history of the fbi essay

‘Discredit, disrupt, and destroy’: FBI records acquired by the Library reveal violent surveillance of Black leaders, civil rights organizations

It was the late 1960s, and J. Edgar Hoover smelled trouble. The status quo — hallowed by hate, sanctioned by Jim Crow — was beginning to crack.

Behind the scenes, Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation was keeping watch. In 1967, the FBI quietly unleashed a covert surveillance operation targeting “subversive” civil rights groups and Black leaders, including the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King Jr., Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and many others.

The objective, according to an FBI memo: to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the radical fight for Black rights — and Black power.

Details of that sabotage plaster internal FBI records, with thousands of pages scattered across a medley of databases. Now, the UC Berkeley Library is working to put those pieces together.

In May, just before the movement for Black lives cascaded over the planet, the Library acquired a digital database of FBI records on the surveillance of African Americans throughout the 20th century, expanding the trove of federal records the Library has assembled over the years. Today, the materials provide not only a window into the FBI’s past abuse, but also an unplanned guide for the Black activists demanding racial justice again, now 50 years later.

“These documents ... reveal and confirm the kind of root investment in anti-Blackness and quelling dissent that has long been part of our government structure,” says Leigh Raiford, a professor of African American studies at UC Berkeley. “We can only imagine the extent to which the current administration, and the current FBI, is working to discredit, disrupt, and destroy Black Lives Matter and other movements.

“I’m hoping that a new generation of researchers will learn new lessons for how to outmaneuver these attempts.”

‘A double evil’

One of the biggest lessons contained in the documents is abundantly clear: Whatever you do, don’t let them think you’re a communist.

For Hoover, an Ahab-type character in pursuit of his cursed whale, the mere whiff of such leanings could trigger the dirtiest of tricks in the FBI’s arsenal.

“No holds were barred,” said assistant FBI director William C. Sullivan in his testimony for the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee, as recorded in documents held by the Library and freely available on the digital repository HathiTrust . “We have used (these techniques) against Soviet agents. They have used (them) against us.”

“We did not differentiate,” Sullivan said. “This is a rough, tough business.”

The FBI’s surveillance of African Americans and Black rights organizations — whom the FBI called “Black Extremists” or “Black Nationalist Hate Groups” — grew out of the bureau’s larger espionage operation known as COINTELPRO, the now infamous program launched in 1956 to snuff out communism in the United States. (Other radical groups, including socialists and anti-war activists, were soon added to the agenda.)

In Hoover’s view, it went something like this: There were communists in the civil rights movement. Never mind that there were Black people fighting for their lives.

“The threat of communism became a way in which to undermine Black radical movements,” says Ula Taylor, a campus professor of African American studies who used underground newspapers held by the Library and FBI surveillance records on the Nation of Islam for her book The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam . “All of these Black organizations understood that the way in which the federal government could take down their organization was by painting them red.”

“It was like a double evil,” notes Jesse Silva, scholarly resources strategy and federal government information librarian, who helped acquire the FBI records. “Communists are evil. Black nationalism is evil. Put them together — it’s the ultimate evil.

“They tried to throw in whatever they could to make it stick,” he adds. “Looking at it now, it doesn’t make any sense.”

In Raiford’s view, that story spinning looks something like the political battle now taking place over the Black Lives Matter movement — and whether it is violent or not. Raiford points to a recent clip from Fox News featuring a warning that “if you disagree with BLM, that BLM will send protesters to your home,” as she recalls.

“The FBI understood that, too,” says Raiford, who used FBI records for her research on social movements and visual culture. “They understood that the civil rights movement was winning people’s hearts and minds through the circulation of photographs and videos of nonviolent, peaceful protests.

“We’re seeing that right now,” she continues. “So much of the presidential race conversation is happening over the question: Are these protests peaceful or not?”

Fanning the flames

One of the primary targets for COINTELPRO’s fear-mongering was the Black Panther Party, the revolutionary Black rights group founded in Oakland in 1966. Just two years later, Hoover called the Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

The FBI responded in full force, spreading ominous rumors to incite the group to violence, and even murder. As the Library’s documents show, when conflict arose between the Black Panther Party and the US Organization, another Black Power group, FBI officials directed field offices to “exploit all avenues of creating further dissension” and to submit regular reports on “imaginative and hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPP.”

One “imaginative” suggestion? Sending a fake letter from US to the Black Panthers warning that US planned to “ambush leaders of the BPP in Los Angeles,” as noted in a 1968 memo in the Library’s database.

“It’s difficult when you have some of this vitriol and nastiness,” Silva says. “But we want to collect that, because that’s how society is going to grow — by shining a light on this and saying, ‘Is this what we want to be, or do we want something better?’”

The new collection, acquired from Gale, an educational publisher and online database, contains not only the COINTELPRO records, but also the surveillance files of many important Black figures and organizations of the day — including Thurgood Marshall, Marcus Garvey, the NAACP, and many others.

Additional records, including Hoover’s confidential documents and FBI files on Martin Luther King Jr. and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, are also available through the Library via ProQuest, the massive online repository.

(The California Digital Library, which licenses content for users across the University of California, is also currently trialing ProQuest’s extensive Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle collection , which holds additional FBI records and the personal papers of many civil rights groups and activists.)

Details of the FBI’s harassment of the Panthers and other Black groups are especially shocking given the justification for its illegal acts: to prevent violence.

As Black rights activist Stokely Carmichael told a packed Greek Theatre during a campus visit in 1966 , “This country is too hypocritical — and we cannot adjust ourselves to its hypocrisy.”

“White people beat up Black people every day — don’t nobody talk about nonviolence,” continued Carmichael, then the leader of SNCC, a civil rights organization that was also heavily surveilled. “But as soon as Black people start to move, the double standard comes into being.

“You can't defend yourself — that’s what you’re saying.”

Staying one step ahead

Fast-forward to 2020, and the hypocrisy is still rampant. COINTELPRO operations officially ended in the ’70s, when an FBI office was burglarized and details of the program were exposed to the public.

But its legacy is alive and well. In 2017, amid widespread Black Lives Matter protests, a leaked report from the FBI’s counterterrorism unit defined the security threat posed by so-called Black Identity Extremists — a name that, for many, echoes the inflammatory labels given to civil rights groups during the era of COINTELPRO.

In the 2017 report, FBI officials warn that “perceptions of police brutality against African Americans” were likely to spur lethal violence against law enforcement.

Last year, leaked documents obtained by the left-wing news group The Young Turks exposed an FBI operation titled IRON FIST, designed to “proactively address this priority domestic terrorism target by focusing FBI operations via enhanced intelligence collection efforts” — including the use of undercover agents.

“We know the extent to which the government has worked to destroy (Black rights) organizations and is continuing to do that work — as we’re seeing with the movement for Black lives, writing them off as terrorist organizations,” Raiford says.

But the fight looks a little different this time around, she says. With detailed records of the FBI’s abuses on full display, a new generation of Black activists can stay one step ahead.

“One of the things that makes Black Lives Matter so fascinating and so enduring over these last few years is it is decentralized,” Raiford says, pointing to the FBI’s past assailment of figures such as King. “You can’t necessarily identify a specific leader of Black Lives Matter, so a single person can’t be identified, targeted, and neutralized.

“The movement becomes resilient.”

