In 1955, United Airlines flight 629 exploded
in midair above Colorado, sending debris, engine parts, luggage, and cargo scattering
across the ground. All 39 passengers and 5 crew members were
killed. FBI investigators collected the evidence and
performed background checks on the passengers - slowly putting together a narrative of what
had occurred. They identified a man named John Gilbert Graham,
who was the life insurance and will beneficiary of one of the women on board the plane...
his mother. He held a grudge against her for placing him
in an orphanage as a child. Christ-on-a-cracker, well Graham cracker,
you could have just slipped arsenic in her tea. When the FBI searched his property they discovered
bomb-making parts identical to those found in the wreckage. Shockingly, no law at the time existed for
blowing up an aeroplane full of people, so Graham was charged with the single premeditated
murder of his mother, despite causing the deaths of 43 other people. He was found guilty and executed soon after. For the last 100 years, the FBI has hunted
some of the most dangerous criminals on the planet. Thieves, serial killers, gangsters, and terrorists
have all found themselves in the crosshairs of America’s finest FBI agents. These days, the FBI employs roughly 35,000
people across 55 field offices in the US, and one in Puerto Rico. Aside from the Special Agents -which Hollywood
has shown us in everything from Silence of the Lambs to Die Hard- the FBI employs scientists,
intelligence analysts, support professionals, information technology experts, and many more…
all of whom come together for one reason and one reason only: to hunt down criminals and
bring them to justice. But impressive as this 35,000-strong army
of seasoned manhunters is today, there was a time not so long ago when nothing like the
FBI even existed. In 1908, Attorney General Charles Bonaparte
met President Theodore Roosevelt at a Civil Service reform meeting in Baltimore in what
was a very different USA to the one we know today. Innovations like the railroad had helped the
rapid spread of people throughout the country during the nineteenth century, supporting
a population explosion. And it wasn’t only the nation’s cities
that were mushrooming - the crime rate was, too. But at the time, there was almost no way to
enforce the law on such a grand scale, with most police forces focusing at the community,
or sometimes state-level. At that meeting in Baltimore, President Roosevelt
instructed Charles Bonaparte - who bore a striking resemblance to Poirot and was, randomly
enough, the great nephew of French general and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte - to change
all that. As progressives, the two men were united by
their politics and the belief that ability, rather than political connections, should
be the deciding factor in the recruitment of law enforcement personnel. Such was their dedication to the ideal of
a true meritocracy that after Roosevelt boasted he had dished out border patrol jobs to candidates
with the best marksmanship rather than the most influential mates, Bonaparte responded
- jokingly, I hope - by suggesting Roosevelt should instead have had his candidates shoot
at each other and given the jobs to the survivors. Under Roosevelt’s authority, on 26th July
1908 Bonaparte formed a corps of special agents that would soon be known as the Bureau of
Investigation. Led by Chief Examiner Stanley Finch, the Bureau’s
first ever director, this team of just 34 people were the pioneers of what would go
on to become the FBI we know today. This might not sound like much, but back in
1908, creating an operation like this in America was controversial. Much like today, the US was pretty big on
its freedoms and many people didn’t like the idea of an oppressive government ruling
across state lines. So introducing an agency of law enforcement
experts with a remit to do exactly that wasn’t met with cheers and applause - and many citizens
weren’t cooperative with investigations. In those early days, the Bureau of Investigation
primarily spent its time dealing with civil rights cases including antitrust, land fraud,
banking fraud, copyright violations, and forced labor, as well as the odd national security
threat. . But when it was asked to take the investigative
lead on the newly-passed Mann Act, also known as the White Slave Traffic Act, its power
and influence began to grow… Which was lucky, because the coming years
were going to present the young agency with one hell of a challenge. In many ways, the Bureau was formed at just
the right time. In 1908, a nine year old kid by the name of
Alphonso Capone was already making a name for himself on the streets of Brooklyn; John
