Federal Bureau of Investigation

D

Antiradical Activities

In 1956 Hoover authorized the first in a series of secret FBI operations, code-named COINTELPRO (a contraction of the term counterintelligence program), aimed at disrupting the activities of a variety of political groups in the United States. The first COINTELPRO program targeted the U.S. Communist Party and suspected sympathizers. During the 1960s Hoover authorized more COINTELPRO programs to discredit and disrupt other organizations and movements, including black nationalist groups and civil rights organizations, socialist organizations, white supremacist groups, and New Left groups opposed to the Vietnam War (1959-1975). Under these programs and others, the FBI illegally broke into homes and businesses, engaged in wiretapping without proper authorization, collected derogatory information for political reasons, leaked unfavorable information to the media, and sent anonymous mailings to promote dissension within a group or between rival groups. Hoover also ordered aggressive surveillance of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and tried to discredit King by disseminating derogatory information about him to the media, Congress, and others.

Despite these abuses, in the mid-1960s the FBI became more aggressive in pursuing civil rights violations and terrorism against civil rights workers. The FBI brought to justice the murderers of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964. It also professionally investigated King’s assassination in 1968. The FBI found the fingerprint of James Earl Ray on the rifle that killed King. That allowed the FBI to identify Ray as the killer and apprehend him.

During the 1960s, Hoover increasingly used the resources of the FBI to preserve his own power. He kept detailed files on prominent politicians, including presidents and members of Congress. Hoover engaged in implicit blackmail by letting them know the bureau was aware of their sexual indiscretions and their other improprieties. Hoover also used the FBI for his own personal benefit. FBI employees added a front portico and a rear deck to Hoover’s home in Washington, D.C. They also painted his house each year, maintained his yard, built a fish pond, and constructed shelves and other conveniences for him. FBI employees reset Hoover’s clocks and prepared his tax returns. Today, a director who used taxpayer funds to maintain his home would be prosecuted. But no one dared to criticize Hoover or question whether he had outlived his usefulness.

E

Scandal and Reform After Hoover

Hoover died in 1972, almost 48 years after he first became director of the FBI. (A 1968 law limited the terms of future FBI directors to 10 years.) The Senate’s Watergate investigations of 1973 and 1974 revealed President Richard Nixon’s misuse of the FBI for his own political purposes. For example, Nixon had had the FBI wiretap prominent news reporters, White House aides, and other government officials, and he asked the agency to collect damaging information on his critics. In addition, Nixon’s chosen successor for Hoover, acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray, admitted in 1973 that he destroyed Watergate-related evidence and that he regularly showed White House counsel John Dean FBI files on the Watergate investigation; Gray subsequently resigned. The then deputy director of the FBI, W. Mark Felt, was subsequently implicated in another scandal. He was indicted and convicted of authorizing illegal break-ins related to investigations of the Weathermen terrorist group, although President Ronald Reagan later pardoned him. Ironically, Felt had been one of the key sources of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had been instrumental in bringing public attention to the Watergate burglary and investigation.

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Other revelations of FBI misconduct surfaced in the 1970s, including COINTELPRO, Hoover’s vendetta against Martin Luther King, Jr., and the fact that Hoover had maintained a secret office file containing damaging personal information on presidents, cabinet officials, members of Congress, and other prominent Americans. The disclosures of abuses hurt the FBI’s image as a highly professional agency. Whereas 84 percent of the public had a “highly favorable” opinion of the FBI in 1966, by 1975 this figure had fallen to only 37 percent.

In response to the reports of misconduct, the U.S. Senate and House in 1975 each established special committees to investigate abuses in the FBI, CIA, and other American intelligence agencies. The committees detailed the FBI’s abuses of power and illegal investigative techniques, criticized its lack of oversight, and recommended reforms, many of which were carried out. Among other reforms, the FBI implemented guidelines that limited the agency to investigating criminal conduct rather than divergent political beliefs. Acknowledging that some of the bureau’s activities had been “clearly wrong and quite indefensible,” Clarence M. Kelley, who became FBI director in 1973, said that the FBI should never again occupy the “unique position that permitted improper activity without accountability.” Thereafter, Congress supervised the agency more closely; both the Senate and House established permanent intelligence committees to monitor the FBI’s activity.

