Federal Bureau of Investigation

SIGNIFICANCE: As a division of the US Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seen its investigative and other powers greatly expanded as Congress has gradually added one duty after another. The FBI has been engaged in combating many forms of interstate and international criminal activity. It has also strived to raise the standards of regional police units, which the FBI frequently assists in training.

The forerunner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was established in 1908 by US attorney general Charles J. Bonaparte, who hired nine former Secret Service agents on a permanent basis in the US Department of Justice. This investigative division, simply called the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), was first funded from “miscellaneous expenses” without specific mandate from Congress. Bonaparte actually opposed legislation to specify this new investigative division’s authority, assuring Congress that personal and political activities would not be investigated but that the new division’s responsibilities would focus on interstate commerce and antitrust violations.

History

The period of the attorney general’s direct supervision was rather short. By 1910 the BOI’s dictate was to enforce the new Mann (White Slave Traffic) Act, which made it a federal crime to transport women across state lines for illicit purposes. Now, as personal and commercial activities increasingly projected themselves across state lines with the creation of nationwide transportation systems and national markets—together with the crimes that go with them—the investigative arm of the Department of Justice acquired an expanded role mandated by Congress, together with additional personnel and funds. Thus, in 1919, Congress passed the Dyer (Motor Vehicles Theft) Act to combat automobile theft, which the unit was assigned to investigate, while the Volstead Act, also of 1919, gave the “Feds” the power to investigate and prosecute violations of the Constitution’s Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, sale, import, and export of alcoholic beverages.

Even before that time, the early bureau was involved in internal security matters—at first because of the opposition to World War I, as well as possible espionage and sabotage. Thus, the agency had to investigate cases arising from the Espionage Act of 1917, the Selective Service Act (draft dodgers) of that same year, the Sedition Act of 1918, and the Immigration Act of 1918.

Simultaneously and thereafter, people considered radicals became the focus of the bureau’s investigation: labor union leaders, members of the Socialist Party, those sympathetic to the Bolshevik (communist) Revolution in Russia in 1917, pro-Irish activists supporting the rebellion for independence from Britain (1916–22), Black militants such as Marcus Garvey, and others. The head of the unit gathering information regarding immigrants perceived as potential security threats was J. Edgar Hoover, one of the architects of the 1920 Palmer Raids against suspected radicals and leftists during the so-called Red Scare.

Following that period, often viewed as one involving abuse of power and scandal (including the Teapot Dome scandal of 1923–24), the bureau witnessed a few years of administrative reform and retrenchment coinciding with the early years of Hoover’s directorship (1924–72). The New Deal era (1932–39) was to see the naming of additional federal crimes, thus empowering the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as it was renamed in 1935. These included kidnappings—mostly involving Prohibition-connected gangsterism—and the use of the US mail for extortion, the robbing of federally chartered banks, and, with the growth of fascism and Nazism, espionage. The bureau’s detentive, wiretapping, and break-in powers were also extended.

By that time, FBI agents were authorized to carry weapons and to make arrests independently of state and local law enforcement. A broad surveillance program was instituted against subversives in 1936.

During World War II, curbing German espionage and communist activity became the FBI’s major focus, and its internal security investigative powers grew even more. Especially with the passage of the McCarran (Internal Security) Act of 1950 and the Communist Control Act of 1954, during the Cold War period (1947–91), the FBI sustained its emphasis on the containment of communism (especially during the perceived witch-hunt orchestrated by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin) and of various types of radical activism.

In the meantime, there was additional targeting of organized crime (and enlarged empowerment of the FBI) with the passage of such legislation as the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets (OCCSS) Act of 1968 and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Acts of 1970 and 1986.

However, the Watergate scandal of 1972–74 and legislative disclosure of abuse of power by several federal agencies, including the FBI, led to new guidelines, reorganization, and reform to make the agency more accountable to Congress and the general public. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, terrorism and counterterrorism have occupied center stage amid the concerns and activities of the FBI. By the 2020s, FBI director Christopher Wray was emphasizing the organization's prioritization of the longtime increase in domestic extremism, particularly the more frequent occurrences of violent incidents such as mass shootings. He addressed this concern and focus in hearings following the January 6, 2021, insurrection against the US Capitol building during Congress's meetings to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election; the FBI had launched one of its biggest coordinated investigations into the attack on the Capitol in an attempt to identify individuals involved and determine whether it was an organized, premeditated attack.

The dynamic nature of American society and its evolving views of crime—the new forms that it has taken, novel threats to internal security, and Congress’s response to these—have, in part, accounted for the changing role and powers, even abuses of power, of the FBI. Another factor was the nature and character of the man with whom the agency had become so closely identified for much of its history: director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover’s obsession with “security” investigations helped to provide a particular bias to the agency’s activities for much of his nearly fifty-year tenure.

To this day, the public is divided in its assessment of the FBI. Some recall the heroic role played by the “G-men,” by “The Untouchables,” immortalized by the media, while others dwell on the high-handed nature of some of the agency’s operations and the autocratic nature and tactics of its best-known director.

