The Establishment of FBI Under Hoover's and Martin Luther King's Opposition

This Bureau was created in 1908-1909 because the people found it necessary to have more protection from other countries that threatened our nation’s security. America’s population was increasing, and so was crime. The government realized this great need for more highly trained agents to secure the nation’s safety. The head office of the FBI is in our nation’s capital, Washington D.C. There are other FBI agencies located throughout the large cities of America. They cooperate with both local and state agencies of law enforcement to investigate criminal behavior, that deal with federally controlled agencies, such as the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), banks, terrorism, cybercrime, espionage, and education institutions that are federally funded. FBI agents to do not dress in uniform to protect their identity when working on cases, due to the threat to their lives from the criminals. The job of the FBI agents is to seek evidence of crimes committed, to prove guilt and truth. “Two world wars brought new demands on the FBI to protect Americans from the gangster era and crime networks, through political scandals and civil rights, to cyber-crime and terrorism.”[i] Before the creation of the FBI to investigate crime, you would have to either use the Department of Justice to hire private detectives or you would have to use Secret Service agents from the Treasury Department.[ii] Usually law enforcement had been taken care of locally in each state for most of America’s history.[iii] As America grew, its crime did as well. People were annoyed by this because they wanted some federal agency they could use instead of having to go to these departments.[iv] “The U.S. attorney general was the head of the Justice Department. From 1906-1909, the U.S. attorney general was a man named Charles J. Bonaparte.” President Theodore Roosevelt informed Bonaparte that they needed to do something about land fraud, which was a big crime at this point of time.[v]

This gave Bonaparte the idea of creating a whole new unit of investigators to work for him. He proposed the idea to Congress in 1907 and asked for a small amount of money to create this unit. Congress refused to do so.[vi] In 1908 Congress said that the Justice Department could no longer use the Secret Service agents to work on crimes. Bonaparte has fewer recourses than before hand to work on crimes. He went back to Congress once again, and asked them to give him some money for his department. Once again Congress refused.[vii] Bonaparte was tired of Congresses refusal and chose to create a posse of agents for the Justice Department. He payed for them through a “general expense fund.” On July 26, 1908, a chief examiner of the Department of Justice, Stanley W. Finch became the head of what we now call the FBI. At the end of the they year they had collected 34 members. In this group it included Secret Service agents or former private detective.[viii] In 1909 Bonaparte gave the office to a man named George Wickersham. In March 1909, Wickersham gave this group of agents a name, “the Bureau of Investigation.” (BI) Finch became the chief of the Bureau. The motto of the FBI is Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity is on the seal of the FBI.

Bonaparte gave the distinct role of these agents. Their investigations would only uncover crimes against the U.S. These crimes included crimes that had to do with “banking, postal services, and destruction of government property.”[ix] One of the Bureau’s most famous crimes that they have solved was Case 100: Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie was 19 when she met Clyde. She was married to an imprisoned murderer at that time. Clyde was 21 and unmarried when he met Bonnie.[x] Soon after Clyde had met Bonnie, he got arrested. He escaped with the help of Bonnie. Bonnie gave Clyde a gun. Clyde was captured again by the police, and was arrested. This occurred on January 1930. Clyde as paroled a year later, and was rejoined with Bonnie. On February 1932, they began their life of crime.

At first Bonnie and Clyde were not just Bonnie and Clyde, there were 5 people at one point doing crime together. There was a man named Buck, Clyde’s brother; Buck’s wife, Blanche; and William Daniel Jones who was a friend of Clyde’s for a long period of time.[xi] Buck and William had already had been involved with crime before joining Bonnie and Clyde. The whole gang began off with crimes such as robberies and burglaries. These crimes made headlines across the country.[xii] The whole gang left a trail of blood across the country. The gang would escape the law multiple times. The crimes and their escapes made the authorities eager to capture the gang. The crimes buck committed with Bonnie and Clyde were that he was suspected of killing two police officers, kidnapping a man and a woman in a “rural area in Louisiana, and later released them in Texas”, multiple robberies, and stole some cars. Blanche assisted her husband in most of these crimes, did not commit them, but assisted. There was a shooting with police in Iowa on July 29, 1933, Buck Barrow was hurt badly. His wife Blanche was captured by the police. Jones, mistaken for “Pretty Boy” Floyd, the police arrested him in November 1933 in Houston, Texas.[xiii] “Pretty Boy” Floyd was a burglar who did heists in the same area the Bonnie and Clyde gang would commit crimes. Bonnie and Clyde were not intimidated when the others were captured, and pushed forward on their life of crime.[xiv]

