Hoover's FBI and Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control Press and Bureau's Image. Matthew Cecil. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014. 368 pp. $29.95 hbk.In early May 2014, only a few months after publication of Matthew Cecil's engaging and detailed new book, Hoover's FBI and Fourth Estate, actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr. passed away at age 95. This would be entirely unremarkable and certainly not coincidental if Zimbalist's fame and career had suddenly ceased after cancellation of his private-detective television series, 77 Sunset Strip, in 1964. But very next year, Zimbalist went on to a starring turn in an even more successful, albeit now highly controversial, skein.As a New York Times obituary observed, Zimbalistpersonified suave and unflappable leading man . . . as a stalwart agent who always got his man on The F.B.I., which ran for nine seasons and made him a household name. The F.B.I. was unquestioning in its support of agency it depicted, and both on screen and off, Mr. Zimbalist became its unofficial symbol.Indeed, as Cecil explains, The F.B.I. simply was last of many winning public relations vehicles and efforts deployed during J. Edgar Hoover's 48-year tenure as head of Federal Bureau of Investigation. Cecil, associate professor and director of Elliott School of Communication at Wichita State University, devotes a fascinating final chapter of his book to television show, which aired 241 episodes during a nine-year run on ABC that started in 1965. The F.B.I., Cecil explains, represented culmination of more than three decades of public relations practiced by FBI and showcased ultimate expression of Bureau's preferred self-image, shaping perceptions of agency during a time of cultural upheaval in America.Hoover attempted to control everything about show, from meeting with Zimbalist personally and sending him offto Quantico, Virginia, for a tour of FBI's vaunted training facilities to putting kibosh on storylines and commercials that did not suit his or Bureau's taste. Companies with rejected ads included Pfizer, Allied Van Lines, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, among others. In expressing his disgust after begrudgingly accepting commercials for what he called toilet products from Colgate-Palmolive, Hoover lamented that eventually sponsors will be for cures of bad breath, B.O., & birth control pills.But Cecil's tome is about far more than just a television series that has been offthe air for forty years. With a title as transparent and obvious about its subject matter as movie Snakes on a Plane, book pivots on FBI's highly fruitful efforts during Hoover's reign to manipulate-sometimes subtly, sometimes not so much-members of mainstream news media to erase Bureau's early crisis of legitimacy and its reputation as the Department of Easy Virtues. …