The "good" that you never hear about when discussing federal agencies. I posted this as a response to the "FBI and CIA need to be dismantled" thread, but I feel that this is worthy of its own thread. I truly believe that J Edgar Hoover was a rockstar at the beginning of his career and later became compromised. Here is why: I have been thoroughly researching Communist roots within the United States and Europe. Believe it or not, there is a ton of literature from the turn of the 20th century, that talks about how the United States was being infiltrated by communist organizations.  For those of you that are unfamiliar, the United States has gone through two "red scares." The first red scare happened somewhere around the 1917-1924 time frame. During this period, Russia was going through the infamous Russian Revolution, in which the Red Army was slaughtering the Orthodox Christian Russians. They assassinated the Tsar of Russia and were transforming the nation into a Communist Bolshevik State. The revolution was intended to take place worldwide. Communist agents had infiltrated all of Europe as well as migrated to the United States.  The goal of these people was to cause outrage within the working-class citizens of the host countries. They did this by creating workers unions and spreading propaganda that would psychologically eat away at the workers, making them think that they were unfairly treated. Before long, and with orders from Moscow, anarchist groups (Antifa and others) popped up throughout America. Today, with our "surveillance state," we keep Antifa at bay, However, back then we didn't have the technology to identify threats before they were going to occur. The anarchists of the first red scare began making explosives and mailing them to prominent members of congress. They were setting fires and sabotaging construction/factory equipment. As you might imagine, The American public was outraged and somewhat scared or concerned with the sudden communist uprising. One day, an anarchist delivered an explosive package to the Attorney General, Alexander Mitchell Palmer, and that was the straw that broke the camels back. The president of the time, Woodrow Wilson, had had enough and appointed Palmer and 24-year-old J Edgar Hoover to deal with these radical leftist communists. At this time, the FBI had not been formed yet. The precursor was the Bureau of Investigation, est. 1908, I believe. Anyway, Palmer and Hoover put together a task force to handle the problem. The following actions would become to be known as the Palmer Raids. Depending on the source you find, you will learn that this task force rounded up between 3,000 and 10,000 disruptive union workers. The workers were arrested and interviewed (without warrants).  The raids took place in two operations. The second of which captured the majority of the people. The newly established ACLU was losing their minds due to the warrantless arrests. However, I genuinely believe the ACLU was created by Communists to protect Communists (see here, p. 117). In my mind, This entire event was a National Emergency, and the actions taken were needed to be made. The effects of Palmer and Hoover could very well have saved America from having the same fate as Russia. If you were to learn about the Palmer raids in college, you would be taught that Palmer was a POS and that he over-reacted and that the American citizens were just hysterical about nothing. However, if you study the situation on your own, you will learn that within the raided warehouses, the feds found dummy walls, behind which were bomb factories. The Actions by the Anarchists of 1917-1924 time frame was very similar to that of the Weatherman in the 1960s and 1970s. I believe we are experiencing a third red scare right now. However, The very legislation we all complain about (The USA PATRIOT Act, FISA Act, etc.) is keeping the Communist sleepers at bay. You may suggest that they (antifa) could stop using tech (cell phones, email, etc.), but I also think we have moles within their organizations. Our federal agencies have had some very shady past behaviors, but that is all we hear about. We never hear about the great things they have done, like the event mentioned above. I can't stress enough that had Palmer and Hoover not put together that task force, we may very well be living in a different country right now. Last thing: The result of those raids was the collection of valuable intelligence on the communist organizations that operated within the United States. Also, 249 people were put on a boat and deported to the Soviet Union. The Boat was nicknamed the Soviet Ark.