At last, every hero becomes a bore.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He saw himself and the institution he built as one in the same.
He was revered and reviled. He was founder and the builder of an United States Federal institution, that now has over thirty thousand employees and has a budget of eight billion. Once upon a time, famous, and respected, he was idolized by kids in the 1930s, for he was responsible for creating the good feelings about G men (government men), the prototypical hero of law and order, and justice, in an earlier age when government wasn’t as pervasive as it is today. Later, he was hated and reviled, on the top of list of the 1960s conspiracy theorist’s boogie men: he was viewed as a nexus for secrets, power, and repression of free speech.
