48 Fun Facts About FBI

A 1908 ban on borrowing which agency's agents led to the Bureau's creation?

The Secret Service had been renting out its investigators until Congress banned the loans in May 1908. The ban backfired: the attorney general hired 34 agents of his own, several of them Secret Service veterans.

The Bureau's founder in 1908 was a great-nephew of which French ruler?

Napoleon Bonaparte had his youngest brother's marriage to a Baltimore merchant's daughter annulled so the brother could wed a princess. The American grandson of that marriage, Charles, grew up to found the Bureau.

The Bureau of Investigation was created in 1908 with the backing of which president?

Theodore Roosevelt reached the White House because an anarchist shot McKinley in 1901. Fear of more such attacks, and a Justice Department with no detectives of its own, made his case for a federal force.

Which motto was coined for the FBI in 1935?

Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity dates from 1935, the year the Bureau took its present name, and was chosen because the words spell out the new initials. Bureau histories disagree over which official thought of it.

In 1910 the young Bureau took the lead on enforcing which new law against interstate prostitution?

The Mann Act banned taking women across state lines for 'immoral purposes', loose wording soon aimed at the famous. Boxing champion Jack Johnson, convicted under it in 1913, spent seven years abroad and was pardoned only in 2018.

In 1933 J. Edgar Hoover was also given charge of which federal bureau?

The Bureau of Prohibition came under Hoover in 1933, just as the country was voting to end Prohibition itself. He never folded its agents into his own force, and the unit was soon gone from his Bureau.

J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972 while serving which president?

Richard Nixon was taped in 1971 explaining why he would not force Hoover out: the director, he feared, might pull the temple down with him, president included. Hoover died in office the following May.

After Hoover's death, Congress limited FBI directors to a single term of how long?

Ten years, and one term only, has been the rule since 1976, set so that no director could again build Hoover's kind of tenure. Congress has bent it once, passing a 2011 law to keep a director for two more years.

Which president's attorney general put J. Edgar Hoover in charge of the Bureau in 1924, after the Teapot Dome scandal?

Calvin Coolidge's attorney general, Harlan Fiske Stone, was cleaning house after the scandal touched the previous director. His 29-year-old choice promptly fired agents he judged to be political hires.

Which first job, taken at 18, is credited with giving J. Edgar Hoover his lifelong devotion to indexed files?

Library of Congress messenger, from 1913, put him beside the staff building its card catalogue. Both the Library and the FBI trace his zeal for making masses of information findable back to that job.

At 24, J. Edgar Hoover organized which crackdown on suspected radicals, named for his boss, the attorney general?

The Palmer Raids, named for Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, swept up thousands of people in dozens of cities in 1919 and 1920. They were soon condemned for trampling civil liberties.

The FBI lab's first major case tied Hauptmann to the Lindbergh ransom notes by matching what?

Handwriting: after Hauptmann's arrest in 1934, samples were flown to Washington, where the young lab matched them to the misspelled ransom notes. The work helped convict him and made the lab's name.

Outside which Chicago movie house was John Dillinger shot dead by Bureau agents in July 1934?

The Biograph Theater was showing a Clark Gable gangster film, Manhattan Melodrama. The 'Woman in Red' who led agents to him actually wore orange, and had bargained for help against her own deportation.

Which FBI Chicago office chief won fame for the Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd cases?

Melvin Purvis lit a cigar outside a Chicago cinema as the signal to close in on Dillinger in July 1934. Three months later he led the agents who cornered Pretty Boy Floyd on an Ohio farm.

Which of these gangsters was brought down by Treasury Department investigators instead of Hoover's Bureau?

Al Capone fell to a Treasury tax-evasion case in 1931 because gang crime lay outside the Bureau's powers at the time. Its agents had only arrested him for contempt, after he faked illness to dodge a grand jury.

In 1928 the Supreme Court let agents tap a bootlegger's phones without a warrant, ruling it was no search under which amendment?

