Welcome to the Aaron Burr Federal Building

The J. Edgar Hoover building may be on the way out. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, (the civil rights group founded by Martin Luther King, Jr.), has petitioned the Department of Justice to remove Hoover’s name from the FBI’s headquarters in DC (the exterior of which is often glimpsed in X-Files episodes) because of his practice of abusing the FBI’s investigative powers for personal reasons. The campaign is being headed by the SCLC’s current president, Martin Luther King III, but also has support of several members of Congress, including House Government Reform Committee chair Dan Burton (R-IN) and Traficant pal Steve LaTourette (R-OH), among others. I don’t know what the feeling is like inside the FBI, but most people I’ve talked to find Hoover’s name on a federal building highly disagreeable – what Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently called “a monument to a monumental embarrassment.” The only disturbing factor: the current legislation (H.R. 5213) that was introduced by Rep. Burton in July of this year is an almost exact copy of a similar bill that was introduced last year (H.R. 1278) by none other than the Bush-libeling Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). Perhaps there’s more of an X-Files connection here than I thought.

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