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Tim Weiner

Enemies: A History of the FBI Hardcover – February 14, 2012

by Tim Weiner (Author)

4.4 802 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post • New York Daily News • Slate

“Fast-paced, fair-minded, and fascinating, Tim Weiner’s Enemies turns the long history of the FBI into a story that is as compelling, and important, as today’s headlines.”—Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Oath

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Enemies is the first definitive history of the FBI’s secret intelligence operations, from an author whose work on the Pentagon and the CIA won him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

We think of the FBI as America’s police force. But secret intelligence is the Bureau’s first and foremost mission. Enemies is the story of how presidents have used the FBI as the most formidable intelligence force in American history.

Here is the hidden history of America’s hundred-year war on terror. The FBI has fought against terrorists, spies, anyone it deemed subversive—and sometimes American presidents. The FBI’s secret intelligence and surveillance techniques have created a tug-of-war between protecting national security and infringing upon civil liberties. It is a tension that strains the very fabric of a free republic.

Praise for Enemies

“Outstanding.”—The New York Times

“Absorbing . . . a sweeping narrative that is all the more entertaining because it is so redolent with screw-ups and scandals.”—Los Angeles Times

Print length

560 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

February 14, 2012
Dimensions

6.4 x 1.53 x 9.52 inches
ISBN-10

1400067480
ISBN-13

978-1400067480
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Wall Street Journal:"A fascinating account of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counterespionage snooping over the past century....A very good read."

Tim Weiner's new book, "Enemies: A History of the F.B.I.," is an outstanding piece of work, even-handed, exhaustively researched, smoothly written and thematically timely -- The New York Times

About the Author

Tim Weiner has won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting and writing on secret intelligence and national security. As a correspondent for The New York Times, he covered the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington and terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, and other nations. Enemies is his fourth book. His Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA won the National Book Award and was acclaimed as one of the year’s best books by The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Time, and many other publications. The Wall Street Journal called Betrayal “the best book ever written on a case of espionage.” He is now working on a history of the American military.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1
Anarchy
J . Edgar Hoover went to war at the age of -twenty--two, on Thursday morning, July 26, 1917. He walked out of his boyhood home in Washington, D.C., and set off for his new life at the Justice Department, to serve as a foot soldier in the army of lawmen fighting spies, saboteurs, Communists, and anarchists in the United States.

America had entered World War I in April. The first waves of her troops were landing in France, unprepared for the horrors that faced them. On the home front, Americans were gripped by the fear of sabotage by German secret agents. The country had been on high alert for a year, ever since an enemy attack on a huge warehouse of American munitions bound for the battlefront. The blast at Black Tom Island, on the western edge of New York Harbor, had set off two thousand tons of explosives in the dark of a midsummer night. Seven people died at the site. In Manhattan, thousands of windows were shattered by the shock waves. The Statue of Liberty was scarred by shrapnel.

Hoover worked for the War Emergency Division at the Justice Department, charged with preventing the next surprise attack. He displayed a martial spirit and a knack for shaping the thinking of his superiors. He won praise from the division’s chief, John Lord O’Brian. “He worked Sundays and nights, as I did,” O’Brian recounted. “I promoted him several times, simply on merits.”

Hoover rose quickly to the top of the division’s Alien Enemy Bureau, which was responsible for identifying and imprisoning politically suspect foreigners living in the United States. At the age of -twenty--three, Hoover oversaw 6,200 Germans who were interned in camps and 450,000 more who were under government surveillance. At -twenty--four, he was placed in charge of the newly created Radical Division of the Justice Department, and he ran the biggest counterterrorism operations in the history of the United States, rounding up thousands of radical suspects across the country. He had no guns or ammunition. Secret intelligence was his weapon.

