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Another disenchanted FBI informer, Mary Jo Cook, told how she had infiltrated the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War in Buffalo in 1973. Paid some $5,000 for her work, she mainly befriended the veterans and kept the FBI posted on their antiwar activities. Though she found the spying "more exciting than working as a teller in a bank," she soured on it when she discovered that the veterans were sincere in their opposition to the war, not under any foreign-propaganda influence and not bent on violence.
Falling Esteem. The continuing revelations are not only eroding J. Edgar Hoover's once impregnable reputation as the world's most efficient and incorruptible cop. They tend to obscure the fact that the FBI organization Hoover developed was a highly disciplined investigative agency, compiling a remarkable record of arrests for such major crimes as bank robbery, kidnaping and espionage. The disclosures, moreover, have sent public esteem for the agency plummeting. While 84% of Americans gave a "highly favorable" rating to the FBI in a Gallup poll in 1965, only 71% did so in 1970, and a mere 37% now feel that way. Nevertheless, the disclosures have served a valuable purpose. They should discourage any future director—or President —from tolerating any use of the bureau as a secret political spying agency.
* Hoover's outrage at sexual transgressions by public figures was not shared by all Presidents. President Kennedy's appointments secretary, Kenneth O'Donnell, is quoted as saying in a new biography of Hoover (The Director by Ovid Demaris) that Hoover repeatedly tried to interest J.F.K. in the fact that a U.S. Ambassador had been caught leaving a woman's bedroom by her angry husband. When Hoover persisted in seeking Kennedy's reaction, O'Donnell passed it along: "The President said that from now on he's going to hire faster Ambassadors."