We’re talking G-Men, Feds and rogue elephants in our notorious spies series. The latest update is part II of our look at FBI history and how J. Edgar Hoover created the FBI and was given the world.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is responsible for criminal investigations, counterterrorism, and domestic espionage (that is: spying and the collection of intelligence). The run-up to World War II marked a decisive change in the Bureau’s activities. Targeting celebrity criminals like Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd and John Dillinger had previously been the Bureau’s raison d’être, cementing J. Edgar Hoover’s profile, according to historian Richard Gid Powers, as “the most feared man the underworld has ever known.” But unrest in Europe led President Roosevelt to suggest Hoover step it up a notch. He wanted to know what the fascists and communists were up to on American soil, and he wanted to implement this tremendous expansion of the Bureau’s power without a fight on the Hill.
As always, J. Edgar Hoover was prepared. He found to a 1916 Congressional appropriations bill that authorized the Bureau to conduct investigations “regarding official matters under the control of the Department of Justice or the Department of State as may be directed by the Attorney General.” Any expansion of power, therefore, needed only State Department approval. (The Department of Justice was already on board.) Roosevelt summoned Secretary of State Cordell Hull to the White House and explained the situation. “Go ahead and investigate the cocksuckers,” said Hull to Hoover.
Hard as it might be to believe, this approval and those innocuous words would be the FBI’s legal foundation for domestic surveillance and intelligence collection for the next forty years. Hoover drafted a memorandum to the Bureau explaining this new authority would be “for intelligence purposes only, and not the type of investigation required in collecting evidence to be presented to a court.” In other words, when it came to spying on Americans, the gloves were off.
THE PRESIDENT’S PERSONAL POLICE FORCE
With the onset of a Second World War, the FBI ratcheted up its surveillance and pursuit of persons suspected of involvement in espionage and foreign subversion. Wiretapping, previously outlawed by the Federal Communications Act (a law affirmed by the Supreme Court), was authorized by President Roosevelt in the name of preserving the Republic. Roosevelt, for his part, backed the FBI in any skirmish with Congress or the Attorney General, and for good reason: he now had at his disposal an unaccountable, personal police force. Hoover returned the loyalty, grateful for such a powerful, protective shield for his Bureau. The two men successfully drove sledgehammers through existing legal restraints. National security was “need to know,” and in the judgment of the Director and the president, neither the Justice Department nor the Hill needed to know a great many things.
It helped that Hoover’s programs were a success, something he regularly took to the airwaves to report. Through aggressive police work, a careful deployment of tradecraft, and the recruitment of double agents, the Bureau breached the German intelligence apparatus in the United States, and systematically dismantled it with extreme malice. Meanwhile, Hoover resented Roosevelt’s notorious internment of Japanese-Americans. He considered it a lack of faith in the Bureau’s abilities to police would-be subversives. Much of Hoover’s career would be marked by such resentments; no one was welcome in FBI territory.
THE SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICE
While the Bureau piled on the successes in the United States during World War II, one of Hoover’s most successful programs went largely unnoticed, much to the Director’s chagrin. In 1940, President Roosevelt ordered the creation of a foreign intelligence unit that was to be independent of the military. To avert the inevitable turf wars for such an agency, Roosevelt placed it under the purview of the FBI, and confined its operations to the western hemisphere. (Army and Navy intelligence were given the rest of the world.)
Hoover, however, was not happy with his new responsibility. The FBI was a highly effective organization on U.S. soil. To operate in South America was asking for trouble, and threatened the prestige of the Bureau. Having no choice in the matter, however, he quickly stood up the Special Intelligence Service. As G. Gregg Webb noted in Studies in Intelligence:
Hoover tried to rid himself and his agency of the SIS and its foreign-intelligence liabilities three times. The documents concerning these efforts to transfer the SIS’s duties out of the FBI reflect Hoover’s trepidation toward building a foreign espionage and counter-espionage organization. In the event, he accepted this assignment with resolve and characteristic ability, but his administrative competence and bureaucratic scheming belied what were clearly his deep reservations concerning management of the SIS’s work in Latin America.
The FBI’s new authority to operate in South America during the war saw Hoover engage a sprawling Nazi network, and to the director’s relief, the Special Intelligence Service was a success. The service deployed 360 agents to the continent, and uncovered 1,420 agents of the Axis Powers, to include intelligence officers, propagandists, saboteurs, and smugglers. 544 were apprehended. A further 7,064 foreign subversives were relocated. This was a major achievement for the Bureau, and a major expansion of its powers on foreign soil. Notably, the Bureau identified and alienated Nazi infiltration of the Chilean and Argentine governments, preventing Axis expansion on the continent.
LIABILITIES
Hoover resented the scant notice of the Bureau’s remarkable achievements in foreign espionage, and he did little to pursue further international expansion of the Bureau following the Treaty of San Francisco and the end of the war. He dutifully trumpeted the FBI’s accomplishments to the Attorney General, and left little doubt that the FBI could succeed in the global arena. But ultimately, he begged off the task, writing: “While I do not seek this responsibility for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I do believe that upon the basis of our experience of the last five years we are well qualified to operate such a [worldwide] service in conjunction with parallel operations of the Military and Naval Intelligence.”
Hoover didn’t want the job. The Bureau divested itself of the Special Intelligence Service’s files and responsibilities, keeping only its special agents in U.S. embassies overseas as unarmed legal attachés, or “legats,” (a program still in operation). This ended the Bureau’s offensive capacity on foreign soil. The publicity payoff was minimal when compared to the risk such endeavors entailed. And the prestige of the Bureau remained Hoover’s prime directive.
A CENTRALIZED INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
After the war, the Truman administration dismembered the foreign intelligence apparatus of the United States. The president would soon regret this decision, as he now had no insight into the activities of the suddenly aggressive Soviet Union. He wanted information, but perhaps more importantly, he wanted analysis. To get things back on track, the FBI was the natural go-to organization, but Hoover again resisted such authority. He recognized that the FBI’s responsibilities had to be limited in order to be effective. His agents were masters of espionage and counterintelligence on U.S. soil, but had a cop mentality that made them unsuited for intelligence analysis. Hoover’s policy was to collect intelligence and feed it unfiltered to the Justice Department or White House, resulting in a blizzard of unevaluated reports (and an aversion of blame if something went wrong). Both he and Truman understood that this kind of global intelligence operation would require a new apparatus entirely.
Thus was born the Central Intelligence Group, and the age of the American spy.
