A Short History of the FBI

by Sanford J. Ungar

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a division of the U.S. Department of Justice, is one of the most powerful and influential law enforcement organizations in the world.

With more than 8,000 special agents scattered across the country in both large cities and small towns or based at headquarters in Washington, D.C., the FBI is responsible for enforcing hundreds of federal criminal laws. Its cases include kidnappings and bank robberies, efforts to locate fugitives, and analyses of frauds against the government. It also has jurisdiction over counterintelligence matters (finding and apprehending foreign spies working in the United States), and at various times in American history it as fulfilled a vaguely defined mandate to protect the so-called internal security of the country.

Since World War II, it has also been responsible for conducting background investigations of certain people under consideration for federal jobs. By the example of its own procedures and the thorough training courses that it conducts, the FBI has a profound influence on local police forces.

The FBI Identification Division, established in 1924, maintains the world's largest fingerprint files, containing more than 170 million prints. Like those of the scientific laboratory, established in 1932, its services are available to other law enforcement agencies. The laboratory maintains a reference collection, containing items such as tire treads and typewriting samples.

Beginning as the Bureau of Investigation in 1907, the FBI originally had few responsibilities. It first attracted notice when new federal laws, such as those forbidding the interstate transportation of stolen motor vehicles, were adopted to deal with problems that had traditionally been handled by the states. The bureau was soon exploited for political purposes. It was used in the Palmer raids (1919-20; see PALMER, A. MITCHELL) to arrest immigrants who were thought to be subversives, and its agents later spied on political adversaries of President Warren G. Harding.

J. Edgar HOOVER was named director of the bureau in 1924 with a mandate to eliminate corruption and to get the agency out of politics. Hoover did exactly that, reducing the number of agents, establishing professional qualifications for the bureau's members, and consolidating FBI field offices. Hoover's own ambitions to be a national figure and the adoption of dozens of federal criminal laws by Congress combined to increase the bureau's stature and prestige.

Only after Hoover had died (1972) did the country begin to learn about some of his abuses while in power, including the keeping of extensive secret files on politicians and adversaries of the FBI, disruptive activities against leftist and civil rights organizations, and extensive illegal wiretapping and bugging. The ABSCAM scandal -- an FBI operation that involved offering unsolicited bribes to, among others, members of Congress -- has heightened controversy over FBI methods. No statute regulates FBI activities. A charter delimiting the role of the agency was drafted in 1979 but has not yet been ratified by Congress.

Bibliography

Eiliff, John T., The Reform of FBI Intelligence Activities (1979);

Theoharis, Athan, Spying on Americans (1978); Ungar, Sanford J., FBI (1976).