John Edgar Hoover was born in Washington, D.C., on January
1, 1895. Upon completing high school, he began working at the Library of
Congress and attending night classes at George Washington University Law
School. In 1916, he was awarded his LL.B. and the next year his LL.M.
Mr. Hoover entered on duty with the Department of Justice
on July 26, 1917, and rose quickly in government service. He led the
Department's General Intelligence Division (GID) and, in November 1918, he
was named Assistant to the Attorney General. When the GID was moved in the
Bureau of Investigation (BOI) in 1921, he was named as Assistant Director
of the BOI. On May 10, 1924, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone appointed
the twenty-nine year old Hoover as Acting Director of the BOI and by the
end of the year Mr. Hoover was named Director.
As Director, Mr. Hoover put into effect a number of
institutional changes to correct criticisms made of his predecessor's
administration. Director Hoover fired a number of Agents whom he
considered to be political appointees and/or unqualified to be Special
Agents. He ordered background checks, interviews, and physical testing for
New Agent applicants and he revived the earlier Bureau policies of
requiring legal or accounting training.
Under Director Hoover, the Bureau grew in responsibility
and importance, becoming an integral part of the national government and
an icon in American popular culture. In the 1930s, the FBI attacked the
violent crime by gangsters and implemented programs to professionalize
United States law enforcement through training and forensic assistance.
For example, the Bureau opened its Technical Laboratory to provide
forensic analysis on Bureau investigations as well as services to other
federal, state, and local law enforcement officials.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the Bureau garnered headlines
for its staunch efforts against Nazi and Communist espionage. During World
War II, the Bureau took the lead in domestic counterintelligence,
counterespionage, and countersabotage investigations. President Roosevelt
also tasked the Bureau with running a foreign intelligence service in the
Western Hemisphere. This operation was called the Special Intelligence
Service or SIS. In the early years of the Cold War, the Bureau took on the
added responsibility of investigating the backgrounds of government
employees to ensure that foreign agents did not infiltrate the government.
More traditional criminal investigations including car thefts, bank
robberies, and kidnappings also remained important.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Bureau took on
investigations in the field of civil rights and organized crime. The
threat of political violence occupied many of the Bureau's resources as
did the threat of foreign espionage. In spite of Mr. Hoover's age and
length of service, Presidents of both parties made the decision to keep
him at the helm of the Bureau. When Mr. Hoover died in his sleep on May 2,
1972, he had led the FBI for 48 years.
