 Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nakhach Tank Peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual author lecture with Paul Letersky, author of The Director. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday, July 20th at 1 p.m., former Congresswoman and Wilson Center Director Jane Harmon will discuss her recently published book, Insanity Defense, which examines how four administrations have failed to confront some of the toughest national security policy issues. And on Thursday, July 22nd at noon, we invite you to meet Teddy Roosevelt. In the latest edition of the National Archives Comes Alive Young Learners Program, actor Joe Wieckendt will portray the 26th president and talk about the expansion of national parks during his administration. J. Edgar Hoover looms largely over the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and of 20th century America. He was the founding director of the FBI and served under eight presidents as director of the agency and its predecessor Bureau of Investigation. Within the records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Archives, a subset of material relates specifically to Hoover. In fact, one of the most unusual objects among our photographic holdings is a pair of brass knuckles. The brass knuckles, most likely a gift, are engraved with Hoover's name and were included in a transfer of photographs to the National Archives in 1982. We even have a plaque from the United Airlines for joining the 100,000 mile club. During the paper records, we have an investigative case files Hoover kept in his private office to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information. Hoover's own personnel file and an entire series devoted to congratulatory letters mainly to mark the annual anniversary of his appointment as director. These are just a few examples from the tens of thousands of cubic feet of FBI records we preserve in the National Archives. Using archival records with personal stories and memories brings history to life and today we're eager to hear from someone who had access to one of the more intriguing figures of 20th century history. Paul Luttersky is a former FBI agent who began working for J. Edgar Hoover as a personal assistant in 1965. He knew where the infamous secret files were kept and where the wire taps were indexed and he had a front row seat to the comings and goings of Hoover's personal office. He later became a special agent and participated in events that grabbed national headlines. After leaving the FBI he became a vice president of Pan American World Airways. Our moderator for today's conversation is Joe Pistone also known by his undercover alias Donnie Brasco. Pistone is a former FBI agent who worked undercover between September 1976 and July 1981 as part of an infiltration into the Bonanno crime family and to a lesser extent the Colombo crime family in New York City. Pistone was an FBI agent for 17 years until he resigned in 1986. Now let's hear from Paul Luttersky and Joe Pistone. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Nice scene again Joe, nice hat. Thank you Paul, I appreciate that. That reminds me of something I have to ask you because so many people had asked me, you know, people that read the book, your book and saw the movie Donnie Brasco and your hat reminded me of this question because my son had a hat that said on the front, forget about it and people asked me, what do you mean forget about it and I said I can't wait to have Joe tell you because he's the one that came up with the term so if you don't mind Joe, could you explain, forget about it? Well, you know, forget about it is a term that actually I didn't come up with it. It was a term that the mob guy used, mob's guys used when I was working undercover and it has a merit of interpretations. You know, it depends how you say it. Forget about it. Paul Luttersky is a great guy. Forget about it, you know, so it all depends on how you say it. But that actually was a mob term. And I just like to make one addition to my bio there. I did resign from the FBI after 17 years, but then I went back. I stayed out for close to four years and then I went back in and actually retired in 1996. So I didn't just quit after 17. I went in and and did almost five more years. Well, let's correct the National Archives file on it. Exactly. And but Paul, I want to say for those of the for those of individuals that are listening and watching this. I read the book. I read your book, the director. I've read other books and you know, your book is is from somebody that was there. All the other books on on Mr. Hoover were from individuals that that weren't in that that office. And I worked under Mr. Hoover, I come into the FBI under Mr. Hoover, and I must say I think he was the best director we ever had. And your book points that out in my opinion because again, it's based on firsthand knowledge. It's not based on hearsay. So I want to congratulate you on first of all, writing the book and also on not putting stuff in there that, you know, just to sell the book. It's the truth and it's the