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But it was not until 1932 that Hoover and the FBI took hold of the national imagination. Kidnaping had grown to something of an epidemic, most notoriously dramatized by the Lindbergh affair. Hoover's men broke that case, and with the help of the Lindbergh Act, which made kidnaping a federal crime punishable by death, eventually curbed that particular vogue. Two years later, gangsters mowed down an FBI agent and several policemen in the "Kansas City Massacre," and the FBI won the right to bear firearms and make arrests.
The vintage year was 1934. John Dillinger fell to the FBI on a Chicago street (his death mask was to survive as a tourist attraction at headquarters in Washington). "Baby Face" Nelson dropped on an Illinois highway. Not long after, Russell Gibson of the Barker-Karpis gang was killed resisting arrest in a Chicago alley. Then "Ma" Barker and her son Fred were killed fighting agents in Florida. Tennessee Senator Kenneth D. McKellar was incautious enough in 1936 to sniff that Hoover himself had never made an arrest, so less than a month later Hoover personally presided over the collaring of Alvin ("Old Creepy") Karpis, whom the FBI called "Public Enemy No. 1." (Karpis got the last word by insisting later that Hoover cowered in the background and waited for agents to put on the cuffs before he appeared to pose for pictures.)
A kind of comic-strip hero worship began. At his arrest in 1933, "Machine Gun" Kelly supposedly pleaded: "Don't shoot, G-men; don't shoot!" The coinage was to appear on G-man pajamas, G-man toy submachine guns, and the lips of a generation of radio actors. The FBI in Peace and War, introduced by the somber, implacable kettledrums of Prokofiev, fostered the image of relentless baritones in service to the general good. Much later, Hoover reserved his Sunday nights for watching TV's FBI, starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., a paragon of rectitude specifically approved by the director himself.
During the '30s, Hoover's agents were mainly preoccupied with kidnapers, robbers and murderers. During the war, F.D.R. commissioned Hoover to search out Nazi spies and saboteurs. The FBI took 33 German agents on one weekend in 1941. But Hoover protested strongly when thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans were interned as part of the spy scare. After the war, the FBI focused increasingly on the pursuit of Communists, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. "There is little choice," he once said, "between Communism and Fascism. Both are totalitarian, antidemocratic and godless."
His prides and prejudices were strong, especially where the autonomy of his bureau was concerned. With Attorney General Robert Kennedy he fought a long battle of wills over FBI operations and their animosity was obvious. It was in a curt call from Hoover that R.F.K. learned of John Kennedy's assassination. Though Robert remained Attorney General for ten more months, they never spoke again after Nov. 22.