Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Transcription

1 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) BRYANNA HAHN FOX Since its inception over 100 years ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has risen from being an underfunded, understaffed, and relatively unknown police agency to being one of the most respected, powerful, and recognized law enforcement agencies in the world. During this time, the FBI has investigated and captured offenders ranging from Al Capone to al-qaeda operatives, and become known for its owncastofcharactersincludingtheprofilersof the Behavioral Science Unit, the C-16 organized crime squad, the internal spy Robert Hanssen, and the FBI s first and most infamous director, J. Edgar Hoover. This entry presents a brief overview of the origins, responsibilities, and priorities of the FBI and discusses how these have intersected and evolved with some of the most legendary crimes in American history. The History of the FBI It was 1908, and the first Ford Model Ts were being rolled off the assembly lines, political and corporate corruption were rampant in the rapidly growing nation, and Al Capone, Baby Face Nelson, and John Dillinger were about to embark on their notorious lives of crime. To combat these issues, President Theodore Roosevelt instructed US Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte to sign an order to appoint nine special agents at the Department of Justice to investigate the rising proportion of federal violations. Over the following years, the number of federal crimes increased, as did the number of special agents at the United States Bureau of Investigation. By 1915, there were more than 300 special agents serving under the direction of Chief Examiner StanleyW.Finch,andthe Bureau hadestablished field offices across the nation (FBI, 2008). The Bureau s priorities at that time were mostly domestic, though some agents were stationed along the Mexican border to collect intelligence on the ongoing revolution, and serve as the first border patrol agents to prevent illegal smuggling and immigration into the United States. However, the priorities of the FBI changed drastically in 1917 with the start of World War I. The Bureau was put in charge of enforcing the newly passed Espionage, Selective Service, and Sabotage Acts, and began to function more as a counter-spy agency than a national police department. Special agents were largely tasked with gathering intelligence, identifying spies and defectors, rounding up army deserters, and enforcing a variety of other war-related crimes. Even after the end of the war in 1918, Americans became enormously fearful and growingly intolerant of communism, leading to the Red Scare of the 1920s (FBI, 2008). Furthermore, in 1920, Congress ratified the 18th Amendment making it illegal to sell or import any intoxicating beverages in the United States, and putting Prohibition into effect. Inadvertently, these developments led to a massive outbreak of crime and violence across the nation, and the exponential increase in power for the FBI to identify and apprehend all enemies, foreign and domestic. By 1926, a full-fledged crime epidemic was sweeping the United States, with more than 12,000 murders, mostly gang-related, occurring every year, on top of the bootlegging, gambling, bank robbery, illegal speakeasies, kidnapping, auto theft, and corruption rampant in all corners of the country. On top of this, the federal police agency was rocked by scandal as the nation learned that Bureau agents were assigned to spy on members of Congress, largely due to the Red Scare (FBI, 2008). After some major internal housekeeping, a 29-year-old lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover was appointed to be the new director of the United States Bureau of Investigation, and the agency was forever changed. When Director Hoover assumed power in 1924, the Bureau employed 441 special agents and 650 support staff stationed in nine nationwide field offices (FBI, 2008). By the end of the decade, Hoover had expanded the Bureau to 30 field The Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment, First Edition. Edited by Wesley G. Jennings John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOI: / wbecpx128

2 2 FEDERAL B UREAU OF I NVESTIGATION (FBI) offices from San Francisco to Chicago, fired all agents he considered unqualified, and implemented new formal training and merit-based promotion criteria for the growing number of special agents in the agency (FBI, 2008). Science and statistics also took a front seat in Hoover snewfbi,asheestablishedtheidentification and Information Division ( Ident ), tasked with collecting and matching fingerprints of offenders from across the nation, as well as compiling uniform and nationwide crime statistics (FBI, 2008). Both developments greatly aided the Bureau in tracking and catching serial offenders, and in watching trends in crime. Most importantly, Hoover recognized that it would be impossible to fight crime (and communism) withouttheresoundingsupportandrespectof the public. He therefore established the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin in 1932 to publicize