"J. Edgar Moyers"??

I will just go ahead and say upfront that I was saddened by the following article, and the information contained therein (major H/T to Andy for alerting me to this piece), J. Edgar Moyers The TV moralist's government record. Why? Because Bill Moyers is someone for whom I had respect. His series with Joseph Campbell on The Power of Myth was just one of many outstanding series he has done in his long journalistic career. The manner in which he has conducted himself, portrayed himself moreover, made this pretty surprising coming from him.



As many of you may already know, Bill Moyers worked in the Lyndon Johnson Administration, and it is that period of time with which this article deals:

One of the darker periods of modern American history was J. Edgar Hoover's long reign over the FBI, as we have learned since he died in 1972. So it is more than a historical footnote to discover new records showing that prominent public television broadcaster Bill Moyers participated in Hoover's exploits.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Washington Post has obtained a few of the former FBI director's secret files. According to a Thursday front-page story, Hoover was "consumed" with exposing a (nonexistent) relationship between a gay photographer and Jack Valenti, the late film industry lobbyist who was then an aide to Lyndon Johnson. Hoover's M.O. was to amass incriminating personal information as political blackmail.

But as the Post reports in passing, the dossier also reveals that Mr. Moyers -- then a special assistant to LBJ -- requested in 1964 that Hoover's G-men "investigate two other administration figures who were 'suspected as having homosexual tendencies.'"

Sigh. Tell me that doesn't make you sad. It does me. I know, I know, it was a different time, but for someone who has long been considered to be above that sort of thing to have engaged in that sort of thing is just disheartening. Especially because:

This isn't the first time Mr. Moyers's name has come up in connection with Hoover's abuse of office. When Laurence Silberman, now a federal appeals judge, was acting Attorney General in 1975, he was obliged to read Hoover's secret files in their entirety in preparation for testimony before Congress -- and as far as we know remains one of the only living officials to have done so. "It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service," he wrote in these pages in 2005.

Amid "bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King," Judge Silberman found a 1964 memo from Mr. Moyers directing Hoover's agents to investigate Barry Goldwater's campaign staff for evidence of homosexual activity. A few weeks before, an LBJ aide named Walter Jenkins had been arrested in a men's bathroom, and Mr. Silberman wrote that Mr. Moyers and his boss evidently wanted leverage in the event Goldwater* tried to use the liaison against them. (He didn't, as it happened.)

When that episode became public after Mr. Silberman testified, an irate Mr. Moyers called him and, with typical delicacy, accused him of falling for forged CIA memos. Mr. Silberman offered to study the matter and, should Mr. Moyers's allegations pan out, he would publicly exonerate him. "There was a pause on the line and then he said, 'I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?' And then he rang off."

How indeed, Mr. Moyers? Or to the rest of us who have developed a deep respect and admiration for you? Or is this just old news:

Memories are short in Washington, and Mr. Moyers has gone on to promote himself as a political moralist, routinely sermonizing about what he claims are abuses of power by his ideological enemies. Since 9/11, he has been particularly intense in criticizing President Bush for his antiterror policies, such as warrantless wiretapping against al Qaeda.

Yet the historical record suggests that when Mr. Moyers was in a position of actual power, he was complicit in FBI dirt-digging against U.S. citizens solely for political purposes. As Judge Silberman put it in 2005, "I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends."

Mr. Moyers told us through a spokeswoman that he "never heard of the Valenti matter until this story and had nothing to add to it." He also pointed to a 1975 Newsweek article in which he wrote that he learned of the LBJ-Hoover relationship in "the quickly fading days of my innocence." In the Nixon days, this was called a nondenial denial.

Well, my memory isn't short. And the "nondenial denial" just doesn't help matters much. I expected more, and better, from Mr. Moyers.

Oh - and just in case some folks have forgotten, J. Edgar Hoover was mighty good friends with Joseph McCarthy. As in the one from whom we have the term, "McCarthyism." I might add, that J. Edgar Hoover was notorious for spying on American citizens. So, bear that in mind as you consider the above, and all of the ramifications of this article. (There are tons of books available on the subject of McCarthyism, McCarthy, and J. Edgar Hoover, if you wish to learn more. A simple search will reveal a number of them, especially at Amazon.com.)

And I wonder what Mr. Moyers thinks of Obama's maintaining of some of Bush's more egregious policies, given how outspoken he was when Bush began them (FISA, anti-terror policies like extraordinary rendition, State Secrets, etc., etc.). Despite the disappointment of what this article reveals, I hope Mr. Moyers will continue to hold the powers-that-be feet to the fire. That he will hold Obama accountable for continuing so many of the more despicable policies of Bush II that he decried when Bush did them.

Still, the disappointment lingers.

* By the way, you may recall that it was on the issue of GLBT people in the military, Hillary Clinton always quoted Barry Goldwater who said, "You don't have to be straight to shoot straight." So, it doesn't surprise me that HE did not use the issue of homosexuality for political reasons. That the Democrats had no problems doing that, though, does...