O n May 4, 1972, the body of J. Edgar Hoover lay in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol on the catafalque originally built to hold Lincoln's casket. Only 22 Americans before him had been so honored, and Hoover was the first civil servant to lie in a spot normally reserved for presidents and generals. Representative Don Clauson of California eulogized the man who had headed the Federal Bureau of Investigation for nearly half a century in reverential terms. "As a boy he as my hero and as a man he remained my hero," Clauson said. "His name will linger forever in the hearts and minds of all Americans privileged to live in his time and under his protective shield of service" (quoted in Powers at 481). To Clauson, as to much of Middle America, J. Edgar Hoover was a demigod. Humorist Art Buchwald captured both the source and content of the public's feelings about him when he satirically suggested that Hoover was really "a mythical person first thought up by Readers Digest."' Others viewed the man known to most Americans as "the Director," and to those who worked for him at the Bureau simply as "the BOSS," far more negatively. The month before Hoover died, Clauson's colleague,
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