J. Edgar Hoover

John Edgar Hoover was born in Washington, D.C., on January 1, 1895. After high school he worked at the Library of Congress while attending night classes at the George WashingtonGeorge WashingtonGeorge Washington (1732–1799) was the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. Earlier he commanded the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787.Open the full entry University law school, receiving an LL.B. in 1916 and an LL.M. the following year.⁠[1][2]

He entered on duty with the U.S. Department of Justice on July 26, 1917, became an assistant to the attorney general in November 1918 and in 1919 took charge of the department’s General Intelligence Division (GID).⁠[1]

On August 22, 1921, William J. Burns, head of a private detective agency, became director of the Bureau of Investigation, and the 26-year-old Hoover was named assistant director; the GID moved into the Bureau that year.⁠[3][1]

On May 10, 1924, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone named the 29-year-old Hoover acting director of the Bureau of Investigation, and by the end of that year appointed him director.⁠[1][3]

He fired agents he considered political appointees or unqualified, ordered background checks, interviews and physical testing for new applicants, and revived the requirement that agents have legal or accounting training. On July 1, 1924, the Bureau set up an Identification Division that consolidated fingerprint collections in Washington.⁠[1][3]

On July 1, 1932, the Bureau was renamed the United States Bureau of Investigation; on November 24 that year it established a Technical Laboratory in Washington that provided forensic analysis to the Bureau and other law-enforcement agencies. From July 1, 1933, the Justice Department combined the Bureau and the Bureau of Prohibition in a Division of Investigation under his supervision.⁠[3][4]

Because the public confused Bureau agents with Prohibition agents, the Division of Investigation officially became the Federal Bureau of Investigation on July 1, 1935. On July 29 that year the FBI launched a national police training program with a class of 23 officers, the forerunner of the FBI National Academy.⁠[4][3]

In the 1930s the Bureau targeted violent gangster crime and promoted the professionalization of U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry law enforcement through training and forensic assistance. The FBI’s own history judges that Hoover “became as adept at publicizing his agency’s work as he was at administering it.” By the end of the decade the FBI had field offices in 42 cities, with 654 special agents and 1,141 support employees.⁠[1][4]

During World War II the FBI led domestic counterintelligence, counterespionage and countersabotage investigations, and President Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, the only president elected four times; he led the country through the Great Depression and World War II and greatly expanded the federal government’s role through the New Deal.Open the full entry tasked it with running a foreign intelligence service in the Western Hemisphere, the Special Intelligence Service (SIS). In the early Cold War it investigated the backgrounds of government employees to screen out foreign agents.⁠[1]

On March 14, 1950, the FBI began its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives program; traditional criminal cases such as car theft, bank robbery and kidnapping remained important.⁠[3][1]

From 1956 to 1971 the FBI ran COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program), which used covert and often extralegal means, including intense surveillance, infiltration, anonymous mailings and police harassment, to discredit and neutralize groups it regarded as subversive to U.S. political stability; targets included the Communist Party USA, the Socialist Workers Party, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Ku Klux Klan.⁠[5]

In 1971 the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office in Media, PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry, took confidential files and released them to the press, exposing the program. On April 28, 1971, Hoover formally ended all COINTELPRO operations.⁠[5][6]

In the 1960s and early 1970s the FBI expanded into civil rights and organized crime, and political violence and foreign espionage also drew significant resources. Presidents of both parties kept him in office despite his age and length of service. On June 1, 1968, Congress enacted a law under which future FBI directors would be appointed by the president with the Senate’s consent to 10-year terms, effective after his tenure.⁠[1][3]

He died in his sleep on May 2, 1972, at the age of 77, after leading the FBI for nearly 48 years. His body lay in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, an honor previously given to only 21 other Americans. President Richard NixonRichard NixonRichard Nixon (1913–1994) was an American politician who represented California in the U.S. House and Senate, served as vice president from 1953 to 1961 and was the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. His administration opened relations with China, signed strategic arms limitation agreements with the Soviet Union and ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War; he resigned over the Watergate scandal on August 9, 1974, the only U.S. president to do so.Open the full entry named L. Patrick Gray III acting director the following day.⁠[1][6][3]

On January 27, 1975, the Senate voted 82–4 to create the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church and known as the Church Committee, to determine “illegal, improper, or unethical activities” by federal agencies. Its staff researched COINTELPRO, which it described as “covert action designed to disrupt and discredit,” with targets including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the anti-Vietnam War movement, Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was an American Baptist minister and social activist who led the U.S. civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. He headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.Open the full entry and elected officials.⁠[7]

The committee issued its final report on April 29, 1976, with 96 recommendations. BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry records that the report sharply criticized COINTELPRO, saying that many of its techniques “would be intolerable in a democratic society” and calling it a “sophisticated vigilante operation” aimed at blocking the First Amendment rights of speech and association. In March 1976 Attorney General Edward H. Levi issued FBI intelligence guidelines in response to concerns raised by the Church and Pike committees.⁠[7][5][3]

He wrote the article on the FBI for the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, updating its statistics for the 1961 version; it described the Bureau’s work against criminals such as John Dillinger and its counter-subversion work. He also wrote the article on fingerprints for the same edition.⁠[8]

The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington was formally dedicated on September 30, 1975.⁠[3]

Britannica judges that he built the FBI into “a highly effective, if occasionally controversial, arm of federal law enforcement”; its article on COINTELPRO notes that he was criticized for overzealousness and for persecuting people he regarded as radical or subversive.⁠[2][5]

Federal Bureau of Investigation: Official website: https://www.fbi.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

United States Senate: Official website: https://www.senate.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]