Washington - 'This is the FBI' is a phrase that has long led
to the capture of both imaginations and criminals.
The law-enforcement agency first came into entertainment in a
1930s radio series, the G-Men. Later, the agency's legend grew
through fictional agent Lewis Erskine in the 1960s television drama
The FBI, followed by other shows including the 1990s paranormal hit
series The X Files and appearances on countless crime dramas.
On Saturday, the federal agency - which has lit up the silver
screen but has also drawn negative spotlights for snooping on US
citizens, intelligence breakdowns and other scandals - will mark its
100th anniversary.
For the celebration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is
focusing on successes during its rich history, beginning with the
hunts for Depression-era gangsters like Bonnie and Clyde, the
murderous bank robber John Dillinger and his gang, Babyface Nelson,
and Pretty Boy Floyd.
More recently, the agency tracked down the Unabomber, Theodore
Kaczynski, who from 1978-95 terrorized university and airline
employees with mailed bombs, and anti-government domestic terrorist
Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal office building in 1995 in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people including many children.
Two years before Oklahoma City, international terrorism arrived on
US shores in the form of a truck bomb in the underground garage of
New York's World Trade Center. The FBI worked with international
agencies to track down alleged mastermind Ramzi Yousef and
accomplices.
But just eight and a half years later, the towers were destroyed
on September 11, 2001, and the FBI and overseas intelligence agency
the CIA were blamed for intelligence failures that allowed the
suicide hijackings to occur.
The FBI's history began with a small group of 34 special agents
under then-US Attorney General Charles J Bonaparte on July 26, 1908.
The group was known as the Bureau of Investigation, the word Federal
was added to the title in 1935.
Today, the agency has about 30,000 employees, including 12,000
special agents. With the motto 'Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity,' the
FBI is responsible for violations of federal laws and crimes that
cross state borders within the United States. That spectrum covers
organized crime, terrorism, spying, kidnappings, bank robberies,
enforcement of cartel laws and mortgage fraud.
If much of the FBI history is the stuff of hero films, there are
also many chapters that the agency is unlikely to discuss in any
official celebrations. This includes many of the years under then-
director J Edgar Hoover, when a hunt for communist enemies of the
state led to the monitoring of innocent citizens, the infiltration of
anti-Vietnam-War protest groups, and even snooping on sitting
presidents.
For critics, the FBI represents unnecessary use of government
force, like the raid against right-wing residents of the Ruby Ridge
compound in 1992 and the 1993 storming of the Branch Davidian
compound in Waco, Texas, that left nearly 80 dead after a fire broke
out. McVeigh later cited those incidents as fanning his anti-
government sentiments.
The list of snoops and double agents is also long - FBI agent
Robert Hansson spied for 15 years for Moscow before being arrested in
2001.
After the 1996 Olympic Park bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, the
FBI long suspected a security guard who turned out to be innocent.
Worst of all were suggestions that FBI headquarters ignored tips
about the flight training of September 11 terrorists.
Investigations pinned the oversight on years-long micromanagement
and the failure of the agency's leaders to see the big picture, while
not communicating with the CIA. The FBI had also been operating with
outdated technology for years despite an inflow of money, with
communication problems contributing to the 9/11 failures.
Director Robert Mueller, who has headed the agency since 2001, has
worked to overcome these challenges, while taking on more
responsibility for counterterrorism inside the United States. But
human-rights advocates have criticized counterterrorism efforts that
frequently come without the warning 'This is the FBI.'
USA
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