A Brief History of the FBI - Report Example

FBI History FBI takes it origins from the “special agents” initiative founded in 1908 by the Attorney General Charles Bonaparte at the time Teddy Roosevelt was in office. They first met at the meeting of Baltimore Civil Service Reform Association in 1982 when law enforcement was rather political activity then professional area. Opinions of these two men coincided regarding the system of law enforcement and criteria according to which workers should be tested and probated before they got the position. Both Roosevelt and Bonaparte promoted the idea of progress in society and considered rather efficiency and competency than political leverage to define who deserves to serve the homeland. Roosevelt became the U.S. president in 1901 later appointing Bonaparte the Attorney General (FBI Website). In 1908, Bonaparte created a progressive initiative, the force of special agents which had neither an official name, nor an official leader and was headed by Bonaparte personally. However, this was the forerunner of FBI. The organization was initially called Bureau of Investigations (BOI). The bureau first focused mainly on criminal acts, dealing only with the small number of economic offenses like financial fraud and violation of competition law. In a few years, the working staff of the bureau increased to 300 agents and about 300 “peripheral” employees. Having established sub-offices in many large cities of the country including several offices near the Mexican border, the Bureau virtually undertook the task to coordinate and control of activities of all state police departments. As the World War I sparked, the Bureau faced the new task – agents were to provide assistance to counterintelligence teams. This need was dictated by the fact that numerous German agents and spies developed their activity in the U.S in the first years of war, although the country’s policy at that time was to safeguard neutrality. The new Espionage Act of 1917 emerged as a result of the government’s fear of German spies. This legislation enabled BOI’s agents to apprehend citizens suspected in assisting the enemy and implement preventative measures against potentially dangerous public moods. However, thousands of apprehensions proved to be fruitless, and BOI’s efficiency in terms of counterintelligence activity was rather low. Thus, the agency focused its attention on preventative measures against dissentients – nobody actually believed that Germany could win the war, but the U.S. government was afraid of possible “export” of Bolshevist ideology to American territory. In July 1919, the Bureau got its first formal director, William J. Flynn, who was the first to occupy the newly established position (FBI Website). The main target of the bureau at that time was political radicalism and espionage. By 1922 GID had a large database incorporating information about more than 500 thousand American citizens. Although the range of tasks GID faced was rather wide varying from drug trafficking to conducting investigations for other federal agencies, stabilization in the political arena after the World War I led to staff reduction: whereas BOI staff consisted of 1127 employees n 1920, it had been reduced to 600 by 1923. Hoover’s era As coordination of efforts in the struggle against political radicalism was needed at that time, the new division was established in August of 1919 under the Department of Justice jurisdiction – General Intelligence Division (GID) headed by the young John Edgar Hoover. As this division later became a part of the bureau, Hoover was appointed a deputy director of BOI in 1921 and later became the head of the Bureau. This is a significant figure in the history of FBI as he headed the Bureau for almost half a century, introducing new policies and methods and having rather profound impact on FBI’s activity from 1924 to 1972. In fact, Hoover has made an immense contribution to improvement and development of the Bureau, yet his policy was sometimes rather controversial. However, Hoover aimed at professionalization of investigations and encouraged FBI’s development in this direction. For instance, the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory – which later became the FBI Laboratory, was established in 1932 upon his initiative. Moreover, Hoover improved training of agents, encouraged use of modern technological means of investigation (including wiretapping and bugging), and convinced the Congress to increase funding of the organization (John Edgar Hoover). What is also notable, Hoover was the only director with the lifelong tenure in FBI – all his successors were given only 10 years in office, according to the respective legislation of the Congress. When the Prohibition act was in effect, Hoover used technology of wiretapping to identify and arrest bootleggers (Greenberg). In 1930s, the agency also unfolded vigorous activity aimed at apprehension of gangsters and other criminals notorious with their kidnapping activity, murders and robberies. For instance, the bureau agents killed or arrested such gangsters as Alvin Karpis, George Kelly, “Baby Face” Nelson and notorious John Dillinger. Success in the struggle against criminal activity across the country expanded powers and influence of the organization (John Edgar Hoover). As a result, in 1935 BOI became rather influential agency and got its modern name – the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Although the agency focused on war on crime for all these years, Hoover – who was a convinced anticommunist – always kept in mind that the greatest threat to the U.S. was posed not but gangsters and mafia, but Bolsheviks and other dissentients. This idea won support on the side of President Franklin Roosevelt who authorized Hoover to put opposition parties and groups – both left-wing and right-wing - under surveillance. As the World War II began. Hoover ordered to provide information a\of all the citizens who were seen to sympathize Germany, Italy and communism. Names of these people formed a special apprehension list that would guide arrests in case America entered the war. As Nazi secret agents infiltrated from Latin America, a Special Intelligence Service was established in FBI that was intended to prevent this. Thus, this was the first time powers of FBI as a counter-intelligence organization went beyond the borders of USA. As America eventually entered the war in December of 1941, FBI significance as that of the main counter-intelligence agency grew considerably, as well as its powers did. Moreover, the staff grew, too: the number of agents reached 4886 in 1945. It should be mentioned that FBI work during the war was very successful, and no foreign infiltrators managed to created agents’ network on the U.S. territory. The new period of FBI activity began after the WWII when USSR turned from the U.S. ally into its main opponent. Thus, the beginning of the Cold War between USA and USSR triggered anticommunist hysteria in America – which became the moment of glory for Hoover with his radical anticommunist disposition. The Bureau received another task – to check the backgrounds of all government employees in order to make sure that there were no foreign agents in the government machine (FBI Website). However, the bureau still handled traditional criminal investigations. Investigations of organized crime and civil rights cases were also taken on by FBI in 1960’s - 1970’s. During that period, FBI resources were mainly engaged in investigations concerning political violence and foreign espionage threat. After Hoover died, influence of FBI was undermined considerably. Whereas Hoover had strong political leverage that helped him promote FBI’s interests and allowed him to neglect some laws in the bureau’s activity, this wasn’t possible anymore after his death. Thus, FBI has been complying with American laws since that time. USA PATRIOT Act However, powers of FBI were expanded considerably as a result of the grave tragic events almost four decades later. On September 11, 2001, a week after Robert Mueller, a new director, took up office, unprecedented terrorist attacks knocked America out. The failure to prevent them became a pitch-brand on the reputation of the agency headed by Mueller, though there wasn’t his personal fault. The 9//11 events changed the main priorities of FBI’s activity and shifted to grant more attention to the national security insurance, laying foundations for the so called war on terror. On the 26th of October, 2001, the so called PATRIOT Act was signed by George W. Bush (full name - Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) which was earlier approved by the Senate and the Congress. This federal legislation virtually granted rather wide powers in terms of surveillance to government and police. Particularly, FBI’s powers were expanded in the field of interception and electronic surveillance – which was considered to be the violation of the fourth amendment to the Constitution. In other words, the government received powers to tap telephone lines legally and to intercept Internet messaging (Rouse). At the same time, these powers concerned not only suspected terrorists, but all investigated cases. As the internal FBI investigation was conducted in 2007, there were over one thousand cases of violations and powers abuse identified. These violations concerned particularly the rules of intelligence collection (from phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions). The investigation was reported to have covered only 10% of all cases handled by FBI since 2002. This evidences show that certain FBI agents have been practicing powers abuse and violating federal laws. Furthermore, in is reported that they shot about 150 people during the period between 1993 and 2011 with 70 of them shot dead. These cases are followed by internal investigations. Such cases of shootings involving officers are a subject to serious and thorough investigations. Thus, each law enforcement agency has a special team of experienced and appropriately trained detectives who are to investigate all cases of police shootings (Tracy). “The team should consist of a primary detective, two additional detectives, a state’s attorney or assistant U.S. attorney, forensic personnel, and subject matter experts” (Tracy). There is a number of typical shooting circumstances like SWAT shooting, hostage shooting, vehicle-involving shooting and others. Each case of officers-involving shootings is followed by two investigations. The first one is a criminal on-scene investigation aimed at assembling all the evidence in the crime scene. The second one is an administrative investigation that is conducted to make shore that all the policies and procedures of the department were accurately followed by the officer. Completion of internal investigations is expected within 60-90 days. In conclusion, it should be mentioned that the investigations conducted for all the cases showed that all the shootings were justified. Works Cited: FBI Website, “A Brief History of the FBI”, from: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/brief-history Greenberg, David. "Civil Rights: Let Em Wiretap!". History News Network, 2001, from: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/366 John Edgar Hoover. Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014, from: http://www.biography.com/people/j-edgar-hoover-9343398 Rouse, Margaret. Patriot Act, from: http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/Patriot-Act Tracy, Drew J. "Handling Officer-Involved Shootings," The Police Chief 77 (October 2010): 38–48, http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/naylor/CPIM1010/#/38 Read More