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J. Edgar Hoover
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J. Edgar Hoover Article

Which president gave J. Edgar Hoover the responsibility to investigate foreign and domestic espionage in the United States?

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In the late 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave Hoover the task to investigate both foreign espionage in the United States and the activities of communists and fascists alike. When the Cold War began in the late 1940s, the FBI undertook the intensive surveillance of communists and other left-wing activists in the United States.

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