to police agencies and the public the list of Most Wanted Fugitives, up-and-coming policing techniques, and the biggest busts by the agency s revered G-Men. Hoover held each of his agents to an exceptionally high standard of fidelity, integrity, and bravery, to ensure that they were the best in the world. As a result, just three short years later, several of the most violent gangsters in the country, including Machine Gun Kelly, Al Capone, John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, Baby Face Nelson, and Bonnie and Clyde, were listed in the Law Enforcement Bulletin as apprehended or slain public enemies, and Hoover s G-Men became household names and pop culture heroes (FBI, 2008). To top it off, in 1935 the organization was granted additional powers by Congress to carry guns and make arrests, and was formally renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, 2008). By 1943, the total number of FBI employees rose to over 13,000, with an additional 4,000 special agents stationed in 54 field offices across the United States. The FBI and the nation were mostly prosperous during World War II, though, as during World War I, the focus tended to shift abroad rather than domestically. This became more pronounced toward the end of the war, after American scientists developed and deployed the first atomic bombonhiroshima,japan.whiletheuseofthe nuclear weapon effectively ended World War II, it became instantly clear that the weapon could also be used against the United States if the secret to building the bomb was ever released (FBI, 2008). As US relations with the Soviet Union began to sour, and the communist nation developed their first atomic bomb in 1949, fear of nuclear warfare and global spread of communism engulfed America as the new Cold War began. Consequently, the FBI focused all available efforts on preventing the Soviets from gaining any additional technology or intelligence from the United States, and began the first internal search for the mole that helped the USSR steal the secrets to building an atomic bomb. On February 2, 1950, Klaus Fuchs, a British physicist working in the United States on the secret Manhattan Project, confessed to giving military secrets to thesoviets.healsoledthefbitojuliusand Ethel Rosenberg, American communists who led the spy ring and ultimately disclosed the classified documents from the Manhattan Project that instructed the Soviets how to build their nuclear weapon. In the end, the Rosenbergs were arrested, convicted, and ultimately executed for treason. From this time forward, Hoover s FBI doubled their efforts to keep one eye open for public enemies while continuing to diligently search for foreign dangers. To combat these new internal threats, the FBI was now making significant progress. In March 1950 the FBI released its first Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list to increase the national exposure and the FBI s ability to enlist the help of state and local law enforcement agencies in apprehending dangerous fugitives. With the Cold War beginning to heat up, the focus on internal threats remained a top priority with Hoover and the FBI. In 1956, Hoover began the top-secret Counterintelligence Program, known as Cointelpro, which aimed specifically at identifying and disrupting the activities of the Communist Party in the United States. Within five years, Cointelpro expanded to allow secret intelligence gathering on members of the Socialist Workers Party. Furthermore, in 1964 the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) was added; the Black Panthers were included in 1967, and by 1971 most groups deemed to be a domestic threat were included on the FBI s approved covert intelligence-gathering list. Then, in 1971, after an FBI office was burgled by members of a radical group and reports documenting the secret tactics and operations of Cointelpro and the program s very existence were leaked to

3 F EDERAL B UREAU OF I NVESTIGATION (FBI) 3 the press, it became clear that the FBI s tactics had gone too far (FBI, 2008). After evidence of questionable and in some cases unconstitutional intelligence-gathering methods, J. Edgar Hoover was forced by Congress to end all Cointelpro operations in April 1971 (FBI, 2008). The 1960s were also a very challenging time for the FBI for other reasons. With the onset of the civil rights movement, the anti-establishment social trend, political assassinations, and violent opposition to the Vietnam War, the FBI had more than enough domestic issues on their plate. The convergence of these issues resulted in a slew of crime, violence, civil unrest, and national security crises that the nation had not seen since the gangland days of Prohibition. Specifically, three major assassinations took place in the 1960s. The first was in 1963, when PresidentJohnF.KennedywasshotandkilledbyLee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas a crime the FBI was asked to investigate by President Lyndon B. Johnson, despite its classification considering it a local homicide case at the time. Then, five years later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis after James Earl Ray fired a fatal shot at the civil