Free Republic

Family Theater Before television, we listened to the radio for news, weather, sports, and entertainment. What we heard influenced us just as television influences us today. One of the weekly programs was “Family Theater” which repeated the theme; the family that prays together stays together. A January 1, 1948 episode titled “Another Year” in which J. Edgar Hoover's New Year’s address gave me pause because we did not heed his message, which is applicable today, July 15, 2024.J. Edgar Hoover

Many find it shocking the Department of Justice (DOJ) could be capable of ginning up false allegations against a former president in a previous election and would again do the same prior to the 2024 election. This shock, however, is a mark of just how drastically conservatives have failed to recognize the long decline of the DOJ and its ultimate transformation into a political subsidiary of a radicalized Democratic Party. Conservatives would do well to observe seminal moments that have led the country’s top law enforcement entity to its present dire state. In that review, all roads ultimately lead back...

One of those men was Henry Marshall, whose death—he was shot five separate times in the chest with a rifle—was ruled “a suicide.”.. June 3, 1961, Henry Marshall was found dead on his farm near Bryan in Robertson County, Texas. He had been shot five times with his own rifle. Marshall, 51, had worked as a clerk with the Robertson County office of the Agricultural Adjustment Agency (AAA), holding a senior post in the agency. In 1960, he was asked to investigate the activities of Billie Sol Estes, a wealthy benefactor of Lyndon B. Johnson, whom he found to have...

Hoover built the FBI and abused its power, which is why he's left behind a legacy controversial enough to warrant repeated calls for the “J. Edgar Hoover Building” that headquarters the FBI to be renamed. It never has, but the 10-year tenure for FBI directors is arguably a much more important impact of his time. Instead of serving 37 years like Hoover, each FBI director gets 10 unless an extension is proposed by the President and affirmed by the Senate.

Is it really the worst political environment ever in the history of the United States -- or even the worst "in the modern era" (let's define that as "1900+")? Not even close. On January 2nd, 1920, thousands of Americans -- by some measures ten thousand Americans -- were detained and many arrested in the so-called "Palmer Raids" nationwide. Woodrow Wilson's AG orchestrated those raids against purported communists and anarchists, along with anyone they believed supported either. My writing here on these pages over the last 15 years would have certainly landed me on that list -- and behind bars. This...

Aretha Franklin was tracked by the FBI for 40 years as the agency repeatedly sought but ultimately failed to tie the Queen of Soul to “extremists” and “radicals,” newly declassified documents reveal. The 270-page FBI file — obtained by Rolling Stone magazine — details how the feds spied on the “Respect” songstress through “false phone calls, surveillance, infiltration and highly-placed sources” from 1967 to 2007. The FBI’s suspicion of the late star was laid bare in the cache of documents, which included a slew of phrases, such as “black extremists,” “procommunist,” “hate America,” “radical,” “racial violence” and “militant blackpower.” “I’m...

This is the story of how the FBI framed four innocent men for murder, destroyed families, and tried to cover it up. It’s also the story of the convergence of John Durham and Robert Mueller: how Durham uncovered the FBI’s crimes and how Robert Mueller’s FBI disputed the innocence of the men the FBI framed. The FBI knocked and Mike Albano opened the door. It was 1983. As a member of the Massachusetts State Parole Board, Albano thought he had been doing his job when he looked into voting to commute the sentence of Peter Limone, who along with Joseph...

Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) proposed stripping J. Edgar Hoover's name from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) headquarters building in Washington, D.C,, and called him a "maligned character" with a history of racism, homophobia and misogyny. On Saturday, Connolly appeared in a video message on MSNBC's The Cross Connection advocating for the change after he introduced legislation to remove the former FBI director's name on February 25...

The raids constituted a horrific, shameful episode in American history, one of the lowest moments for liberty since King George III quartered troops in private homes. Friday, January 3, 2020 Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons | Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) Lawrence W. Reed Lawrence W. Reed Politics History Woodrow Wilson First Amendment Communism World War I Police State Exactly a hundred years ago this morning—on January 3, 1920—Americans woke up to discover just how little their own government regarded the cherished Bill of Rights. During the night, some 4,000 of their fellow citizens were rounded up and jailed for what amounted, in...

It’s now official: Russia, Russia, Russia really was fake news from the start. There was no factual basis for the FBI to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign. That means there was no need for the appointment of a special counsel and that Robert Mueller should have stayed in retirement. It means the two years of rumors and accusations and the giant cloud of suspicions over the White House produced by Mueller’s headhunters were unfair and unjustified. It also means J. Edgar Hoover can finally rest in peace. James Comey is now revealed to be the dirtiest cop ever to run...