Hoover lived all his life in Washington, D.C., where he was born on New Year’s Day 1895, the youngest of four children. He was the son and the grandson of government servants. His father, Dickerson, was afflicted with depression; deep melancholy cost him his job as a government cartographer and likely hastened his death. His mother, Annie, was doting but dour. Hoover lived at home with her for the first -forty--three years of his life, until the day she died. He told several of his closest aides that he remained a single man because he feared the wrong woman would be his downfall; a bad marriage would destroy him. Hoover’s niece, Margaret Fennell, grew up alongside him; she stayed in touch with him for six decades. She knew him as well as anyone could. “I sometimes have thought that he -really—-I don’t know how to put -it—-had a fear of becoming too personally involved with people,” she reflected. If he ever expressed love beyond his devotion to God and country, there were no witnesses. He was sentimental about dogs, but unemotional about people. His inner life was a mystery, even to his immediate family and his few close friends.

Hoover learned how to march in military formation and how to make a formal argument. The drill team and the debate team at Central High School were the highlights of his youth. Central High’s debate squad was the best in the city, and Hoover became one of its stars; his school newspaper praised his competitive spirit and his “cool relentless logic.” He told the paper, after a stirring victory over a college team, that debating had given him “a practical and beneficial example of life, which is nothing more or less than the matching of one man’s wit against another.”

Hoover went to work for the government of the United States as soon as he had his high school diploma. Its monuments were all around him. His -two--story home sat six blocks southeast of Capitol Hill. At the crest of the hill stood the chandeliered chambers of the Senate and the House, the colossal temple of the Supreme Court, and the Library of Congress, with its vaulted ceilings and stained glass. Hoover dutifully recited the devotions of the Presbyterian Church on Sundays, but the Library of Congress was the secular cathedral of his youth. The library possessed every book published in the United States. The reverent hush of its central reading room imparted a sense that all knowledge was at hand, if you knew where to look. The library had its own system of classification, and Hoover learned its complexities as a cataloguer, earning money for school by filing and retrieving information. He worked days at the library while he studied in the early evenings and on summer mornings at George Washington University, where he earned his master’s degree in law in June 1917. He registered for military service but joined the Justice Department to fight the war at home.
“The gravest threats”

On April 6, 1917, the day America entered World War I, President Woodrow W. Wilson signed executive orders giving the Justice Department the power to command the arrest and imprisonment, without trial, of any foreigner deemed disloyal. He told the American people that Germany had “filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies, and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot.” The president’s words stoked fear across the country, and the fear placed a great weight on the Justice Department. “When we declared war,” O’Brian said, “there were persons who expected to see a veritable reign of terror in America.”

O’Brian watched over Hoover and his colleagues as they labored day and night in cramped and smoky rooms at the War Emergency Division and the Alien Enemy Bureau, poring over fragmentary reports of plots against America. They were like firemen hearing the ceaseless ringing of false alarms. “Immense pressure” fell upon them, O’Brian recalled; they faced demands from politicians and the public for the “indiscriminate prosecution” and “wholesale repression” of suspect Americans and aliens alike, often “based on nothing more than irresponsible rumor.” Before Black Tom, “the people of this nation had no experience with subversive activities,” he said. “The government was likewise unprepared.” After Black Tom, thousands of potential threats were reported to the government. American leaders feared the enemy could strike anywhere, at any time.

The German masterminds of Black Tom had been at work from the moment World War I began in Europe, in the summer of 1914. They had planned to infiltrate Washington and undermine Wall Street; they had enlisted Irish and Hindu nationalists to strike American targets; they had used Mexico and Canada as safe havens for covert operations against the United States. While Hoover was still studying law at night school, at the start of 1915, Germany’s military attaché in the United States, Captain Franz von Papen, had received secret orders from Berlin: undermine America’s will to fight. Von Papen began to build a propaganda machine in the United States; the Germans secretly gained control of a major New York newspaper, the Evening Mail; their front men negotiated to buy The Washington Post and the New York Sun. Political fixers, corrupt journalists, and crooked detectives served the German cause.

But after a German -U--boat torpedoed the British passenger ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing 1,119 people, including 274 Americans, the German ambassador glumly cabled Berlin: “We might as well admit openly that our propaganda here has collapsed completely.” Americans were enraged at the attack on civilians; Germany’s political and diplomatic status in the United States was grievously damaged. President Wilson ordered that all German embassy personnel in the United States be placed under surveillance. Secretary of State Robert Lansing sent secret agents to wiretap German diplomats. By year’s end, von Papen and his fellow attachés were expelled from the United States.

