J edgar hoover. Two images come to mind. The first is the long serving fbi director with his vaunted files. Targeting communists and leftists. Using his files to get his way with politicians. Image is of a secretive man wearing a black cocktail dress and a feather boa and high heels with his secret lover, clyde tolson. One of those is verifiable. The other is not. An irrepressible cultural meme with innuendos and suppositions. They capture the two major hoover of sessions of communism and gays. The fbis preoccupation with gays, has not been very well documented and examined only in limited ways. Public discourse over the fbi and gays often center on the idea of a gay hoover targeting his own through some kind of overcompensation. The fact of the matter is we dont know. We cannot know what his sexuality was. Unless were willing to use stereotyping somehow as evidence. Not knowing and having no convincing evidence means hoovers sexuality is a causal factor in why the fbi targeted gays for 40 years it simply isnt helpful to a historical understanding of what the fbi actually did. Let me take you on a whirlwind tour of my book. I cannot cover everything of course. But your claim time to read it. At 400 pages, you will need the time. The obsession with gays and politics from the 1930s to the mid1990s. Why did start the 1930s . It started then because americans reassessed gender roles. It also reassessed its perception of those gender roles. Particular games to those attracted to members of the same sex. Homosexuality was not regarded as a serious threat it was regarded as an individual sinful act and nothing overly concerning. After the stock market crash in 1929. Americans reassessed of those views. In patriarchal masculine American Culture as the previously valued husbands and fathers and heads of households suddenly failed to fulfill theirs assigned roles, to pay bills,s and pay the americans changed their views about gender. If the ideal heterosexual men was failing, gays who already stood outside expectations for men were suddenly regarded as a serious threat. After a series of child kidnappings and murders in the mid1930s, game and in particular were singled out as dangerous and predatory animals. For the fbi, started just after madison wasarles kidnapped abuse and murder. Depression era child kidnappings were nothing new. Familiar with all the Charles Lindbergh kidnapping. Had been a reevaluation of gender roles. Hoover had declared an end to child kidnapping in 1935. Shocked americans from coast to coast and even led president Franklin Roosevelt publicly promise that the fbi would never stop until it sure was captured. Bureaucratervative holdover from the republican Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover administrations now had to react because his liberal boss had publicly demanded it and he wanted to retain his job, and he had to rectify the specious claims about child kidnapping. Significantly mobilized an assault on this particular case. Fbi agents went after a sex offender. Popular perception had it that gay men targeted children. There she focused on hobos. Hobos were the most visible and iconic symbol of the Great Depression. Almost forgotten today at the thatit was widely believed sexual perversion was common in the hobo community. Hobos commonly traded sexual favors for food or money. Fbi agents narrowly focused on hobos they went after exconvicts. A population were among those believe that homosexuality was common. They also focused on mental patients even the view that homosexuality was a psychiatric disorder. A significant thing happened. The fbi began systematic monitoring of gays. To fit a larger pattern of the federal government during the new deal coming to discover homosexuality and attempting to regulate it. The first time because new deal programs and bureaucrats working directly with common americans. They found themselves weeding gays out of those programs. Those programs always had a family focus. The fbi failed to solve the case. Thus failing to solve president roosevelt public promise. And nevertheless collected volumes of information about sex offenders. Successve some level of hoover use that information in educational campaign. If he couldnt solve the murder, he could warn and educate the American Public about the threat of gays. This also fits the. Hoovers fbi created its own Public Relations arm that famously propagated the idea that morally upstanding professional fbi agents used scientific investigative techniques and always capture their prey. That36, the fbi shifted and began focusing on educating americans about the threat from communists and homosexuals and other subversive influences. It was only a few years after 1937 when the fbis perception of targeting of gays came to the four. With the advent of world war ii, suddenly the perception of gays evolved from being perceived as a criminal threat to children to being a National Security threat. If a gay man or woman was found in government, securely holding an influential position, they could be targeted at subversive elements into betraying wartime secrets. We see for the second world war. The fbi investigating homosexuality among top government officials either because of stories of sexual improprieties or because they were gay baited by public enemies. These included under secretary of state Sumner Welles who famously got drunk on a train and solicited sex from a male africanamerican train porter. David walsh, chair of the committee and Naval Affairs who was gay baited because he didnt fit the mold of a mans man at the time. He was accused of frequenting a gay brothel in new york city that allegedly was targeted by nazi agents. The lend lease coordinator general Philip Stephenville who also didnt fit the common masculine mold of the time. He hated sports any like music. [laughter] leading his political enemies to gabe 8 00 a. M. Because he had worked successfully with the soviets. Era, the fbisr interest in gays evolved it again. It was similar to 1937 and that man Economic Disaster had led to a new perception of gays. The rise of the soviet union as a superpower and the threat led toear annihilation another focus on gays as threats. Coincided with the second child kidnapping panic in which the americans perceived children as being the targets. Gays were seen as a threat to the cold war homefront and as a subversive threat because communist agents could blackmail anyone in government to betraying secrets. Gays were seen as medical criminals and moral deviance. 