How J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's first and longest director of the FBI, used controversial methods to turn the agency into one of the most efficient investigative forces in the world

He was the youngest of four children. As a child, he had a stutter that he overcame by speaking quickly. He also joined the debating team in high school.

Hoover was from Washington and spent most of his life in this city. He never got a passport and never traveled outside of the US.

He grew up as a devout Protestant. He worked as a Sunday School teacher and planned to become a minister until his father got sick and his family needed another income.

His father struggled with depression and died in 1921 when he was 64. Hoover lived with his mother and continued to do so until she died in 1938.

Sources: History Today, New Yorker, BBC, PBS

He worked there for two years and first developed a taste for classifying information. His mentor showed him how to catalog.

Sources: History Today, New Yorker, Washington Post

He joined a southern fraternity called Kappa Alpha, which upheld and applauded the history of keeping enslaved people in the South. In the 1950s, Kappa Alpha continued to hold shows where actors dressed up in blackface and also hosted Confederate-themed balls.

Hoover continued to go to these events in the 1950s.

Sources: History Today, New Yorker, WBUR

In 1919, US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer liked Hoover's efficiency and political leanings and appointed him head of the Radical Division of the Bureau of Investigation when Hoover was 24 years old.

The Radical Division had a staff of 25 and focused on monitoring radicals — from pacifists to socialists or anarchists — arresting them and deporting them. The raids resulted in thousands of arrests and 556 people being deported. The agents didn't use warrants.

The raids were known as the "Palmer Raids," and within a few years, public opinion had turned against the raids and Palmer was forced to resign. Hoover kept his job though and in 1921 was appointed the bureau's assistant director.

Sources: Atlantic, New Yorker, History, PBS, New York Times

The scandal involved the secret exploitation of oil-rich land in Wyoming by private companies and Cabinet officials.

When Hoover was appointed as the head of the bureau, agents weren't allowed to carry weapons and had to report suspects to other law officials who conduct arrests.

Sources: Atlantic, PBS

Forty years later, before much of what went on behind the scenes at the FBI became public, The New York Times reported one of the only criticisms aimed at Hoover was his establishment of a "cult of personality."

An unnamed official also pointed to the fact FBI offices always had a picture of Hoover but rarely had one of the attorney general or the president.

Sources: PBS, New York Times

In 1932, it began to test ballistics and fingerprints. It was the country's first crime laboratory. Within four years, it had 6 million criminal fingerprints on file.

New hires had to have college degrees. He liked accountants and lawyers for their professionalism. The new hires were trained to use guns and analyze forensic information.

Hoover hired more effective agents and enforced a new rigid code of conduct. What had only years before been seen as a corrupt branch of government, he turned into an efficient machine.

Sources: PBS, New York Times, Atlantic

Sources: PBS, New York Times

It was in response to a wave of famous criminals robbing banks and killing people, including John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. Roosevelt passed 21 new laws, giving agents the power to investigate extortion, racketeering, bank robbery, and the murder of federal officials.

In 1934, the FBI's reputation got a boost when its agents, known as "G-men," killed John Dillinger. In the same period, law enforcement agents — not always from the bureau — also killed Bonnie and Clyde, Charles Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson.

"When the smoke cleared from the mayhem, J. Edgar Hoover emerged as an Untouchable in official Washington," Buffalo News reported.

Sources: Atlantic, New York Times, Guardian, PBS, New York Times, Buffalo News

In 1935, the bureau was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Sources: Guardian, PBS, New York Times, Buffalo News

In response, a few days later, Hoover attended the arrest of a well-known criminal named Alvin Karpis.

He personally apprehended Karpis, stopping him from grabbing a weapon.

Source: New York Times

Hoover began to wiretap individuals and create files on people he dubbed "subversives." Later in the 1930s, Congress banned wiretapping.

But instead of stopping his agents from wiretapping, Hoover simply stopped providing wiretapping evidence in court.

Sources: Atlantic, History, PBS, Slate

Tolson later became Hoover's assistant director.

Sources: New Yorker, Guardian

Both men never married and were rumored to be lovers, but their relationship has never been confirmed.

Sources: New Yorker, Guardian

His reputation was bolstered on the left when he opposed the internment of Japanese people, saying it was an "extremely unfortunate" policy.

