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.