There were multiple traps set up to capture the duo. All these traps failed but one. One of these times the police attempted to capture Bonnie and Clyde was on November 22,1933. The trap included bring the sheriff, his deputies, and the police. The trap failed, Bonnie and Clyde shot two of the guards and escaped.[xv] On April 1st, Bonnie and Clyde encountered two highway patrol men, these men attempted to stop them, reaching for their guns. The duo was faster and shot them first and escaped. On April 6th the duo encountered a constable and wounded him badly. They kidnapped him and the and the chief of police. There was a man named Henry Methvin who would occasionally help the duo with their heists when the duo was in the area that he lived.

“The FBI had jurisdiction solely on the charge of transporting a stolen automobile, although the activities of the Bureau agents were vigorous and ceaseless.”[xvi] Authorities followed every clue that they could find. The FBI put up wanted posters country wide with pictures and descriptions of the duo. There were multiple sightings, and they would alert the officers, but it would always be too late. The FBI gave furnishing fingerprints, criminal record, and other data were distributed to all officer’s country wide. On April 13th an FBI agent thoroughly investigated Ruston, Louisiana, I’m not entirely sure why he chose this area. There he found a connection between the Methvin family and Bonnie and Clyde.[xvii] The corporation of Texas and Louisiana strongly believed that the duo was in their area. Some agents had heard the Bonnie and Clyde and the Methvin family were having a party in Louisiana on May 21st and that they would return in two days. On May 23rd a whole of officers from Louisiana and Texas hid behind some bushes in a highway near Sailes, Louisiana. Around early daylight the duo came riding in a car. When they police began shooting at the car, they tried to escape. With the bullets hitting the car in specific places made it blow up, and Bonnie and Clyde ended up dying in that car. The crimes Clyde and Bonnie committed were automobile thefts, believed to have committed 13 murders, multiple robberies, multiple burglaries, and multiple kidnappings.

In the 1920’s many people did not think much of the FBI. The FBI was a corrupt unit at that time. A new U.S. attorney came along, Harlan F. Stone, he wanted to change this corrupt unit of investigators.[xviii] Stone said, “from now on, the Bureau would not concern itself with “political or other opinions of individuals…. only with their conduct and then only with such conduct as is forbidden by the laws of the United States.” On May 10, 1924 Stone made a man named J. Edgar Hoover to be the leader of the BI. Hoover’s goal was to make the BI more “professional”. Hoover was born on January 1,1895, in Washington D.C. He lived and worked all his life in there. Hoover was the youngest of four, yet he never connected with any of them. However, he had a niece whom he had kept in touch with for 30 years.[xix] He had come from a family where they had served in government positions. Hoover had lived with his loving mother his entire life, caring for her needs as most people did at that period of history. He was 43 when she died. Hoover never married. He told only few of his friends the reason why he did not want to marry. Hoover was worried that wrong women would ruin him, and bring him down.[xx] His niece, Margaret Fennell, the niece that Hoover had kept in close touch with him knew a lot about him. Fennell said he never expressed love to anyone and feared of becoming involved with others emotionally or personally.[xxi] He was sentimental towards dogs though, but could care less about humans.[xxii] Hoover was a member of a debate team at Central Highschool. At that debate team Hoover learned how to make a formal argument, this will help him later in his career in the FBI. Central High had best debate team in the city. Not only was Hoover on the best team, he was the star of this team.[xxiii] The school newspaper praised him for his talents on this team.[xxiv] When this same newspaper interviewed him, he said “debating had given him a practical and beneficial example of life.” This life example on the team he said had given him “nothing more or less than matching the ones man wit against another.” When Hoover received his high school diploma, he began to work for the U.S. government. He was fortunate enough to live 6 blocks away from Capitol Hill. He grew up with the White House and all the other government buildings close to him. This was not a new thing for Hoover to work for the U.S. government.

