Federal Bureau of Investigation

E

National Crime Information Center

The National Crime Information Center (NCIC), located in Clarksburg, West Virginia, is a computerized database of information on crime and criminals. It serves as the nucleus of a vast communications network that includes local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. Designed to complement metropolitan and statewide electronic systems, it makes available in a few seconds data essential for effective law enforcement. The NCIC database contains information on criminal histories, missing persons, fugitives and wanted persons, stolen vehicles and license plates, stolen guns, and other data. It also contains mugshots, images of stolen property, and prints of right index fingers. Most patrol officers can access NCIC data directly via computer terminals in their squad cars. The FBI also operates the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which interfaces with the NCIC. The NICS performs background checks on people seeking to purchase firearms. These checks are intended to prevent the sale of firearms to felons, fugitives, illegal aliens, and certain other people.

In addition to maintaining fugitive information in the NCIC, the FBI has since 1950 widely publicized its “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives,” a list of particularly dangerous fugitives. The bureau publicizes these and other fugitives on its Web site, on the radio, and on the television program America’s Most Wanted. The FBI has captured many fugitives as a result of this publicity.

F

Crime Statistics

Since 1930, the FBI has served as a national clearinghouse for crime statistics through its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. Law enforcement agencies throughout the United States forward data monthly and annually to the FBI on the following crimes: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Agencies also report hate crimes, the overall number of people arrested, and the characteristics of those arrested.

The FBI publishes the statistics annually in the Uniform Crime Reports Bulletin. Although the Bulletin was created as a service for law enforcement agencies, it is now used by sociologists, legislators, city planners, and the media as an indicator of the crime rate.

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VI

History

A

Founding and Early Years

The agency that eventually became the FBI was founded on July 26, 1908, when U.S. attorney general Charles J. Bonaparte appointed Stanley W. Finch to head a new, unnamed investigative division within the Department of Justice. The division started with 34 special agents, 10 of whom were former Secret Service employees. It was named the Bureau of Investigation in 1909. The agency took its present name, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 1935.

In its early years, the agency’s jurisdiction was limited because most crimes were handled by local law enforcement agencies. Its investigative responsibilities included antitrust violations, bankruptcy fraud, postal fraud, violation of federal banking laws, destruction of government property, and certain crimes on Native American reservations. In 1910 Congress expanded the bureau’s jurisdiction by passing the White Slave Traffic Act (Mann Act), which made it a federal crime to transport girls or women across state lines for prostitution or other immoral purposes. The Motor Vehicle Theft Act (Dyer Act) of 1919 empowered the bureau to investigate whenever stolen automobiles were taken across state lines. These laws gave the bureau additional ways to combat organized crime and to investigate criminals who eluded local police by crossing state lines.

During World War I (1914-1918), Congress charged the bureau with investigating sabotage, espionage, and violations of draft laws and with conducting wartime counterintelligence efforts against the Central Powers. After the war, heightened concerns about foreign sabotage and internal security led to the “Red Scare” of 1919 and 1920. In 1919 Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer created the General Intelligence Division (GID) to investigate American radicals. Led by a Justice Department attorney named J. Edgar Hoover, the GID targeted anarchists, Communists, trade union activists, civil rights activists, and foreign resident agitators. In the so-called Palmer Raids of January 2 and 6, 1920, special agents and local police arrested thousands of Communists and suspected sympathizers across the country. However, the bureau came under sharp criticism when an independent review uncovered a range of abuses during the raids, including illegal searches and seizures, warrantless arrests, denial of legal counsel, and poor detainment conditions.

