His files to using get his way, often times, with politicians. Mansecond is of a secretive wearing a feather blower, sashaying around washington,. C. With his lover one of those is verifiable. Based on historical evidence. He other is not nevertheless it has become an irrepressible cultural meme rooted in innuendo, and supposition. It captured the two major hoover era of sessions. Ommunists and gays until now the fbi preoccupation with gays and the means a targeted gays have not been documented and examined only in limited ways. Public discourses over the fbi and gays center around the idea of a gay hoover targeting his own through overcompensation. We cannot know what his sexuality was unless we are willing to use stereotyping as evidence of a persons character or nature. Having no convincing evidence sexuality isovers a causal factor in explaining why is fbi targeted gaze for 40 targeted gays for 40 years is not helpful to understanding what the fbi did. Let me take you on a whirlwind tour of my book. I cannot cover everything, but that allows you plenty of time to read it. Overall, the evolution of the fbis targeting, obsession, and politics surrounding gays and lesbians from the mid1930s to the mid1990s. Why did it start in the 1930s . The Great Depression . It started than because americans reassess gender roles. They also reassess perceptions of those gender roles, particularly when it came to people attracted to those of the same sex. Prior to the 1930s, americans did not regard homosexuality is homosexuality as something serious, a serious threat, something necessitating a systematic federal response. Instead it was regarded as an individual sinful act, nothing overly concerning. After the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression set in by 1930, americans reassess those views. In patriarchal, masculine american culture, as the previously valued husbands, father, head of households suddenly failed to fulfill his assigned role, could not care for his children, lost his home, became homeless, americans change their views about gender. If the ideal heterosexual men was failing socially and culturally, gays, who already stood outside expectations for men, were sudden regarded as a serious threat. Moreover, after a series of child kidnappings and murders in the mid1930s, gay men in particular were singled out as dangerous, predatory animals. For the fbi, it started just after christmas in 1936 when a 10yearold was kidnapped, abused, brutalized, and murdered. Depression era child kidnappings, murders were nothing new. In this instance, there had been a reevaluation of gender roles, and hoover had declared an end to child kidnappings in 1935, and now looked foolish. Even more, the story shocked americans from coast to coast and even led Franklin Roosevelt to publicly promise the fbi would never stop until the killer was captured. Hoover, a conservative bureaucrat holdover from a republican Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover administration, now had to react because one, his liberal boss, fdr, publicly demanded it, and two, he had to rectify his previous. His previous claims about child kidnappings. The fbi was motivated to solve this particular case. Fbi agents focused on finding a offender. At the time, popular perception had it that gay men targeted children. That is who they targeted most and in particular, they focused on hobos. Transients, hobos, were the most visible and iconic symbol of the Great Depression. Almost forgotten today, at the time it was widely revealed that sexual perversion was common in the hobo community mainly because hobos commonly traded sexual favors for food or money. Fbi agents not only focused on hobos, they focused on exconvicts who similarly at the time were perceived to be a population among who homosexuality was common. Fbi agents finally focused on mental patients, given the view that homosexuality was a psychiatric disorder, and investigating all these avenues, fbi agents eliminated a staggering 24,000 subjects, yet never solved the case. A significant thing happened. For the first time, the fbi began systematic monitoring of gays which happen to fit a , larger pattern of the federal government coming to discover homosexuality and attempting to regulate it. For the first time, because new deal programs and new deal government bureaucrats were working directly with common americans to affect depression relief, they found themselves weeding gays out of these new deal programs, which always had a family focus. The fbi failed to solve the case, thus failing to satisfy president roosevelt process roosevelts public programs. President roosevelts public promise, it nevertheless had collected volumes on sex offenders. To achieve some level of success in this area, hoover use that information in educational campaign. If he could not solve the murder, and they investigated it all the way through the 1980s, by the way, he could warn and educate the American Public about the threat of gays. This also fit the period. In 1935, hoovers fbi created its prime records division, which is the Public Relation arm which famously propagated the idea that morally upstanding, professional fbi agents used to used scientific investigative techniques and always captured their prey. 1936, 1937, the fbi shifted that Public Relations effort and began focusing on educating americans about the threat of domestic fascists and communists and other subversive influences like sex offenders. It was only a few years after 1937 when the fbis perceptions and targeting of gays evolved. With the advent of world war ii, within the United States, suddenly perception of days evolved gays evolved to being a National Security threat. Why . If the gay man or woman was found in government, holding an influential position, they could be targeted by subversive elements into betraying wartime secrets, leading to failure and the loss of military lives. Or so the argument went. Thus we see for the Second World War period the fbi investigating homosexuality among top government officials either because of stories of sexual impropriety or because they were gaybaited by political enemies. These include under secretary of state sumner welles, who famously got drunk on a train and solicited sex from a male africanamerican train porter. It included senator david walsh, chair of the committee of Naval Affairs who was gaybaited because he did not fit the mold of a mans man at the time, and was accused of frequenting a gay brothel in new york city that allegedly was targeted by nazi agents. It finally included the lend lease coordinator of moscow, who also did not fit the common masculine mold of the time. He hated sports and he liked music. [laughter] leading his political enemies to gaybait him because he worked closely and successfully with the soviets, whereas his political enemies failed, and they hated the soviets. By the cold war era, the fbis interest in days evolved yet in gays evolved yet again. It was similar to 1937 in that then, economic disasters had led to a new perception of gays, and now with the cold war, after the Second World War, the rise of the soviet union as a superpower, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and fears of domestic subversion led to another focus on gays as threats. Again, it coincided with a second sex crime panic in which americans perceived children being targeted for murder. This time, gays were seen as a threat to the cold war homefront and a subversive threat because communist agents supposedly could blackmail any in government into betraying the country. Particularly, gays were seen as medical, criminal, and moral deviants. A popular Magazine Article in 1950 argued that gays sought to recruit children into their deviancy. Not just boys, all children. The article quoted one socalled expert on gays, all too often we loose sight of the fact that the homosexual is an inveterate seducer of the young of both sexes, and presents a social problem because he is not content with being degenerate himself. He must have degenerate companions and is ever seeking younger victims. End quote. Another text from the time on sexuality claimed because gays were a shonda part where a shunned part of society, quote, the homosexual will murder his victim during an act of sexual frenzy and afterwards rob him. The quickly evolved a public witchhunt for gays in the 1950s, one that was similar to yet distinct from the witchhunt for communists in government. Today the gay witchhunt is known as a lavender scare. The state department had begun purging gays from its ranks in 1947. The public witchhunts began in 1950 after senator mccarthy singled out two cases of sexual subversion in the state department, which led the state department to purge itself of gays, firing 91. Soon after this, americans focused on the topic for years. One american wrote president truman, quote, if the state department can acquire and harbor 91 homosexuals who presumably had something to do with shaping our Foreign Policy or slanting the information on which it is based, the state department is capable of anything. The lavender scare long outlived the red scare. In short order, j edgar hoovers fbi responded. It had to respond. It was responsible for domestic security and for protecting americans from subversive influences. To demonstrate to the president , the fbi was on top of the issue, in april 1950 hoover forwarded the white house a list of 393 people arrested in the capital sexual irregularities. Hoover created the first version apparentlyhoover created the first version of the fbis sex , deviance program. This was based on arrest records and fingerprint records. Anytime a person was arrested on a morals charge, which was soliciting gay sex, his arrest record and fingerprints were forwarded to the fbi, who forwarded them to the Civil Service commission. This limited program did not work very well. The Civil Service noted many irregularities and errors. This was compounded by two Senate Committees forming at the time to investigate the gays and government issue. First there was the wary committee, which only two senators were on it. Then came the more significant who we hooey committee. Both of them popularized the 11 to her scare, energized this, and let it to become commonplace. Hoover was forced to reconsider and dramatically expand his sex deviance program, and he did by june 1951. The reconfigured sex deviance program moved to include collecting any and all information about gays, including simple allegations. The information would be collected, compiled, that fbi Source Information added to it, and then be disseminated widely across government to ensure gays and lesbians were fired from their jobs. In time, recipients outside of government were added, including Police Departments and universities. Today is the 60th anniversary of the fbi writing a memo that yes, we sent this to universities today. The program was neither authorized by the attorney general or the white house. Instead, it was fbi efforts placing hoover and the fbi in the vanguard of the lavender scare. The fbis careful effort can be seen in how gayrelated information was disseminated. When Forwarding Information to the Civil Service commission, house of representatives or the senate, including the library of congress and botanical gardens, fbi policy mandated the use of fbi letters. This is the document about the university today. That is