Timeline

1900-1909

May 27, 1908

A Sundry Civil Service Bill declared that Secret Service employees accepting assignments by any department other than Treasury (except in counterfeiting cases) would be suspended for two years. The provision became effective July 1. It prevented the practice of agencies like the Department of Justice (DOJ) from borrowing investigators for specific cases.

June 29, 1908
Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte ordered the creation of a special agent force in the DOJ. His order reassigned 23 investigators already employed by the Department and permanently hired eight more agents from the Treasury Department.

July 26, 1908
Attorney General Bonaparte ordered the special agent force to report to Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch. This order is considered the formal beginning of the agency that became the FBI in 1935. In March 1909, Attorney General George W. Wickersham named this force the Bureau of Investigation (BOI).

1910-1919

June 25, 1910
Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act, also known as the Mann Act. The new law significantly increased the BOI's jurisdiction over interstate crime.

April 30, 1912
Former Examiner A. Bruce Bielaski, Chief Finch's assistant since 1909, was appointed Chief of the BOI.

August 1914
World War I began in Europe, placing additional responsibilities on the BOI. On April 6, 1917, Congress declared war on Germany and President Woodrow Wilson authorized the BOI to detain enemy aliens.

June 15, 1917
Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917. The act forbade espionage, interference with the draft, or attempts to discourage loyalty. It greatly increased the BOI's ability to deal with espionage and subversion during the war, but a lack of personnel hampered Bureau efforts in enforcing the law.

June 30, 1919
Attorney General Palmer directed that the BOI be placed under the Assistant Attorney General's direction. William E. Flynn, former Chief of the Secret Service, was named Director of the BOI.

October 28, 1919
Congress passed the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act, also known as the Dyer Act. This act authorized the Bureau to investigate auto thefts that crossed state lines. Prior to the passage of this act, jurisdictional boundaries between states hampered the ability of law enforcement officials to thwart interstate auto theft rings.

1920-1929

August 22, 1921
William J. Burns, the head of a famous private detective agency, became Director of the BOI. Twenty-six year old J. Edgar Hoover was named Assistant Director.

May 10, 1924
Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone designated J. Edgar Hoover Acting Director of the BOI. By the end of the year Stone appointed him Director.

July 1, 1924
The BOI set up an Identification Division after Congress authorized "the exchange of identification records with officers of the cities, counties, and states." The Bureau established its fingerprint files in Washington, D.C., by consolidating collections from the former Bureau of Criminal Identification at Leavenworth, Kansas and those of the International Association of Chiefs of Police formerly housed in Chicago.

October 11, 1925
Auto thief Martin James Durkin shot and killed Special Agent Edwin C. Shanahan while Shanahan tried to arrest him. Agent Shanahan was the first BOI agent killed in the line of duty.

January 1, 1928
The BOI instituted a theoretical and practical training course for new special agents. During a two-month assignment to the Washington Field Office, new agents were instructed in Bureau rules and procedures, provided with practical exercises in crime investigation, and evaluated by experienced agents as to their qualities and potential.

1930-1939

June 11, 1930
Congress authorized the BOI's National Division of Identification and Information to collect and compile uniform crime statistics for the entire United States. Previously, this program was handled by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

March 1, 1932
The Bureau initiated the international exchange of fingerprint data with friendly foreign governments. Due to the rise of tension in Europe, this program was halted in the late 1930s. It was not re-instituted until well after World War II.

June 22, 1932
In response to the Lindbergh kidnapping case and other high profile kidnappings, Congress passed the Federal Kidnaping Act. The act gave the BOI authority to investigate kidnappings that were perpetrated across state borders.

July 1, 1932
The BOI became United States BOI or USBOI. Within a year it was named the Division of Investigation (DOI) when the Bureau of Prohibition was placed under the supervision of Director Hoover. The Prohibition Bureau was quickly phased out over the next several years; it was not merged into the USBOI.

November 24, 1932
The BOI established a Technical Laboratory in the Southern Railway Building at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C. It provided services to the FBI and other federal, state, local, and even international law enforcement.

September 1933
Gangster "Machine Gun" Kelly reputedly coined the nickname "G-Men" for FBI agents while being interrogated by DOI agents. The legend that Kelly shouted "Don't Shoot G-men, Don't Shoot," while he was being arrested is doubtful. The heroic "G-Man," short for Government Man, quickly became synonymous with FBI special agents in the public's imagination.

June 18, 1934
Congress enacted a series of anti-crime legislation over the months of May and June 1934 in response to crimes like the September 1933 Kansas City Massacre, where gangsters killed DOI Agent Raymond Caffrey, Jr. and other law enforcement officials. These May/June Crime Bills gave special agents the power of arrest and the authority to carry firearms. Previously, special agents could only make a "citizen's arrest," otherwise the agent had to call on a U.S. marshal or local police officer to take custody of a suspect.