Organization

The FBI is the principal investigative arm of the US Department of Justice, headed by the attorney general, who is therefore the bureau’s nominal head. It is a field-oriented organization in which different divisions and offices at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, as well as other locations, provide program direction and support services to fifty-six field offices, some four hundred satellite offices known as resident agencies, four specialized field installations, and more than sixty foreign liaison posts, each of which is headed by a legal attaché (legat) or legal liaison officer who works abroad with American and local authorities on criminal and civil matters within FBI jurisdiction—that is, on cases not assigned by law to another federal agency. Accordingly, the FBI has priority in such matters as national security, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, cybercrime, international and national organized crime or drug matters, and financial crimes. To implement these functions, the FBI is primarily charged with gathering and reporting facts, locating witnesses and alleged perpetrators, and compiling evidence in federal cases.

Among the services the FBI provides are fingerprint identification; laboratory examinations; police training; the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal communications, information services for use by the law-enforcement community; and administration of the National Crime Information Center and the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Also, the bureau provides law-enforcement leadership and assistance to state and international law enforcement agencies.

The organization is headed by a director, now appointed by the US president with the advice and consent of the US Senate. The term is currently limited to ten years. There is a deputy director and several assistant directors, who supervise deputy assistant directors. Each assistant is in charge of one of the headquarters divisions as well as the Office of Congressional Affairs and the Office of Professional Responsibility, among others. The Office of the General Counsel is headed by the FBI’s general counsel, while the Office of Diversity and Inclusion is administered by the chief diversity officer.

As of 2024, the FBI employed about thirty-seven thousand people, consisting of positions such as special agents as well as language specialists, information technology specialists, and other support professionals. In 1911, the original bureau had eighty-one agents and thirty-three support staff members, with an appropriation of $329,984. In fiscal year 2024, the FBI had a budget of some $11 billion.

Programs

The FBI’s programs include background checks on federal job applicants and appointees slated for sensitive federal agencies as well as those of presidential nominees to executive or judiciary positions. Other programs involve the investigation of civil rights violations, domestic terrorism, national foreign intelligence (foreign espionage and foreign counterintelligence within the United States), and drug trafficking by organized groups, as well as racketeering, violent crimes, kidnapping, sexual exploitation of children, extortion, bank robbery, consumer product tampering, crimes on American Indian reservations, unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, and threats—or other harm to—the president, vice president, or members of Congress. Finally, the FBI’s white-collar crimes program targets such criminal activity as money laundering, bank fraud and embezzlement, public corruption, environmental crimes, fraud against the government and health care, election law violations, and telemarketing fraud. The FBI’s strategic plan prioritizes combating threats to national and economic security or to US citizens and their property as well as criminal enterprises.

Notable FBI Cases

During the early years of the FBI’s predecessors (1908–24), high-profile cases involved violations of the Mann (White Slave Traffic) Act of 1910, focusing on the likes of Jack Johnson, a Black heavyweight champion accused of eloping with and seducing a White woman, whom he later married. There was also the case of Edward Y. Clarke, at one time acting imperial wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. Under the authority of the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918 during World War I, the bureau prosecuted the likes of William D. “Big Bill” Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or Wobblies), Jacob Abrams, and Emma Goldman of the Union of Russian Workers, all held to be radicals, anarchists, or subversives.

The Hoover years opened with the tracking down of “bad guys,” as the age of Prohibition-driven gangsterism and kidnappings, corruption, and rackets of all kinds had arrived. Cases involving the likes of Al “Scarface” Capone, John Dillinger, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker (popularly known as Bonnie and Clyde), George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, and Willie “the Eel” Sutton catapulted the FBI and its director to fame.

Two famous kidnapping cases in that era were those of the twenty-month-old child, eventually found dead, of hero-aviator Charles Lindbergh (for which Bruno Hauptmann was executed in 1936) and of wealthy Oklahoma City oilman Charles F. Urschel. Most of the perpetrators ended up in prison or were killed in shoot-outs with the G-men (government men), as agents were now known. Even more important, the favorable publicity moved Congress to empower the bureau to intervene in additional crimes formerly considered to be regional, or where local law enforcement proved itself unable to cope.

Even before World War II’s outbreak in Europe in 1939, the FBI became involved in German espionage cases such as that of Guenther Gustav Rumrich and Frederick (“Fritz”) Joubert Duquesne and in sabotage cases such as that involving George John Dasch and the Long Island (Nazi) Saboteurs. The Smith Act of 1940, outlawing advocacy of the violent overthrow of the government, had given the Feds additional authority to pursue radicals. Even before the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the FBI was again responsible for locating draft evaders and deserters.

Overlapping these mandates was the ferreting out of communists and other leftists, increasingly emphasized after the advent of the Cold War in 1947. Thus, there was the case of the Amerasia journal and the trials of William Remington, Alger Hiss, and Judith Coplon. With the surrender of the Axis powers, communist espionage and subversion became a major issue. In 1957, Rudolf I. Abel, a Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) intelligence officer, was arrested in New York, convicted of conspiracy as a Soviet spy, and imprisoned. Most notably, in 1953, the American “atomic spies,” Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed for giving the Soviet Union classified information.