way it happened. And there's no end to end ways in there. And again, for the listeners or anybody that's viewing this it's from an individual that has firsthand knowledge. And that's why I think it's a it's a good read, very, very good read. Well, thank you for those kind words, Joe. And I have to bring to the audience attention as well that you and I work together. We're in many cases together out of the Alexandria field office and before having our conversation today, I was thinking about the times when we were in Alexandria and I don't ever remember talking about Hoover. You know, we had our own things that were going on and we had airplane hijackings and bank robberies and all that sort of thing. And reflecting back, I'm saying I don't think I ever discussed who were with Joe or Jim C. Hanna or other partner. So this book really reminded me I should be talking to you guys about some of this stuff. So when you when you read the book, you probably saw a couple of surprises. No, I did. And you're absolutely right. The only thing that I knew was that you worked in the director's office. I mean, that's, you know, that's the only information I had. I don't ever recall, you know, over coffee or whatever we were doing. You relay in stories about, you know, the time that you worked in the office. And I don't I don't ever remember myself or Jim asking your questions or questioning about the time you spent there. We knew that you worked there. I knew that you were friendly with with Mrs. Gandhi, and that's about it. So yeah, I there were a lot of things in the book that I did learn. And we spent what three years as semi partners and partners. And like I said, a lot of the information I I gleaned from the book, I had no idea because we never had conversations about it. Right. You know, I didn't realize that, Joe, until knowing we're going to chat today. And I said, oh, my gosh, I just never brought anything up. But it wasn't intentional. I think we were just wrapped up in what we were doing. We had a good time as FBI agents. We got involved in cases that grab national headlines and national attention. And then, of course, you went on to disappear on us for a while. Good to have you back. And Miss Gandhi. She was a lovely lady, Joe, very, very courteous, very welcoming, but very powerful. She was probably the most powerful woman in the 20th century. She started working for Mr. Hoover when they were both in the Justice Department. She started working for him in 1918 and was still working for him till he died. Actually, she was still working for him till after he died because she had a lot of files that she had been shredding. So she had quite a history herself. And very few people know about her. She was the highest paid female employee in the Department of Justice out of 40,000 people. But she, I'll tell you, there would be no J. Hoover if it wasn't for Helen Gandhi. And we always called her Miss Gandhi. And I have to tell you this story. I was only there in the office for a few months. And the office was very formal. Everything was formal. Everything was disciplined. All the rules were hoovers. When I first met him, it was the first day I worked for him. He didn't interview me for the position assistant directors did. And they recommended me to work in Mr. Hoover's office. And so first time I met him, Joe, was the first day I worked for him. And when it went into his office, shook his hand, he said to me, Mr. Latersky, welcome to my personal office staff. You should have been briefed on what your responsibilities are in this office. So there's no sense of you and me wasting time telling you what your duties are. I only want you to remember one thing and one thing only. In my office, I allow no margin for error. Now, a 23 old person gets a little frightened when something like that occurred. And that was the total first meeting I had with him. And my end of the conversation was, yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir. No, no, sirs, just yes, sir. But he called me, Mr. Latersky. The entire time that I knew him, the entire time I worked with him, it kind of bothered me a little bit. And I asked Miss Gandhi one day, I said, you know, Miss Gandhi, he always calls me Mr. Latersky. I would wish on some Monday morning I would come in and he would say, good morning, Paul, how is your weekend? He never said that because he didn't give a rest. Took us about how my weekend was. And Miss Gandhi said to me, don't take it personally. Just get used to it. I've been with him for 50 years and he's never called me Helen. I just couldn't believe that 50 years and he never called her Helen. But that shows you the type of formality that was in that office and the discipline. Well, I think that that shows you kind of respect, too. I mean, you're a twenty three year old. You're not an agent, you know, you're working in his office and he's calling you Mr. He's not calling you. Hey, Paul, right. I think that's a sign of respect that that he had for people. I mean, I met him. I met him. You remember the basketball team we had? We played Washington, D.C. League