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A Memorable History of Deception and Spy Capers

Khalid Elhassan June 7, 2020 34 min

Operation Mincemeat - World War II — Items recovered from Major Martin and his briefcase. BBC

22. Running Afoul of J. Edgar Hoover

Edgar Hoover did not pass Popov’s Abwehr questions on to American military authorities – particularly the ones asking about Pearl Harbor’s defenses. After the Japanese attack wrecked the US fleet there a few months later, Hoover’s oversight should have wrecked his career. However, Hoover was himself an expert at the art of deception when he wanted to be. He buried his mistake deep in the FBI’s secret archives, and it did not come out until after his death.

In the meantime, the prissy FBI Director, whose private life was even more scandalous than Popov’s, got moralistic about the double agent’s playboy antics. Hoover even threatened to have Popov arrested under the Mann Act for travelling with a woman across state lines “for immoral purposes”.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.