By Carol Morello
Gregg Schwarz frowned as he positioned himself, just so, in front of the wrought iron fence surrounding John Edgar Hoover’s grave, a place he has visited countless times but never before in anger. A retired FBI agent who joined the agency in 1972, the year Hoover died, Schwarz had hired a videographer to film him for YouTube expressing his displeasure with a movie that depicted Hoover as a repressed homosexual. In a dig at Clint Eastwood, the director of “J. Edgar,” Schwarz titled his video response, “Dirty Harry to Filthy Harry.”
“Mr. Hoover was portrayed as an individual who had homosexual tendencies and was a tyrannical monster,” Schwarz said into the camera, as the sun glinted off his FBI cuff links and FBI lapel pin. “That is simply not true.” Many former FBI agents share Schwartz’s pique with the film’s dropped hints of an abiding love between Hoover and aide Clyde Tolson, who is buried a few grave sites away. Historians agree that there is no evidence that either man was gay, and a request for comment from either Eastwood or screenwriter Dustin Lance Black was declined.
Since “J. Edgar’s” release early this month, hundreds of agents have griped about the film on xgboys, a closed e-mail list for FBI retirees that takes its name from one of Hoover’s pet dogs, which in turn is a play on the old nickname for federal agents, “G-men.” “I don’t know anyone who’s not extremely upset,” said Bill Branon, a former agent who is chairman of the J. Edgar Hoover Foundation, which grants scholarships to college students studying law enforcement and forensics. “It’s not only because of our admiration for him. It’s the fact it’s just not true. If it were true, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. But don’t do that to the poor guy when he’s dead and gone.”
The widespread unhappiness over Hollywood’s imagined rendering of Hoover’s rumored-but-never-proven personal life largely comes from men who started their FBI careers when Hoover was still in charge. Their devotion is undimmed almost four decades after his death. Nowhere is that more evident than at Hoover’s grave at Congressional Cemetery. The headstone usually has several stones perched atop it, a sign of recent visitors. There are often fresh flowers inside the wrought iron fence that was forged by a former agent turned metalworker. Retired agents periodically tend to the grave site, removing weeds and overgrown grass. And some newly minted agents make post-graduation pilgrimages there, even though Hoover is not on the curriculum at the FBI Academy.
Agents younger than 70 or so don’t get it, said Brad Benson, president of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. “Devotion is probably a good word for my generation and up,” said Benson, 70. “The more recent people can’t understand why all the energy is being devoted to this when our [retirement] benefits are at stake.”
Older agents say their admiration for the late director is cemented in his role in building up the FBI and instituting several law enforcement innovations, such as crime labs and fingerprinting databases. Many cite his thoughtful gestures, the kind that engender loyalty, including the personal notes he sent to mark special occasions in an agent’s family — such as births, deaths and anniversaries.
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