and we won the championship and we we went up to his office to present him with the trophy. He was very cordial, very polite to all the ball players, shook everybody's hand, you know, thanked us for winning the championship. And of course, you know, when I. Went into the bureau. So I have, let me tell you something. I have nothing but fond memories of working for Mr. Hoover because rules were rules and you abide by the rules and it didn't matter who you were. If you broke the rule, you know what the rule was, you know, you got you got some kind of some form of punishment. And that's that's the way I was brought up. And that's the way I I like things. I like I like rules to be followed by everybody. And in the time I worked for him. I saw that through my career. Well, the short career I had with well, Mr. Hoover was alive and I heard great stories of agents that had family problems, maybe they're a sick child, their sick wife. And he he found out about it and he transferred them to an office that, you know, that was suited as far as getting treatment for the for the sick relative that had a hospital that treated whatever the illness was. Like I said, I'm sorry, I forgot to share off my phone. You know, that that's entirely true. I used to set up appointments for him. And, you know, when the agents came down to Quantico for in service training, a lot of them wanted to meet Mr. Hoover, just to meet him, shake his hand, have a photograph taken with him. And he never denied one agent while I was there. All the requests that he had from agents, he made sure he honored those requests. And like you were saying about illnesses and what have you, I so clearly remember some of the agents that would come in. I remember one whose son had respiratory problems and he came in to see Hoover and Joe before the agent left the justice building, before he left the building, there was a note on my desk from him that said transfer agents such and such to Phoenix. I mean, the agent walks in and says, I got a son that has this issue and within minutes he transferred, he transfers him to Phoenix. But that's the type of the person he was and the way he treated people. The fact that everything was formal and everything was disciplined, I agree with you, Joe, I think our whole office, all the agents, we had a bunch of young agents there at the time. We all came from similar backgrounds and we all had that Protestant work ethic, even though most of us were Catholic, and we grew up that way. You have rules and you abide by them. You break the rules and you have to suffer some kind of consequence. I really want to emphasize the fact because he was criticized for being a racist and I think it was based upon all the reports about the FBI bugging Martin Luther King, wiretapping Martin Luther King. And what most people don't know is that the attorney general at the time was Bobby Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy authorized to go wiretapping because Martin Luther King's senior advisers were both card-carrying communists and had nothing to do with anything but the fact that he had two card-carrying communists as senior advisers and two of them actually wrote some of his speeches and so Bobby Kennedy and Jack Kennedy were afraid that what was happening was that the communists knew that Martin Luther King could convert them to communists. But that was the whole purpose of the wiretaps and I don't think a lot of people knew that. No, and I think a lot of people. They just shrug it off because, you know, they have this conception of Mr. Hoover and it is one that, you know, that he was a racist. He was a B and you know what's funny is that a lot of these books that that are written and are derogatory against Mr. Hoover, I know a couple of them are written by foreigners. I mean, and again, you know, not to repeat myself, but with no first hand knowledge, you know, everything is here. Well, I used to teach a course, not give a lecture at in services for FBI agents and it was on a history, basically the history of of the undercover program in the FBI and the history of coming in as a young agent, because most of the agents, you know, very few, well, none of them came in under Mr. Hoover, but I always tell them that what you are allowed to have on your desk, you're allowed to have one yellow pad, right? That's right. One government pen and one number two pencil. And don't take that government pen home with you. And then would you left the office to go, you know, to go on a street, do your investigation, all that stuff had to be put away. Your desk had to be clear, nothing on your desk. That's right. Already old bulk pens where we had four desks pushed together, one phone in the middle for four ages and they couldn't believe it. And then I would I explain to them about inspections. For those of you who listen, every FBI office used to get inspected once a year. I don't know. I don't know how many times a year or how many what the time limit is now, but the the special agent in charge, if you remember this, would would assign each agent a task. OK, Joe, you come in on