When Hoover arrived at the Justice Department, O’Brian had just tried and convicted a German spy, Captain Franz von Rintelen. The case was -front--page news. Von Rintelen had arrived in New York a few weeks before the sinking of the Lusitania, carrying a forged Swiss passport. On orders from the German high command, he had recruited idle sailors on New York’s docks, radical Irish nationalists, a Wall Street con artist, and a drunken Chicago congressman in plans to sabotage American war industries with a combination of business frauds and firebombs. But Captain von Rintelen had fled the United States, rightly fearing the exposure of his secret plans. British intelligence officers, who had been reading German cables, arrested him as he landed in -En-gland, roughly interrogated him in the Tower of London, and handed him over to the Justice Department for indictment and trial.

“America never witnessed anything like this before,” President Wilson told Congress after the captain’s arrest. “A little while ago, such a thing would have seemed incredible. Because it was incredible we made no preparation for it.”

Terrorists and anarchists represented “the gravest threats against our national peace and safety,” the president said. “Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. . . . The hand of our power should close over them at once.”
J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI would become the instruments of that power.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (February 14, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 560 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400067480
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400067480
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.95 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1.53 x 9.52 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #237,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #160 in Law Enforcement (Books)
- #217 in Law Enforcement Politics
- #325 in Political Intelligence

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Tim Weiner

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Tim Weiner has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his reporting and writing on American national security. As a correspondent for The New York Times, he covered the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon in Washington, and reported on war and terrorism from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, and many other nations over the course of 15 years.

His new book, ONE MAN AGAINST THE WORLD: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, was hailed as "[an] eye-opening study of Richard Nixon's booze-soaked, paranoid White House years and the endless tragedies they wrought" by Kirkus Reviews prior to publication. "It speaks volumes about Nixon that there is still more to learn about him, 40-plus years after Watergate. It speaks further volumes that what we are learning is even worse than what we knew."

Publisher's Weekly said ONE MAN AGAINST THE WORLD is a "devastating account of Nixon's presidency, drawing on documents declassified in the last seven years.... Chilling excerpts from tape recordings that have only recently been made accessible include cold-blooded exchanges between Nixon and [Henry] Kissinger in which the two debate the merits of committing war crimes in order to win in Vietnam. This is powerful raw material, but Weiner's brilliant turns of phrase transform it into something extraordinary."

His previous books include ENEMIES, a history of the FBI acclaimed as "fascinating" by The Wall Street Journal. LEGACY OF ASHES, his chronicle of the CIA, won the 2007 National Book Award; it was a bestseller across the United States and around the world. He has lectured at the CIA, universities, political think tanks, and Presidential libraries. He directs the Carey Institute's nonfiction residency program in upstate New York and teaches as the 2015 Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton.

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Interesting history of the FBI

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 17, 2012

Verified Purchase

"Enemies" is a fairly thorough and interesting history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from inception to the present day. The author's thesis is that the FBI for much of its history operated outside the law, essentially taking for granted that to protect the nation it was necessary to engage in warrentless wiretaping and break-ins. The author contends that far from being a criminal prosecution agency, the FBI has considered itself to be primarily an intelligence agency. This despite the fact that, as the author points out, the FBI to this day does not have a charter from Congress spelling out its mission.

The author covers the Hoover years with insight and in my opinion is relatively even-handed in his treatment of this complicated man. Perhaps the most insightful portion of this piece is the author's analysis of the Watergate scandal. Hoover had provided political intelligence to many presidents (even as he intimidated Presidents with his feared secret files) but became cautious as he got older. When Nixon was faced with relentless and pervasive leaks within his administration, he asked Hoover to engage in extensive wiretapping and other forms of surveillance in order to identify the leakers. Hoover turned him down, leading to Nixon's formation of the now-infamous "Plumbers" unit (called that based upon their mission to stop leaks) formed by G. Gordon Liddy. Hoover was certain that this would blow up in Nixon's face and he was right. What perhaps even Hoover did not foresee was the fact that "Deep Throat" was within the FBI and assisted in bringing about Nixon's demise.