1950ular Magazine Article claims to reveal the truth about homosexuality. Gays sought to recruit children into their deviancy. Not just boys but all children. The article quoted one socalled expert saying all too often we lose sight of the fact that the homosexual is an inveterate seducer of the young. He presets a social problem because he is not content with being a degenerate himself. He must have the genera companions. Another text from the time on sexuality claimed that because gays wrist shunned part of society, the homosexual will murder his victim during an active sexual frenzy and then robbed him. There quickly evolved a decidedly public witch country gays in the 1950s. One that was similar to but distinct from the witchhunt for communists. City gay witchhunt is known as the lavender scare. The state department had already begun searching purging gays from its ranks in 1947. The public witchhunt began in 1950 after senator Joseph Mccarthy singled out two cases not just for little subversion but sexual subversion in the state department. This led the department to purge itself of gays. Americans and then focused on the topic and it in gross them for years. One american wrote president truman, if the state department can acquire the file on 91 homosexualitys who had something to do with slanting information which is based the state department is capable of anything. The lavender scare actually long outlived the red scare. Over, ginger hoovers fbi responded. It had to respond. It was responsible for domestic security and for fighting subversive influence. To demonstrate to the president of the fbi was on top of the issue, in april 1950 hoover forwarded to the white house a list of 493 people arrested in the capital for sexual irregularities. Hoover created the first version of the fbis sex deviance program. This one was based upon arrest records and fingerprints. Anytime a person was arrested on the morals charge his arrest were reportedgers to the fbi who then reported them to the Civil Service commission. This limited program did not work very well. Civil servants noted many irregularities and errors in the program. This was compounded by two Senate Committees investigating the gay in government issue. Committeethe wary which only had two senators on it. The much more significant few week committee. Both popularized the lavender square. Hoover was forced to reconsider and dramatically expand the sex deviance program. He did so by june 1954. The reconfigured 60 beats beyond moved fingerprints and arrest records to include collecting any and all information about gays. Including simple allegations. The information will be collected, compiled and fbi Source Information will be added to it and then disseminated widely throughout government. To ensure gays and lesbians were fired from their jobs. Recipients outside of government were added including universities. Today is the 60th anniversary of the fbi writing a memo that we sent this memo to a university. Was not authorized by the attorney general or the president. They put hoover in the vanguard of the lavender scare. To nots careful effort say how gay related information was disseminated. When Forwarding Information to the house of representatives or the senate, fbi policy mandated use of fbi letters. These of the documents about the universities today. That is an fbi letter. Typical fbi document means different things. Fbi letters are clearly identified as being from the fbi. The fbi seal is on it the signatures on it. It is very clear where the information is coming from. That tells us something. Information,ng they make it clear where the information is coming from. When Forwarding Information to the government accounting office, the Judicial Branch of the military, fbi policy mandated the use of something called line to memos. Blind memoranda are documents with no letterhead, no signature, no watermark, no nothing. This is a blind memo that happens to be redacted. As you can see the targets name is on their. Sexual allegations that are blacked out. Otherwise there is no indication this is from the fbi. Because we have it. The first one was actually from the fbi file. This came from the eisenhower library. In this case they set the exact document to the president and a neck she has the fbi seal on it. Is that he worked for the cia and was arrested in a park across the street from the white house for soliciting gay sex. This the fbi supervisors were directed to index from all reports and letters and memos all names of suspected sex deviance. They would underline the names with a pencil. Central to this fbi theemination was comprehensive fbi file. The 60 beats file. The sex deviance file. One was a file on sex offenders. Another was captioned sex perverts in Government Service dating from 1942. A third was called sex deviance in washington dc contained all fingerprints and arrest records. Another one was from the fbi Washington Field office. Captionedsearch file sex degenerates constituted the would use tohe fbi educate