The Fourth Amendment: in the Olmstead case, taps placed without entering the bootlegger's property were ruled no search. The Katz ruling reversed that in 1967, saying the amendment protects people, not places.

Early Bureau homicide investigations included the murders of members of which Native American nation?

The Osage were being killed for their oil headrights in 1920s Oklahoma. Bureau agents worked undercover until rancher William Hale was convicted of ordering murders, the story later filmed as Killers of the Flower Moon.

How did the eight Nazi saboteurs rounded up by the FBI in June 1942 reach the United States?

By U-boat: two submarines put them ashore on Long Island and Florida with crates of explosives. The FBI caught all eight only after one of them, George Dasch, phoned the Bureau and gave up the rest; six were executed.

The Venona project, which helped the FBI unmask atomic spies such as the Rosenbergs, decoded the intercepted cables of which country?

The Soviet Union was still America's wartime ally when Army codebreakers began attacking its cables in 1943. The decrypts later led the FBI to Julius Rosenberg's spy ring.

Which wartime policy did Hoover oppose that Roosevelt then enacted under Executive Order 9066?

Mass removal of Japanese Americans struck Hoover as needless, because the FBI had already arrested the people it judged dangerous right after Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 anyway, in February 1942.

What did the name COINTELPRO stand for?

Counter-Intelligence Program was a bland label for covert efforts to discredit domestic political groups. The FBI anonymously mailed Martin Luther King a letter that his aides read as urging him to kill himself.

Burglars exposed COINTELPRO by raiding an FBI office during which 1971 fight?

Ali and Frazier met on 8 March 1971, and the burglars picked that night hoping everyone near the office in Media, Pennsylvania, would be following the fight. The files they mailed to reporters exposed the program.

Which FBI second-in-command was Watergate's 'Deep Throat'?

Mark Felt, the Bureau's number two, began guiding Bob Woodward of the Washington Post after being passed over for director when Hoover died. He admitted being Deep Throat only in 2005, aged 91.

After a $7 million heist, Víctor Gerena spent a record 32 years on the Most Wanted list, reportedly hiding in which country?

Cuba is where prosecutors believe Gerena went after the 1983 robbery of the Connecticut Wells Fargo depot where he worked as a guard. He stayed on the list from 1984 until 2016 and was never caught.

Leslie Isben Rogge, who surrendered in 1996, was the first Most Wanted fugitive caught thanks to what?

Rogge, a bank robber, surrendered at the US embassy in Guatemala City in May 1996 after a viewer of the FBI's new website recognized his photo, the list's first internet-assisted capture.

The FBI Academy, where new agents train, is located in which Virginia town?

Quantico, on a Marine Corps base, is where trainees work staged cases in Hogan's Alley, a mock town built with help from Hollywood set designers. Its only bank is robbed at least twice a week.

In FBI legend, which nickname for its agents did a cornered Machine Gun Kelly coin by shouting 'Don't shoot'?

G-Men, short for government men, entered Bureau lore with Kelly's arrest in Memphis in 1933. The FBI's own history now says he probably never shouted it.

What are the FBI's overseas offices in US embassies and consulates called?

Legal Attachés, or 'legats', are FBI agents posted to US embassies and consulates, more than 60 offices worldwide, mainly to coordinate with foreign police and security services.

The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team was created in the early 1980s with which upcoming event in mind?

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics raised a question nobody could answer: who would handle another Munich, where Israeli athletes were taken hostage and killed. HRT operators have trained full-time ever since.

The FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, home to the fingerprint database, is where?

The Clarksburg, West Virginia, complex opened in 1995 and houses the Bureau's fingerprint and criminal-record databases; its main building is about the length of three football fields.

Which brand of pistol did the FBI adopt as standard issue in 1997?

Glock won out after a search that began with the 1986 Miami shootout, where two agents died and the Bureau decided it needed better handguns. A 10mm Smith & Wesson came first but proved unreliable.

Which American spy for Moscow was arrested in 2001 while taping a bag of secrets under a park footbridge?

