Valenti's Sexuality Was Topic For FBI (LBJ Let Hoover's Agents Investigate Top Aide)

[sabra]

Source: WP

Under Pressure, LBJ Let Hoover's Agents Investigate Top Aide

When Beltway insider Jack Valenti died two years ago at age 85, he was playing the role of intermediary between Washington and Hollywood as the theatrical, snowy-haired president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

But back in 1964, Valenti was a Houston ad executive newly installed at the White House as a top aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson. And J. Edgar Hoover's FBI found itself quietly consumed with the vexing question of whether Valenti was gay.

Previously confidential FBI files show that Hoover's deputies set out to determine whether Valenti, who had married two years earlier, maintained a relationship with a male commercial photographer. Republican Party operatives reportedly were pursuing a parallel investigation with the help of a retired FBI agent, bureau files show. No proof was ever found, but the files, obtained by The Washington Post under the federal Freedom of Information Act, provide further insight into the conduct of the FBI under Hoover, for whom damaging personal information on the powerful was a useful tool in his interactions with presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard M. Nixon.

Johnson initially blocked the FBI from obtaining a sworn statement from Valenti or approaching the photographer, asserting that Valenti was "attracted to the women and not to the men," files show. But under FBI pressure, the president relented and approved an investigation of his close friend.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/18/AR2009021803819.html?hpid=artslot

[cobalt1999]

1. Was Hoover looking for a date?

n/t

[bemildred]

4. LOL.

Maybe just someone to dance with.
:thumbsup:

[jwirr]

6. That was my first thought.

[Captain Hilts]

7. Okay, that's funny!

[MADem]

9. Perhaps he found the guy appealing, and was convinced that it took one to know one?

[bemildred]

2. Hoover was such an ass.

He is the only guy I can think of in US politics that can give Henry Kissinger a run in that regard.

[kirby]

3. Is this really Late Breaking News?

I mean, it is a recent (yesterday) article, but it is about prying into the personal affairs of someone who has been dead for 2 years and about the FBI from the 1960's.

[Peace Patriot]

11. Read James Douglass' new book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why

It Matters," if you want to know why Hoover's blackmail power is relevant today--not only as to Hoover's collusion in the coverup of JFK's assassination by the CIA, which was perpetrated in order to stop JFK's plans to END the "Cold War," but also because the Bushwhacks were massively spying on Americans, and no doubt holding the same kinds of swords over our politicians' heads, and are likely still using those dossiers.

A third way this is relevant to today is that it took some 45 years for we, the people, to find out what was going on behind our backs. Government secrecy cripples our ability to achieve good government. And a fourth way--specific to these recently revealed papers--is to remind us why bigotry against gays is such a poisonous phenomenon, and one more reason why we should oppose it. Maybe you had to live through those times--as I did--to really understand the impact of that bigotry on individuals, and on our society and government--but these kind of reminders can give you some idea of the power that that awful repression would give to a snake-in-the-grass like Hoover.

[kirby]

13. I agree it is important, just not LBN...

As you say it is important and relevant today, I just don't think it meets the guidelines of being posted in the Late Breaking News category.

[Mari333]

5. wow. talk about PROJECTION on Hoovers part. nt

[pattmarty]

8. Valenti was an ass hole dictator for years as head of............

...........MPAA. I don't give a shit about his sexuality, he was a big ass hole.

[MADem]

10. Wow, BILL MOYERS--liberal commentator, sniffer-outer of gays on the WH staff!!!

Who woulda thunk it?

Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.



Sorry, Bill....if I were tasked to do that sort of unsavory job, I'd remember it. He's not being honest with us, or himself, I suspect.

[No Elephants]

12. People in power look for anything they can use to keep someone

in line. With MLK, Jr., JFK and others, it was extra marital affairs with women. But a married man having a homosexual affair would have been a very big club indeed.

Whether true or not about Valenti, this story illustrates two of many reasons why it HAS to be okay for people to be out. No more blackmail. No more marrying unsuspecting hetero men or hetero women to cover up.

[KurtNYC]

14. The old argument against gays in certain military positions was that they

were vulnerable to blackmail. And here is evidence of how real the intent to blackmail them was.

And blackmail over sexual issues continues to this day -- Jeff Guckert / Gannon. Elliot Spitzer was effectively removed when they revealed his sexual behavior. While Larry Craig remains in office.

[WI_DEM]

15. It's ironic Hoover's gay fixation given the information that has come out about him.