Edgar Hoover

The Encyclopedia of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List: 1950 to Present, by Duane Swierczynski. Checkmark Books. 400 pages. $21.95. The whole thing started in 1949 when an enterprising reporter asked the FBI who, in their book, were the 10 hottest yeggs on the lam. Within a year, J. Edgar Hoover -- never to miss a moment of publicity -- institutionalized the list. Here, in a coffee-table size volume, are photos and all sorts of facts and stats on all 477 of them -- 94 percent of whom were captured.

Chick Lang has a prediction: "I think we're gonna have a Triple Crown winner this year." The longtime general manager of Pimlico Race Course is now 82, retired and living at the Easton Club in Talbot County. He is not planning to be at Pimlico today. "I'm not as busy as I used to be," he said. But then, busy is a relative term. He was the man who brought the infield to Pimlico and coaxed the reluctant owners of the track to promote the infield as a place to spend the day. He relied upon promoters to sell the idea, which was initially pitched to area colleges.

WashingtonTelevision pundit and newspaper columnist Carl T. Rowan could be recognized for his four and a half decades of journalism and public service.He could be hailed for his long career of "Breaking Barriers," the title of his new memoir -- racial barriers in the military, in journalism, in government, in society. Or for rising from a childhood of abject poverty in Tennessee -- he brushed his teeth with his finger and laundry soap, lived in a rickety house that had no electricity or plumbing -- to a life of Lincoln Town Cars and whirlpool baths, awards and accolades.

History has not been kind to J. Edgar Hoover.Was he addicted to gambling and bet on fixed races arranged by the Mob?Was he so corrupt that his name will be expunged from FBI headquarters in Washington?If so, would Laurel-Pimlico track operator Joe De Francis scrap the stakes race annually run in his honor?The 21st running of the J. Edgar Hoover Handicap is scheduled for Laurel Race Course on March 21.Instead of honoring a legend, is the race now an embarrassment to the Maryland Jockey Club?

"Underworld," by Don DeLillo. Scribner. 827 pages. $27.50.Don DeLillo's magnificent new "Underworld," at once among the finest works of American fiction of this century, opens at the Polo Grounds on Oct. 3, 1951. Behind Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, who vomits on Sinatra's shoe, and Toots Shor sits the sinister J. Edgar Hoover. On the same day Bobby Thomson hits a home run that breaks the hearts of the Dodgers and the Soviets explode an atomic bomb.DeLillo has produced in one rich volume a work which surpasses even John Dos Passos' three-volume "USA."

"Sewer, Gas & Electric," by Matt Ruff. Atlantic Monthly Press, 528 pages, $23.In Matt Ruff's not-too-distant future (we're talking 2023 here, long after the African Pandemic of '04 has wiped out all the black people on earth except those with green eyes), civilization will be a stew of pop culture references, giant corporations and crumbling urban infrastructures.Donald Trump will have left the stage (burned in Cape Canaveral launch pad fire while he was attempting to be the first Martian billionaire)

J. Edgar Hoover was gay and was a heavy gambler, says a new PBS documentary that attempts not only to confirm persistent rumors about the longtime FBI director's alleged homosexuality, but also to indict him for failing to nip organized crime in the bud."Hoover's personal corruption," says the investigation premiering on "Frontline" tonight (9 p.m., Channels 22 and 67), "corrupted the very mission of the FBI . . . it was while Hoover was director [from 1924 to his death in 1972] that the Mafia was allowed to grow rich and powerful."

WASHINGTON -- They came from as far away as Germany and as nearby as Silver Spring. But at the corner of 9th and E streets, visitors to the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building all found disappointment at their final destination yesterday.The attraction that brought them there -- the popular public tour of the FBI's headquarters -- has been halted indefinitely, after recent unspecified threats against the agency's facilities in Washington.By yesterday, news of the tour cancellations, which began Friday, had clearly not reached everyone in the nation's capital.

"We have in our midst hatemongers, bigots, and riotou agitators, many of whom are at opposite poles philosophically but who spew similar doctrines of prejudice and intolerance. They exploit hate and fear, spread rumors, and pit one element of our people against another. Theirs is a dogma of intimidation and terror."President Clinton attacking the militia movement last week? No, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover blasting radical protesters, early 1960s. Even accepting common wisdom about politics and bedfellows, it is beyond strange when William Jefferson Clinton's speeches on domestic violence sound eerily reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover.

Back in the days when everyone liked Ike, when 2 percent inflation was alarming, and when, as Archie Bunker so eloquently sang, "goils were goils, and men were men," J. Edgar Hoover never tired of warning against "godless communism." It was as if the words were inseparable, and there was more than a hint that anyone who was a communist was ipso facto "godless" and, anyone who didn't believe in God was probably a communist.So much has changed since J. Edgar Hoover's day that it came as a bit of a surprise when a questioner, a priest, on ABC-TV's televised "town meeting" last week asked Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to state their "religious beliefs."