Despite what his detractors might claim, anti-communism was no cause of convenience for Hoover. He truly did regard it as a kind of virulent virus set loose on the land, and battling it as a primal struggle between the forces of good and evil, darkness and light. Where matters get complex is in trying to gauge when Hoover’s actions were motivated by that cause and when they were spurred by baser aspects of his personality: his obsession with both secrecy and self-promotion; his grasping for ever more authority; his no-quarter attacks on those he saw as opponents or competitors. A prime and
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