History of the FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stands as the United States’ principal federal law enforcement agency, responsible for both domestic intelligence and security. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, it answers to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence, playing a critical role in safeguarding national interests and upholding the law.
The genesis of the FBI can be traced back to 1908, during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte established a force of Special Agents, marking the initial step towards the modern FBI. This development occurred during a period where law enforcement was often influenced by political considerations rather than professional expertise. Roosevelt, having met Bonaparte in 1892, advocated for reforms in federal law enforcement, emphasizing merit-based hiring, such as insisting on marksmanship tests for Border Patrol applicants.
Roosevelt and Bonaparte shared a belief that competence and skill, rather than political connections, should determine who serves in government. When Roosevelt became President in 1901, he appointed Bonaparte as Attorney General. Together, they applied their Progressive philosophy to the Department of Justice, creating a corps of Special Agents in 1908. Although this initial group lacked a formal name or designated leader beyond the Attorney General, they were the precursors to the modern FBI. These former detectives and Secret Service men laid the groundwork for the agency’s future.
National Climate Leading Up to Its Creation
Today, the necessity of a federal investigative service is widely accepted in the United States. However, in 1908, establishing such an agency at the national level was a contentious issue. The U.S. Constitution is based on "federalism," which divides powers between the national government, with jurisdiction over matters crossing state lines (such as interstate commerce and foreign affairs), and the state governments, which retain all other powers. Throughout the 19th century, Americans typically relied on local and state governments to handle most governmental responsibilities. By the 20th century, advancements in transportation and communication fostered a climate more favorable to federal involvement, paving the way for a national investigative tradition.
The American public’s desire for a responsive federal government, combined with a reformist spirit, characterized the Progressive Era, which lasted roughly from 1900 to 1918. This generation believed that government intervention was necessary to ensure justice in an industrial society. They also looked to "experts" in various fields to achieve that just society.
President Roosevelt embodied Progressivism at the national level. The creation of a federal investigative force comprised of well-disciplined experts, tasked with combating corruption and crime, aligned perfectly with Roosevelt’s vision of a Progressive government. Attorney General Bonaparte shared his President’s Progressive ideals. However, the Department of Justice lacked its own investigators, relying on a few Special Agents for specific assignments and Examiners (trained accountants) to audit the financial transactions of federal courts. Since its inception in 1870, the Department of Justice had used appropriated funds to hire private detectives and investigators from other federal agencies to investigate federal crimes (those occurring across state lines or on federal land).
By 1907, the Department of Justice increasingly relied on Secret Service "operatives" for investigations. These men were well-trained, dedicated, but also expensive. Furthermore, they reported to the Chief of the Secret Service, not the Attorney General. Bonaparte found this situation frustrating, as he desired complete control over investigations within his jurisdiction. Congress provided the impetus for Bonaparte to form his own force. On May 27, 1908, a law was enacted prohibiting the Department of Justice from using Secret Service operatives.
The following month, Attorney General Bonaparte appointed a force of Special Agents within the Department of Justice. Ten former Secret Service employees and several Department of Justice investigators were appointed as Special Agents. On July 26, 1908, Bonaparte directed them to report to Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch. This event is considered the official beginning of the FBI.
Both Attorney General Bonaparte and President Theodore Roosevelt, whose terms concluded in March 1909, recommended that the force of 34 Agents become a permanent part of the Department of Justice. Attorney General George Wickersham, Bonaparte’s successor, officially named the force the Bureau of Investigation on March 16, 1909. At that time, the title of Chief Examiner was changed to Chief of the Bureau of Investigation.
Early Days
In its early years, the Bureau of Investigation had a limited scope due to the scarcity of federal crimes. Its primary focus was on investigating violations of laws related to national banking, bankruptcy, naturalization, antitrust, peonage, and land fraud. Since the Bureau offered no formal training, prior law enforcement experience or a legal background was highly valued.
A significant expansion of the Bureau’s jurisdiction occurred in June 1910 with the passage of the Mann Act, also known as the "White Slave" Act. This act criminalized the transportation of women across state lines for immoral purposes. It provided the federal government with a tool to investigate criminals who evaded state laws but had no other federal violations. Finch became Commissioner of White Slavery Act violations in 1912, and A. Bruce Bielaski, a former Special Examiner, became the new Chief of the Bureau of Investigation.
Over the next several years, the number of Special Agents grew to over 300, supported by an additional 300 support staff. Field offices had existed since the Bureau’s inception, each controlled by a Special Agent in Charge who reported to Washington. Most field offices were located in major cities, but several were situated near the Mexican border, focusing on smuggling, neutrality violations, and intelligence gathering, often in connection with the Mexican Revolution.
With the United States’ entry into World War I in April 1917, during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, the Bureau’s workload increased significantly. The war led to the Bureau acquiring responsibility for enforcing the Espionage, Selective Service, and Sabotage Acts, as well as assisting the Department of Labor in investigating enemy aliens. During this period, the Bureau augmented its ranks with Special Agents possessing general investigative experience and proficiency in specific languages.
