyers The TV moralist's government record.

Wall St. Journal ^ | February 20, 2009

[Steelfish]

FEBRUARY 21, 2009.

J. Edgar Moyers The TV moralist's government record.

One of the darker periods of modern American history was J. Edgar Hoover's long reign over the FBI, as we have learned since he died in 1972.

So it is more than a historical footnote to discover new records showing that prominent public television broadcaster Bill Moyers participated in Hoover's exploits.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Washington Post has obtained a few of the former FBI director's secret files.

According to a Thursday front-page story, Hoover was "consumed" with exposing a (nonexistent) relationship between a gay photographer and Jack Valenti, the late film industry lobbyist who was then an aide to Lyndon Johnson.

Hoover's M.O. was to amass incriminating personal information as political blackmail.

But as the Post reports in passing, the dossier also reveals that Mr. Moyers -- then a special assistant to LBJ -- requested in 1964 that Hoover's G-men "investigate two other administration figures who were 'suspected as having homosexual tendencies.'"

This isn't the first time Mr. Moyers's name has come up in connection with Hoover's abuse of office. When Laurence Silberman, now a federal appeals judge, was acting Attorney General in 1975, he was obliged to read Hoover's secret files in their entirety in preparation for testimony before Congress -- and as far as we know remains one of the only living officials to have done so. "It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service," he wrote in these pages in 2005.

Amid "bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King," Judge Silberman found a 1964 memo from Mr. Moyers directing Hoover's agents to investigate Barry Goldwater's campaign staff for evidence of homosexual activity.

A few weeks before, an LBJ aide named Walter Jenkins had been arrested

[Brad from Tennessee]

Bill Moyers, an ordained minister, is the preacher from Hell. A few years ago Moyers slandered former Interior Secretary James Watt in a speech and was forced to make a public apology.

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[snarks_when_bored]

J. Edgar Moyers The TV moralist's government record.

So, in the immortal words of Dean Wormer, Bill Moyers is "a sneaky little shit". PBS must be so proud.