Sources: History, New York Times

He was at his most popular in the 1950s as Sen. Joseph McCarthy went after communists during the McCarthy hearings.

Sources: History, New York Times

In a poll taken in 1956 by the Hollywood Bachelor Girls Club, he appeared in the top 5 "Most Wanted Men."

Sources: History, New York Times

For one thing, President Harry Truman was wary of him and his methods.

Truman wrote during this period, "We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction."

"They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail … Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him," he wrote."

Source: Guardian

In response, he launched a covert program called Counterintelligence Program, or "Cointelpro," in 1956. The program had agents gathering information and attempting to disrupt or destroy communist groups.

Later, the program attempted to do the same thing to anti-war and civil rights groups, women's rights groups, and student associations.

According to Beverly Gage, who wrote "G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century," agents were "writing anonymous letters, spreading rumors, using informants as provocateurs, planting false stories in the press."

Sources: New York Times, New York Times, Atlantic

He had files on Supreme Court justices, senators, congressmen, and presidents, as well as on actors and writers. The list included President John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, and Felix Frankfurter.

The files weren't only filled with reliable information either. They often had rumors about sexual relationships and ties to supposed radical groups.

Loch K. Johnson, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia, told The New York Times, "It wasn't just spying on Americans. The intent of Cointelpro was to destroy lives and ruin reputations."

From 1956 to 1971, Hoover OK'd at least 2,000 illegal actions by the FBI to target different groups, according to Lerone A. Martin, author of "The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism."

Sources: Guardian, New York Times, History Today, Washington Post

He didn't take the idea of a criminal network seriously, and while the FBI's New York office had 400 agents monitoring "subversives," it only had four agents looking at organized crime.

Reportedly, Hoover thought it would be too complicated and didn't want the FBI's reputation to be tarnished by the investigations, Selwyn Raab wrote in "Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires."

In 1957, he was forced to admit there was a problem after 58 members of the mafia were caught and arrested meeting in a house in upstate New York. The incident prompted the FBI to establish a mafia task force.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine

Source: Hill

This was the first time there was no tie, or suspected tie, to a foreign group. It was an entirely domestic matter.

Source: Atlantic

Sources: Atlantic, History, Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post

He also refused to let his agents protect Black civil rights members or investigate attacks against Black protestors. He claimed they didn't have the jurisdiction.

But there are reports that his personal views were behind his reluctance.

He reportedly said, "I'm not going to send the FBI in every time some [n-word] woman says she's been raped."

Sources: Atlantic, History, Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post

Hoover was sure he was tied to communists. The FBI bugged his hotel room but instead of finding links to communism, it recorded extramarital affairs.

In 1964, Hoover publicly said he considered King to be the "most notorious liar in the country."

In private, the FBI sent the recordings of King's affair to his wife and a letter telling King to commit suicide rather than watch his affair ruin his reputation once the FBI made it public.

The letter said, "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it."

Sources: Atlantic, Conversation, WBUR

Sources: Atlantic, History

Nixon wanted the FBI to do more surveillance, especially on anti-war groups, but Hoover refused. The public had begun to turn against the FBI during the Vietnam War, and Hoover felt vulnerable.

Source: Conversation

At the end of their meeting, Nixon even agreed to provide the FBI with more funding.

In response to criticism that Hoover needed to be put in his place, Nixon later wrote about the meeting, saying "If Hoover had decided not to cooperate, it would matter little what I had decided or approved."

Sources: Time, Newsweek

In private, Nixon reportedly said, "Jesus Christ! That old cocksucker!"

But in public, it was all decorum. He said Hoover had been, "One of the giants… a national symbol of courage, patriotism, and granite-like honesty and integrity."

In the days after his death Nixon ordered his staff to get any secret files that Hoover kept in his office, but they were too late.

Hoover's secretary, on his orders, had destroyed them.

However, an official count still found 883 files he'd had made on senators and another 772 on congressmen.

Sources: Atlantic, History, Atlantic, Guardian, Conversation

Although opinions differed on whether he did more harm than good, it seems mostly agreed that he was in power for too long.

A few years later, the FBI imposed a 10-year limit on its directorship so that no one else would ever have as much power, for so long, again.

Source: History