Dillenger, just five at the time, was living his best life on his parents’ farm in Indiana,
and Dillinger’s future partner in crime - literally - Lester Joseph Gillis, though
you probably know him by his nickname, Baby Face Nelson - would be born within the year. Thanks in no small part to that motley crew,
1921 to 1933 were years so rife with gangsters and flagrant disregard for Prohibition, which
had kicked in in 1920, that they’re often called The “Lawless Years.” And, although the Bureau had swollen to some
300 agents and an additional 300 support agents off the back of some early successes, they
would have to get creative if they were going to prevail in the war on crime. And get creative they did. Al Capone, all grown up and now sporting the
catchy nickname ‘Scarface’ had reigned supreme at the head of the “Chicago outfit”
for 7 years when he had 7 members of rival North Side gang executed by firing squad on
Valentine’s Day in 1929. The old romantic. But Capone was a smart man, and though it
was the worst kept secret in Chicago that he was behind the hit, there was little evidence
on which to indict him. Capone did end up in the slammer later that
year when he was caught carrying a concealed deadly weapon - but he was back out on the
streets again within 9 months thanks to - you really can’t make this stuff up - good behaviour. Unsurprisingly, the Bureau were less than
satisfied with this outcome, and determined to nail their man they opened an investigation
against him. In the end, they got him on tax evasion of
all things. Because yes, believe it or not illegally earned
income is subject to income tax in the US. It just goes to show, you can have people
brutally murdered by firing squad… But don’t you dare try and cheat the IRS. Another big scalp came when the FBI took on
the Klu Klux Klan. After falling into relative obscurity towards
the end of the nineteenth century, the bedsheet-wearing racists were enjoying something of a resurgence
by the nineteen twenties. Under the guiding hand of Edward Young Clarke,
the Klan were once again rising to prominence, boasting one million new members. For his efforts, Clarke was granted the title
“Imperial Kleagle,” a senior position in the Klan but not quite a Grand Wizard. Apparently looking like a bunch of kids dressing
up for halloween wasn’t enough for these guys - they had to give themselves dungeons
and dragons nicknames as well. Despite the cross-burnings, murders, and lynchings,
the Bureau wasn't able to investigate Clarke, since none of the laws he was breaking were
federal. That is, until some enterprising young agent
had an idea. You see, Clarke had been doing very well out
of the huge number of new initiates joining the Klan, personally profiting from 80% of
every 10 dollar membership fee. With his pockets full of cash - wait, do bed
sheets have pockets? With his... pillowcases?... full of cash, he did what so many rich men
in positions of power had done before - he got himself a mistress. But when he took said strumpet on a jaunt
over state lines, the Bureau realised they had him in violation of the Mann act. Because, hey, feel free to recruit people
to your racist organisation, but don’t you dare try and get laid on a dirty weekend away
with your side chick. On May 10th, 1924, the Bureau appointed a
new head - a man by the name of John Edgar Hoover. Like his predecessors, Hoover dreamed of making
the Bureau a shining example of a meritocracy. He immediately fired agents he believed were
underqualified, and only promoted the most effective to senior positions. He implemented regular office inspections
to keep his men on their toes, , and rigorous training courses were introduced for new agents. An early success of this new regime came when
Hoover established the Bureau’s identification division, with the aim of better keeping track
of criminals. At the time,the majority of fingerprint records
were stored locally from city to city, and, astonishingly, the first use of a centralised
system was housed in a prison and staffed by convicts. Which was about as good an idea as building
a jelly bean factory in an obesity clinic. In 1926, Hoover had the collection moved to
Washington under Bureau administration, and soon after, other agencies began supplying
their data. A few years later in 1929, the American stock
market went, as we say in the UK, tits up. Like many catastrophes, the Great Depression
proved to be fertile ground in which criminals thrived.. One of them, John Dillinger, had swapped milking
cows on his parent’s farm in Indiana for something a little more exciting - bank robbery. And he wasn’t emptying vaults, Dillinger
and his gang took time off to murder people and stage jailbreaks for their incarcerated
pals.Dillinger was seen as a Robin Hood-type hero by some, and when he was shot and killed
