There is a sequence in J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood’s 2011 biopic about the progenitor of the FBI as we know it, where Hoover (played feebly by Leonardo DiCaprio, in a transitional role away from any semblance of heartthrob) goes to Charles Lindbergh’s estate to investigate the crime of the century—the abduction of Lindbergh’s 20 month-old daughter. In recounting the day to his biographer, Hoover makes a point to say that Lindbergh came down to greet him and observe his modern, scientific policing tactics (as is contrasted by the brutish New Jersey police who’ve contaminated his crime scene). As the case waffles, the local police are too reticent to work alongside their federal counterparts, and Lindbergh keeps trying to take action into his own hands with the ransoming kidnappers. If only they had followed the advice and oversight of J. Edgar Hoover.
The problem is that none of it would’ve mattered—the body of Lindbergh’s daughter was found on the edge of the estate a couple of months after the kidnapping, accidentally killed in the kerfuffle. The “crime of the century” wasn’t the “case of the century,” and Hoover’s histrionics didn’t do much to give it closure. As Eastwood’s film posits, despite Hoover’s constant posturing as being a spear against some “Bolshevik” conspiracy in the planning to overthrow the U.S., Hoover was never that interested in solving crime or saving America so much as he was bolstering his own image. The Bureau and its G-men were his myth, one that could carry him to the halls of history, not as the meek, speedy-voiced man he was, but as a titan of law enforcement.
Lindbergh never came down off his balcony to greet Hoover, as an old Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) rebukes, instead calling Hoover a “fussy little man” behind his back. The sequence turns into a Liberty Valance-esque bout of clarity, where the yarn Hoover spun for the audience is pulled apart, revealed for the lies they were. After Congress questions Hoover’s credentials as a lawman who hasn’t personally, physically made any arrests, the film sees the man hit the field and become the G-man he touts himself to be, pulling police aside so that he can pull top-ticket criminals out of their cars and bedrooms with his own revolver in hand. One of them is in awe that he’s getting arrested “by Mr. Hoover himself—I’m gonna be famous!” Hoover didn’t do any of that, and it’s a lie that Hoover needs to tell himself as much as others.
Perhaps part of the reason he was so hung up on Lindbergh is how much Lindbergh was the kind of hero that Hoover wanted to be—strong-willed, abled, and a fascist. Lindbergh often trafficked white supremacism. His aviation lined him up well with his American counterparts in the motor racing world that found fellowship with their futurist and fascist companions on the continent. Lindbergh was illusive enough to get away with still being a celebrity, like saying that the U.S. shouldn’t fight Nazi Germany because the Luftwaffe was so impressive to him. It seems obvious that the man who birthed the modern American surveillance state would look up to the man who became the spokesman for the America First Committee in 1940, even though he would never ultimately get his approval.
Hoover is such an interesting (and timely) figure because he was constantly whipped between meekness and temperamentality. Eastwood takes a surprisingly psychoanalytic approach à la Wilhelm Reich, diagnosing Hoover’s need for approval as a result of his repressed homosexually. In the realm of policing, he can create perfect men, ones with no facial hair and the kinds of clean cuts and tailored suits he likes. Yet even in private, he pushes himself towards a heteronormativity, trying to kiss his secretary and recoiling when Tolson—who was his partner in real life—does the same to time. It’s interesting, too, that Eastwood frames this in a somber tone. It’s not a secret cabal of debauched gay men destroying America like in Oliver Stone’s excuse at explaining his own neurosis, JFK (1991), or even the sultry villainy of Kevin Spacey in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). One of the most heartbreaking scenes in J. Edgar is after Hoover’s mother dies, a woman whom he was so attached to that he lived with her well beyond the realm of social acceptability into adulthood. He first tries on her pearls, then her dress, before ripping the pearls off and lashing out at his own fantasy.
Despite Eastwood’s reputation as a conservative, he often operates through a humanist lens which doesn’t often align with the way that politics incarnates itself in the States (remember, too, that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil also includes one of the most empathetic and understanding portrayals of a trans woman in any mainstream American from the 1990s). Eastwood doesn’t make Hoover out to be a monster because of his repressed sexuality, but instead the actions that he commits to make up for the societal ostracization that he’s afraid of, becoming the ultimate weapon of in the culture of dominance.
“Just like that, we had our precedent,” Hoover says of the deportation of Emma Goldman, the anarchist revolutionary who became one of the most prominent victims of the First Red Scare. Hoover had found a cudgel to beat his enemies with. The Palmer raids might’ve caused extraordinary public backlash, but that meant it was time to crack down even harder on the public (“The American people forgot there ever was a threat,” Hoover claims). In 2025, it has terrifying resonances, with ICE weaponized against what the state deems as undesirables (now, primarily, people that are considered “illegal” immigrants), while also having its tools tested against people they see as political adversaries. It’s Emma Goldman in 1919, it’s Mahmoud Khalil in 2025 (now, too, a Republican representative is trying to get the Democrat mayoral candidate in New York City deported for political reasons).
Hoover hated the public, how they lionized criminals, communists and Cagney. Hoover was never someone like Lindbergh, who could fly a plane in a way no one else quite could. Hoover couldn’t even arrest a perp. He’s not the first man like this, but certainly the first in a particular line of American failures that would go on to terrifying political success. This itself is the basis of today’s presidential administration, headed by a man who failed at being a Broadway producer, with someone who failed at being a liberal pundit as his vice president, ramming subsidies through Congress for people in the failing coal industry. They like to blame anyone else for why they think the country or they themselves are failures—immigrants, Democrats, taxes, their ex-wives, someone that beat them in sports in high school, what have you—but the fact remains that they failed. In that case, the best thing to do is follow in J. Edgar’s footsteps: if you’re struggling to succeed, you might as well take control of the machine and get to tell everyone else what to do.