Staff Pick: Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Col. Alexander Bacon Coxe Sr.

Source: Alexander B. Coxe, Sr., Papers #193

Staff Person: Martha Elmore

Description: Alexander Bacon Coxe, Sr., was a seasoned Army officer having served during the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and with the Allied Forces in subduing the Boxer Rebellion in China.  In 1917, he assisted Col. Ralph H. Van Deman in setting up the first United States Army Intelligence organization, G-2, just prior to U.S. entry into World War I.  After World War I ended, Coxe continued to be involved in military intelligence on the domestic front into 1921, including the Mexican border crisis of 1919. Coxe retired from the Armed Forces in 1936 but was brought out of retirement in 1940 for a year to help reestablish and expand the Army Intelligence System.

This letter was signed by John Edgar Hoover, as Special Assistant to the Attorney General, in 1920 to Colonel A. B. Cox [sic].  This was prior to Hoover’s appointment as Director of the Bureau of Investigation (predecessor to the FBI).  In the letter, he mentions Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Ludwig C. A. K. Martens.