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Not all the files are to Hoover's discredit. There is documentation that he opposed the Huston plan, hatched in the Nixon White House, to engage in illegal entry and surveillance. Hoover was doubtless proud of a 1940 memo telling how U.S. Communist leaders were urging party members not to vote for Republican Candidate Wendell Willkie since Roosevelt's re-election would make it easier to "keep Hoover's hands tied." He also resisted pressure—from undisclosed sources—to conduct a probe of Willkie because "the FBI would be accused of conducting a political investigation."
With the identities deleted, the summaries of Hoover's material make pretty tame reading. But the names can still be found in the original files, and thus J. Edgar Hoover retains a kind of posthumous power over those whose foibles were recorded in his O.C. folders.