J. Edgar Hoover: by Curt Gentry.

When a person in power is unfair, unjust, willing to use any and every means in his power to finish off enemies by any route whatsoever, using illegal means and lies without any compunction, things have the potential to become no less frightening than they were in fascist or nazi or any other totalitarian dictatorship where one must put away one's own mind, thoughts, capability of thinking and perception, and either dumb down if that is allowed or be forced to actively participate and promote the agenda of the dictator in power.

For this it is not necessary that the person in power be a head of state or a political party, a figurehead will do for those purposes - the real power may sometimes lie elsewhere, such as it does when an army chief attacks the country that his president or prime minister is holding peace talks with, or an intelligence agency - read spying agency - sabotages the agenda of the president or the prime minister and promotes the agenda he approves instead.

J. Edgar Hoover had not only such power as the chief of FBI for several decades but the character and the inclination that would use it to the full to spy, blackmail, threaten and incapacitate various people in US who could have done far more good to people of US and people of the world if let by Hoover - and this included presidents of the US, Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, and many more including every innocent artist and writer persecuted during the McCarthy era. He used illegal tapping and surveillance to his purpose without so much as informal permission from any authority, indeed a US president would not be even informed and could moreover be blackmailed by Hoover. He kept blackmail files and was not above using them.

Legend goes that after death of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy asked Hoover "Did you guys kill my brother" with tears in his voice. Such was the power and the known character of the person who held the position of the chief of FBI for several decades and controlled various things including investigations against great persona he blackmailed, sometimes with success.

John Lennon was a strong influence against right wing until his personal life - the possibility of the couple never seeing Yoko's daughter again, or being deported to England - made them cancel a few public engagements and helped Republicans come to power.

Hoover's role in McCarthy persecution of artists and writers and so forth made the whole persecution pervasive and fearsome, this was the current history that prompted Arthur Miller's writing of The Crucible, about Salem witch trials, the eerily similar atmosphere of the two times being obvious to anyone that lived through the McCarthy era.

With a person or more like this in power it is hardly far from credibility that the murders of Kennedys and Martin Luther King might just have been not by the persons named and conveniently finished off by other killers.

Was Hoover responsible for killings of Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr? This book with research into recently released papers might give a clue.

He did attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr and used extensive surveillance of invasive nature to find a way, as in other cases. And Martin Luther King Jr. knew he was going to get murdered just the way he was, except he chose to not be shied away from his public role and keep silent and hiding. Kennedys neither of them knew until it was too late.

And thus the long rule of the right wing in US with short intervals of sane intelligent others that did not please Hoover, the latter including Franklin Delano Roosevelt.