B

Hoover’s Reforms

In 1924 Hoover, by then assistant director of the FBI, was named director, and he instituted a series of reforms to restore professionalism and public support for the agency. By firing employees he considered unqualified and carefully choosing replacements, Hoover built a cadre of quality agents. He instituted many innovations in law enforcement, such as extensive training for agents and systematized reporting and filing of information. He also pioneered the use of scientific analysis as a tool of law enforcement, establishing the Technical Laboratory (now called the FBI Laboratory) in 1932. Hoover required agents to advise suspects of their rights when they were arrested, long before the Supreme Court’s 1966 decision in the Miranda v. Arizona case imposed the same requirement upon other American law enforcement agencies. During Hoover’s early years as director, the bureau’s agents developed a reputation for accuracy, honesty, and tenacity.

In the 1930s Congress made a number of crimes federal offenses, significantly expanding the bureau’s authority. In response to the kidnapping of the infant son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, Congress in 1932 passed the so-called Lindbergh Act, which made kidnapping a federal crime if the victim was transported across state lines. The law allowed the bureau to take control of the investigation and, eventually, to capture the kidnapper. After a series of highly publicized gangster crimes, in 1934 Congress made federal crimes of bank robbery, extortion, interstate racketeering, assault or murder of federal officials, transportation of stolen property across state lines, and interstate flight of felons. It also empowered special agents to execute warrants, carry firearms, and make arrests (previously agents had to rely on federal marshals or local police to make arrests). During 1934, federal agents tracked down and killed three notorious gangsters: John Dillinger, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and Lester Gillis (aka “Baby Face” Nelson). Hoover’s “G-men,” as agents were often called, became American folk heroes. The term G-man, an abbreviation for “government man,” was allegedly coined by gangster George “Machine Gun” Kelly, who was wanted by the bureau for kidnapping Charles F. Urschel, a wealthy oil executive, in 1933. When apprehended by special agents, Kelly reportedly exclaimed, “Don’t shoot, G-men! Don’t shoot!” and gave himself up. Whether or not the story is true, the term soon entered the language of popular culture.

C

World War II and Postwar Era

With the rise of fascist movements in Europe during the late 1930s and the continuing Great Depression in the United States, many policy makers feared the spread of fascism and Communism in the United States. In 1936 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with the cooperation of the State Department, secretly directed Hoover to investigate “subversive” movements in the United States. Three years later Roosevelt issued another secret directive giving the FBI the authority to investigate espionage, counterespionage, and related activities. The Smith Act of 1940, which outlawed the advocacy of the violent overthrow of the American government, also expanded the range of activities investigated by the FBI. During World War II (1939-1945), FBI agents tracked suspected spies, investigated sabotage, and pursued draft violators and military deserters. The FBI Laboratory cooperated with other federal agencies to decipher coded messages sent by enemy forces and governments abroad.

After the end of World War II, many American leaders believed that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Communism posed the greatest threat to American interests. As the United States and the Soviet Union entered the Cold War, the FBI shifted its focus to domestic security, escalating its counterintelligence activities and its monitoring of Communist groups and sympathizers. It arrested many leaders of the U.S. Communist Party, who were then prosecuted under the Smith Act. The FBI investigated allegations of disloyalty among federal employees in response to executive orders from Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. By leaking information in confidential FBI files, the agency also provided covert assistance to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in the late 1940s and later to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who charged that Communists had infiltrated the U.S. government. Throughout this period, the FBI monitored suspected Soviet agents and worked to thwart their efforts to recruit Americans as spies. Its most famous spy case involved Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were arrested by the FBI in 1950 for espionage. The two were convicted of passing to the Soviet Union secret information about the design of atomic weapons, and they were executed in 1953.

Many critics believe the FBI’s heavy emphasis on counterintelligence operations during World War II and the Cold War came at the expense of criminal investigations. The FBI spent much of its time recovering stolen cars, apprehending military deserters, and chasing down minor government thieves so Hoover could show Congress that the agency was making a high number of arrests. At the same time, the FBI virtually ignored more serious threats, such as organized crime, corruption involving public officials, financial crime, and terrorism. Hoover shied away from undercover investigations and drug trafficking inquiries, fearing they might invite controversy. “Don’t embarrass the bureau” was his constant dictum and often led to cover-ups within the FBI.

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