Saturday and you've got to paint this room. Or you've got to come in on Saturday and you've got to clean up that room. And you said, yes, sir, you came in because the office had to be speaking span for the inspectors to come in. And the inspectors used to stay like three weeks going over all their files. That's the day. And there was no hammer or a horn when the special agent in charge said, you know, Joe, Paul or whoever, this is your this is your task for Saturday or Sunday to get this office cleaned up, you came in. And we had we really had a good as they see in the Alexandria field office. Jack McDermot, Jack McDermot. He was really a good guy. And he would make sure that we walked the fine line to even, you know, he was almost like a father figure, at least in my opinion. And I went we Jim and I went after some bank robbers. There were five of them out in the mountains somewhere in Shenandoah Valley or whatever. And we were told by the office to wait for backup. And Jim said, we can't wait for backup. Blah, blah, blah, make a long story short. We did capture the bank robbers. But when we got back to the office, Jack McDermot, you know, the Irishman in his face was normally ruddy, but it was beat red when we came to the office because we ignored a rule by him. And we walked in and he said, heroes, big freaking heroes, heroes, you two guys, he's going just and red. He says, you know, you could have gotten yourself killed or you could have gotten somebody else killed and you know what the problem with that is? I'd have so much paperwork to do that I would never get out of this office. Now, I don't want you guys to write again ever again. I'll get the hell out of my office. That was Jack McDermot. Yeah, I was Jack and I, you know, and not to tell stories. But I can remember him going to bat for agents that, you know, that didn't do anything illegal, but just, you know, broke a bureau rule. You know, there there were government rules and then they were bureau rules. It's right. Bureau rules were were always more strident than the government rules. I mean, and and if you did it, you know, when I say, honestly, I mean, without malice, Jack went to went to bat for you. And, you know, talking about government rules and bureau rules. I mean, I can remember one time. I did a voucher and I was like six cents off on your expense report. Right. And and they couldn't reconcile it. I mean, it was like it's six cents. You know, I'll either give you the six cents or you give me. But no, it had to be, you know, one thousand percent right. You figure out where this six cent error is and send it back over to headquarters. I mean, that's that was the bureau back in the day. Oh, yeah, well, and everybody followed well, the motto, I guess it was an unspoken model outside the bureau is don't embarrass the bureau. Yeah, that's when you get the most trouble if you did something that embarrassed the bureau. All the other there were so many rules, Joe, as you well know, you could violate them inadvertently. You didn't even know you're violating your rule. But you were violating the government rule. You were violating a bureau rule, the bureau rule. And that was more important, wasn't it? And that's what I love about your book. The director is that you know, you point all these little things out that I think that the public is going to have a really different opinion and outlook on Mr. Hoover after they after they read your book. Yeah, well, I hope so, John. I try to be very fair. I did criticize the bureau for some of their practices, but I supported them in another way. And so I thought I was really fair, balanced, telling the truth and following your advice, just tell the truth, nothing but the truth. And don't let anybody put any words in your mouth. That's the advice of Joe Pistone. And it's in the book. And I think you're going to find a lot of interest of readers will find a lot of interesting aspects of revisionist history because there were a lot of things that I put in my book that occurred out of Hoover's office that historically it has been miswritten and in my book, I correct history. I'm not a historian, but the thing was, Joe, I happened to be there and I knew what was going on. I knew it was happening. I heard what was going on. And I would really be remiss by them include that stuff in the book. Exactly. And, you know, things, great things that he did was one of the things that that Mr. Hoover did was and I think you pointed out is he started the FBI National Academy, where police officers in from all over the country, all over the world to go through, I don't know how many weeks it is now, but I guess it's it was like six weeks, maybe eight weeks train at at Quantico. And it's cemented relationships with with the police with the police departments. It's cemented relations with relationships with the foreign police departments. And that was one of the smartest things he ever did. And, you know, why he why he formed the National Academy is because he was fighting an awful lot of politicians who wanted to expand federal jurisdiction to the FBI and expand