57 Years Ago In TIME

57 YEARS AGO IN TIME

It was the cold war, not the war on terrorism. But more than a half-century ago, when J. EDGAR HOOVER headed the FBI, Americans also wondered if their government was going too far in trying to protect the nation from an enemy within.

What no tourist [visiting the FBI's headquarters in Washington] will see is the bureau's investigative file covering thousands of ordinary U.S. citizens. It was the existence of those files ... which gave even the most ardent admirer of the FBI a slightly uneasy feeling [during "the trial of the eleven top U.S. Communist leaders"]. It was not that very many people objected to flushing out Communists ... But it was a suspicion that any such collection was bound to damn the innocent as well as the guilty ... In a nation where nobody loves a cop ... the further question arose: Had the U.S. created a budding Gestapo? ... As long as the U.S. felt the need to keep G-man Hoover checking up on its fellow citizens, the uneasy feeling was bound to persist. But without the assurance of the FBI's eternal vigilance, the U.S. might feel uneasier still.

--TIME, Aug. 8, 1949

Read the entire article at time.com/years