The Birth of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

On July 26, 1908 United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issued an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner. It was later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"It’s all up with the “black cabinet” of Washington,” read the Washington Evening Star. Congressional hearings were then underway into the practice by which the U.S. Secret Service loaned investigators to other federal agencies, primarily the Justice Department. As a result of these hearings, Rep. Walter Smith (R-IA) declared that “Nothing is more opposed to our race than a belief that a general system of espionage is being conducted by the general government,” and Rep. John Fitzgerald (D-NY) warned against the dangers of a federal secret police.1 As a result of these hearings Congress forbade the Secret Service from loaning investigators to other departments. Having lost access to those investigators, Attorney General Bonaparte created a small force of detectives for the Department of Justice (DOJ); this was the predecessor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Because Congress had condemned “secret services,” “black cabinets,” spies, and detectives at this time, many Bureau critics have charged that the FBI was created in opposition to Congress’s will and so was born illegitimately.2 This was not so.

Prior to 1908, the Justice Department had no organized force of investigators to gather evidence. It relied on detectives hired from the Secret Service and, for a while private detectives. Under President Theodore Roosevelt, this began to change. The vigorous application of older laws and the increase in new ones that occurred during his administration began to tax the Justice Department’s ability to detect crime. In 1906, 60 Secret Service operatives were needed; the next year, 65. These investigators came from a reserve force of about 20 that the Secret Service kept to help other departments as well as a list maintained by Chief John Wilkie of some 300 other investigators who had applied for Secret Service positions, were already vetted by the Treasury Department, but for whom no position was available.3

This system had worked for many years, but in 1906, Congress began to question it. That January, Appropriations Committee chairman James Tawney (R-MN) asked Assistant Attorney General Glover where the Department of Justice got its “secret service,” i.e. detectives. “Generally from the Treasury Department,” Glover replied.4 Why, Tawney pressed, didn’t the Department rely on its own investigators? Glover answered, there weren’t enough in the Department for the work that needed to be done, but “some persons … have considered the question … as to whether the Department ought to have its own secret service force.” “That is a different proposition altogether,” Tawney snapped. Glover quickly added that the Department had rejected the idea as too costly.5

Tawney complained that the Secret Service loan program gave “what Congress would never authorize …a secret-service bureau in every Department,” thereby creating “a system of espionage in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the theory of our government.” Glover insisted that the Department needed detectives to investigate “violations of the law” and Tawney backtracked. The Justice Department, he averred, “ought to be clothed with all the machinery necessary to conduct prosecutions,” adding, if other Departments need “to use secret-service men they should obtain authority from Congress …[so that] the advisability of maintaining the service throughout our Government would be determined by Congress.” Tawney’s concern could not have been of pressing importance. He did not seriously revisit the issue for two years, though he kept tabs on the use of Secret Service operatives during this time.

Charles Bonaparte, who was appointed attorney general in March 1907, quickly became convinced that the practice of using Secret Service investigators was a problem. His lack of complete control over the investigators, he later argued, meant that he “had no direct information as to what they did, and …but an imperfect control over the expenses which they might incur.” In his Annual Report, Bonaparte called Congress’s attention “to the anomaly that the Department of Justice has no …permanent detective force under its immediate control.”6 He asked that “provision be made for a force of this character; its number and the form of its organization to be determined by the scope of the duties which the Congress may see fit to intrust [sic] to it.” In January 1908 he followed up his request in person. Bonaparte reminded the House Appropriation subcommittee of his earlier request and complained that the Justice Department had “to rely on the secret service of the Treasury Department,” which had just “gone up on us in price.”

Chairman Tawney questioned Bonaparte on how these investigators were paid. “The reason I asked,” he lectured, “is that there is a specific appropriation for [the Secret Service] and…a proviso that the appropriation should be extended for no other service.” The Executive, Tawney thought, should not be loosely interpret the strictures of the law. Roosevelt’s position, though not stated at these hearings, was that what was not forbidden by the law was allowed, hence as president, he had wide discretion in marshaling the executive power. Tawney opposed this and sought to uphold Congress’s authority. It was this concern that fueled his anger at the Secret Service and Roosevelt.7 It is ironic that Bonaparte’s request re-ignited Tawney’s concern; Bonaparte was clearly trying to do as the Chairman had asked, i.e. go to Congress for authority to create a detective force."