by the Bureau’s agents, his legend was, if anything, bolstered. But so was the Bureau’s. Thanks to stopping Dillinger and others like
him, the organisation became a household name for the first time, and it’s agents began
appearing in popular culture. To capitalise on this newfound prestige, in
1935, Hoover felt like it was time for a rebrand - he decided the Federal Bureau of Investigation
had a certain ring to it. He was right - the FBI is now probably the
most famous intelligence agency worldwide. But there was no time for backslapping and
soggy biscuit, because across the Atlantic, an angry Austrian named Adolf Hitler had recently
risen to power. As World War II broke out across Europe, the
United States remained neutral. But a similar brand of fascism to that which
had taken root in Hitler’s Germany found itself at home in a depression-stricken America. There was increased racial and labour unrest
and the American Communist Party saw its influence grow. Frightened by the potential for subversion
on a mass scale, in 1939 a Presidential direction was signed that permitted the FBI to investigate
political agitators. As the war escalated, the FBI’s role expanded
to track down any “potentially dangerous” citizens with antecedents from Axis nations
- that is, people of German, Italian, or Japanese heritage. After Pearl Harbour was attacked, FBI agents
rounded up over 110,000 Japanese Americans and held them as prisoners of war - all under
the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In June 1942, two German submarines covertly
deposited agents on US soil. Evading the coast guard, they made their way
inland and began to blend in with the locals. But one of the agents, a man named George
Dasch, grew so terrified of capture that he turned himself in to the FBI, passing on information
that led to the capture of the rest of the agents while he was at it. The prisoners were tried shortly afterwards,
and those that were uncooperative were executed. The FBI’s swift work in this case and others
like it helped to bolster American confidence in their ability even further, and bBy the
end of 1943, the FBI’s numbers had swelled to over 13,000 employees. The 1960s were a particularly turbulent time
for the FBI, and the United States in general. President Kennedy was assassinated, crime
was on the rise, and violence against the establishment was becoming ever more common. The Vietnam war was met with widespread protest,
and not just in the form of peace signs. In 18 months between 1971 and 1972, the FBI
recorded 2,500 bombings, almost five per day. The Civil Rights Movement spearheaded by figures
like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X was also well underway, and Hoover initiated a
secret counterintelligence program to spy on and disrupt so-called radical organisations. This program, named COINTELPRO, heavily targeted
King and Malcolm X, while in the open, Hoover criticised the new emerging forms of protest
used by the civil rights movement and others as “a conspiracy reflected by questionable
moods and attitudes, by unrestrained individualism, by nonconformism in dress and speech, even
by obscene language, rather than by formal membership in specific organizations.” So, in other words, if you weren’t boring,
you were a commie. Of course, it wasn’t until 2015 when we
finally discovered the link between vibrant hair dye and communism – if only Hoover
would have known he could have saved himself a buck or two. This period also saw the FBI encounter a whole
host of bizarre new cases that would test their agents to their limits. In 1962, three men mysteriously vanished from
Alcatraz prison - a case that remains unsolved to this day. In 1968, the serial killer known as Zodiac
arrived on the scene and taunted the authorities and media with cryptic messages and grisly
murders. On December 8th, 1963, three men kidnapped
Frank Sinatra junior, son of the legendary singer and actor, holding him ransom in the
hope of making some cash out of ol’ blue eyes’ himself.. The kidnappers were stopped by police while
Sinatra junior was stuffed in the trunk, but they managed to bluff their way back to their
hideout. Frank senior coughed up and paid the ransom,
but the kidnappers were caught by FBI agents soon afterwards and most of the cash was recovered. The 70s and 80s saw the FBI establish new
national priorities: foreign counterintelligence, organised crime,white-collar crime and counterterrorism. The last of which was about to become the
priority number one, when a homemade explosive was detonated at Chicago university… The first attack in what would become a 17-year
reign of terror perpetrated by the man known as the Unabomber. But more on him later… One of the strangest cases of the 70s was