The author's analysis is subject to criticism. He is adamantly opposed to the former practice of the FBI of tapping the phones of known Communists and other foreign enemies. On the other hand, he seems supportive of the arguably unreasonable searches conducted routinely by the TSA; never mind the Constitution's provisions against unlawful and unreasonable searches. I guess it is OK to abuse ordinary Americans, but we must scrupulously guard the rights of foreign spies and terrorists.

There were some areas of the FBI's history that I would have liked to have known more about. Some of this information may simply not be available. Weiner does a better job examining the FBI's war against the Mafia than some other authors who have covered the same subject, but more would still have been better. I suppose this subject should really be addressed in a complete book. Also, I finished this piece with questions about the FBI's effectiveness against the Soviet KGB. The author does an excellent job explaining that, just prior to World War Two, the Soviet intelligence agencies operated in the USA and Canada almost completely unfettered. The US literally had no counterintelligence agency or capability. Fantastically, Weiner explains that the OSS, the American predecessor agency to the CIA formed during the war, actually thought that Soviet intelligence was and would continue to be an ally, and gave the Russians sophisticated US intelligence devices and technology to America's infinite harm. Did the FBI morph into an effective counterintelligence agency against the Russians? This book does not provide answers to the question. Perhaps there is no way of knowing.

Overall, I found this to be a good read even if I rejected some of the author's analysis. RJB.

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Peter Hillman

Another Triumph!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 16, 2012

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Tim Weiner's excellent treatment of the FBI's 100-year-old history of domestic spying is destined to be the seminal work on the subject.

Not too long ago, Weiner got a call that his 27-year-old Freedom of Information Act request for declassification of J. Edgar Hoover's secret intelligence files had been granted. Three banker's boxes of documents appeared. Together with other recently-declassified files, numerous interviews and other reliable sources, primary and secondary, Weiner crafts (with 60 pages of illuminating endnotes) a riveting and revealing history of the FBI's domestic surveillance.

Weiner recounts the admonitions of Founding Fathers, such as Hamilton and Madison, that a free nation must be ever-vigilant; but, in conducting such vigilance, must not compromise civil liberties. President-by-President, we see a constant tension between the two tenets. The consistent thread, for the first 60 years, is J. Edgar Hoover.

This is not the Hoover of the Clint Eastwood movie. The Hoover Weiner describes as an "American Machiavelli" seems relatively uncomplicated. He always hated Communism. He resisted aiding the civil rights movement (until late, cajoled by LBJ) because he believed the movement was fostered by the Soviet Union and U.S. Communist Party. He had "evidence"--e.g., a close confidant of MLK was a Communist. For Hoover, and many of the Presidents, the end justified the means, unconstitutional as they were. But Weiner points out that even Hoover had his limits. Hoover's refusal to carry out Nixon's directive to spy on Democrats led Nixon to organize "the Plumbers" of Watergate and other disasters.

At the other end of the FBI Director spectrum is Robert Mueller. Weiner recounts how Mueller told G. W. Bush he and other top FBI officials would resign unless the administration ceased unconstitutional spying after September 11. Mueller prevails, and, as Weiner states, has set a crisp, above-reproach tone for the FBI this century (as the longest-serving Director after Hoover). Whereas Hoover's mantra was, "Don't do anything that embarrasses the Bureau" (which allowed for a lot of unsavory things), Mueller plainly has instilled a "Do the right thing" ethos.

I found the writing anything but dry. Weiner states he believes in largely letting the records speak for themselves. And the records here are often near-incredible. (Personally, I would have liked a photo section). Weiner does a remarkable job of not injecting himself while weaving a century's worth of activities into a highly readable account.