There was then a recurrence of targeting organized crime, with the trials of Joseph P. Valachi (1963), who later cooperated with the FBI, and the Mafia (La Cosa Nostra). This was to continue through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, with the Pizza Connection case, the Commission case, the Patriarca case, and that of John Gotti. Notorious crime “families” such as the Profacis, Luccheses, Genoveses, Bonannos, Trafficantes, Magaddinos, and Zerillis were not neglected.

Neither were civil rights cases such as those of Medgar Evers and the three civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James E. Chaney, all murdered in Mississippi; of Viola Liuzzo, murdered in Alabama; and of Martin Luther King, Jr., murdered in Tennessee. The post–World War II years also involved a new crop of people considered to be radicals such as Patricia Hearst and others of the Symbionese Liberation Army, and of Leonard Peltier of the American Indian Movement.

The FBI was also involved in militia cases (Randall “Randy” Weaver’s Christian White supremacists at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, and the Freemen at Jordan, Montana, in 1996) and cases involving religious groups (such as the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, in 1993). Last but not least was terrorism, whether by individuals such as Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber (1978–96), or groups of Muslim fundamentalists at the World Trade Center in New York City (1993 and 2001). In the 2010s, the FBI investigated violent acts of domestic extremism that included the mass school shooting that took place at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. As such incidents had increased in frequency into the 2020s, debates continued about the effectiveness of the FBI, particularly in cases such as the 2016 Florida nightclub shooting (the worst in the nation's history up to that point) and the 2018 Florida high school shooting in which it was reported that the FBI had investigated the involved suspects at least once prior to the shootings. Additionally, as cybercrime attacks only became more advanced, the FBI had continued releasing an annual report of complaints of internet crime as well as its costs, particularly throughout the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic declared in early 2020.

Espionage cases also continued—not only those involving Soviet operatives but also US government employees of agencies outside the FBI—for example, John A. Walker and Jonathan Jay Pollard, both of the US Navy; Ronald Pelton of the National Security Agency; and Aldrich H. Ames of the Central Intelligence Agency. There were additional cases of double agents in the FBI itself.

Undoubtedly, with the advent of weapons of mass destruction—especially biological and chemical—the FBI has been involved, as it was in the anthrax scare on the East Coast in 2001. Since its origins, the FBI’s investigations have intersected with major events and public issues in American life and have thus been equally controversial.

Moles and Double Agents

Even though there was considerable mumbling about director J. Edgar Hoover’s supposed eccentricities and idiosyncrasies when it came to the behavior of his special agents—according to stories, true or apocryphal, he would not tolerate gay people or adulterers, mandated formal dress even before air-conditioning was available in district offices, had a phobia about overweight men or even those with sweaty palms—unquestionably, during his near half-century at the helm, there were extremely few cases of disloyalty, such as that of William G. Sebold in 1941. Things changed, however, after Hoover’s death.

One of the most notable—indeed, notorious—cases of disloyalty within the agency was that of FBI special agent Robert Philip Hanssen. Hanssen’s clearances allowed him to access classified information at the CIA, the National Security Agency, the White House, and the defense department. They also enabled Hanssen to check an FBI database that would show any possible investigation of himself by his employer. Hanssen, a computer whiz who had majored in chemistry, spoke Russian, had an MBA, and had helped the FBI create a database of Soviet intelligence officers, including their addresses, appearances, likes, and dislikes. He was also involved with anti-Soviet electronic bugs and video surveillance.

In 1979, Hanssen started working for the GRU (Soviet military intelligence), blowing the cover on Soviet double agent General Dmitri F. Polyakov. The latter, like several others who had worked undercover for the United States and were compromised by Hanssen, was executed in Russia. Back in New York in 1985 after a stint at FBI Headquarters, Hanssen returned to spying for the Soviets, this time for the more prestigious KGB. After that, he worked for the Russian SVR, the successor to the KGB’s foreign intelligence unit, sporadically until 2001. But on February 18 of that year, Hanssen was arrested at a dead drop (a drop used for the clandestine exchange of intelligence information) in Foxstone Park, Vienna, Virginia, close to where he lived with his wife and six children. Another team of agents at a second drop site found $50,000 in $100 bills left for him.

The damage Hanssen had caused was incalculable. Over twenty-one years of spying for the Soviets and then for the Russians, he transferred to them six thousand pages of classified documents, twenty-seven computer discs cataloging secret and top-secret programs, including one on how to ensure the survival of the US government in the event of a nuclear attack. Instead of the death penalty, which Attorney General John Ashcroft had sought for him, in exchange for continuing debriefings about Russian undercover operations and FBI countermeasures, Hanssen got a life sentence in prison without parole in July 2001, and his wife was allowed to collect some of his pension. He admitted getting a kick out of outwitting the intelligence communities, both the FBI and the KGB, because it gave him a sense of power, of control. Hanssen died in prison on June 5, 2023, of colon cancer.

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