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Origins early days the "lawless" years the new deal world war ii period postwar america the vietnam war era aftermath of watergate the rise of international crime the post-cold war world recent years: 1993-.

The FBI and Its Evolution Through the History Research Paper

Introduction, start of the fbi, meaning of world war ii relatively fbi, postwar era, the assassination of j.f. kennedy, making counterterrorism a fourth national priority, at the start of new millennium.

There are many different federal agencies in the United States which are distinguished by incredible significance and relevance, and one, in particular, is that of the FBI. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is a federal criminal investigative, intelligence agency, and the primary investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice as well. They are an agency which has started their work around 1908 when they were known as the BOI (Bureau of Investigation), and at present, the FBI has all investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes and other related issues, thus making them the number one law enforcement agency of the United States government. Several issues are to be taken into consideration to understand the way the FBI works, its primary goals, and purposes. The way it is introduced in the legislative process, its organizational relationship to the Presidency, making it even more irreplaceable for the government, and the issues and actions that have shaped the operations of the agency itself; all of these are significant matters in regards to any federal agency, in this case, the FBI. This paper aims to thoroughly address and examine every one of these issues so that we can come to a much more informed and knowledgeable understanding of the subject matter at hand. This is what will be dissertated in the following.

To talk competently and properly about the start of the FBI, you need to know and understand the main purpose they are keeping to; “The mission of the FBI is to upload the law through the investigation of violations of federal criminal law; to protect the United States from foreign intelligence and terrorist activities; to provide leadership and law enforcement assistance to federal, state, local, and international agencies; and to perform these responsibilities in a manner that is responsive to the needs of the public and its faithful to the Constitution of the United States” (Kessler, 2003). Although the FBI was first known as the BOI, it starts wearing a new name in the year 1935, during the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover. The actual establishment of the agency however did take place during the time of its origin, when it was still known as the BOI, there were only several federal crimes in the country that needed to be taken care of; those were the certain current issues the BOI investigated. The BOI was responsible for violations of laws involving banking, bankruptcy, antitrust, and peonage, for instance.

Growing bigger, the FBI had different expansions which took place in the agency over the years, and one of the most outstanding was in 1910, when “the Mann (‘White Slave’) Act had been passed, making the transportation of women over state lines for immoral purposes illegal. It also provided a tool by which the federal government could investigate criminals who evaded state laws but had no other federal violations” (Policy, 2007). The number of Special Agents, working for the agency also increased enormously around this time, and after the entry of the United States into World War I in April 1917 during Woodrow Wilson’s administration, the Bureau’s work was increased once again. This growth continued, increasing gradually as time went on. FBI has been a perfect federal service for dozens of years, it still is. Due to the professional employees and quality work, it is known all over the world.

Then there were the years which were sometimes known as the ‘lawless years’, from 1921 – 1933. And they were known as this due to the fact of gangsterism and public disregard in general, particularly disregard to Prohibition, which made selling or import intoxicating beverages illegal. Although Prohibition was looked at positively by law enforcement agencies, a large majority of the public disagreed with it, and thus there was much angst that was caused as a result of this.

The Bureau began to gain more stature during the late 1930s, and “Although the Harding Administration suffered from unqualified and sometimes corrupt officials, the Progressive Era reform tradition continued among the professional Department of Justice Special Agents” (Policy, 2007). As well during this time, several crucial and significant decisions solidified the Bureau’s position as the nation’s premier and iconic law enforcement agency, and there were many different extravagant and notorious events which took place, such as the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932, to which Congress resulted in passing a federal kidnapping statute, and “Then in May and June 1934, with gangsters like John Dillinger evading capture by crossing over state lines, it passed several federal crime laws that significantly enhanced the Bureau’s jurisdiction. In the wake of the Kansas City Massacre, Congress also gave Bureau Agents statutory authority to carry guns and make arrests” (FBI, 2007).

The World War II period, which took place between the late 1930’s – 1945, was an incredibly significant era for the Bureau, and for many different reasons at that. Many events unfolded in Europe, which resulted in the creation and continuation of the American Depression, which obviously in effect resulted in creating a lot more work for the Bureau. Germany, Italy, and Japan had embarked on a series of invasions during the late 1930s, and although many Europeans and North Americans considered the Spanish Civil War to be an opportunity to destroy Fascism, the United States, Great Britain, and France were locations which continued to remain neutral, as it was only Russia who was supporting the Loyalists. “To the shock of those who admired Russia for its active oppression to Fascism, Stalin and Hitler signed a nonaggression pact in August 1939. The following month Germany and Soviet Russia seized Poland. A short time later, Russia overran the Baltic States. Finland, while maintaining its independence, lost western Karelia to Russia. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, which formed the ‘axis’ with Japan and Italy – and World War II began” (FBI, 2007). This resulted in a lot of violence and a lot of wrongful acts that the FBI thus had to end up dealing with, and the FBI was well aware of all of the Fascist and Communist groups as being threats to American security. During this time the responsibilities of the FBI escalated incredibly, and issues such as subversion, sabotage, and espionage ended up becoming major and serious concerns. It was at this time as well that the FBI developed a network of informational sources, and with leads developed by these intelligence networks through their work, the agents working for the FBI were then able to investigate any potential threats to national security.

The United States did end up making entry into the war, however right before this, the FBI ended up uncovering yet another espionage ring, and this particular investigation led to the arrest and conviction of 33 spies. “War for the United States began December 7, 1941, when Japanese armed forces attacked ships and facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The United States immediately declared war on Japan, and the next day Germany and Italy declared war on the United States” (FBI, 2007). Most of the FBI personnel worked on traditional war-related or criminal cases during the war, although several agents, in particular, had different and special tasks. When the year 1945 came around, the FBI realized that even in just those few years that had passed the world had changed dramatically, and they were now facing a world that was incredibly different from the world they had faced in 1939 when the war had begun. After all, American isolationism had ended and thus economically, the United States was now considered as being the world’s most powerful nation. As well, “At home, organized labor had achieved a strong foothold; African Americans and women, having tasted equality during wartime labor shortages, had developed aspirations and the means of achieving the goals that these groups had lacked before the war. The American Communist Party possessed unparalleled confidence, while overseas the Soviet Union strengthened its grasp on the countries it had wrested from German occupation – making it plain that its plans to extend Communist influence had not abated. And hanging over the euphoria of a world once more at peace was the mushroom cloud of atomic weaponry” (FBI, 2007).

Postwar America is another incredibly significant era for the FBI, as basically, each dramatic change that took place not only in the United States but in the world itself, greatly affected the FBI as well as the jobs and tasks that they would end up being assigned to. For example, the counteraction of the Communist threat became a paramount focus not only of the FBI but of the government at all levels, and the U.S. foreign policy stuck to remaining to concentrate on defeating the actual Communist expansion abroad, while many U.S. citizens, on the other hand, were fighting to defeat the Communist threat that was present at home.

