![]() ![]() (And so, it appears from recent testimonials before Congress, it remains.) Hoover’s agents were ill-equipped to handle the flood of violent crime that washed over the nation in the first years of FDR’s administration-which, Vanity Fair correspondent Burrough notes, “wasn’t the beginning of a crime wave, it was the end of one.” Where bank robbery had been comparatively rare, those years saw an explosion of attacks across the country, mostly in rural settings committed by men and women such as Bonnie Parker, John Dillinger, and Machine Gun Kelly, they met with public understanding, if not approbation, for the economy had tanked, and the public blamed bankers for the hardships they now had to endure. Edgar Hoover argued otherwise-and wrote gainsayers out of the official histories-his fledgling FBI was a thoroughly politicized bureaucracy just like any other, torn by rivalries and full of guys who just couldn’t handle the work. ![]() A rollicking, rat-a-tat ride with Clyde Barrow, Ma Barker, and a raft of inept (but a few first-rate) G-men. ![]()
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