Federal Bureau of Information
From Chiki
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the official criminal investigation service for the USA. The FBI has worked with CHERUB many times (including in Maximum Security), and with the CIA. The motto of the bureau is "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity". The mission of the FBI is "To protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners."
History
In 1886, the Supreme Court, in Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Rail road Company v. Illinois, found that the states had no power to regulate interstate commerce. The resulting Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 created a Federal responsibility for interstate law enforcement. The Justice Department, which had hired few permanent investigators since its establishment in 1870, made little effort to relieve its staff shortage until the turn of the century, when Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte reached out to other agencies, including the Secret Service, for investigators. But Congress forbade this use of Treasury employees by Justice, passing a law to that effect in 1908. So the Attorney General moved to organize a formal Bureau of Investigation (BOI), complete with its own staff of special agents. Its jurisdiction derived from the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.[7][8] The FBI grew out of this force of Special Agents created on July 26, 1908 during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Its first official task was visiting and making surveys of the houses of prostitution (in preparation for enforcing 'The White Slave Traffic Act' passed on June 25, 1910). In 1932, it was renamed the United States Bureau of Investigation. The following year it was linked to the Bureau of Prohibition and rechristened the Division of Investigation (DOI) before finally becoming the FBI in 1935.[7]
The director of the old BOI, J. Edgar Hoover, became the first FBI director and served for nearly 48 years. After Hoover's death, legislation was passed limiting the tenure of future FBI directors to a maximum of ten years. The Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, or the FBI Laboratory, officially opened in 1932, largely as a result of Hoover's efforts. Hoover had substantial involvement in most cases and projects the FBI handled during his tenure.
During the so-called "war on crime" of the 1930s, FBI agents apprehended or killed a number of notorious criminals who carried out a number of kidnappings, robberies, and murders throughout the nation, including John Dillinger, "Baby Face" Nelson, Kate "Ma" Barker, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, and George "Machine Gun" Kelly. While this campaign, as well as the campaign to build-up the FBI, was carried out in response to a national crime wave, most historians now believe that if there was a crime wave at all, it was grossly exaggerated during the Great Depression[citation needed].
Other activities of its early decades included a decisive role in reducing the scope and influence of the Ku Klux Klan. Additionally, through the work of Edwin Atherton, the FBI claimed success in apprehending an entire army of Mexican neo-revolutionaries along the California border in the 1920s. Lester J. Gillis, also known as "Baby Face" Nelson. Lester J. Gillis, also known as "Baby Face" Nelson.
Beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1970s, the Bureau investigated cases of espionage against the United States and its allies. Eight Nazi agents who had planned sabotage operations against American targets were arrested, six of whom were executed (Ex parte Quirin). Also during this time, a joint US/UK code breaking effort (Venona)—with which the FBI was heavily involved—broke Soviet diplomatic and intelligence communications codes, allowing the US and British governments to read Soviet communications. This effort confirmed the existence of Americans working in the United States for Soviet intelligence.[9] Hoover was administering this project but failed to notify the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) until 1952. Another notable case is the arrest of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in 1957.[10] The discovery of Soviet spies operating in the US allowed Hoover to pursue his long standing obsession with the threat he perceived from the American left, ranging from Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) union organizers to American liberals with no revolutionary aspirations whatsoever.
During the 1950s and 1960s, FBI officials became increasingly concerned about the influence of civil rights leaders. In 1956, for example, Hoover took the rare step of sending an open letter denouncing Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a civil rights leader, surgeon, and wealthy entrepreneur in Mississippi who had criticized FBI inaction in solving recent murders of George W. Lee, Emmett Till, and other blacks in the South. The FBI carried out controversial domestic surveillance in an operation called COINTELPRO.[11] It aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States, including both militant and non-violent organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a leading civil rights organization.[12]
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a frequent target of investigation. The FBI found no evidence of any crime, but attempted to use tapes of King involved in sexual activity for blackmail. In his 1991 memoirs, Washington Post journalist Carl Rowan asserted that the FBI had sent at least one anonymous letter to King encouraging him to commit suicide.[13]
When President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed, the jurisdiction fell to the local police departments until President Lyndon B. Johnson directed the FBI to take over the investigation.[14] To ensure that there would never be any more confusion over who would handle homicides at the federal level, Congress passed a law that put investigations of deaths of federal officials within FBI jurisdiction.
After the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Act) took effect, the FBI began investigating the former Prohibition organized groups, which by now become fronts for crime in major cities and even small towns. All of the FBI work was done undercover and from within these organizations using the provisions provided in the RICO Act and these groups were dismantled. Although Hoover initially denied the existence of a close-knit organized crime network in the United States, the Bureau later conducted operations against known organized crime syndicates and families, including those headed by Sam Giancana and John Gotti. The RICO Act is still used today for all organized crime and any individuals that might fall under the Act. J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director (1924–1972) J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director (1924–1972)
In 1984, the FBI formed an elite SWAT[15] team to help with problems that might arise at the 1984 Summer Olympics, particularly terrorism and major-crime. The formation of the team arose from the 1972 Summer Olympics at Munich, Germany when terrorists murdered Israeli Athletes. The team was named Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and acts as the FBI lead for SWAT related procedures and all counter terrorism cases. Also formed in 1984 was the Computer Analysis and Response Team (CART).[16] The end of the 1980s and the early part of the 1990s saw the reassignment of over 300 agents from foreign counter intelligence duties to violent crime and the designation of violent crime as the sixth national priority. But with reduced cuts to other well-established departments, and because terrorism was not longer considered a threat after the end of the Cold War,[16] the FBI became a tool of local police forces for tracking fugitives who had crossed state lines, which was a felony. The FBI Laboratory also helped develop DNA testing, continuing the pioneering role in identification that began with its fingerprinting system in 1924.
Between 1993 and 1996, the FBI increased its counter-terrorism role in the wake of the first 1993 World Trade centre bombing in New York, New York and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and the arrest of the Unabomber in 1996. Technological innovation and the skills of FBI Laboratory analysts helped ensure that all three of these cases were successfully prosecuted, but the FBI was also confronted by a public outcry in this period, which still haunts it today.[17] After Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA, 1994), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPA, 1996), and the Economic Espionage Act (EEA, 1996), the FBI followed suit and underwent a technological upgrade in 1998, just as it did with its CART team in 1991. Computer Investigations and Infrastructure Threat Assessment centre (CITAC) and the National Infrastructure Protection centre (NIPC) were created to deal with the increase in Internet-related problems, such as computer viruses, worms, and other malicious programs that might unleash havoc in the US. With these developments, the FBI increased its electronic surveillance in public safety and national security investigations, adapting to how telecommunications advancements changed the nature of such problems.
Within months of the September 11, 2001 attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller, who was only sworn in three days before the attacks, called for a re-engineering of FBI structure and operations. In turn, he made countering every federal crime a top priority, including the prevention of terrorism, countering foreign intelligence operations, addressing cyber security threats, other high-tech crimes, protecting civil rights, combating public corruption, organized crime, white-collar crime, and major acts of violent crime.[18]
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