A public assassination of J.F. Kennedy astounded America in the sixties, which was a visiting-card of that period which ended up lasting into the mid-1970s, and although it was characterized by idealism, at the same time it was also increased by urban crime and certain prosperity for some specific groups to consider to have to resort to violence as a means of ‘challenging the establishment’. J. Edgar Hoover had been named as the director of the FBI in 1924, with a mandate to eliminate corruption and as well to get the agency out of politics, and “Hoover did exactly that, reducing the number of agents, establishing professional qualifications for the bureau’s members, and consolidating FBI field offices. Hoover’s ambitions to be a national figure and the adoption of dozens of federal criminal laws by Congress combined to increase the bureau’s stature and prestige” (Kessler, 2003). It was only after Hoover’s death in 1972 however that the United States began to realize and understand some of the abuses that he had made while he had been in power, and this including the fact for example of how he had kept extensive secret files on politicians and adversaries of the FBI, as well as disruptive activities against leftist and civil rights organizations, and extensive illegal wiretapping and bugging. This news hit America hard, and “The ABSCAM scandal – an FBI operation that involved offering unsolicited bribes to, among others, members of Congress – has heightened controversy over FBI methods. No statute regulates FBI activities. A charter delimiting the role of the agency was drafted in 1979 but has not yet been ratified by Congress” (Ungar, 2007).

In1978 Director Kelley resigned and he was replaced by formal federal judge William H. Webster. With the rise of international crime in the 1980s, which began in particular in the year 1982, following an explosion of terrorist incidents worldwide, Webster reacted by making counterterrorism a fourth national priority, and as well, “He also expanded FBI efforts in the three others: foreign counterintelligence, organized crime, and white-collar crime. Part of this expansion was the creation of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime” (FBI, 2007). Then as well throughout the 1980s, there was a major illegal drug trade situation, one which truly and severely challenged the resources of American law enforcement. As well, as the United States resulted in facing yet another financial crisis in the failures of savings and loan associations during the time of the 1980s, the FBI resulted by having “uncovered instances of fraud that lay behind many of those failures. It was perhaps the single largest investigative effort undertaken by the FBI to that date: from investigating 10 bank failures in 1981, it had 282 bank failures under investigation by February 1987. Resources to investigate fraud during the savings and loan crisis were produced by the Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enhancement Act” (FBI, 2007).

In regards to the more recent years, the FBI had been portrayed more publicly than ever before, and on September 4, 2001, former U.S. attorney Robert S. Mueller, III was sworn in as the new FBI director, and he remains in this position to this day. However, it was only within days of his entrance to duty as FBI director when the September 11 terrorist attacks were launched against New York and Washington. “Director Mueller led the FBI’s massive investigative efforts in partnership with all U.S. enforcement, the federal government, and allies overseas…as well…on October 26, 2001, President George W. Bush signed into law the U.S. Patriot Act, which granted new provisions to address the threat of terrorism, and Director Mueller accordingly accepted on behalf of the Bureau responsibility for protecting the American people against future terrorist attacks” (Kessler, 2003). At the start of the new millennium, the FBI is an organization that truly and stands dedicated to its core values, and it is their commitment to these values and standards which ensures that they can effectively and efficiently carry out their missions and duties in the United States of America.

From this review, we can conclude many different things, several of particular importance and significance, namely that of how the organization originated, both in the legislative process and in general. We have been able to quite clearly see just how important and relevant the FBI is as an organization, and how truly critical they are in regards to working against violence and crime in the United States of America. There has never yet been and surely never will be another organization that even remotely compares to the FBI, and the respect that they thus should be granted is truly unimaginable. The employees that work for the FBI are fearless, brave, and courageous, and they strive to create a peaceful and their work is unmatched by any other. The FBI is an organization that has been considered as having made various positive actions, as well as some negative, but overall their status remains secured as being honorable. As the FBI approaches its 90th anniversary, it continues to anticipate and respond to emerging criminal threats, and it is better off than ever before because as a historical organization it can use its experiences and ratifications from the past and use those as examples to work more positively in the present and future. The actual work of the FBI, on behalf of the American people, is truly being carried out by some of the most dedicated and talented employees in the world; they are all completely committed to combating criminal activity not only in the United States but in the world as a whole, and they continue the mission of that first small group of Special Agents which were present in the year 1908, those who established a tradition of services that has far become the Bureau’s motto, which is: Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.

Douglas, J., & Newbold, K. M (2005). John Douglas’s Guide to Careers in the FBI: The Complete Guide to the Skills and Education Required for Competitive FBI Candidates . New York: Kaplan Publishing.

FBI (2007). History of the FBI , online article. Web.

Kessler, R (2003). The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI . New York: St. Martin’s Press.

O’Connor, K. J., & Sabato, L. J. American Government: Continuity and Change, 2004 Election Update (7th Ed) . New York: Pearson Longman. ISBN: 0-321-27627-2.

Policy. History of the FBI , online article. 2007. Web.

Simeone, J. et al (2002). The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the FBI . Royersford, PA: Alpha Publishing.

Theoharis, A. G. et al (2000). FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide . New York: Checkmark Books.

Theoharis, A. G (2004). The FBI and American Democracy: A Brief Critical History . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

TracFBI. FBI History , online article. 2007. Web.

Ungar, S. J. A Short History of the FBI , online article. 2007. Web.

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History of the Fbi

By: Max   •  Essay  •  727 Words  •  May 14, 2010  •  1,360 Views

History of the FBI

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was founded in 1908 when the Attorney General appointed an anonymous force of 34 Special Agents to be investigators for the Department of Justice. Before that, the DOJ had to borrow Agents from the U.S. Secret Service. In 1909, the Special Agent Force was renamed the Bureau of Investigation, and after countless name changes, it became The Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935.

When the FBI was established, there weren’t an abundance of federal crimes, so it investigated criminal acts that dealt with national banking, bankruptcy, naturalization, antitrust, peonage, and land fraud. In June of 1910, the FBI grew larger because the “Mann Act” (Made it a crime to transport women to other states for immoral reasons). The FBI could now prosecute people whom tried to flee over states lines. Because of its continued worth and effectiveness, the FBI’s number grew to over 300 special agents and 300 support employees over the next few years. When the U.S. entered World War I, the FBI was given responsibility of Selective Service, Espionage, Draft violations, and Sabotage Acts. . The passage of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act in 1919 made it even easier for the FBI to prosecute criminals.

In 1920, the gangster era began. This brought a new type of crime into play that had not been seen before. Criminals were kidnapping and robbing banks, both of which were not federal crimes at that time. In 1932 the passage of a federal kidnapping statute made it a criminal act. In 1934, many other federal criminal statutes were passed, and Congress gave Special Agents the authority to make arrests and to carry firearms.

The FBI’s size and jurisdiction during the second World War greatly increased and included intelligence matters abroad. At the end of World War II, and the introduction of the Atomic Bomb, the FBI began working on background security investigations for the White House and other government agencies, as well as internal security for the executive branch of the government. In 1945, the FBI raided a magazine company that was particularly interested in the Far East and discovered a multitude of classified state documents. Around this time, Americans feared the invasion of Communism, which triggered the FBI to investigate people within the U.S. whom were suspected of sabotage and undermining Democracy in the name of Communism.

The FBI’s role in fighting crime grew yet again after the Korean war. On March 14, 1950, the FBI began its "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" List to further increase the FBI’s capacity to capture exceptionally dangerous criminals. Many advances in Forensic Sciences helped the FBI to become even more

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FBI Studies

The Future of FBI Counterintelligence Through the Lens of the Past Hundred Years

Essay by Raymond J. Batvinis, PhD in The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence , edited by Loch K. Johnson, reprinted by permission

Counterintelligence is the business of identifying and dealing with foreign intelligence threats to the United States. Its core concern is the intelligence services of foreign states and similar organizations of non-state actors, such as transnational terrorist groups.