On the morning of November 17th, 1962, FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. took on “all the trappings of a military command post,” according to historian William Breuer. The previous night an intelligence puzzle had finally come together. The resulting picture staggered the FBI men. And these had served at their posts during WWII and the height of the Cold War. They’d seen plenty. Now they had mere days to foil a crime against their nation to rival Hideki Tojo’s.At the time (pre-Mueller! And pre-Comey!), the FBI relied heavily on “HUMINT” (Human Intelligence.) So they’d expertly penetrated the plot, identified the ringleaders...

Scotty Bowers ran a brothel out of a gas station and slept with dozens of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Inside his ‘Secret History of Hollywood’ and why we should believe his stories. I went to bed with J. Edgar Hoover. He was in drag. He was not a great beauty either, you know, but I was treating him just like he was a girl Several of the sex workers Bowers employed are also still alive, and Tyrnauer interviewed them for the documentary. They all verified Bowers’s accounts, some on camera. One even still had an index card Bowers had made with...

So, did everyone enjoy yesterday’s kabuki theatre? Both the Comey testimony in the House and the Gorsuch hearing in the Senate was Congressional Open Mic Night at its best: pols otherwise unknown outside their home districts pontificating their respective talking points. Lately all Congressional hearings seem more like a game of reverse-rule Jeopardy: all contestants are required to ask their question in the form of an answer. Occasionally a rookie lands a seat on the panel who doesn’t follow the rules and asks real questions: Representative Elise M. Stefanik is a young, freshman republican congresswoman from the Albany New York...

I watched the 1951 movie, "I was a Communist for the FBI" for free on YouTube. It was distributed by Warner Brothers in 1951 and nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary. I urge everyone to watch it. The parallels to the manipulation taking place today are stunning. It is obvious that today's agitators are taking cues from the same playbook. I especially appreciated the section in which black steelworkers in Pittsburgh were manipulated into a wildcat strike and riots so that the Party could raise money for its own purposes. At one point they joked about raising hundreds of...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has broken its silence on the most popular file in its digital vault. The one-page memo, dated March 22, 1950, was addressed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from Guy Hottel, then head of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office. It relayed some information from an informant. The subject: FLYING SAUCERS INFORMATION CONCERNING "An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico," Hottel writes. "They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three...

Before I came to dislike the movie “Selma,” I was deeply moved by it. Twice it brought me to tears. A crane shot of Martin Luther King Jr. leading thousands of demonstrators over the Edmund Pettus Bridge was one such moment, and so was the vicious attack on John Lewis — bravely, steadfastly walking into the beating he knew was coming. Today, Lewis is a member of Congress. Forever, he’ll be an American hero. Too bad, though, that the movie had to go Hollywood on Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, as if from the grave, has bellowed his protest. In its...

For a few months in 1966, the budding romance between film star George Hamilton and Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of the 36th president, was the talk of Washington....But a previously confidential FBI file - which a Philadelphia judge last week outlined in an opinion and ordered to be released - shows for the first time how far Johnson went to protect his daughter and his presidency

Edward S. Miller, a lifetime FBI man of high rank and stature, recently passed away at the age of 89. A good man and good American, Miller, who was also a veteran of World War II (Okinawa), faithfully served his family, country, and God. He also faithfully served the agency that hired him in 1950, as well as the longtime head of that agency, J. Edgar Hoover. I was fortunate to spend a long Saturday afternoon with Ed Miller back in March, at long last meeting him after previously only corresponding with him. (He was an alumnus of Grove City...

The rumor that J. Edgar Hoover was gay is repeated in the new biopic J. Edgar opening this week. And herein lies a useful lesson worth noting: Hoover's alleged homosexuality was contrived by the KGB in the 1960s. Despite the volumes of revelations about the true nature of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, even clear-thinking Americans cannot embrace the reality that one of the KGB's key functions was to run disinformation programs to undermine leaders and institutions in the West, especially the United States - what the spy agency called the "main adversary In the 1960s Service A...

In a very bizarre turn of events, it seems that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is all riled up over Clint Eastwood's latest movie, J. Edgar. Which, of course, stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the FBI's founding director, J. Edgar Hoover. So when the bureau's not chasing down Scarlett Johansson's nude pics, it's all up in Clint's business! What's up with the FBI going all Hollywood these days? Color us not surprised it has everything to do with Eastwood's portrayal of The Hoov. And remember we first criticized Clint for failing to make the character "gay-enough." Now it seems the FBI...