William J. Flynn, the former head of the Secret Service, became Director of the Bureau of Investigation in July 1919 and was the first to hold that title. In October 1919, the passage of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act provided the Bureau of Investigation with another tool to prosecute criminals who had previously evaded the law by crossing state lines. Following the country’s return to "normalcy" under President Warren G. Harding in 1921, the Bureau of Investigation reverted to its pre-war role of combating a limited number of federal crimes.
The period from 1921 to 1933 is often referred to as the "lawless years" due to the prevalence of gangsters and public disregard for Prohibition, which made it illegal to sell or import intoxicating beverages. Prohibition created a new avenue for federal crime fighting, but the Department of the Treasury, not the Department of Justice, had jurisdiction over these violations.
Attacking crimes that were federal in scope but local in jurisdiction required creative solutions. The Bureau of Investigation had limited success using its narrow jurisdiction to investigate some of the criminals of "the gangster era." For instance, it investigated Al Capone as a "fugitive federal witness."
The federal investigation of a resurgent white supremacy movement also demanded ingenuity. The Ku Klux Klan, dormant since the late 1800s, was revived partly in response to the economic gains made by African Americans during World War I. The Bureau of Investigation employed the Mann Act to bring Louisiana’s philandering Ku Klux Klan "Imperial Kleagle" to justice.
Through these investigations, as well as more traditional investigations of neutrality and antitrust violations, the Bureau of Investigation gained stature. Although the Harding Administration was plagued by unqualified and sometimes corrupt officials, the Progressive Era reform tradition persisted among the professional Special Agents of the Department of Justice. William J. Burns, the new Bureau of Investigation Director, who had previously run his own detective agency, appointed 26-year-old J. Edgar Hoover as Assistant Director. Hoover, a graduate of George Washington University Law School, had worked for the Department of Justice since 1917. He oversaw enemy alien operations during World War I and assisted in the General Intelligence Division under Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, investigating suspected anarchists and communists.
After President Harding’s death in 1923, his successor, Calvin Coolidge, appointed replacements for Harding’s cronies in the Cabinet. Coolidge appointed attorney Harlan Fiske Stone as the new Attorney General, who, on May 10, 1924, selected Hoover to head the Bureau of Investigation. By inclination and training, Hoover embodied the Progressive tradition. His appointment ensured that the Bureau of Investigation would maintain that tradition.
When J. Edgar Hoover assumed leadership, the Bureau of Investigation had approximately 650 employees, including 441 Special Agents working in nine city field offices. By the end of the decade, there were roughly 30 field offices, with Divisional headquarters in New York, Baltimore, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Chicago, Kansas City, San Antonio, San Francisco, and Portland.
Hoover immediately fired unqualified agents and began to professionalize the organization. He abolished the seniority rule for promotions and introduced uniform performance appraisals. He also scheduled regular inspections of operations in all field offices. In January 1928, Hoover established a formal training course for new Agents, requiring applicants to be between 25 and 35 years old. He also reinstated the preference for Special Agents with legal or accounting experience.
Hoover recognized that the Bureau of Investigation needed public support to effectively combat crime. In remarks prepared for the Attorney General in 1925, he emphasized that "the real problem of law enforcement is in trying to obtain the cooperation and sympathy of the public and that they cannot hope to get such cooperation until they themselves merit the respect of the public." In 1925, Agent Edwin C. Shanahan became the first Agent to be killed in the line of duty when he was murdered by a car thief named Martin J. Durkin.
In the early years of Hoover’s directorship, American law enforcement achieved a long-held goal: the establishment of an Identification Division. Tracking criminals using identification records had been considered a crucial tool since the 19th century, and fingerprint matching was considered the most accurate method. By 1922, many large cities had established their own fingerprint collections.
In line with the Progressive Era tradition of federal assistance to localities, the Department of Justice created a Bureau of Criminal Identification in 1905 to provide a centralized reference collection of fingerprint cards. In 1907, the collection was moved to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary to save money, and convicts staffed it. Suspicious of this arrangement, police departments formed their own centralized identification bureau, maintained by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and refused to share its data with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. In 1924, Congress merged the two collections in Washington, D.C., under the Bureau of Investigation administration. By 1926, law enforcement agencies across the country began contributing fingerprint cards to the Bureau of Investigation.
By the end of the decade, Special Agent training was institutionalized, the field office inspection system was firmly established, and the National Division of Identification and Information collected and compiled uniform crime statistics for the entire United States. Additionally, studies were underway that would lead to the creation of the Technical Laboratory and Uniform Crime Reports. The Bureau was equipped to end the "lawless years." It was in 1935 that the organization added the word "Federal" to its name, officially becoming the FBI.