Counterintelligence has both a defensive mission protecting the nation’s secrets and assets against foreign intelligence penetration and an offensive mission of finding out what foreign intelligence organizations are planning to better defeat their aim.

Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive I will weep for thee. For this revolt of thine me thinks, is like another fall of man. –William Shakespeare, Henry V , Act 2, Scene 2

1. INTRODUCTION

The year 2008 celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—the principle investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The history of the “Bureau” as it is often referred to, is a truly American saga: a tale of an institution that has become an inextricable feature of the American experience.

(The organization was called the Bureau of Investigation and Division of Investigation before the change was made in 1934 to its current name. For simplicity “Federal Bureau of Investigation” and “FBI” will be used throughout this chapter.)

Remarkable growth and transformation are also evident in this story. Originally envisioned as a modest investigative agency; the FBI, over ten decades, has emerged as the most powerful investigative agency in the world.

Today, with a force of twenty-five thousand employees serving at home and most foreign countries, one can only begin to grasp its uniqueness; in effect, a national investigative and intelligence service responsible for all criminal, counterterrorism, and counterintelligence matters—in a single agency.

This chapter will address only the FBI’s foreign counterintelligence function; briefly tracing its evolution through an examination of the key events and issues that effected its growth as the principle civilian counterintelligence service of the U.S. government.

2. EARLY YEARS

The FBI was founded in 1908 to serve as a permanent investigative force for the U.S. Department of Justice. Its mandate was the enforcement of federal laws by collecting evidence for government use in criminal or civil proceedings. One of these statutes was espionage against the United States.

With no foreign enemies to fear at the time the FBI focused on other issues during this period of progressive reform: fraud, waste, and even morality under the so-called Mann Act, a law that made the transport of a woman from one state to another for immoral purposes a federal offense (Whitehead 1956,17-25).

World War I thrust espionage to center stage of America’s national security agenda—a priority that the government was ill prepared to handle.

With no precedents, no human talent or experience to draw from nor any counterespionage service in existence, President Woodrow Wilson was forced to rely on a loose arrangement of agencies that included the FBI, the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division (MID), the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) together with hundreds of state and local police agencies nationwide, all with no history of working together on a common mission.

German espionage and sabotage in the United States illuminated this hopeless arrangement.

A case in point was the massive explosion that occurred on June 16, 1916, at the Black Tom munitions terminal located near Jersey City, New Jersey, which cost two lives and at least twenty million dollars of damage to war supplies destined for the Britain and France.

On January 11, 1917, a mysterious fire destroyed the Canadian Car and Foundry Plant at Kingsland, New Jersey, resulting in another seventeen million dollars in damage followed the next day by a an explosion at a DuPont plant nearby.

The investigations of these incidents were generally characterized by interagency rivalry, stalled investigations, and a few insignificant arrests that failed to produce sufficient evidence of German government inspired sabotage (Witcover 1989, ch. 2, 189-90).

American counterintelligence disarray only worsened after the war.

With Russia in Lenin’s hands and communism spreading throughout Europe, America found itself in the grip of a new hysteria: fear of home-grown and foreign-inspired anarchy aimed at government overthrow. These anxieties were fueled when a group called the “Anarchist Fighters” began sending letter and package bombs to prominent citizens around the country during the summer of 1920.

One bomb sent to Attorney General of the United States A. Mitchell Palmer prematurely detonated killing the bomber and damaging Palmer’s Washington, D.C., home. The shaken Palmer quickly declared a nationwide emergency and began connecting “the dots as [he] saw them” noted one historian. In his mind “communism had triumphed in Russia and was sweeping Europe in a wave of uprisings.

American communists leaders had proudly allied to Moscow” and then “announced their own blueprint for takeover?’ As Ken Ackerman has written, by late 1919 “anyone who didn’t see the danger on the horizon seemed like a fool” (Ackerman 2007, 385).

Turning to J. Edgar Hoover, then a twenty-five-year-old Justice Department attorney, Palmer set up an all-source intelligence Justice Department repository called the General Intelligence Division (GID).

Records were collected, collated, and regularly updated on suspected anarchists as well as ethnic, labor, and civil-rights leaders and organizations throughout the country. Foreign newspapers, magazines, and periodicals from countries such as Lithuania, the Soviet Union, Romania, Portugal, and Italy together with pamphlets published by ethnic organizations in major U.S. cities were indexed and updated for later reference (Ackerman 2007, 340-41).

Relying on GID information, Palmer ordered Hoover to work with the Immigration Service, then an arm of the U.S. Department of Labor, to identify dangerous aliens and arrange for their deportation. Armed with arrest warrants, signed by the attorney general, FBI agents, together with immigration officials and local police, launched nationwide raids rounding up and imprisoning en masse, according to one very rough estimate, between five and ten thousand so-called alien radicals, anarchists, and communist-party sympathizers (Ackerman 2007, 389).

Palmer’s massive dragnet was conducted without the authority or even knowledge of William Wilson, the secretary of labor, who had been absent for months from his office for family health reasons. In the spring of 1920 Louis Post, a senior Labor Department official opposed to these questionable arrests, was appointed acting secretary.

A month later Post forced the release of fifteen hundred jailed aliens and then dismissed the charges for insufficient evidence. Before Post finished, practically all of those charged were released.

The American public, warned by Palmer to expect a revolution, were puzzled when nothing happened, and then shocked at the unexpected release of these so-called terrorists. Bewilderment soon turned to outrage when the government’s disregard for the basic civil liberties was made public.

3. TURNING AWAY

Palmer’s actions dramatically slowed counterintelligence development in the United States. The popular view was that the government’s counterintelligence function was a threat rather than a useful tool for combating foreign espionage.

As a result the GID closed in 1921 ending further collection of intelligence information. The closing the MID’s counterintelligence operation soon followed. “With [these decisions], any chance of developing a functional counterintelligence sharing system capable of protecting U.S. interests from foreign intelligence aggression” one historian noted, was “delayed for another fifteen years” (Batvinis 2007, 44).

Further contraction followed in the fall of 1923 with the nomination of Harlan Fiske Stone as attorney general. Calvin Coolidge, who became president on the death of President Warren G. Harding, purged Harding’s cabinet, removing Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, later imprisoned in the wake of the “Teapot Dome” scandal, and attorney general and Harding political crony, Harry Daugherty, who Stone replaced.

Stone appointed J. Edgar Hoover as acting director of the FBI in May 1924. Hoover took control of a demoralized agency which, in the words of one historian “gathered evidence in a haphazard fashion,” a failure that routinely jeopardized successful government prosecutions.

Stone’s clear and straightforward order to Hoover was to end intelligence investigations of Americans and reform the FBI.

Hoover later documented his instructions in a six-point memorandum: five dealt with FBI reform while the sixth point, seminal in its implication for a fundamental course direction, insisted that the Bureau act strictly as a “fact-gathering organization” pursuing “activities [that] would be limited strictly to investigations of violations of criminal law” (Whitehead 1956, 68).

Stone’s order ended foreign counterintelligence investigations. In what would be referred to as the “Stone Doctrine” the attorney general established a rule which governs the U.S. intelligence policy today: the federal government cannot investigate anyone for exercising a constitutional guarantee of free expression unless sufficient facts indicate the person is engaged in criminal activities to support a political objective.