federal enforcement and Hoover kept saying, and this is in my book as well, Hoover argued the point and he said, crime has to be solved locally. Crimes are local and they have to be. And so what we have to do is coordinate among various police departments and he set up a system where you could exchange information on new technologies, investigative techniques. And we refer to his National Academy as the West Point of law enforcement. And but that was his whole purpose was to bring police departments together to exchange information on criminal matters. Exactly. And when I was assigned to Quantico, I had interaction with a lot of the the police officers went through the academy. And it's amazing where I talked to you talk to a lot of them and they didn't have a good taste in their mouth for the FBI before they went to the National Academy. But once they got there, they saw that, hey, this is all about relationships, you know. And like I say, it was it was a very, very smart thing that Mr. Hoover did. And I'll tell you another aspect that very few people know of is Mr. Hoover's moral compass. I bet most people in our country today don't know that J. Hoover fought FDR during World War Two. He opposed the internment of the Japanese Americans and argued with FDR about the moral irresponsibility that the nation would have by doing it. But of course, FDR was the president. And so he vetoed Hoover's attempt to prevent that from happening. But when you think of how atrocious that decision was made and Hoover tried to fight it, it was just incredible. And I just want people to know that this is a different person than the movies would show. Got the movie J. Edgar was so distorted. There was just so many things that were inaccurate and distorted in that movie. And I liked Clint Eastwood. He was the director, but he was very disappointing with this movie. I'd like them as an actor and a director, but they distorted Mr. Hoover in that movie. Well, again, you know, it all comes from people that weren't on the inside. You know, but you're right. It was a terrible movie. I didn't watch the whole thing. And even some of these books that are written by people have no idea what number one, what the FBI is about. You know, well, that movie that movie was difficult to get through. But I had to get through it because of the book and because I in a way, I have to defend Hoover and Gandhi. Cheese, that movie showed him having a romance, kissing, having her call him. Edgar, that never happened, Joe. Never happened. I want to get back to this racial thing, too, because you remind me of it. You're an old New Jersey guy. And do you remember Aubrey Lewis, a football player? You went to the same high school. I went to the same high school he did. Oh, is that to me? I mean, before me, but. Yeah, but he's arguably other than you, arguably the best athlete that ever came out of New Jersey. I think it was Joe Pistone, Aubrey Lewis. Aubrey Lewis and then everybody else. Aubrey Lewis, Aubrey Lewis, Larry Dobey, a lot of good athletes come out of. Oh, that's right. You took yourself out of that mix for some reason. Well, the reason I'm bringing him up, Joe, is he was the first African American to be captain of a varsity sport at Notre Dame, and he had scholarships to 200 colleges, he chose Notre Dame, but he injured his ankle at Notre Dame and he was supposed to go play for the Chicago Bears and he couldn't. And so what he did instead became an FBI agent. I don't know if you were aware of that. Oh, yeah, I sure did. And the reason I'm bringing it up again is this racist thing. He was an agent and he was offered a high executive position in Montgomery and Ward. Montgomery and Ward is where the during the civil rights movement was a sit in at the counters of Montgomery Ward, and that was just seven years before Aubrey Lewis was given that executive position offer. When Hoover heard about it, he had me get a hold of Lewis, make an appointment, and Hoover wanted to wish him well on the way out. So and you know, he said to Aubrey Lewis, if there's anything we can do to help you in your new position, don't hesitate to call us. That's the kind of guy he was. He could he could have cared less whether the guy was black, white or purple. In the same way, in the same way he treated the African-Americans on his staff, Jimmy Crawford, who was a chauffeur for, I don't know, 35, 40 years, came into the office when he, you know, he bring them into the office. Jimmy came up to me and he said, you have to call Annie at home. And I said, you're all nervous. What's what's wrong, Jim? He said, well, Mr. Hoover has dinner almost every night with Clyde Tolson, with Mr. Tolson, and Hoover has given Annie, Annie was Hoover's housekeeper, and he gave Annie one rule. You feed Jim, you feed Jimmy the same food you served me and Mr. Tolson. Of course, Jimmy ate in the kitchen, Tolson and Hoover ate in the dining room. But here was a chauffeur and Hoover is telling his house maid, you make sure he has the same thing you had. So anyway, Jim comes into the office the morning he was panicking, I said, what's