Looking for Clues: Investigating the FBI

By Russ Gifford

From Anarchists to Gangsters, Commies to Radicals, Kidnappers to Killers - the FBI pursued them all. The Bureau watchmen have been on the job for more than 100 years now. Born in the aftermath of the assassination of William McKinley, created by his successor, the Bureau answered to the Attorney General and investigated for the Justice Department. Originally, Theodore Roosevelt expected them to share the Secret Service men, but the Treasury Department intervened. But if someone thought they would wither and die, they were shocked.

The Bureau would become a major organization after bomb explosions shattered the peace in New York and near Washington, D.C. in September of 1920. The Red Scare was on. The Bureau of Investigation, and its new assistant manager, J. Edgar Hoover, was quick to respond to the call. Hoover’s gift for reading the political tides - and gathering headlines - would see him in power for decades. He pursued high-profile gangsters - often ending in public shootouts. While they gunned down gangsters in the 1920s and 1930s, his first love was the FBI’s original mission - tracking foreign agents he saw as dangerous to the country. He would cultivate connections in movies and television to see the story of the FBI was told by his standards.

The early emphasis was organization - and Hoover was meticulous in overseeing an organization dedicated to producing data from files quickly and accurately - and keeping all of it at his fingertips.

As the Bureau was first engaged to combat a new breed of violent criminals who used cars, phones, and radios to thwart local police departments, the FBI always embraced modern technology to combat these new criminals. Over the decades, this included top-notch lab facilities and cutting-edge surveillance tools like wiretaps, bugs, and drones. Many times, the laws had to be adjusted to catch up with the FBI’s usage of invasive technology.

Despite the advancing decades, Hoover clung to his belief foreign influence was behind every popular movement - especially in the Black groups pushing for Civil Rights. And he would fight the new CIA for primacy on the many potential Communist spy rings in the Cold War era.

We will track the results of the Hoover era, and how the agency became the organization it is in the 21st century.