Hoover soon began modernizing and professionalizing the Bureau by weeding out incompetence, implementing scientific law-enforcement techniques, and investigating fraud.

FBI responsibilities expanded in 1933 when Congress passed an omnibus crime bill federalizing jurisdiction over matters that were previously a state responsibility. Crimes such as bank robbery, bank burglary, kidnapping, and fugitives were assigned to Hoover’s Bureau.

Exploiting front-page headlines touting the nationwide capture of a collection of colorful crime figures such as “Pretty Boy” Floyd, “Machine Gun” Kelly, and John Danger, Hoover transformed the reputation of the new FBI in a decade while creating the image of the fearless “G-Man,” a legend that would elevate Hoover and the FBI to almost mythical levels in the nation’s imagination (Burrough 2004, 5-19).

Yet with no single federal agency responsible for counterespionage, theft of government secrets remained easy prey for Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union.

With the arrival in the United States in 1933 of Boris Bazarov, the new Russian intelligence station chief, acquisition of military secrets became, the “key goal” for the Russians (Sibley 2004, 25). By leveraging its connection with the American Communist Party and President Roosevelt’s interest in developing trade, Moscow reaped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of scientific research for Soviet use.

At the same time German agents also walked off with America’s most important military technology with an ease that defied comprehension (Batvinis 2007, ch. 2).

4. COUNTERINTELLIGENCE REFORM

FBI counterintelligence reform began in February 1938 following the discovery of a major German espionage ring which had been operating for years in the United States. It was soon closed down with the conviction of four low-level operatives, but not before public revelations of embarrassing investigative missteps by Hoover’s vaunted FBI (Batvinis 2007, ch. 1).

In the fall of 1938 President Roosevelt substantially increased FBI, ONI, and MID counterespionage budgets, followed in June 1939 by the presidential creation of the Interdepartmental Information Conference (IIC).

Composed of the heads of the MID and ONI with Hoover as chairman, the IIC served as a center for policy coordination and dispute resolution. The GID was reopened, a special liaison unit was formed for contact with cabinet departments, a plant protection program was created to tighten up personnel and physical security at American industrial facilities and weekly IIC meetings were held to hammer out jurisdictional agreements.

One typical accord called for FBI investigation of civilians (citizens and aliens) because of their potential prosecution in federal courts while MID and ONI handled soldiers, sailors, and marines under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, requiring prosecution in military courts.

The president insisted that the FBI serve as a “clearing house” by ordering all federal agencies to report any allegations of espionage or sabotage to the FBI for investigation. State and local police agencies around the country were encouraged to report similar suspicions to the FBI as well (Batvinis 2007, 67-68).

In July 1939 the first FBI counterespionage training school was held for its special agents in charge followed soon after by a special FBI counterespionage school for selected South and Central American police officials.

Liaison with foreign police and security agencies accelerated. For years State Department restrictions forced Hoover to use subterfuges in exchanging information with friendly foreign security services.

Freed by the IIC mandate, formal sharing arrangements began in 1939 with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police followed in July 194o by FBI facilitation of the establishment of British Security Coordination, the MI6 station in New York headed by William Stephenson (Secret History 1999, 3-7).

5. COUNTERINTELLIGENCE GROWTH

The year 1940 witnessed three events which greatly. affected the FBI’s counterintelligence growth.

The first, a counterespionage investigation, provided the FBI with an education that it could receive in no other manner. The next two involved presidential orders concerning electronic interception of conversations and the creation of a foreign intelligence service.

The FBI investigation of the so-called Ducase beginning in February 1940 was a watershed in the FBI’s counterintelligence history. Named after Frederick Duquesne, one of the ringleaders, the case started when William Sebold, a German-American, forcibly recruited into espionage in Germany in 1939 by the Abwehr, promptly told all to the FBI upon his return to America.

Using Sebold as its double agent in (the first in FBI history), the FBI uncovered a massive German espionage ring which concluded in June 1941 with the arrest of thirty-one spies and the identification of another fifty un-indicted co-conspirators living outside the United States.

During the eighteen-month life of the case the FBI learned many lessons including the techniques of double agentry, espionage tradecraft, accommodation addresses, dead letter boxes in major cities throughout the world, shortwave wireless deception, and military coordination in response to unexpected moves by the Abwehr.

As a result, German espionage in America was shattered on the eve of Pearl Harbor, while at the same time positioning the Bureau well for the wartime espionage realities to come (Ronnie 1995).

The technological advancements after the First World War that made household radios a permanent fixture in America, in turn led to stiff competition among entrepreneurs eager to get into the broadcast business. Congressional efforts bring rationality to this new industry led to the passage of the Comprehensive Communications Act of 1934, which created the Federal Communication Commission to oversee the new industry.

One drawback to the law, however, was a permanent ban on government use of intercepted electronic communications as evidence in criminal trials. Throughout the 1930s the Supreme Court of the United States consistently upheld this provision with the final government appeal struck down in December 1939 — three months after the Second World War erupted in Europe.

President Roosevelt has been described as an attorney who saw issues not as legal or illegal, but as matters of right or wrong.

By banning wiretapping, Roosevelt reasoned, the Court had not considered the espionage and sabotage menace facing America, a threat that he believed demanded the exploitation of every advantage for the nation’s protection (Jackson 2003, 68-69).

Ignoring the Court’s ruling the president ordered the attorney general of the United States, Robert Jackson, in May 1940 to instruct the FBI to begin wiretapping foreign embassies, consulates, and other suspected foreign espionage and sabotage platforms, an order which led Hoover to report by summer’s end that “all conversations into an out” of the German, French, Italian, Russian, and Japanese embassies were being recorded (Batvinis 2007, 133).

Two months later President Roosevelt secretly ordered J. Edgar Hoover to set up the first secret foreign intelligence service in the nation’s history.

The targets of the new “Special Intelligence Service” (SIS) were Latin American capitals where FBI agents, posing as businessmen, stole political, diplomatic, economic, and military information for use by U.S. government policymakers.

The SIS successfully operated for seven years ending in May 1947 when its functions were consolidated into the newly created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During its lifespan it contributed significantly to the FBI’s counterintelligence progress as well as the later startup of CIA.

Hundreds of German agents were seized in Latin America and secretly shipped to U.S. prisoner-of-war camps until their repatriation after the war. Important tactical and strategic intelligence was acquired, and thousands of secret radio communications were intercepted by the war’s end.

Using leads provided by British code-breakers, SIS operatives together with special agents in the United States successfully exploited double agents as part of the famed “Double-Cross” system in the run-up to the Allied invasion of Normandy.

So effective was the FBI against Germans intelligence that Guy Liddell, a senior MI5 officer with access to Abwehr Ultra, confided to his diary that “he [Abwehr] considers the FBI a far more formidable obstacle than the British secret service” (Liddell 1943).

Axis espionage diverted attention away from Soviet wartime intelligence activities in the United States. Stalin’s forces suffered horrendous losses while tying down millions of German troops on the Eastern Front, a fact which led to the nagging White House fear that the Soviet Union would abandon the West by negotiating a separate peace deal with Germany as it had in 1917. It was this reality that forced the Roosevelt administration to soft pedal relations with Moscow.

Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall ordered the Army Security Agency (ASA) in 1943 to begin efforts to decipher censored Soviet diplomatic cablegrams in search of an answer to this concern. Thousands of censored messages were collected from as many governments as possible, particularly America’s wartime partners Canada, Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand.

