FBI History
World War II and the Cold War: The Domestic Front
Prior the United States’ entry into World War II, the FBI worked to dampen the kind of hysteria that had afflicted the public in World War I, but these efforts were foiled by one of its own Agents, Leon G. Turrou, who had actively investigated Nazi spy rings during the 1930s. Turrou published a sensational account of his work, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, which was promptly made into a movie of the same name starring Edward G. Robinson. Hoover, outraged, began a public relations campaign in which he acknowledged the existence of foreign spies, but advised the public that the Bureau had things under control. The 1930s gang wars, as well as World War II, made the battle against evil into a relatively simple matter: The enemy was confronted directly, with force. The later transition into a more ambiguous – and, given the existence of the atomic bomb, more frightening – Cold War with a former Soviet ally played out gradually in the FBI’s public relations, and over time, the image of the G-man underwent a subtle transformation. Hoover reasserted control over the FBI’s public image with the 1945 launch of the only radio series to carry the official approval of the FBI: This Is Your FBI. The show’s producer/director, Jerry Devine, was given closed case files as the basis for its weekly stories, which were presented in a semi-documentary style that featured dramatic newsreeltype music and a narrative voice that introduced different chapters in the evolution of a case. Devine himself was even allowed to attend a two-week training session at the FBI Academy in order to get a feel for the Bureau’s inner workings, and made regular trips to Washington throughout the series’ run. This Is Your FBI was a huge hit for the young American Broadcasting Network, and ran for eight years, going off the air in 1953.
Melvin H. Purvis, Jr., and J. Edgar Hoover after Dillinger’s capture and death. Purvis was the FBI Agent who led the investigation that led to Dillinger’s death.
radio program, wrote Powers, began to portray Agents “who acted less like action heroes than social workers, who through sympathy and understanding instead of guns or fingerprints caught and reformed criminals.”
The final episodes of This Is Your FBI were the first to indicate a refinement of the image Hoover wanted to present of the Cold War FBI Agent. While postwar Hollywood continued to crank out retreads of the G-men formula or spy thrillers about fighting off the Red Menace, Hoover’s
In the 1959 film The FBI Story, based on the book written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Don Whitehead, Jimmy Stewart, as FBI Agent Chip Hardesty, plays this new embodiment of the sensitive, cerebral G-man. Aimed at a mass-market family audience, the film offers a hero for the domestic
National Archives
The image of the FBI Agent it presented – collegial, avuncular, upbeat – had reached a kind of peak among the American public. It was relentlessly positive and uncomplicated – and, given the political turmoil facing the nation, it was doomed to end.
60 Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity
Pop Culture.indd 60
7/3/08 11:46:40 AM