the fbis letter. Particular fbi documents mean different things. Fbi letters are clearly identified as being from the fbi. The fbi seal is on there, theres a signature on there, its clear where the information is coming from. That tells us something. When Forwarding Information to congress to the government accounting office, Government Printing office, the Judicial Branch or military branches, fbi policy mandated the use of something called blind memos. I will explain this in a second. Blind memoranda are documents with no letterhead, no signature, no watermark, nothing revealing the fbi as a source. This is a blind memo, this one happens to be redacted. The targets name is on their. Is on there. Sexual allegations, which are blacked out. Otherwise theres no indication this is from the fbi. Dont worry, because i found this. The first one was from an fbi file. This one came from the eisenhower library. In this case they sent the exact , document to the president so it has the fbi seal on it. This is not actually a blind memo. That he, whoout is worked in the cia, was arrested across the street from the white house for soliciting gay sex. Beyond this fbi supervisors were , directed to index from all reports, letters, memos, newspapers, and other sources, all names of suspected sex deviants. They would do this by underlining the name with a green pencil. Central to the fbi dissemination and purging effort was a comprehensive fbi file. The sex deviance file. One file was on sex offenders dating from 1937. Another was captioned sex perverts in government service, dating from 1942. A third, called sex deviance in washington, d. C. Contained the fingerprints and arrest records. The fourth was in the Fbi Washington Field Office until it was made obsolete in 1953. A fifth socalled Research File captioned sex to generates and six to generates and sex offenders constituted the information the fbis crime records division, its Public Relations arm, would use to educate and influence the public about the threat of socalled sex deviants. Even more, fbi field offices in cities with large gay and lesbian population such as San Francisco maintained Research Files in which they kept information about gays in their particular locations. In total, by 1977, the fbis sex deviance files had grown to be hundreds of thousands of pages in size. I would estimate the main file and related files probably upwards of 500,000, half a million pages. I dont have the time here to cover all government officials the fbi targeted, but thats why i wrote a 400 page book. Suffice it to say, some included case, aforementioned adley stevenson, charles they are, nicholas nabokov, state Department Official and future state Department Official nabokovsayer, nicholas in the middle. Charles bolin. Amuel reber the federal Security Agency itself. Three low level Eisenhower White house correspondents, staffers, among many, many others associated with all of these individuals. In reality, because the fbi sex deviants file was destroyed in 1977, 1978, we can never know exactly how many people were targeted. This merely constitutes a tiny sampling. Concurrent with the fbis hunt for gays in government at the start of the lavender scare, fbi agents also targeted the first early gay Rights Groups on the west coast. The Mattachine Society. Another group was called one incorporated, which had an eponymous magazine, and it was and the lesbian group. Here they are, looking very subversive. The first of the socalled homofile groups by 1952, it had caught the attention of journalists. Who had given the lavender event scares the question if a communist spy could infiltrate the group and swing power. The public charges initiated an fbi investigation under its common fill program to see if communists had infiltrated the groups. Checking all sources from local Police Departments, credit bureaus, post offices, and interviewing informants, the fbi decided after months of investigation that both groups are clean. That thethe fbi missed Mattachine Society was founded of theer members communist party, but there are Different Reasons for that. By 1956, all of that changed. The magazine published an intemperate article. Here it is. Did the fbi was very concerned with. The magazine claimed to not only that gays worked in the fbi, but hinted that hoover , was gay. This kind of public charge led hoover to target one using federal antiinsanity antiobscenity law. Long story short, the effort failed. , the magazine, did win a legal case, forever protecting the rights of gay Rights Groups to use the mail. Fbi records on daughters are spotty at best. They also suggest the nature of the fbis efforts against early gay Rights Groups. Because men were commonly perceived to be the greater threat, the greater violation of gender roles in a patriarchal, hyper masculine culture, gay men received greater scrutiny and focus than women did. Thats at least on the fbi side of things. The Civil ServiceCommission Im sure it was a completely different story. The fbi surveilled members, try tried to reconstruct daughters membership lists, collected its magazine, and was interested in where it opened new chapters across the country. Fbi retention was also drawn to the east coast of the United States went home a file groups when homophile groups formed. Including mattachine new york, 2 groups and washington, d. C. , the activity of early gay rights activist Donald Webster corey. I would like to focus on Donald Webster corey. That was a pseudonym of a real individual named edward. The corey persona was a hero to many gays and lesbians of the early 1950s because he wrote this book, the homosexual in america. This was the first to offer a view of homosexuality that was