Soon a small team of army code-breakers discovered that the system used by the Soviets for the encoding and decoding, full-proof when used properly, had been fatally compromised by Moscow’s duplication and distribution of the one-time code pads to its diplomatic establishments worldwide (Benson and Warner 1996, 83).

Over time precious intelligence, hidden so carefully, steadily emerged. No evidence of a separate Stalin-Hitler deal was ever found.

Army officials, however, were stunned to read of large-scale Soviet espionage during the war against the United States, Canada, and Great Britain using a vast network of agents in key wartime U.S. government agencies and industries supplying Moscow with a storehouse full of important secrets.

Even more startling was the discovery that the details of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret codename for the construction of the first atomic bomb, had been in Soviet hands since the early 1940s (Benson and Warner 1996, 79).

In 1948, five years after Venona (the ASA codename for the project) began, the FBI and ASA joined forces; and using the raw decryptions containing only code-names of Soviet agents the Bureau began widespread, top-secret investigations which soon laid out the full range of Soviet espionage during the Second World War.

Among the more than one hundred and fifty Soviet agents uncovered were David Greenglass, brother-in-law of Julius Rosenberg, British physicist, Klaus Fuchs, and the young Harvard University physics student, Theodore Hall; all three working at Los Alamos, New Mexico—the very heart of the atomic bomb research project.

Also revealed were Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the treasury, Lauchlin Currie special assistant to President Roosevelt and Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official who played a major role in establishing the United Nations (Benson and Warner 1996, 84).

6. FBI COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND THE COLD WAR

Throughout the Cold War FBI counterintelligence focused primarily on the KGB and the military intelligence arm of the Soviet General Staff, the GRU. Like a chess match between two skilled opponents, an unrelenting shadow struggle ebbed and flowed for more than forty years, each side seeking an advantage by careful movement of its pieces across an international board in a deadly war of wits.

The FBI also faced the intelligence services of Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania—all ideologically bound to serve Moscow’s intelligence needs. Operating from Washington, New York City, and other platforms around the country these new surrogates acted as force multipliers for Moscow.

As Russian and FBI sparring deepened the focus of these matches increasingly centered on New York City. One historian explained that United Nations headquarters offered the KGB “an even larger and more important capability in New York” than it had at its embassy in Washington.

For example, by January 1983, 330 Soviet nationals worked at the U.N. Secretariat (UNSEC) with another 310 members assigned to the Soviet Mission to the United Nations (SMUN), plus additional Russians working as journalists or commercial roles. Reliable information suggests that approximately 30 to 40 percent of these officials were KGB or GRU officers, many of whom gradually moved into positions of “authority and influence” (Barron 1983, 241).

Add to this sizable threat the Bloc officers, after 1960 the Cubans, and in 1974 the arrival in Washington of Peoples Republic of China diplomats and one gets a sense of the magnitude of the Cold War threat facing FBI counterintelligence.

7. FBI COUNTERINTELLIGENCE—A SECOND REFORM

A second period of FBI counterintelligence reform began in 1975 following President Richard Nixon’s resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal and his replacement by Gerald Ford. The new president sought to improve government intelligence and counterintelligence transparency following revelations of illegal government activities conducted against American citizens particularly during the Vietnam War.

Ford’s successor, President Jimmy Carter, went even farther by ordering a Department of Justice examination of FBI counterintelligence policies—an inquiry which revealed a hodgepodge of confusing rules, regulations, and levels of authority developed over three and a half decades that frequently resulted in decisions that violated the civil rights of American citizens.

To correct these anomalies Attorney General Edward Levi brought rationality to the conduct of both FBI domestic intelligence and foreign counterintelligence investigations ordered the creation of new guidelines, and, for the first time, a check-and-balance system of oversight of FBI counterintelligence activities that included new levels of review for even the most intrusive procedures.

Counterintelligence investigations were subjected to scheduled review to determine the necessity for continuing an investigation. Special Agents now knew where their investigative authority began and ended, what investigations they could and could not conduct, with specific time limits placed on investigations.

Three decades later despite continued modification, and refinement in the face of changing foreign intelligence realities these guidelines remain the governing rules for FBI counterintelligence investigations (Nolan 2008).

Curiously, it was an FBI-induced double-agent operation in 1977 codenamed Lemonaid that further reformed FBI counterintelligence.

It started when a U.S. naval officer, posing as a person desperate for money, handed an officer an envelope, containing an offer to spy for the KGB, as he disembarked a Soviet cruise ship in New York following a trip to the Caribbean. Soon the double agent was embarked on a cat-and-mouse adventure with three KGB officers assigned to the United Nations in New York.

Attorney General Griffin Bell, determined to slow Soviet espionage in the United States, used Lemonaid as a test case by determining that the two KGB officers handling the double agent assigned to the UNSEC had no diplomatic immunity while a third, then working in the SMUN, was immune.

At Bell’s request President Carter authorized the FBI arrest of both KGB officers under UNSEC cover on espionage charges and a persona non grata action against the third KGB officer assigned to the SMUN. Both officers were later convicted and sentenced to fifty years in prison (Washington Post 1978).

This case had an important impact on counterintelligence.

Flagrant KGB espionage use of the United Nations, particularly the UNSEC, was curtailed with, the imprisonment of two of its officers. For the first time the FBI could speak publicly about these matters using the court trial evidence in case studies for briefings to government agencies and private companies.

In the end President Carter exacted a high price from the Soviet leadership for exchanging the two officers by demanding the release of five prominent soviet dissidents including Anotoliy Sharansky, who later became deputy prime minister of Israel (Washington Post 1979).

For almost four decades FBI counterintelligence electronic surveillance was conducted solely on presidential authority, a practice that ended with congressional passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on October 25,1978.

This law created procedures for federal-government electronic-collection requests for foreign intelligence through a special court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The FISA court judges, who are selected by the Chief Justice of the United States, rule on all government petitions for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence electronic interception. These applications and decisions remain classified to prevent public disclosure of the investigative target as well as government sources and methods.

Two years later, the FBI acquired another weapon for investigating spies.

This time it was the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) passed on October 15, 1980. Until CIPA the government was handcuffed in its attempts to prosecute espionage agents by “gray mail,” a term applied to a defendant’s demand of the government for all information that he was accused of providing to a foreign intelligence service in order to prepare an adequate trial defense.

The government’s fear was that the defendant or his attorney could further harm U.S. national security interests by publicly releasing the information, thus exposing sensitive information to other foreign adversaries. The new law alleviated this problem by authorizing the trial judge to decide what government information the defendant needed.

Both sides would make their case to the judge who would then decide the defendant’s needs. Based on the judges’ findings the government could then decide if public revelation of the information was offset by the value of successful prosecution.

These two national security legislative landmarks have been keys to an increase in foreign espionage convictions over the past thirty years. In a study on Americans who spied against the United States, researchers identified one hundred and fifty individuals arrested and convicted of espionage between 1947 and 2001. One hundred and nine convictions occurred following FISA and CIPA passage (Herbig and Wiskoff 2002, 31).

8. FBI COUNTERINTELLIGENCE ADVANCEMENT

President Ronald Reagan chose to go after the Soviet Union head on. Characterizing it as the “Evil Empire” he embarked on a crusade, not simply to get along with Moscow, but rather to use the power of his presidency to force an end to the Soviet Union forever, using FBI counterintelligence as a weapon in the pursuit of his Soviet agenda.

