Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the U.S. government agency responsible for investigating crimes, including terrorism, that involve transgression of federal law. (A very few, specific federal crimes are investigated by other agencies, for example, tax evasion is the responsibility of the Internal Revenue Service.) The bureau is part of the U.S. Department of Justice; the bureau director is appointed by the attorney general. The FBI employs almost 28,000 people, 11,000 of whom are special agents. Its headquarters in Washington, D.C., develops policy and provides support to the 56 field offices and 400 satellite offices within the United States, and the 44 posts abroad headed by legal attaches (“legats”).

The FBI was reorganized in late 2001 in response to a perceived need to concentrate on counterterrorism in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. Four executive assistant directors, each in charge of one of the four major branches of the bureau, now report directly to the deputy director and director of the FBI. These four are responsible for the bureau's work in criminal investigations, counterterrorism/counterintelligence, law enforcement services, and administration. Dale Watson was appointed to the post of executive assistant director for counterterrorism/counterintelligence, a newly created position, in December 2001.

The FBI began in 1908, when Attorney General Charles Bonaparte hired 10 former Secret Service agents as investigators for the Department of Justice. These detectives were to confine themselves to investigating violations of antitrust, postal, and banking laws, and crimes targeting the federal government. The passage of the Mann Act (1910) and Dyer Act (1919) broadened its mission to investigating prostitution and motor vehicle theft. The World War I-inspired Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Act (1918) further broadened the bureau's mandate. In 1919, following a series of attempted anarchist bombings, the bureau under Director William Flynn embarked on an antiradical campaign, investigating suspected communists, anarchists, and foreign-born agitators. Hundreds of suspected revolutionaries were subsequently deported under the 1917 and 1918 Immigration Acts. By 1920, more than 500 special agents were working at the bureau, with roughly the same number of support staff.

Bureau investigations of dissenters within the United States continued throughout the early 1920s. Trade union and civil rights activists and political radicals were all monitored. The FBI kept close watch on both the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the National [Page 133]Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Investigations of the KKK were initiated because Southern juries refused to indict Klan members for a series of murders. The investigations ultimately led to the prosecution of KKK leader Edward Y. Clarke under the Mann Act; he was convicted in 1924.