wrong? He says, when we were driving in, Mr. Hoover asked me, how did I like dinner last night? And he said, I responded by saying that you know that, and he fixed some great pork chops. Hoover went through the roof. He said, we had steak. What's she doing serving you a pork chop? Well, she didn't take inventory. She only had two steaks left. So Jim says, you've got to call her at home and give her a heads up. So I gave her a heads up and told her the story. And she says, thanks for calling, but don't worry about it. I can take care of them. I have in the past, we may take care of them. She says, I'll let you say, yes, Mr. Hoover, yes, Mr. Hoover, and then I'd walk away. That's the type of stories that nobody would ever hear of with J.G. Hoover. I'm pretty sure I have that in the book as well. I think they wanted us to take some questions now. Is that right? Oh, here's he's got a written question. Who did Hoover report to? And then, whoops, Doug, I didn't finish reading that question. I don't know if Joe saw it. It didn't come through the whole question. Who did Mr. Hoover report to, Paul? And did he have written rules you had to follow? Well, I think we beat that one to death about the rules. He technically and supposedly reported to the attorney general. And I the tail wagged the dog an awful lot because as we talked about, he was in charge and he thought he was in charge of everything, including the Attorney General's office. And just another story from the book very quickly. When Ramsey Clark was attorney general, Hoover had such a disdain for the guy that he wouldn't even accept his calls. Ramsey Clark would call the office and I had a direct line to Mr. Hoover, you know, I could transfer calls to him and I say, Mr. Hoover, the attorney general was on the phone and he'd say, tell him I'm on the hill, meaning Capitol Hill. Attorney General would call again. Mr. Hoover, the attorney general was on the line. I don't want to talk to make up something. And then he said to me, the man has a yellow belly and a jelly spine. I don't have anything to do with them. I mean, this was the attorney general and supposedly his boss. And he had some battles with Bobby Kennedy as attorney general. But as a whole, he got along with most of them because most of them let him do what he wanted to do as far as running the FBI. And when you think about it, he worked for 17 different attorneys general over his career, eight presidents and 17 attorney general. So to answer the question, he reported to the attorney general sometimes. If you like them. Can you get that one, Joe? Oh, he said, just continue our discussion. And well, there's a good story in my book about Ramsey Clark. His father was Tom Clark, the associate not justice of the Supreme Court. And President Johnson had just signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But Johnson was a segregationist. And he signed the Civil Rights Act because he was really forced to. And Tom Clark, the Supreme Court Justice, told Johnson and I know this because Hoover and Tom Clark were friends and they talk and I overheard some of this stuff. So Clark went to Johnson and said, I'm going to help your reputation out and get this cloud of being a segregationist off your head. I'll resign from the Supreme Court, create an opening and you can appoint Thurgood Marshall in my position. Thurgood Marshall, as you know, I was an African American. He preferred to be called a Negro and he was the solicitor general at the time. And so Clark was going to step down so that Johnson could put a black man on the court, but then he stopped with a caveat and he said, but before I do that, you have to name my son attorney general. And that's how Ramsey Clark became attorney general and how the first African American was appointed to the Supreme Court. And that was basically Johnson's legacy other than the Vietnam War. But I think that's another interesting twist of history because when when Tom Clark finally stepped down from the court, Ramsey Clark was already the attorney general for three months. And Ramsey Clark said, I'm stepping down from the court because I can see that there's a conflict of interest in our relationship. Well, that was a lot of BS. There was a quid pro quo three months before that as to what he was going to do. So again, revisionist history, Joe. And a lot of people don't know that. Yeah. Somebody has a question. Did Hoover have any disagreements? I don't know with who, but it says with other presidents. He he had disagreements with Harry Truman quite a bit. That was probably his worst relationship from presidents. He was real close to Nixon because that went back to the days of fighting communism, when Nixon was in the Senate and went after Elger Hiss, Nixon was a big anti-communist fighter. And so he and Hoover got along real well. Nixon called him Edgar. He called Nixon Dick until almost the very end of Hoover's life. When Nixon, who was really paranoid, had a guy by the name of Charles Houston, put together a plan. It was called the Houston plan that was very oppressive to Americans, violating every