Until Reagan came to office travel controls on Russian and Bloc diplomats were lax and rarely enforced, unlike American officials based in Moscow where all travel was strictly controlled. Legislation creating a new Office of Foreign Missions (OFM) inside the Department of State changed this equation by significantly strengthening FBI surveillance of foreign intelligence officers in the United States.

A foreign diplomat’s travel in the United States was now on a quid pro quo basis with a country’s travel policy toward U.S. diplomats. Suddenly Russian and Bloc diplomats were required to inform OFM in advance of any planned travel which would then make all necessary arrangements including plane reservations, hotel accommodations, rental vehicles and specific travel route if using their own vehicle.

The new law even required OFM to make any purchase requested by an embassy costing more than twenty-five dollars.

To drive the point home President Reagan selected special agent of the FBI James E. Nolan, then serving as the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Intelligence Division, and one of the Bureau’s foremost counterintelligence experts, to head the OFM with the rank of U.S. ambassador—the first serving FBI agent ever to be honored in this fashion. Among the many later enhancements was the selection in 1988 of Raymond Mislock, a senior FBI executive, as the director of security for the U.S. State Department (Nolan 2008).

Following the arrest in May 1985 of former navy officer John A. Walker on charges of spying for the Soviet Union, the Reagan administration undertook a further series of measures to enhance FBI counterintelligence.

In addition to strengthening the special agent complement for counterintelligence, a senior FBI official was assigned for the first time to the National Security Council to serve in the Intelligence Directorate as the director of counterintelligence programs. Reagan’s decision was an unprecedented move that placed counterintelligence near the forefront of national security policy making.

Soviet intelligence suffered its most crushing blow when President Reagan decided to reduce the bloated Soviet diplomatic staffing levels in the United States.

Following repeated Soviet refusals to do so voluntarily, the White House took action. A formula based on the number of American diplomats in the Soviet Union and Soviets in the United States was developed that called for the elimination of fifty-five diplomatic positions from the Soviet Embassy, UNSEC, and SMUN.

Relying on FBI information, the government expelled only intelligence officers including “the entire leadership of the KGB and GRU” together with “all KGB Line Chiefs and key intelligence officers.” This abrupt departure of so many talented and experienced personnel was a painful disruption for the KGB bureaucracy, one that left a large gap in their effectiveness which they never really overcame (Major 1995, io).

9. CONCLUSION

Two decades have passed since the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union. As for the KGB threat, it has disappeared only to be replaced by smaller yet equally aggressive successor called the SVR. The threat posed by her satellite services has disappeared, replaced by a collection of peaceful East European nations eagerly shifting their alignment to the west.

The Peoples Republic of China (PRC), the Asian giant which emerged from isolation less than four decades ago, today has a military and foreign intelligence capability that will pose enormous (as evidenced by the Chi Mak espionage case) challenges for the United States in the decades to come.

Today the threat facing FBI counterintelligence is no longer mere deterrence of classic theft of government classified information.

The overriding mission is prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction including biological, radiological, and chemical devices that will become more readily available, transportable, and more easily dispersible as the century unfolds.

The new century will also be an era in which nations will pursue another nation’s economic and trade secrets with the same vigor (if not more) that it seeks military and political secrets. Given the enormity of the U.S. economy and the huge government and private investments in cutting-edge technology research the challenge facing FBI counterintelligence will come, not just from China, but from smaller nations and foreign companies willing to steal in their eagerness for any advantage in our globally competitive world.

Critics claim that the FBI’s law-enforcement structure is inadequate for twentyfirst-century counterintelligence realities and should be replaced by a separate service staffed by counterintelligence officers, presumably with no law-enforcement powers.

Richard Posner argues that the FBI should revert to an American version of Scotland Yard’s “Special Branch,” which investigates espionage cases referred from the British Security Service. One source with vast American counterintelligence experience who disagrees with Posner, noted that today western security services view the FBI with “naked envy” for the flexibility provided by criminal, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and intelligence responsibilities under one roof.

Others, including William H. Webster, the only American ever to serve as both the director of the FBI and the CIA; Louie Freeh, a former director of the FBI and the Deputy for the National Counterintelligence Executive, M.E. “Spike” Bowman, take a different view. They point out that the FBI has routinely adjusted to the changing foreign intelligence challenges over the past century and continues to do so. Any necessary reforms, they warn, should be made within the FBI rather than wasting a decade or two creating a separate counterintelligence agency (Posner, Secrecy and Power, 2007, 120-138; Webster 2008; Freeh 2005; Bowman 2008).

A more important question is this: should the awesome responsibilities for U.S. internal security and foreign counterintelligence be separated from an organization made up of highly skilled men and women, grounded in the importance of civil liberties, trained in the rule of law, answerable to the U.S. Department of Justice, or placed in the hands of officers working in some type of separate counterintelligence service. Some would argue, yes!

Others would note that America is a nation of laws which places devotion to civil liberties above all else and, in the end, that is why America’s counterintelligence function should remain with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Ackerman, K. D. 2007. Young I. Edgar . New York: Carroll and Graf.

Barrett, J. Q. 2003. That Man: An Insider’s Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt . New York: Oxford University Press.

Barron, J. 1983. KGB Today . London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Batvinis, R. J. 2007. The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

Benson, R. L., and M. Warner, eds. 1996. Venona . National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency. Washington, D.C.

Bowman, M.E. 2008. “Spike.” Interview by author. (October 15).

Burrough, B. 2004. Public Enemies . New York: Penguin.

Freeh, L. 2005. My FBI . New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Herbig, K. L., and M. E Wiskoff. 2002. Espionage against the United States by American Citizens , 1947-2001. Monterey, Calif.: Defense Personnel Security Research Center (July).

Jackson, R. H. 2003. That Man . New York: Oxford University Press.

Liddell, Guy. 1943. Unpublished personal diary entry for October 22. Provided to author courtesy of Mr. Dan Mulvenna.

Major, D. 1995. Operation “Famish.” Defense Intelligence Journal (Spring): 10-22. Nolan, James E. 2008. Interview by author (October 3).

Posner, R. 2006. Not A Suicide Pact . New York: Oxford University Press.

. 2007. Uncertain Shield . New York: Oxford University Press. Powers, R. G. 1987. Secrecy and Power. New York: Free Press.

Ronnie, A. 1995. Counterfeit Hero . Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press.

Secret History of British Intelligence in America , 1940-1945. 1999. Author unknown. New York: Fromm International.

Sibley, K. A. S. Red Spies in America . 2004. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Washington Post. 1978. “N.J. Jury Convicts 2 Soviet Spies” (October 14): Ai.

Washington Post. 1979. “Soviet Union Exchanges 5 Dissidents for Two Spies” (April 28): Al.

Webster, William H. 2008. Interview by author (November 7).

Whitehead, D. 1956. FBI . New York: Random House.

Witcover, J. 1989. Sabotage at Black Tom . Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

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A retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent, Ray is now a historian and educator specializing in the discipline of counterintelligence as a function of statecraft.

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Watergate Scandal

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 16, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex of buildings in Washington, D.C. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents. Nixon took aggressive steps to cover up the crimes, but when Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein revealed his role in the conspiracy, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. The Watergate scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to question their leaders and think more critically about the presidency.

