By Ralph P. Davidson

Year-end meetings between our Business staff and the members of TIME's Board of Economists have become a tradition for the past six years. Last Tuesday the men who advise us on national and world economic prospects jetted to Manhattan for an all-day question-and-answer session with our researchers, correspondents, writers and editors, who assembled this week's Business story on the economic prospects for 1976. To protect his staff from scholarly hedging, Business Editor George Church started the meeting by dipping into his store of anecdotes. "After consulting the leading economists of his day about where the economy was going and getting a constant stream of forecasts of 'On the one hand this and on the other hand that,' Harry Truman allegedly said, 'Hell, what I need is a one-armed economist.' " Still, Reporter-Researchers Hilary Ostlere, Allan Hill and Sarah Button were struck by the almost universal comment of one economist to another, "I agree with you absolutely--but ..." Nevertheless, concluded Associate Editor James Grant, who wrote this week's story, "I'm glad TIME has two-fisted advisers. The election year of 1976 looks like a good time for weighing both sides of every question."

J. Edgar Hoover first appeared on our cover in August of 1935. The director and his Federal Bureau of Investigation were portrayed as antidotes to the headlines of Depression and organized crime. For by then the FBI's 623 trench-coated agents had zeroed in on such notorious criminals as John Dillinger, "Baby Face" Nelson, and "Pretty Boy" Floyd. When operatives cornered George "Machine Gun" Kelly at his Memphis hideout in 1933, Kelly said he surrendered rather than be killed by "G-men," a sobriquet that has adhered to agents in movies and on cereal box tops through the years. In the '30s Hoover was portrayed as a dedicated, hard-working loner who approved wiretaps only in matters of life and death. Hoover's picture was again on the cover of TIME in August of 1949, when the nation was concerned with internal security. The '40s director was observed as a dossier-keeper who carefully followed the peregrinations of the American left. Hoover's day-to-day operations remained a secret. The details of his abusive wiretaps, conspiracy with executives to misuse the bureau's power, and harassment of citizens are only now being told. They are the subject of a new Hoover cover story, researched by Marta Dorion, written by Ed Magnuson and edited by Ronald Kriss. Frank Merrick wrote an accompanying story, researched by Audrey Ball, which examines suggestions before Congress to improve control of the bureau.

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