"This is the FBI": US agency marks 100th birthday

By Gabriele Chwallek Jul 25, 2008, 1:52 GMT

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.'