"J. Edgar" with Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts

J. Edgar Hoover was a uniquely American enigma. He was, at first, a ruthless fighter against Communism in the days of the Palmer Raids, which took place in 1919 under the direction of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and the Department of Justice. Those raids have long been ostracized as being illegal, but they really did save the nation in the early days of the 20th Century. The raids were mostly a reaction to labor related violence by the Unions. This was only 2 years after the Russian Revolution had ushered in Communism, and there was a real threat to America at the time. By September of 1920, explosions would rock Wall Street, when a wagonload of dynamite was set off at lunchtime, killing 38 and injuring scores. This was the environment in which J. Edgar Hoover "cut his teeth". It is also a small part of the history not made very clear to the audience in this film. Simply put, Mr. Eastwood has assumed too much of the average viewer.

The film is compelling, in that it keeps your attention. The direction of the actors is very well done, but the direction of the story; the screenplay; can leave the audience a bit confused as the story jumps back to the 1920's, and the Palmer Raids, and then jumps forward to the Nixon Era. Whole decades between the late 1930's and the 1960's are simply left out, or worse, merely alluded to, without any background information to help the younger viewer, as well as the uninformed, make sense of all the information imparted in the film.

Mr. Hoover's accomplishments in a forensic approach to solving crime cannot be understated. He set up the FBI's first fingerprint database, as well as introducing scientific methods to solving crimes. Ballistics, fibers, wood saw markings; all were carefully categorized under his tenure, and those accomplishments still yield results today. No matter what your politics may be, he was an innovative, though flawed, crime fighter.

Mr. Hoover is ably portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio as a conflicted man, both socially and morally. His relationship with Clyde Tolson, his assistant for almost his entire career, is not ignored, but neither is it explored for any indications that Mr. Hoover's famous "secret files" were largely due to a sense of "protectionism" of his own sexual preferences. This is a man who even had a file on Eleanor Roosevelt's dalliances with another woman, and informed the President of that fact. To his credit, that information was never made public during his tenure, but what about the files on Martin Luther King? Those he used to tempt Martin Luther King to kill himself on the eve of accepting the Nobel Peace prize. That episode is fully covered in the film.

The Kennedy years are virtually ignored, except for one scene showing J. Edgar calling Robert Kennedy to tell him the news of the assassination. Nothing further is said, or shown, concerning the FBI's complicity in covering up the events in Dallas.

J. Edgar's refusal to believe in organized crime, aka, the Mafia, is also overlooked here. How is it possible to have a film about the FBI without mentioning that it's director insisted, as late as 1964, that the Mafia, or any organized crime existed in America?

The film felt overly long, mostly due to the jumping forward and backward through almost 50 years of our nation's history in a hodge podge fashion. The film, in my opinion, would have been better served with a chronological approach to the story. Most viewers will find it helpful to read a bit about the man before they see the film. As it stands, the audience is left wondering if J. Edgar Hoover was a good man, or a bad man. The simple truth is, that just as we all are, he was a bit of both.

"Hellhound On His Trail" by Hampton Sides

This is a gripping book, thoroughly researched and adamant in it's conclusion. Just one flaw. It doesn't wash clean. When all the assembled evidence is gathered and analyzed, the reader is still left with several glaring questions; where did an escaped convict get the money to buy a car, travel about using only cash for a year, seemingly stalking Dr. King, meticulously planning his murder using maps to mark his intended locations, only to leave those maps behind in an Atlanta rooming house, along with a $20 bill that would wind up being sequentially matched to the bills that James Earl Ray possessed?

Now, on with the review. If you have ever seen Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece "North by Northwest", then you will understand the way that the various Intelligence organizations operated in the 1950's and 60's. The setting up of identities for ficticious persons, while having non-descript real people carrying out seemingly unrelated "tasks" was the preferred way to accomplish anything of note, without fear of the entire "chain" of seemingly unrelated events being discovered. Moreover, if it were discovered, it would seem to make no sense. This was the rationale behind the Kennedy Assassination, and most probably, given the painstaking research of this book, the same thing that drove the plot to kill Martin Luther King.

