A Brief History of the FBI

The FBI, or Federal Bureau of Investigation, is the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Justice and the nation's primary investigative and domestic intelligence agency. It was first established in 1908. 

In the first years of the 20th century, it was clear that the US Department of Justice lacked resources to investigate violations of law across the nation. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt gave his approval for his attorney general to bypass Congress and form his own investigative squad. This force included some Secret Service agents and would become the center of the new Bureau of Investigation.

During World War I, the passage of the Espionage Act of 1918 led to the FBI launching its first nationwide domestic surveillance program that taped conversations and opened the mail of suspected radicals.

When fears of communism rose in the US, J. Edgar Hoover directed FBI agents to sweep up between 6,000 to 10,000 Americans, in mass arrest known as Paler Raids.

With the outbreak of World war II, the FBI investigated threats to national security including those of American Nazi, fascist, and communist groups. The FBI was tasked by Franklin D. Roosevelt to oversee intelligence operations in the entire western hemisphere.

In the 1980s, the FBI focused much of its work on global drug trafficking and white-collar crime. Then, the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1988 pushed Islamic terrorism to the forefront of the bureau's national security concerns.

During the 2016 presidential election, the FBI investigated Hilary Clinton's use of private email server during her tenure as security of the state.