When Hoover came to be the director there were 650 agents working for the BI. He fired 62 of them and shut down 5 out of 50 of the offices. He continued to do this for five years.[xxv] Today the FBI has offices located all over the world, mostly places where the U.S. embassies are located. The BI now was filled with better trained agents and it was less corrupt with a new director. To win the respect of the American people. Hoover had to keep high standards to do this. In the 1930’s that was the “gangster era.” Crime seemed to be ruling the U.S. Hoover did not find it the BI’s job to investigate crimes like murder and robbery. The BI invested high-profile cases. This is how the BI earned their respect, they only solved high profile cases. In the 1960’s a civil rights movement came to life.[xxvi] African Americans were tired of the way they were treated by society and demanded a change. Not only was it blacks that demanded a change, women did too, they wanted the same rights as men. “Hoover believed that the civil rights movement of the 1960’s threatened our society.”[xxvii]

Hoover was determined to contain this movement of “mainstream” civil rights.[xxviii] Hoover worked behind the scenes using the FBI agents in 1957 to spy on Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of this movement. Hoover was determined to give King a bad reputation and to “reduce his influence.” Hoover wanted an FBI agent, Cartha DeLoach, “to straighten King out”, and put a stop to what King is doing with the Civil Rights Movement.[xxix] “Martin Luther King Jr. and other members of King’s civil rights groups. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Bureau tried to give King a bad name and reduce his influence. In 1976, Congress released a report about FBI activities concerning King. The report noted: From December 1963, until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign of the federal bureau of investigation to “neutralize” him as an effective civil rights leader…. The FBI collected information about Dr. King’s plans and activities through an extensive surveillance program, employing nearly every intelligence gathering technique at the Bureau’s disposal…. Attempts were made to prevent the publication of articles favorable to Dr. King and to find “friendly” news sources that would print unfavorable articles.”[xxx] King first come to the light of the nation’s attention in February 1956. King started a boycott on blacks not giving up their seats to a white person. He started this boycott after the arrest of Rosa Parks. King was arrested for “orchestrating the boycott.”[xxxi] After King’s arrest he vowed to use “the passive resistance and the weapon of love” at his protests from that point on. He stayed true to his word.

Hoover bugged Martin Luther King (MLK) on June 11, 1962 to get some dirt on him.[xxxii] MLK was visiting Stanley Levison, an advisor and his friend, at his office, in Manhattan that day. Hoover received permission to wiretap Levison’s home. MLK’s phone calls to Levsion’s house were mainly about his hope and dreams of his people.[xxxiii] On November 18, 1962, King informed the press, and quoted, that “there is a considerable amount of distrust between Albany Negros and local members of the FBI.”[xxxiv] Hoover hired many black FBI agents for MLK to probably reduce suspicions in my opinion. Wayne Davis, an FBI agent, got a call from Hoover lasting 30 minutes about MLK Jr. Hoover said, “how awful King was, what a hypocrite he was and how his concern was that the movement that King was leading, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as infiltrated by communists.”[xxxv] Davis said once the phone call finished he said, “Listen Hoover was a bastard, ruled by fear[P1] .” Relentlessly, the FBI continued to record, spy, and bugged MLK as King was planning a march on August 1963 in Washington D.C. This huge protest march for civil rights would include at least 250,000 demonstrators. This would be one of the largest marches ever. Hoover continuously communicated with President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy with many memos to try to blame MLK of a huge communist conspiracy against the U.S.[xxxvi] Hoovers attempted persuasion failed.
This resulted in Hoover ordering the FBI to report in depth of all the history of the communist’s party involvement with the civil rights movement.[xxxvii] This report went nowhere as well. Having this document fail as well, Hoover ordered another one. This time he wrote it himself.[xxxviii] “FBI intelligence chief Bill Sullivan to the director. “Since 1919 communist leaders have devised countless tactics and programs designed to penetrate and control the Negro population.” Direct evidence of the communist control failed.[xxxix] Hoovers response to Sullivan was, “I for one can’t ignore the memos re King…” After the I have a dream oration: “In the lights of Kings powerful demagogic speech…. We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation form the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.” Nick Katzenbach stated the result was “a really politically explosive document.” It was signed by Hoover, and it spread throughout all of Washington D.C. Robert Kennedy ordered for this report to be withdrawn, yet it was too late. The result ended up being with the leaders of our government shocked.[xl] This document was politically exploding everywhere. Kennedy’s hands were tied because everyone was siding with Hoover, and so Kennedy had to reverse his order and allow for Hoover to have an unlimited surveillance of King and his SCLC headquarters in Atlanta.

