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During the 1940 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt had the FBI spy on former President Herbert Hoover, who was considering another run (backstory: FDR was working with British intelligence to counter Hoover and the isolationist wing of the GOP and promote Wendell Wilkie as the GOP candidate; previously, a faulty microphone had been installed by Wilkie supporter Sam Pryor so that no one could hear when Hoover gave a speech at the GOP National Convention in late June, an act FDR took credit for in private conversations; Pryor is known to have subsequently done work for British intelligence and the CIA):

With Roosevelt in the White House, however. Hoover found himself on the other side of the fence: The FBI occasionally reported to the Roosevelt administration on the former president's political activities. In July 1940, Roosevelt specifically directed the Bureau to investigate Hoover and Richey after receiving a tip from newspaper columnist Marquis Childs. Childs told Roosevelt that Hoover and Richey, when attending the recent Republican National Convention, had sent cablegrams to Vichy France. These communications, Childs surmised, were intended to elicit a statement from Pierre Laval, the former French premier and at that time a Nazi collaborator, indicating that Roosevelt had already made "definite commitments" to send United States soldiers abroad. Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr., in turn, relayed President Roosevelt's request for an investigation to Edward A. Tamm, an FBI assistant director. The president wanted to know the exact contents of the Hoover-Richey cablegrams. Bureau agents responded by checking with every trans-Atlantic communication company in New York City, but failed to locate any record of the alleged cablegrams.

Thereafter, Hoover may have been kept under some type of surveillance. In February 1941, the FBI director sent a report to the White House detailing the former president's luncheon conversation with the British ambassador. Lord Halifax, regarding Winston Churchill's opposition to Hoover's proposed plan to ship food and other supplies to unoccupied areas of France. The full extent of the FBI's surveillance of Hoover and concomitant dissemination to the White House of information detailing his activities is not known. J. Edgar Hoover and other FBI officials were clearly willing to ingratiate themselves with any incumbent president.