that of student Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation army
- which sounds like a political group from Monty Python’s the Life of Brian, but was
actually a terrorist group seeking all-out war against the US capitalist state. But things got a little weird when footage
emerged of Hearst swearing allegiance to the very Symbionese Liberation Army she had been
abducted by, and they got weirder still when she was seen robbing a bank later that year
weilding an M1 carbine. By all accounts, it seemed like she’d been
working with the People’s Symbionese Front – I mean Symbionese Liberation Army – all
along. The FBI tracked the SLA to a warehouse where
a massive shootout occurred and, when the safe house caught fire, 6 SLA members were
burned alive…. But Hearst wasn’t among them. She had escaped, but the FBI was hot on her
tail. On September 18th, 1975 she was caught and
charged with robbery. During her trial, the defence claimed she
had been brainwashed, referring to her as a ‘low-IQ zombie’, but the jury found
her guilty all the same, sentencing her to 35 years in prison, later reduced to 7. She was later pardoned by President Clinton
– but then the philanderer did have a penchant for pardoning terrorists, especially comunist
terrorists, he granted so many grot bags and bombers clemency it became a scandal called
Pardongate. During the 1980s, against a backdrop of repeated
bombings by the Unabomber, the illegal drug trade was on the rise and the FBI was awarded
joint jurisdiction with the DEA over narcotics-related crimes. Concurrent to this, the FBI was growing more
sophisticated in its forensic methods, with breakthroughs in DNA technology helping to
reliably identify or rule out suspects. This in turn created a new DNA index -similar
to the fingerprint index- which helped keep track of dangerous suspects. Despite the technological breakthroughs, the
FBI was still unable to catch the Unabomber, a failing that was widely condemned in the
media, as was a failed raid of a religious sect in Waco Texas that led to 80 people,
including children, being burned alive. By the time the 90s came around, international
crime was becoming a serious business and the FBI director at the time, Louis Freeh,
even travelled to Sicily in 1993 and publicly compelled the Sicilian people to break free
of the mafia's grip. All while the mob watched from the crowd. The 90s was also when the FBI finally managed
to gain some traction with the Unabomber case... Between 1978 and 1995 the Unabomber had carried
out a series of bombing attacks, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others. A 150-strong task force had been created by
the FBI to find him, without success. He left no forensic evidence, created bombs
from readily available scrap metal, and chose his victims at random. But his luck was about to change... In 1995 the Unabomber released a 30,000-word
manifesto expressing a desire to strike out against modern technology and advocating a
return to primitive society and nature. After much deliberation, the FBI released
the manifesto to the press in the hopes that someone would recognise the killers' words. And someone did. David Kaczynski contacted the FBI and described
how he had a troubled, loner brother named Ted. He described how his brother was something
of a genius, taught at the University of California (which had been the target of two bombs),
and had since retired to a log cabin in Montana. Providing letters written by his brother Ted,
David gave FBI linguistic analysts all the evidence they needed to identify Ted Kaczynski
as the Unabomber. On April 3, 1996, The Unabomber Ted Kaczynski
was arrested in his cabin. At the scene, a live bomb was found ready
for mailing. After 17 years one of the FBI’s most persistent
threats had been captured - a result of cutting edge linguistic analysis and hard-won public
cooperation. In recent times, the FBI has faced terrorist
threats off the back of 9/11 and ISIS, increased cyber-crime, and the mystery of Hilary Clinton's
emails. It has also successfully captured 463 of the
494 most wanted fugitives of the noughties As of August 2020, 94% of the most wanted
fugitives ever identified have been captured or located. Not bad for a group that started out as a
handful of ex-cops.
Paints a very rosy view of the FBI that has never existed in reality. Also cool shout out to extrajudicial assassinations of those deemed “criminals” in the first minute. J Edgar Hoover really was an exemplary crime-fighter, right? Now they stick to entrapping autistic Muslim teenagers and convincing them to do terrorism to pad their statistics and surveilling nonviolent protestors. Great work, FBI.
This dude looks like Shaun from The Good Place.