rights leader. Finally, two months after Dr. King s assassination, the late President Kennedy s brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was slain by Sirhan Sirhan while traveling in Los Angeles, California. Before closing the case on these murders, hundreds of FBI agents reportedlytrackeddowntensofthousandsof investigative leads, conducted more than 30,000 interviews, and produced thousands of pages in official reports. Despite the overwhelming amount of data collected, questions remain about whetheroswald,ray,andsirhanactedalone when carrying out these assassinations, and whether there was any conspiracy by the American government to kill or cover up the killings of these polarizing political leaders. Furthermore, in response to the civil rights movement and US involvement in Vietnam, there wasamassiveincreaseinsocialunrestthatcame from major cities in the north, small southern towns, and college campuses across the nation. While most demonstrations were peaceful, the 1960s were also marked by a propensity for groups to resort to chaos and violence when challenging the establishment. It is estimated that, by 1970, there were 3,000 bombings and 50,000 bomb threats within the United States every year, most of which were handled by the FBI. By the end of the 1960s, the FBI employed over 6,700 special agents and 9,300 support staff in 58 domestic field offices and 12 legal attaché offices abroad. On May 2, 1972, a long and historic chapter of the FBI came to a close with the death of J. Edgar Hoover,whohadservedasFBIdirectorforalmost 48 years. Happily, Hoover lived to see his ultimate dream, the opening of the FBI Academy training facility in Quantico, Virginia, before he died. To this day, all new FBI agents and participants in the prestigious National Academy are trained at the state-of-the-art facilities in Quantico. The Academy is also home to the FBI s top criminal profilers, behavioral scientists, and criminological minds, in the now-legendary Behavioral Science Unit (BSU). In the 40 years since it was established, the BSU has been the subject of countless films,tvshows,andbooks,includingthe Silence of the Lambs, thex-files, andcriminal Minds, and has produced world-renowned profilers such as Roy Hazelwood, John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and more. The high-quality training and scientific endeavors undertaken at the FBI Academy are still considered the capstone in Hoover s tenure as FBI director. While Hoover certainly had overstepped some legal and ethical bounds during his half-century involvement with the FBI, he also deserves the sole credit for turning the FBI into an investigative powerhouse through his pioneering use of science, statistics, and public relationstofightcrimeandterrorism,andraising the bar of law enforcement capabilities and professionalism around the globe (FBI, 2008). The day after J. Edgar Hoover s death, L. Patrick GraywasappointedtoleadtheBureaubyPresident Nixon, and one of his first acts as acting director in 1972 was to appoint the first women asspecialagents somethingformerdirector Hoover was never prepared to do. A few weeks later, five men authorized by Republican Party officials were arrested for burglary and wiretapping at the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Office building in Washington DC.TheWatergatescandalandWhiteHouse cover-up had just begun, and the new acting director was drawn into the middle of it. Even though unbiased agents conducted a thorough investigation of the Watergate break-in under Gray s direction, it became clear that the politics

4 4 FEDERAL B UREAU OF I NVESTIGATION (FBI) would not allow for Gray to be confirmed by the Senate as director, and Gray removed his name from consideration. On July 9, 1973, former FBI agent and Kansas City Police Chief Clarence KelleywasappointedtobethenewFBIdirector. After the tumultuous 1960s and the scandals of the early 1970s, Director Kelley sought to restore public trust in the FBI, law enforcement, and government. Within weeks of his appointment, top Nixon Administration officials, including the Vice President and President Nixon himself, all resigned amid FBI charges of obstruction of justice, tax evasion, and other crimes. Director Kelley also established the first hierarchy of priorities when pursuing federal investigations. The three top priorities, in order, were foreign counterintelligence, organized crime, and white-collar crime. In addition to recruiting more women as special agents, the FBI began recruiting agents with more specialized and experienced professional backgrounds, such as in accounting andlaw.kelleyalsoapprovedtheuseofthefirst laser technology to detect latent crime scene fingerprints in By the time Kelley stepped down as director later that year, he had ushered in a new era of law enforcement to the FBI and police agencies across the nation. The next director of the Bureau, former US judge William H. Webster, built upon the work of Clarence Kelley by increasing the use of science andtechnologyinthefbi,andaddingafourth priority to the FBI s agenda: counterterrorism. By the mid 1980s, the illegal drug trade began to explode, and the US Attorney