Agency: Federal Bureau of Investigation (aka G-Men)

Creation Date: July 26, 1908, as Bureau of Investigation, 1932 became United States Bureau of Investigation, 1933 became Division of Investigation, became Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935

Legal Act: United States Federal Law

Location of Headquarters: J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, DC, United States of America

Person in Charge: (as of 2023) Director Christopher A. Wray

Number of Employees: (as of 2023) Approximately 35,000

Annual Budget: (as of 2023) Approximately $9.7 Billion USD

Website: www.fbi.gov

Mission Statement: To protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States

Stated Principles: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.

Collection type: HUMINT (in their role relating to counterintelligence and counterterrorism)

Organization type:  Law Enforcement

Oversight Bodies: Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence

Area of Operations: Domestic – United States of America, (Legal Attaché (or LEGAT) offices located internationally)

Brief History: In the early 1900s, the United States of America was dealing with the benefits and the drawbacks of population increase and economic expansion. The drawbacks included, an increase in crime and corruption, as well as the rise of anarchist activity, which resulted in the assassination of President William McKinley on September 14, 1901. In response to the increase in crime, corruption and anarchist activities, President Theodore Roosevelt formed the Bureau of Investigation in 1908.  Headed by Charles Bonaparte, grandnephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Bureau of Investigation started with investigators borrowed from the Secret Service. Bonaparte eventually acquired 34 of his own investigators which comprised of 25 new recruits and 9 hired from the ranks of investigators at the United States Secret Service.

Through the 1900s to present day, the FBI has been at the forefront of domestic security and intelligence as well as federal criminal activity. Both an intelligence gathering organization and a prosecuting law enforcement entity, the FBI is a full circle domestic intelligence / law enforcement entity.

Powers: The Federal Bureau of Investigation has full police powers relating to their law enforcement mandate. As noted, the FBI is a domestic intelligence and law enforcement entity and is not mandated to conduct operational activity outside of the United States of America.

Notable Operations:

 9/11: The 9/11 investigation, Codenamed “PENTTBOM” was the largest case ever undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI was tasked with identifying the attackers and preventing further terrorist acts of this type from continuing.

Scouring some of the largest crime scenes ever in recorded history, the fallen Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in the Pennsylvania countryside, FBI agents assembled and collected various pieces of wreckage for evidentiary purposes.

19 terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks were identified mere hours after the attacks occurred.

Oklahoma City Bombing:

 On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh exploded a powerful Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma.

The explosion destroyed one third of the building and 168 people were killed with several hundred more being injured.

In the rubble of the building, the axle of the rental truck used by McVeigh was found, and the serial number on it was traced back to a body shop. Employees from the body shop assisted FBI with a composite drawing of McVeigh, who by happenstance, had been arrested just 90 minutes after the bombing on a concealed weapons charge when a state trooper pulled him over for a missing license plate on his vehicle.

Evidence against McVeigh discovered and used by the FBI included:

Chemicals used in the explosion on McVeigh’s clothing.

A business card found in possession of McVeigh that had a handwritten note on it “TNT @ $5 / stick, need more”

Robert Hanssen:

 On February 18, 2001, FBI Agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for providing highly classified information to the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopsnosti (KGB Committee for State Security) and its predecessor the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki  (SVR Russian Foreign Intelligence Service).

For almost 15 years, using what he learned as an FBI agent, Hanssen employed clandestine techniques, including “dead drops” (see page on terminology) to provide national security information to his Russian handlers. In return, Hanssen received over one million dollars, in a combination of diamonds, bank funds and cash.

After securing Russian documentation, the FBI (along with the Central Intelligence Agency) were able to identify Hanssen as a possible spy for the Russians.

Hanssen was taken into custody, essentially red handed, on the way to his parked vehicle after planting a package of classified material wrapped in a plastic bag by a wooden foot bridge in Foxstone Park, in Vienna, Virginia.

Hanssen is serving a life sentence without parole.