In this respect, the book is quite different from, but no less triumphant than, "A Legacy of Ashes." There, Weiner wisely chose to be judgmental; recollections, impressions, theories, documents and prior accounts were scattered to a thousand winds. Weiner's judgment was the necessary compass (not for nothing did it win a Pulitzer and the National Book Award!).

In contrast, the author has no need to constantly judge and forge a path in "Enemies." Plenty of principals in the FBI's history have judged. In the main, as Weiner relates, breaches of civil liberties, e.g., secret military tribunals; warrantless tapping) sadly were repeated. Other lessons have been learned. The FBI's mission necessarily is a work-in-progress. As the Founding Fathers foresaw, the tension between security and civil liberties will always be with us. It is a blessing that we have someone of Weiner's immense gifts to remind us of this.

P.S. Earlier this week Terri Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air" had a terrific interview of Weiner on his new book, at the end of which they played the tape of LBJ congratulating Hoover on the FBI's breaking the case of the three white civil rights workers' murders. You hear Hoover deliberately telling LBJ key things only when and as Hoover wants them revealed. Listen to the podcast before, during or after reading the book!

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Wandering

A Warning, Not a Tribute

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

When I finished reading this book I thought that J. Edgar Hoover's name should be taken off the FBI Headquarters in Washington. Upon further reflection, I have changed my mind. His name should remain, but as a stern warning, not a tribute. To understand the warning all citizens who worry about creeping tyranny should read this book.

The prolonged and repeated red scares of the early and mid-20th centuries warped American politics disastrously. Good men and women were sent to prison unjustly. Citizens (including Ronald Reagan) became snitches on their own co-workers. Insane paranoia about tiny Cuba almost led to world annihilation. The Vietnam war could never be justified rationally, but can be explained causally as the product of the fear held by several presidents that they would be accused of being soft on communism.

One wonders why the red scares were so much more virulent in the US than other Western countries. Part of the answer lies in the fact that many unscrupulous people who created the red scares profited by them.. J. Edgar Hoover was arguably the worst. He built the reputation of the FBI, and his own power base, by police state tactics. Hoover's FBI was no Gestapo or NKVD, but it was antithetical to freedom, democracy, and the constitution.

Hoover's FBI did not limit its black bag operations to attacks on suspected communists. Under Hoover, the FBI engaged in illegal wiretaps of Dr. King and used the product for crude and cruel blackmail. Hoover also kept secret files on the powerful, including presidential hopefuls and incumbents, so no one with the power to do so had the courage to fire him, much less hold him to account.

Today we hear a lot about a so-called Deep State. I not think that fairly describes the contemporary FBI, but this book reminds us that it is possible for one man operating in the shadows, but also in plain sight, to subvert liberty and democracy, and to become so powerful that no one can stop him.

5 people found this helpful

角々鹿々

J.E.HooverのFBI再発見

Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on December 16, 2016

Verified Purchase

T.Weiner / Legacy of ashes CIAの裏面史を読みその延長でこの作品を読むことにした。
Untatchable やHooverの王国として一般論では知っているつもりだったが
これを読むと、私の既成概念は砕かれた。
第一次大戦のスパイ活動とロシヤ革命の米国波及の阻止、狂気の沙汰にも見える
創生期の混乱が生々しく描かれ、「敵」は変われど、CIAの創設が第二次大戦の終結の時と
重なるようにFBIも最初は的はCommunism だった。CIAはその素顔が見えたが
この作品は米国の素顔が見えてくる。
ただこの本は活字が小さい、老眼にはきつい。

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James Squires

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 26, 2018

Verified Purchase

Great Story !!
I Buy Many Books From Amazon !!

藤村　卓也

Enemies

Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on April 17, 2014

Verified Purchase

よくここまでDiscloseしたなという驚き、アメリカの政府機関の間のCommunicationの悪さをことごとく暴露している

Translate review to English

Elisabeth G Vezina

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 1, 2017

Verified Purchase

It's a great book, really!

See all reviews

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Enemies: A History of the FBI Hardcover – February 14, 2012

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Buy new:

$26.50

FREE delivery: July 15 - 20

Ships from: Amazon

Sold by: MbBooks

Buy used:

$9.58