Why is J. Edgar Hoover’s name memorialized on the FBI headquarters building in Washington? This is like putting the image of the devil on the front of a church.

He was a morally corrupt white supremacist who used his authority in an iron-fisted, racist manner. His atrocities included using nefarious tactics to try to smear the reputations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

He declared that the Black Panthers were the most dangerous domestic terrorist group in the country, totally mischaracterizing the self-help organization while bypassing the rotten-to-the-core Ku Klux Klan.

He kept vital information from the Freedom Riders that could have protected them from the savage beatings that awaited them in the Deep South.

He had the chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, assassinated. A guilty, but not sorry, country paid $1.82 million for this murder to Mr. Hampton’s family.

The felonious President Nixon, in an obvious attempt to worship a like-minded lunatic, signed into law the legislation authorizing the naming of the FBI building after Mr. Hoover two days after the racist’s death in 1972.

A better choice would have been to name it after Dr. King, who really did believe in equal justice under the law.

BERNARD A. GORDON

Hanover