July 22, 1934
John Herbert Dillinger, one of the most notorious gangsters of his day, resisted arrest outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago and was killed by special agents.

October 1934
The Department of Justice Building at 9th and Pennsylvania Avenue was dedicated. FBI Headquarters occupied space in the building until the 1970s.

July 1, 1935
The DOI officially became the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the beginning of Fiscal Year 1936.

July 29, 1935
The FBI established a national police training program, the forerunner of the FBI National Academy, when it welcomed a class of 23 police officers for a 12-week course of instruction in scientific and practical law enforcement methods.

May 24, 1936
President Roosevelt called Director Hoover to a morning meeting to discuss his concerns about subversive activity in the United States. He asked Hoover to report on the activities of Nazi and communist groups. After receiving approval from the Attorney General and authority from the Secretary of State to conduct the investigation, Hoover notified his special agents in charge of the assignment.

1939
President Roosevelt assigned responsibility for investigating espionage, sabotage and other subversive activities jointly to the FBI, the Military Intelligence Service of the War Department (MID), and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).

1940-1949

June 24, 1940
The FBI established a Special Intelligence Service (SIS) at President Roosevelt's request. In connection with the SIS, the Bureau dispatched agents to countries throughout the Western Hemisphere (except Panama). FBI agents in South and Central America gathered intelligence information and worked to prevent Axis espionage, sabotage, and propaganda efforts aimed against the US and its allies. Special agents assigned to posts in Europe, Canada and Latin America began acting in an official liaison capacity. After President Truman closed the SIS in 1946 these agent liaisons formed the basis of the FBI's Legal Attache (Legat) Program.

August 31, 1940
The FBI created a Disaster Squad to assist civilian authorities in identifying persons who died in a Virginia plane crash. FBI personnel were among the victims.

January 1, 1941
The FBI seal, as currently depicted, came into limited use at this time. The prior seal had been the DOJ seal with an extra band for the FBI and its motto.

June 28, 1941
Special agents arrested German spy Frederick Joubert "Fritz" Duquesne and 32 other German agents following a two-year investigation. Agents successfully filmed members of Duquesne's ring as they provided information to William Sebold, a confidential FBI informant.

June 12, 1942
Four German saboteurs led by George John Dasch landed from a U-boat on the beach near Amagansett, Long Island, New York. Five days later, a second team of four German saboteurs, led by Edward Kerling, landed at Ponte Vedra Beach in Florida. Dasch turned himself in at the New York Field Office two days after landing. Within two weeks, the FBI captured all eight saboteurs.

May 30, 1945
Between January 1940 and May 1945, the Bureau investigated 19,299 alleged cases of sabotage. Sabotage in some form was found in 2,282 incidences, primarily acts of spite, carelessness, malicious mischief, and the like. During World War II, not a single act of enemy-directed sabotage was discovered in the United States.

August 1946
Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, making the FBI responsible for investigating persons having access to restricted nuclear data. The FBI was also responsible for investigation of criminal violations of this act.

March 21, 1947
Executive Order 9835 established the Federal Employees Loyalty Program. Upon agency request, the FBI investigated when derogatory information was found regarding government employees.

December 15, 1948
A New York grand jury indicted former State Department employee Alger Hiss for perjury. The charge stemmed from a congressional investigation of Communist subversion and espionage in the government.

1950-1959

February 2, 1950
British security agents arrested Klaus Fuchs after an investigation based on an FBI tip derived from Soviet telegrams decrypted and decoded by the Army Signals Agency with FBI investigative assistance; these decrypted, decoded cables are known collectively under the codename Venona.

March 14, 1950
The FBI initiated the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives Program in order to draw national attention to dangerous criminals who have avoided capture.

March 6, 1951
The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, David Greenglass, and Morton Sobell began in U.S. District Court, New York City. All four were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and sentenced on April 5.

September 1951
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1949 convictions of top communist leaders prosecuted under the Smith Act. Four of the eleven convicts jumped bail and hid in the communist underground for several years.

October 27, 1955
FBI Director Hoover, with the concurrence of the Attorney General, authorized official cooperation with reporter Don Whitehead as he wrote a history of the FBI entitled The FBI Story. The book became a bestseller and was made into a 1959 movie starring Jimmy Stewart as an FBI agent.

November 1, 1955
A United Airlines DC-6B exploded near Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and five crew members. The FBI provided assistance from its Disaster Squad in identifying the deceased.

June 21, 1957
The FBI arrested Colonel Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet espionage agent.

November 14, 1957
New York State Trooper Edgar Croswell uncovered a conference of crime bosses who had gathered from across the country on the estate of Joseph Barbara in Apalachin, New York. In response to the exposure of a nationwide criminal syndicate, Director Hoover instituted the Top Hoodlum program to develop information about prominent criminal leaders and their activities.