and influence the public about the threat of sex deviance. More, fbi field offices in cities with large cave populations such as San Francisco and change socalled Research Files where they kept information about gays and their particular locations. By 1977 the fbi sex deviance be hundreds ofto thousands of pages in size. The main files probably more than half a million pages. I dont have the time here to cover all government officials that were targeted. Thats where a 400 page book. Suffice it to say some included the aforementioned carmel aussie, president ial candidate ofai stevenson, president Bradley University david owen, Arthur Vandenberg junior, state Department Official charles and Nicholas Novato of the voice of america. Ande Department Official future ambassador to the soviet union charles bolin. The federal Security Agency itself, the forerunner to the department of health and human services. Three lowlevel Eisenhower White joseph andspondents stewart alsop. Among many many others associated with these individuals. Sex deviancebi file was destroyed in 1977, we can never know exactly how many but thisre targeted merely constitutes a tiny sampling. Fbi also targeted the first gay rights group, the Mattachine Society. Another group was called one of the incorporated that had an economist magazine. Daughteran magazine cells go by this. The mattachine was the first socalled humble file group to form. By 1952 mattachine had caught journalistsocal were wondering whether a communist spy could infiltrate the group and swing its political power. Public charges initiated an fbi investigation under its program of mattachine and one to see whether communists had infiltrated these groups. Sources, the fbi decided that both groups were clean. Somehow the fbi did notice that the mattachine was actually founded by former members of the communist party. By 1956 all of that changed. The magazine published an claimingte article that gays work in the fbi but hinted that hoover himself was gay. This kind of trouble charge laid hoover to target the magazine and the Mattachine Society. Using federal and types of the law in an effort to shut down the publications. And thert failed magazine did win a legal case protecting the right of gay groups to use the males. Target thee to lesbian group. They suggest the nature of the fbi effort against early gayrights groups. Were commonly perceived to be the greater threat. The greater violation of gender roles and patriarchal hyper masculine cold war culture. Gay man actually received greater scrutiny and focus than women do. That is at least on the fbi side of things. Commission wasce probably completely different story. The fbi surveilled members and try to reconstruct members with these lists. It was interested in where it opened new chapters across the country. Fbi tension was also drawn to the east coast of the United States when homosexual groups formed there. Mattachine new york and two groups in washington dc. Day rightsy of early activist Donald Webster corey. I would like to focus on Donald Webster corey. He was actually a pseudonym for a real individual by the name of edward said garin. Cori persona was something of a hero to many gays and lesbians in the early 1950s. He wrote this book, the homosexual in america. This book was the first to offer a view of homosexuality that was in a positive light. That they were repressed segment of society. Rather than some kind of moral or medical or criminal deviance. Had something of an odyssey in lgbt history. He participated in activist groups. As a middleaged man he went to college and ultimately to the phd in sociology and became an expert on deviancy. Was ag that homosexuality pathology. One historian has described him as a jekyll and hyde personality between his corey and his real persona. What the fbi files teach us is that corey in 1952 founded in early gayrights group called homosexuals anonymous. As i know we did not previously know about this group. Corey revealed the fbis use of informants. He willingly offered the fbi information about gays. We know the identity of this therapist it was dr. Alfred gross. The fbi forgot to black out his in this memo. This if youabout have the bottom of the document you can see how he described sick error and that he was average looking. Dr. Gross long cooperated with the fbi when he came to gays. He worked with a group called the George W Henry foundation. A quaker group that counseled young man arrested on morals charges. They regarded them not with any have sympathy but as young man arrested who had some cap corey hadal problem invited dr. Gross to speak before his group. After doing so he decided coreys group was only interested in Political Rights and they were rude and confrontational. He probably reported all this to the fbi. Including identifying for fbi agents that corey was in reality said garin. They knew the identity of this major gayrights activist who had to hide behind a pseudonym. Briefly one to focus the fbi and gay rights activist John Richard Jack nichols junior. Here he is taking the white house. Nichols is well known because heng with Frank Campbell founded the Mattachine Society of washington dc. Famous for its militant activism and picketing the white house. What is so interesting about nichols is that he was the son of an fbi agent of the same name. , frank mustve known junior and senior. How can they not know . The bureau claimed the file the longer existed. Statened the penn archives of all places had this fbi document involving nichols. After some backandforth i got hold of it. Here it is. It was heavily redacted. Somebody telling fbi officials all about nichols junior. Was his father mentioned in this document . I didnt know to the bottom that first paragraph you can see