The Watergate Break-In

The origins of the Watergate break-in lay in the hostile political climate of the time. By 1972, when Republican President Richard M. Nixon was running for reelection, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War , and the country was deeply divided.

A forceful presidential campaign therefore seemed essential to the president and some of his key advisers. Their aggressive tactics included what turned out to be illegal espionage. In May 1972, as evidence would later show, members of Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (known derisively as CREEP) broke into the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate headquarters, stole copies of top-secret documents and bugged the office’s phones.

Did you know? Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein deserve a great deal of the credit for uncovering the details of the Watergate scandal. Their reporting won them a Pulitzer Prize and was the basis for their best-selling book “All the President’s Men.” Much of their information came from an anonymous whistleblower they called Deep Throat, who in 2005 was revealed to be W. Mark Felt, a former associate director of the FBI.

The wiretaps failed to work properly, however, so on June 17 a group of five burglars returned to the Watergate building. As the prowlers were preparing to break into the office with a new microphone, a security guard noticed someone had taped over several of the building’s door locks. The guard called the police, who arrived just in time to catch them red-handed.

It was not immediately clear that the burglars were connected to the president, though suspicions were raised when detectives found copies of the reelection committee’s White House phone number among the burglars’ belongings.

In August, Nixon gave a speech in which he swore that his White House staff was not involved in the break-in. Most voters believed him, and in November 1972 the president was reelected in a landslide victory.

Nixon's Obstruction of Justice

It later came to light that Nixon was not being truthful. A few days after the break-in, for instance, he arranged to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in “hush money” to the burglars.

Then, Nixon and his aides hatched a plan to instruct the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to impede the FBI ’s investigation of the crime. This was a more serious crime than the break-in: It was an abuse of presidential power and a deliberate obstruction of justice.

Meanwhile, seven conspirators were indicted on charges related to the Watergate affair. At the urging of Nixon’s aides, five pleaded guilty to avoid trial; the other two were convicted in January 1973.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Investigate

By that time, a growing handful of people—including Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, trial judge John J. Sirica and members of a Senate investigating committee—had begun to suspect that there was a larger scheme afoot. At the same time, some of the conspirators began to crack under the pressure of the cover-up. Anonymous whistleblower “ Deep Throat ” provided key information to Woodward and Bernstein.

A handful of Nixon’s aides, including White House counsel John Dean, testified before a grand jury about the president’s crimes; they also testified that Nixon had secretly taped every conversation that took place in the Oval Office. If prosecutors could get their hands on those tapes, they would have proof of the president’s guilt.

Nixon struggled to protect the tapes during the summer and fall of 1973. His lawyers argued that the president’s executive privilege allowed him to keep the tapes to himself, but Judge Sirica, the Senate committee and an independent special prosecutor named Archibald Cox were all determined to obtain them.

The Saturday Night Massacre

When Cox refused to stop demanding the tapes, Nixon ordered that he be fired, leading several Justice Department officials to resign in protest. (These events, which took place on October 20, 1973, are known as the Saturday Night Massacre .) Eventually, Nixon agreed to surrender some—but not all—of the tapes.

Early in 1974, the cover-up and efforts to impede the Watergate investigation began to unravel. On March 1, a grand jury appointed by a new special prosecutor indicted seven of Nixon’s former aides on various charges related to the Watergate affair. The jury, unsure if they could indict a sitting president, called Nixon an “unindicted co-conspirator.”

In July, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes. While the president dragged his feet, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, criminal cover-up and several violations of the Constitution .

Nixon Resigns

Finally, on August 5, Nixon released the tapes, which provided undeniable evidence of his complicity in the Watergate crimes. In the face of almost certain impeachment by Congress, Nixon resigned in disgrace on August 8, and left office the following day.

Six weeks later, after Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as president, he pardoned Nixon for any crimes he had committed while in office. Some of Nixon’s aides were not so lucky: They were convicted of very serious offenses and sent to federal prison. Nixon’s Attorney General of the United States John Mitchell served 19 months for his role in the scandal, while Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, served four and a half years. Nixon’s Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman spent 19 months in prison while John Ehrlichman spent 18 for attempting to cover up the break-in. Nixon himself never admitted to any criminal wrongdoing, though he did acknowledge using poor judgment.

His abuse of presidential power had a long-lasting effect on American political life, creating an atmosphere of cynicism and distrust. While many Americans had been deeply dismayed by the outcome of the Vietnam War, and saddened by the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy , Martin Luther King and other leaders, Watergate added further disappointment to a national climate already soured by the difficulties and losses of the previous decade.

HISTORY Vault: Nixon: A Presidency Revealed

The triumphs of Richard Nixon's presidency were overshadowed by a scandal that forced his resignation. Learn more about the driven but flawed 37th president from those who worked closest to him.

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Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — FBI — Why I Want to Be an FBI Agent

Why I Want to Be an FBI Agent

• Categories: Career Dream Job FBI

About this sample

Words: 1165 |

Published: Dec 16, 2021

Words: 1165 | Pages: 3 | 6 min read

Works Cited

• “Administrative Announcement.” USITC, www.usitc.gov/employment/dress_policy.htm.
• Advanced Solutions International, Inc. “AWARDS/SCHOLARSHIPS.” Awards and Scholarships, www.fbinaa.org/FBINAA/Members_Only/Awards_and_Scholarships.aspx.
• “FBI Agent Salary.” Career and Job Search Guide, www.careerprofiles.info/fbi-agent-salary.html.
• “Federal Bureau of Investigation.” FBIJOBS, fbijobs.gov/career-paths/special-agents/eligibility.
• “How To Become a Special Agent with the FBI.” How to Become an FBI Agent, www.fbiagentedu.org/careers/fbi-special-agent/become-special-agent-with-fbi/.
• “New Agent Training.” FBI, FBI, 13 June 2016, www.fbi.gov/services/training-academy/new-agent-training.
• “Organization, Mission and Functions Manual: Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The United States Department of Justice, 26 Sept. 2014, www.justice.gov/jmd/organization-mission-and-functions-manual-federal-bureau-investigation.
• Pike, John. “History.” History - Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2003, fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/fbi_hist.htm.
• “What Tasks Do FBI Agents Typically Perform?” FBI, FBI, 13 June 2016, www.fbi.gov//about/faqs/what-does-an-fbi-agent-do-on-a-typical-day.
• Writers, Staff. “FBI Agent Career Guide: Requirements and Salary Information.” CriminalJusticeDegreeSchools.com, CriminalJusticeDegreeSchools.com, 11 Dec. 2019, www.criminaljusticedegreeschools.com/criminal-justice-careers/fbi-agent/.   

Should follow an “upside down” triangle format, meaning, the writer should start off broad and introduce the text and author or topic being discussed, and then get more specific to the thesis statement.

Provides a foundational overview, outlining the historical context and introducing key information that will be further explored in the essay, setting the stage for the argument to follow.

Cornerstone of the essay, presenting the central argument that will be elaborated upon and supported with evidence and analysis throughout the rest of the paper.

The topic sentence serves as the main point or focus of a paragraph in an essay, summarizing the key idea that will be discussed in that paragraph.

The body of each paragraph builds an argument in support of the topic sentence, citing information from sources as evidence.

Should follow a right side up triangle format, meaning, specifics should be mentioned first such as restating the thesis, and then get more broad about the topic at hand. Lastly, leave the reader with something to think about and ponder once they are done reading.

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