New documents show longtime friendship between J. Edgar Hoover and Paul Harvey

By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 23, 2010

For the better part of six decades, Paul Harvey spun tales on the radio in his staccato baritone, entertaining up to 24 million listeners a day with folksy vignettes ending in unexpected twists.

And now, the rest of the story.

Previously confidential files show that Harvey, who died last February at 90, enjoyed a 20-year friendship with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, often submitting advance copies of his radio script for comment and approval. Harvey wrote Hoover and his deputies regularly. Hoover, in turn, helped Harvey with research, suggested changes in scripts and showered the broadcaster with effusive praise.

But the real twist, suitable for one of Harvey's signature "Rest of the Story" vignettes, is how they met -- on opposite sides of an espionage investigation.

The news is contained in nearly 1,400 pages of FBI files, released to The Washington Post in response to a one-year-old Freedom of Information Act request. The trove supplies new details about how America's No. 1 broadcaster came to befriend America's No. 1 G-man.

(More here.)