Hoover got the greenlight to put the bug on King, and went all in. Hoover was more than happy when he could have unlimited electronic surveillance on King.[xli] He bugged Kings hotel rooms, home, telephone, essentially anything electronic. There was total of 16 wiretaps and 8 bugs on King.[xlii] All the surveillance is sealed on King until 2027, then it will be released to the public. Sine MLK traveled a lot the FBI chose to plant these surveillance tactics in his hotel rooms, rather than his home.[xliii] They still did plant some surveillance in King’s house, but it was less significant for them. King’s mistake was the lack of awareness of the telephone taps. The FBI heard King thinking out loud to himself about his plans for the civil right movements. [xliv]The FBI also had surveillance of MLK having parties in his hotel rooms and affairs with women, as he was a married man. Besides just having a house, MLK had an additional apartment where he would bring the women he was having affairs with.[xlv] The main reason they put cameras in his hotel rooms were to embarrass and destroy him having evidence against him about these affairs.[xlvi] The FBI shared the surveillance of King with the president. Though Hoover showed the surveillance of King having affairs with other women, he was angered when he found out on November 18, 1964, that MLK was going to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. King also criticized the FBI of their “performance in the civil rights field.”[xlvii]

Hoover sent these tapes to MLK’s house as a threat to him and to show King that he had these tapes. It was not King that received the package at his house, it was his wife that had opened the package. Inside this package there was a letter from Hoover that read, “King, look into your heart, the American people soon would know you for what you are – an evil, abnormal beast…. There is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.” DeLoach, a deputy associate director of the FBI, had heard the tapes of King. DeLoach called King to confront him. King denied these allegations and wanted to know who was telling all these lies.

After MLK’s assassination Hoover was angered when he heard MLK’s birthday was to be made a holiday. He attempted to put a stop to it, but failed. Hoover was on King’s back from 1963 until his death in 1968.[l] After Hoovers death the FBI’s image changed dramatically in who they hired. When Hoover was director a large majority of the people he employed were white, he did not hire any other race unless he needed to do so in using them. Not only did the people who they hired changed by race, but they began to start hiring women as well. Today the FBI now has an office where they “promote diversity and equality.

The FBI was created to meet the need with America’s expanding population. Crime was increasing, and the Justice Department functions were limited. Therefore, the FBI came into being, and established highly trained undercover agents to protect our government and its people here and abroad from crime. One significant case that the FBI handled was Case 100: Bonnie and Clyde notorious bank robbers and killers in several states. The FBI came in because most of these banks were owned federal government. The small towns that the duo invaded had limited police protection in banks. They left a blazing trail of death and destruction with no conscience. As J. Edgar Hoover became the director of the FBI, he abused both his power and position for his own prejudices and fears[li]a[P2] gainst MLK. The phrase “power corrupts” was descriptive of Hoover.