William H. Webster, a former federal judge and prosecutor, became FBI director in 1978. Under Webster the agency conducted complex investigations of espionage, organized crime, and white-collar crime. For example, in the late 1970s, in an undercover operation code-named ABSCAM, FBI agents uncovered political corruption of members of Congress, resulting in the convictions of six U.S. representatives, one U.S. senator, and many local officials. Webster complied with many of the reforms that were instituted following the congressional probes, but he was criticized for authorizing the investigation of a left-wing group, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), that raised money in the United States for humanitarian aid to El Salvador. Although the FBI’s investigation of the group was not illegal, it improperly delved into political activities that fell outside of the jurisdiction of the FBI.

Congress expanded the responsibilities of the FBI throughout the 1980s. After President Ronald Reagan made a “war on drugs” a policy priority, Congress granted the FBI concurrent jurisdiction with the Drug Enforcement Administration to investigate narcotics violations in the United States. After a number of terrorist acts killed Americans traveling or working abroad, Congress expanded the FBI’s jurisdiction in 1986 to include terrorist acts against American citizens conducted outside of United States territory. During the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, the FBI investigated hundreds of bank failures and uncovered evidence of widespread fraud.

F

Ruby Ridge and Waco Incidents

In the early 1990s the FBI’s involvement in two violent standoffs—the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents—raised new questions about its operations and use of deadly force. In the Ruby Ridge incident, federal marshals traveled to a remote mountain cabin near Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August 1992 to arrest white separatist and anti-government activist Randall (Randy) Weaver, who was wanted on a weapons charge. A shootout ensued in which a federal marshal and Weaver’s son were killed. The next day, FBI sharpshooters surrounded Weaver’s cabin, with authorization to “shoot on sight” any armed adult in the vicinity of the cabin. One of the sharpshooters shot and killed Weaver’s unarmed wife and wounded Weaver and a friend. Weaver was later acquitted of all major weapons charges and received a government settlement of $3.1 million, in which the government admitted no wrongdoing. Investigations by the Justice Department and Congress condemned the agency’s use of excessive force and resulted in disciplinary actions against FBI officials.

In the Waco incident in 1993, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) launched a raid on the compound of the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas, whose members were suspected of purchasing illegal weapons. During an ensuing gunfight, four ATF agents were killed, 16 agents were wounded, and a number of Branch Davidians were killed or wounded, although it is not known for certain how many. On April 19, 1993, following a 51-day standoff with the sect, FBI agents launched a tear-gas assault on the compound to force the Branch Davidians out. A fire soon engulfed the compound, resulting in the deaths of more than 80 Branch Davidians, including many children. Although the FBI was severely criticized in the aftermath of the tragedy, a federal judge and a special counsel concluded in 2000 that the Branch Davidians had deliberately started the fire and that federal agents were not responsible for their deaths. Critics maintained, however, that the FBI could have been more patient in ending the standoff.

The Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents led the FBI to institute several reforms. The agency revised its policy on deadly force to permit such force “only in the face of imminent death or serious physical injury to the officer or another person.” It also revised its procedures for reviewing shooting incidents to ensure an impartial investigation, and it changed its policies for managing crisis situations.

G

The FBI Under Freeh

In January 1993 the FBI suffered another scandal when allegations surfaced that William S. Sessions, who had become FBI director in 1987, had committed numerous ethics violations while in office. According to the allegations, later confirmed by a Justice Department investigation, Sessions took personal trips in the bureau’s plane, used FBI resources to construct a security fence around his home, and allowed his wife improper access to FBI headquarters. President Bill Clinton fired Sessions in July 1993 after he refused to resign. Louis J. Freeh, a former prosecutor, judge, and FBI agent, was appointed FBI director in 1993 following Sessions’s ouster. Freeh focused on expanding the bureau’s international presence and increasing the number of overseas offices.

The FBI also confronted new threats from terrorism. The FBI successfully investigated the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City, ultimately resulting in the conviction of six Islamic radicals for the bombing and ten other Islamic radicals for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks. The FBI quickly solved the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, arresting antigovernment activists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The bombing killed 168 people. In 1996 the agency identified Theodore Kaczynski as the so-called Unabomber, the man responsible for killing 3 people and injuring 23 others in a 17-year bombing campaign against industry, academia, and the airlines. In 1998 bombs were detonated at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 223 people and injuring thousands. The FBI’s investigation traced the bombings to a conspiracy by Islamic radicals to kill American citizens outside the United States. These bombings, combined with the earlier bombings on United States soil, increased the agency’s emphasis on domestic and international counterterrorism programs.