civil right you can have. Because Nixon wanted to find out where the leaks were coming out of the White House and he wanted Hoover to chair the Houston plan. And when Hoover saw how oppressive and the violations of civil rights there were, he refused to do it. And that's when his relationship with Nixon headed south pretty rapidly. And that was the start of the plumbers, the Watergate scandal. Because Hoover wouldn't go along with these oppressive tactics, Nixon put together his own investigative staff and they became known as the plumbers to correct the links. And I guess we all know the rest of the story when you talk about Watergate. And was any very emphatic about agents reading suspects, their Miranda rights, once you've arrested them about their right to an attorney, their right to the island, I mean, that was a big agency that that did that on a daily basis. Every time you arrested somebody, you had to read them their rights, their Miranda rights. Well, you're absolutely right. But the other aspect of the investigative work and the legal aspects, I know at Quantico during the training, most of the time in the classroom, we were studying constitutional law. And there was such an emphasis on the law of search and seizure as well as giving the rights to to arresting people. Search and seizure was a big, big, big course. What were most of all of Hoover's private, I only get half of the question. So this is private files destroyed after his death. Like, I guess a simple answer is yes. Miss Candy took it took her two weeks shredding those files. And did she she did it under his instructions before he passed on? And she knew that long before he passed on, he died of a heart attack. So he didn't have a chance to say anything to anybody before he died. But those files were shredded. That's that's that's a simple answer, Joe. What inspired you to write this book? I mean, you know, when did you first get the idea and think about it? I mean, about five or six years ago, maybe. Yeah, I would say about six years ago, seeing the events at the time and recognizing history, repeating in itself. So say I'm not a historian, but in my book, there's a lot of history. And I didn't want the book to be another Hoover biography. And it's not it's a memoir. It's how Hoover was known to me. That's how I wrote the book. Plus, I had very small grandchildren, just a few years old. And I wanted them to know about their grandfather, and I didn't think I may ever have a chance to explain it to them or talk to them about it. So it was a combination of wanting to put something down for my grandchildren and also show how history was repeating itself and how different the FBI was than when you and I were there, Joe, how politicized the FBI became during that time and continues today. There's been investigations going on on the Justice Department for five, ten years now. And they continue. I don't know if they're ever going to come to a conclusion either. But. Again, you know, like I said, I I've read a lot of books on the FBI, on the director and not because, you know, not because you're an agent. I'm an agent. We were partners at some point in time. For those of you who are listening to this, this is definitely the go to book about the director, Mr. Hoover, it I learned things in there. You know, you hear a lot of things during your 27 years as an agent. But the little little things in there that that I didn't know. But I wasn't surprised when I read them. And that that's positive things. I wasn't surprised when I read them. And very informative again. And I just got to congratulate you, Paul. You did one of a job. And I don't know you had you while you're recalled. I mean, you were there, so there's not much recall, you know? I mean, it's like people say, well, how did when you were under witness stand, how do you recall everything? Well, I was there. You know, it wasn't like that's one of the statements I had. I had to use quite often because people would say, well, didn't Hoover do this, didn't Hoover do that? And I said, no, he didn't. And I said, I was there. So anyway, Joe, thank you. Thank you very much for taking your time. It's great seeing you again. It's great to see you're looking you're looking well. And I want to thank Doug Swanson and everybody at the National Archives for giving me the time to talk about my book. And certainly giving me an opportunity to spend some time with you, Joe. So just take care of yourself now. And I want to thank them for inviting me on. It was a pleasure. And I really enjoyed the the hour we spent together. And in fact, I'm going to reread the book. Why don't you go out and sell it? I'm going to buy one now. You want me to autograph it? Of course. So I'm sure we've used up our time over here. So once again to the archives, thank you very much. And Joe, thanks for taking the time. I know even you have a different career and you're very busy. So I really appreciate you taking this time off. And I want to again, thank the archives. It was an honor to to be asked to to moderate this. I appreciate it. Thank you. So thank you, everybody.