What makes this book so remarkable is that even as it sets out to prove that one lone man killed Martin Luther King, it fails. Along the way there are so many glaring holes in the tale that one has to agree with the New York Times editorial of July 1968, which basically said that if you believe this you're nuts.

This is a very well written, and gripping read, even if you don't buy the conclusion. Mr. Sides has written an accounting of James Earl Ray's 21,000 plus mile journey that rivals any work of fiction. The FBI, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, a man known well for his distatse of the slain Dr. King, is tasked with heading the Investigation, against his will. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, along with New Scotland Yard, are prominently on display in their role to capture the assassin.

Some of the best portions of this book concern the American government and it's reaction to the assassination. Coming, as it did, within 5 years of President Kennedy's murder in Dallas, the country's leadership, under LBJ, was hard pressed to bring this case to a quick close. With many of the nation's cities already in flames, including Washington DC, and the Poor Peoples March set to begin in about 4 weeks, time was of the essence. It was also a Presidential election year.

Absent from this account is any mention of the deal that James Earl Ray made in accepting a 99 year prison sentence in lieu of a trial. This had to do with his father's escape from a mid-western prison some years earlier. James Earl Ray was offered a trial- but his father would be returned to prison. This is a rather important piece of the puzzle, that is left out of the book by the author.

Ask anyone about the trial of James Earl Ray - they'll tell you he was found guilty. In reality he accepted the sentence without trial. He then immediatley recanted his statement. So, there never was a trial, not until shortly before Mr. Ray's death in 1998, at which time he was attempting to prove his innocence. Even the King family asserts that James Earl Ray was not the killer. Here is a link to the letter that James Earl Ray wrote from prison concerning these facts;

http://www.catyoga.com/pages.htm

Whatever your view concerning the King assassination, this book is non-stop action and suspense. And that is a hard thing for an author to accomplish when the ending is already so well known.

Forty Two

It has been 42 years since Robert Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles. He was 42 years old. So much has been written about that night and his subsequent death that there is little to add.

I was 13 and a half when Kennedy was shot. Coming, as it did, on the heels of Martin Luther King's murder, 8 weeks earlier, it was one of those events that leaves you changed in some measure. There is a loss of confidence and security in all that surrounds you.

In the years between 1962, when I received my first transistor radio, and the end of the decade, I got most of my news and music through a flesh colored apparatus known then as the "earphone." They came with the radio. And every night when I went to bed I put the radio beneath my pillow and the "earphone" in my ear. With the lights out and the music on I traveled far and wide in search of that indefineable "something." And sometimes I'd get it. The night of June 4th was one of those nights.

Just past 3 AM in the early morning hours of June 5th, I was listening to WMCA Radio 56 (560 on the AM dial) when the news broke that Robert Kennedy had been shot at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. No one was awake. Even back then I was a lousy sleeper, frequently keeping the radio turned on beneath my pillow all night, waking at intervals to check on the news, or search for a favorite song.

Roaming the dial from one end to the next at nighttime brought in some extraordinary places. I would jot down the names of the cities and the names of the stations. Addressing the postcards to the stations in such faraway places as Colorado, I would inform them that I had received their signals in New York City and at what time. I usually got back a postcard thanking me for listening. I had dozens of these and considered myself somewhat akin to the early radio listeners and the crystal headsets they wore.

But this event was so astounding, so mesmerizing. In the dark everything is magnified, senses are enlarged and the mind's eye gives sharp focus to the words being spoken. It was that way this night as I lay there listening to the reports coming in.

All through the next day I watched and waited with the rest of the world to see if Robert Kennedy would pull through. There was no way I was going to sleep that next night. This was a drama that had to be seen through until the end. And that end came sometime around 4:30 AM when Joeseph Mankiewicz tearfully announced the death of Robert Kennedy. The rest is history.

The world has changed in dramatic ways since those days. The ways in which we receive our news 24/7 has brought the world closer in some measure. But I will always remember, and even long for, the days when I got my news through the "office" beneath my pillow, flesh colored "earphones" in place, searching for the next "big thing."