Alongside its successes, the FBI came under attack for its practices at the FBI Laboratory. In 1995 an FBI Laboratory chemist, Frederic Whitehurst, alleged that laboratory staff engaged in sloppy practices, fabricated evidence, and bent their findings to benefit prosecutions. A Justice Department investigation of laboratory practices, completed in 1997, failed to substantiate most of Whitehurst’s charges, but the investigation faulted laboratory examiners for substandard work, scientifically flawed reports, and misleading trial testimony, some of which tended to incriminate defendants. The FBI ordered reforms in report preparation, evidence handling, management, and other areas.

The FBI was also heavily criticized for its investigation of a bombing at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. During the course of the inquiry, FBI agents identified an Atlanta security guard, Richard Jewell, as the prime suspect in the bombing. The security guard was never charged with a crime and was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing. But Freeh and the FBI were criticized for allegedly leaking the suspect’s name to the media and for conducting initial questioning of the security guard under false pretenses.

The FBI’s counterespionage operations came under renewed scrutiny in a series of highly publicized spy cases. In 1984 Richard W. Miller became the first FBI agent arrested (and later convicted) for espionage. In 1994 the FBI arrested Aldrich H. Ames, a veteran CIA official, for selling secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia. The agency was criticized for not acting earlier to apprehend Ames. In 1996 another FBI agent, Earl E. Pitts, was arrested for selling classified FBI counterintelligence information to Russia; he was convicted in 1997. In 1999 the FBI arrested and jailed Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, on charges of illegally copying nuclear weapons design secrets from Los Alamos computers. When the government agreed to drop all but one of its charges against Lee, critics assailed the FBI and director Freeh for presuming Lee guilty of spying despite weak evidence. In 2001 the FBI arrested Robert P. Hanssen, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent, on charges that he had sold national security secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia for 15 years. The FBI ordered an independent review of how Hanssen escaped detection and said it would administer polygraph tests to agents in key national security positions.

Freeh retired as FBI director in 2001, two years before the end of his ten-year term. President George W. Bush appointed Robert S. Mueller III, a longtime federal prosecutor, as the new director. Mueller was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.

H

September 11 Attacks

On September 11, 2001, just over a month into Mueller’s tenure, a team of airplane hijackers carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in United States history, completely destroying the World Trade Center and severely damaging the Pentagon, the U.S. military headquarters outside of Washington, D.C. More than 3,000 people died in the attacks. The FBI launched the largest investigation in its history and soon determined that the hijackers were linked to al-Qaeda, a radical Islamic group led by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden (see September 11 Attacks). Later that year, the agency investigated the mailing of several letters containing potentially lethal anthrax bacteria to media companies and political offices.

In 2003 a congressional inquiry into the September 11 attacks issued a report that criticized the FBI and CIA for failing to share critical pieces of intelligence with each other and for overlooking important clues to the terrorist plot. For example, the inquiry found that FBI headquarters failed to heed warnings from its Phoenix office about terrorist suspects seeking to enroll in flight training schools or to act properly on a request from its Minneapolis office to conduct a search of an alleged conspirator in the terrorist attacks. In response to the report, Mueller noted that the FBI was already a “changed organization” that had restructured to make prevention of terrorist attacks its highest priority and that had improved coordination with the CIA and state and local law enforcement.

In 2004 an independent commission tasked with investigating the September 11 attacks repeated the criticisms of the congressional inquiry. The 9/11 Commission, known in full as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, concluded that before the attacks the FBI failed to share crucial information with other agencies and lacked an effective way to synthesize the collective knowledge of its field agents. Although the commission praised the FBI’s renewed focus on counterterrorism and its “significant progress” in improving its intelligence capabilities since the attacks, it also cited “gaps between some of the announced reforms and the reality in the field.”

The commission recommended changes in hiring, training, and management that would ensure the FBI develops an “institutional culture imbued with a deep expertise in intelligence and national security.” At the government level, the commission recommended the creation of a director of national intelligence (DNI) to unify intelligence-gathering work and the creation of a National Counterterrorism Center to analyze all terrorism-related intelligence and to plan counterterrorism operations.

The U.S. Congress implemented the recommendations to create the DNI and the National Counterterrorism Center when it passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The DNI coordinates and supervises the intelligence gathering and counterterrorism work of the FBI and 14 other intelligence agencies. The new law also created an intelligence directorate at the FBI and mandated that a select group of FBI agents be trained in intelligence gathering techniques. The training is to emphasize uncovering terrorist plots rather than gathering information for use in criminal prosecution.

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