1960-1969

August 7, 1962
President John F. Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum 177. This memorandum enhanced the government's foreign police-training program. In connection with this program, Director Hoover agreed to accept up to 20 foreign police officers into each session of the FBI National Academy.

June 12, 1963
Medgar Evers, Mississippi Field Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was killed because of his civil rights advocacy. The FBI arrested Byron De La Beckwith for the crime. He was indicted and tried twice in state court. The jury did not reach a verdict on either occasion. On December 18, 1990, a grand jury indicted De La Beckwith again. He was extradited from Tennessee to Mississippi and tried in 1993. The jury found him guilty.

November 22, 1963
Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the FBI to investigate the murder. At that time the FBI had no statutory authority to investigate presidential assassinations. Jurisdictional conflict between federal, state and local authorities created confusion in the investigation of the case.

June 21, 1964
Civil rights workers James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Following the FBI's MIBURN investigation, eight men, including Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price and Sam Holloway Bowers, Jr., the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the KKK of Mississippi, were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment under the federal civil rights statutes for the crime.

July 4, 1966
President Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FBI records eventually became subject to the FOIA.

January 1, 1967
The FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) became operational. Law enforcement officials from across the country could tap this electronic database of criminal histories and other information to identify suspects and learn more about persons arrested.

April 4, 1968
James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. The FBI opened a special investigation based on the violation of Dr. King's civil rights so that federal jurisdiction in the matter could be established.

June 1, 1968
Congress enacted Public Law 90351 providing for the appointment of the FBI Director by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate to a 10 year term. The act was to take effect after Director Hoover's tenure.

1970-1979

October 15, 1970
Congress approved the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. This law contained a section known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act or RICO. RICO has become a very effective tool in convicting members of organized criminal enterprises.

May 2, 1972
J. Edgar Hoover died in his sleep at the age of 77. President Richard M. Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray III to be Acting Director.

May 8, 1972
The FBI Academy opened a new training facility on the US Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Virginia.

April 27, 1973
William D. Ruckelshaus was appointed Acting Director of the FBI by President Nixon following the resignation of L. Patrick Gray III.

July 9, 1973
Clarence M. Kelley was sworn in as Director of the FBI. Kelley was a former FBI agent and had served as the Chief of Police of Kansas City, Missouri for many years before this appointment.

June 26, 1975
Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams were murdered while conducting an investigation on an Indian reservation near Pine Ridge, South Dakota. American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier was convicted of committing the murders.

September 30, 1975
The J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. Building was formally dedicated. FBI Headquarters units had begun moving into the new building the previous November.

March 1976
Attorney General Edward H. Levi issued guidelines for FBI intelligence activities. In April 1976, he issued guidelines for FBI domestic security activities. These guidelines were issued in response to congressional concerns raised by the Church and Pike Committees.

October 4, 1976
The FBI established an Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate charges of malfeasance against Bureau employees.

February 23, 1978
William H. Webster took the oath of office as FBI Director. Director Webster continued Director Kelley's emphasis on "quality" investigations.

April 3, 1978
The FBI Laboratory Division pioneered the use of laser technology to detect latent "crime scene" fingerprints. This date marks the first successful use of lasers to detect latent prints on case evidence.

June 7, 1978
A federal grand jury in Miami indicted 22 labor union officials and shipping executives for kickbacks, embezzlement, and other illegal activities, surfacing the UNIRAC undercover investigation. Eventually more than 110 convictions were recorded, including Anthony M. Scotto, longshoreman union leader and organized crime figure.

1980-1989

January 5, 1981
Attorney General Guidelines were issued concerning FBI undercover agents involving the investigation of bribery of public officials. The FBI's successful ABSCAM investigation had raised concerns that undercover efforts might lead to entrapment. This was not the case in the ABSCAM investigation. The courts upheld the convictions.

January 28, 1982
At the direction of Attorney General William French Smith, the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began reporting to the Director of the FBI. The FBI and DEA were given concurrent jurisdiction over narcotics violations and have worked together on these matters since this time.

August 1983
The Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) became fully operational. HRTs act in hostage situations throughout the country and are trained to handle negotiations as well as hostage rescue should those negotiations fail.

March 15, 1984
The FBI's GREYLORD investigation into judicial misconduct in Cook County Illinois yielded its first conviction, a former Deputy Traffic Court Clerk. Other convictions followed. Eighty-two judges, lawyers, clerks, and police officers pled guilty or were convicted in court.

April 9, 1984
DOJ announced charges in the "Pizza Connection" case. FBI agents and Italian law enforcement officials documented international connections between American and Italian organized crime groups in a large heroin distribution ring. Eighteen men were convicted including five organized crime family leaders.

July 10, 1984
The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) was established at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. Initially focusing on unsolved murders, the NCAVC used sophisticated behavioral science techniques and a complex computer system to assist state and local authorities to identify suspects and predict criminal behavior.