THE DIRECTOR

The first book ever written about J. Edgar Hoover by a member of his own personal staff - his former assistant, who served in the FBI for years - offering unique insight into an American legend.

The 1960s and 1970s were arguably among America's most turbulent post-Civil War decades. While the Vietnam War continued seemingly without end, protests and riots ravaged most cities, major political figures were assassinated, and corruption found its way to the highest levels of political Washington.

In 1965, in the middle of the chaos, twenty-two-year old Paul Letersky was assigned to assist the legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who'd just turned seventy and had, by then, headed the Bureau for an incredible forty-one years. Hoover was a rare and complex man who walked confidently among the powerful and the great, often making them sweat. His personal privacy was more tightly guarded than the secret "files" that he carefully collected and that were so feared by corrupt politicians. Through Letersky's close working relationship with Hoover, and the trust and confidence he gained from Helen Gandy, Hoover's most loyal senior assistant for decades, Paul became one of the few able to enter the Director's secretive - and sometimes perilous - world.

Hoover would ultimately serve the nation for forty-eight years and build the FBI into a professional crime-fighting organization unmatched by any nation. In his lifetime he was honored and feared, respected and denounced. Since his death half a century ago, millions of words have been written about him and there've been hundreds of hours of TV dramas and A-list Hollywood films. But until now, there has been virtually no account from someone who, for a period of years, spent hours with the Director on a daily basis.

Paul Letersky is a retired FBI agent whose early service included three years working directly for FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Letersky would go on to become a Special Agent, handling confidential informants and tracking down con men, and was involved in events that grabbed national headlines, including aircraft hijackings, bank robberies, extortions, presidential politics, and the search for the Unabomber. After leaving the FBI, Letersky became vice president of Pan American World Airways, and the first charter member of the Overseas Security Advisory Council. He has a law degree from the University of Baltimore and lives in Oregon.

Gordon Dillow has been a reporter, columnist, and war correspondent for more than thirty years. He has written for a number of newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and is the author of Fire in the Sky and coauthor of Where the Money Is, Uppity, and Blue on Blue. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.