Some agents, especially older ones, despised Hoover and his
edicts. One veteran agent advised new recruits, “The first thing
you’ve got to do is unlearn everything they taught you at the Seat
of Government. The second is get rid of those damn manuals.” In
1929, an agent resigned with the complaint that Hoover’s
initiatives were “directed against the personnel rather than against
the criminal.”
White, too, sometimes chafed at Hoover’s rules and whims. But
he clearly relished being part of the bureau, being swept up in
events greater than himself. He tried to neatly type up his reports
and touted the virtues of scientific policing. Later, he would
replace his cowboy hat with a fedora and, like Hoover, take up golf,
putting the ball across the immaculate greens, where the new
American men of money and power and leisure gathered. White
would become almost indistinguishable from one of Hoover’s
college boys.