General gave the FBI concurrent jurisdiction over narcotics violations with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The drug epidemic also caused a great dealofviolence,particularlyinthesouthernand border states, leading to the FBI s creation of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC). Through the joint efforts of the DEA, FBI, and the NCAVC, significant progress was made in hampering the import of illegal drugs into the United States, and dismantling major organized drug rings domestically and abroad. At the same time, the FBI focused on the top national security priorities, and solved so many high-profileespionagecasesthatthepressdubbed 1985 the year of the spy. Perhaps as a result of his success in counterintelligence and counterterrorism, Director Webster was asked to leave the FBI to become Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which he did in May In November 1987, former federal judge William Sessions was sworn in as the next FBI director. While the FBI had actively pursued drug crimes and violence for the past 10 years, the 40% increase in violent and narcotics-related offenses in the late 1980s led Director Sessions to designate drugs and violent crime as the FBI s fifthandsixthtopnationalpriorities.todothis, the FBI once again adopted the newest and most promising techniques available to law enforcement, including the use of the DNA forensic technology at the FBI labs. And for the first time since its inception, Director Sessions made crime prevention a top priority for the Bureau, adding drug and violence reduction programs to the FBI s agenda. The added initiatives also led to a large expansion of the Bureau workforce, with the FBI employing over 9,600 special agents and 13,600 support staff across 58 field offices and 15 foreign attachés by Then, two events in the early 1990s had a major impact on the FBI s policies and operations. In August 1992, US marshal William Degan was killed at Ruby Ridge, Idaho while surveiling a federalfugitivenamedrandallweaver.unfortunately, during the standoff between Weaver and Degan, Weaver s wife was accidentally shot and killed by an FBI sniper. A few months later, another tragedy occurred when a standoff between FBI agents and heavily armed members of a religious group who had killed four agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms led to the death of 80 people, including children, when the religious group set their compound in Waco, Texas on fire as the FBI agents helplessly watched. These incidents led to congressional and public inquiries about the FBI s ability to respond to crisis situations, and in July 1993 Director Sessions was removed from his position by President Clinton. The next director of the FBI, former special agent and US judge Louis J. Freeh, was sworn in during the summer of Director Freeh aimed hissightsatdeepeningthefbi scommitment to forging strong domestic and international partnerships to solve the most serious issues at home and abroad. Between 1993 and 1996, there was a distinct rise in the number of terroristic offenses committed in the United States. The

5 F EDERAL B UREAU OF I NVESTIGATION (FBI) 5 World Trade Center was bombed for the first time in 1993, Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995, and the UNABOMBER, also known as Theodore Kaczynski,beganhisreignofterroracrossthenation in In response to these attacks, as well as the tragedies that occurred at Ruby Ridge and Waco in the early 1990s, the Bureau formed the Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG), based at the FBI Academy in Quantico, to deal more efficiently with crisis situations in the future. Another major crisis the FBI dealt with under Director Freeh s leadership was identifying and apprehending its first major internal breach by the now convicted spy, Robert Hanssen. Hanssen joined the FBI in 1976 as a special agent assigned to the New York counterintelligence division, where he investigated and prevented espionage by the Soviet Union. But only three years after joining the Bureau, Hanssen himself became a Soviet (and later a Russian) spy. Over the next 22 years, Hanssen would leak enormous amounts of top-secret intelligence, including the names of Soviet defectors working undercover for the US government. One such informant, a Soviet general named Dmitri Polyakav, was actually double-exposed by another mole from the CIA, Aldrich Ames. However, Hanssen was never identifiedastheleak,asameswastheonlyspy Polyakov exposed before he was executed in Hanssen was nearly exposed twice more: once when his wife caught him writing letters to the Soviets, and again when he approached a guard outside the Russian embassy in 1991 and stated he was a disaffected FBI agent who was willing to offer his services as a spy. The Russian Embassy actually alerted the US State Department about the incident, believing that Hanssen was a double agent trying to trick them into confessing to espionage. However, the incident fell through the cracks and Hanssen was never investigated. By this time, the FBI had begun to notice that there was a mole in their midst, but as two spies were operating simultaneously in the FBI