The Mob Was Probably Blackmailing Him
Photo credit: Bettmann / Contributor, Getty Images
The rumor is that Hoover kept his hands off the mob because they may have had some dirt on his sexuality. Hoover had contact with organized criminals and their associates, and it’s possible they discovered he was interested in men, not women. Several high-ranking mobsters claimed they knew personal details about the director’s sex life.
Crime figure Meyer Lansky, known as the “Mob Accountant,” reportedly had “pictures of Hoover in some kind of gay situation” and an associate reported that Lansky boasted, “I fixed that [expletive].” Carmine Lombardozzi, known as “the Italian Meyer Lansky,” claimed: “J Edgar Hoover was in our pocket.”