Robert Hanssen, a veteran FBI agent, was seized at Foxstone Park outside Washington moments after the drop. Moscow had paid him more than $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.

In the FBI's ABSCAM sting, congressmen were filmed taking bribes they believed came from which invented figure?

An Arab sheikh with oil money to invest was the FBI's invention, fronted by a bogus firm called Abdul Enterprises. One senator and six congressmen were convicted.

Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger, on the run for 16 years, was caught in 2011 living near the beach in which city?

Santa Monica, California, was where a tip found him, sharing an apartment with his girlfriend a few blocks from the Pacific. It came days after the FBI aired TV spots aimed at women who might know her.

Which Irish-American crime group did Whitey Bulger lead?

Bulger led the Winter Hill Gang, named for a Somerville neighbourhood; the FBI's Boston office was accused of turning a blind eye to his crimes in exchange for information on the Italian Mafia.

The Unabomber, arrested in 1996, had lived since 1971 in a remote cabin in which state?

Montana was home for 25 years, in a cabin near Lincoln with no electricity or running water. He was caught after his brother David recognised his writing in the manifesto that newspapers printed in 1995.

The 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff between the FBI and Randy Weaver took place in which state?

Idaho's northern panhandle saw an 11-day siege that left three people dead, among them Weaver's wife, shot by an FBI sniper as she held her baby. The government later paid the family $3.1 million.

The FBI's 51-day siege near Waco, Texas, in 1993 surrounded the compound of which religious sect?

The Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, held out after a failed ATF raid left four agents dead. The standoff ended when fire swept the compound during an FBI tear-gas assault, killing more than 70 people.

The FBI was criticized for its treatment of which man after the 1996 Olympic Park bombing?

Richard Jewell, a security guard, spotted the bomb and helped clear the area, then spent about three months as the FBI's prime suspect before being cleared. The real bomber was Eric Rudolph.

Which FBI director, appointed just before 9/11, served from 2001 to 2013?

Robert Mueller was sworn in on 4 September 2001, a week before the attacks. He stayed twelve years because Congress passed a one-off law in 2011 letting him serve two years past the usual limit.

Which FBI director was fired by the president in May 2017?

James Comey learned of it from a television news report while he was speaking to FBI staff in Los Angeles. Days later a special counsel was appointed to carry on the Russia inquiry he had been leading.

The 1997 film Donnie Brasco tells the true story of which undercover FBI agent infiltrating the Mafia?

Joseph Pistone lived as jewel thief Donnie Brasco from 1976 to 1981 and was about to be inducted into New York's Bonanno family when the FBI pulled him out. His evidence led to more than 100 convictions.

The TV series Criminal Minds follows which part of the FBI?

The Behavioral Analysis Unit grew from a small team formed in the early 1970s, after an instructor's classes showed how a crime scene reveals its author's personality.

Unlike the FBI, which British agency hunts spies and terrorists at home but has no power to arrest anyone?

MI5 works inside Britain, while MI6 spies abroad and GCHQ handles signals. When MI5 wants a suspect held, it has to ask the police to make the arrest.

The FBI dropped its 2016 court fight to make Apple unlock a terrorist's iPhone after doing what?

Paying outsiders to hack it cost more, the FBI's director said, than he would earn in his remaining seven years in the job. The case ended with no ruling on whether Apple could be forced to help.

Which president dedicated the FBI's new headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, in 1975?

Gerald Ford dedicated it on 30 September 1975. The name was Richard Nixon's doing: two days after Hoover died in 1972, he moved to have the unfinished building named for the late director.

FBI agent John O'Neill hunted bin Laden, retired in August 2001, and died on 9/11 in which new job?

World Trade Center security chief was a post he had held for under three weeks. O'Neill had led the FBI's pursuit of al-Qaeda since the 1990s, and he died in the towers helping with the evacuation.

Which group started America's national crime statistics in 1929, a year before the FBI took over?

Police chiefs, through their international association, wanted crimes counted the same way everywhere. Taking part is still voluntary for the thousands of agencies that report.