and CIA, catching them was even more difficult. Once the CIA mole, Aldrich Ames, was arrested in 1994, thefbiwasabletoformajointmole-hunting team to catch the second spy. After searching for several years, the FBI decided they would buy the mole s identity, and paid $7 million to a source from the KGB to receive the file on the spy. In November 2000, the FBI finally obtained the file, and the lead agent wasabletorecognizethevoiceonanaudiofile right away. It was his colleague, Robert Hanssen. In February 2001, Hanssen decided to do one more drop, and left a garbage bag full of classified intelligence in a park in Virginia for his Russian contacttocollect.thefbi,whohadbeenwatching his every move, caught Hanssen in the act and arrested him on the spot. Hanssen s only response to the agents was, What took you so long? To this day, Hanssen has never indicated any political or ideological motive for his activities, tellingthefbiafterhewascaughtthathisonly motivation was money. After the series of terrorist bombings and espionage cases between 1993 and 2001, the FBI s priorities, outreach, and financial resources expanded to address the increasingly international nature of the crimes it was facing. In 1994, the FBI opened its first legal attaché office in Moscow, capital of the formerly communist Russia, and sharpened joint efforts against organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism across the globe. The FBI s budget also grew by more than $1.27 billion during these years, with the Bureau hiring over 5,000 new agents and 4,000 support personnel to achieve the new set of goals. By the time Director Freeh left the FBI for a new position in June 2001, a new age of law enforcement was on the horizon, and the FBI seemed well prepared to deal with any crime it faced, both foreign and domestic. Then came September 11, After being sworn in as the new FBI director less than one week before, former US attorney Robert Mueller IIIwaslaunchedintoamuchdarkertimewhen al-qaeda successfully committed the first terrorist attacks on US soil since Pearl Harbor. Almost immediately, the FBI s priorities took a drastic turn, with massive investigative efforts placed on counterintelligence analysis and national security in the wake of the devastating attacks on Washington DC, Pennsylvania, and New York City. In October of 2001, President George W. Bush signed into law the US Patriot Act, granting the FBI and other federal agencies unprecedented license to investigate and prevent future threats of terrorism to the American people. Since then, the Bureau has made it their new mission to prevent any future terrorist attacks against Americans,

6 6 FEDERAL B UREAU OF I NVESTIGATION (FBI) counter foreign intelligence operations against the United States, and address cybercrime attacks on US businesses and government (FBI, 2008). Priorities of the FBI Asaresultofthenewwaveofterrorism,counterintelligence, and cyber attacks in the United States, the official priorities of the FBI underwent a complete restructuring in 2002, with protecting the United States from terrorist attacks leaping to priority number 1. Protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage is now priority 2, and protecting the States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes has been added at priority 3. Priority 4 is to combat and prevent public corruption at all levels, and priority 5 is to protect American citizens civil rights. Priority 6 is to combat criminal organizations and enterprises, also known as organized crime; and the pursuit of white-collar criminals is now priority 7. The FBI s lowest criminal priority, contrary to public perception, is to combat violent crime. Priorities 9 and 10 are to support state, local, federal, and international partners, and to upgrade technologytosuccessfullyperformallotherfbimissions and priorities. Today s FBI In this new era of cops and robbers, in more restricted financial times, the FBI has still managed to maintain, if not improve, its capabilities as the top law enforcement agency in the world.inthepast10years,thebureauhasdedicated itself to upgrading its training standards and technological infrastructure, and recruiting more top-notch agents and staff to successfully accomplish each of its top priorities. Today, the FBI is known for its world-renowned agents, pioneering new law enforcement techniques, and catching some of the most notorious criminals in history. The newest FBI Director, JamesB.Comey,wasappointedtohisposition in June 2013, and has already developed a reputation among those in the Bureau, and partner law enforcement agencies, for his integrity, dedication, and humility as he leads the FBI into the next chapter of its history. SEE ALSO: Crime Measurement; Police History; Police: Administration and Organization; Uniform Crime Reports. Reference FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). (2008). The FBI: A centennial history, Washington, DC: US Department of Justice. Further Readings Holden, H. M. (2008). FBI 100 years: An unofficial history. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press. Kessler, R. (2011). The secrets of the FBI. New York: Crown Publishers.