The FBI Has Been Political From The Start
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The AG was required by law to get congressional approval before creating this new “investigative” service of special agents within the Department of Justice. In the spring of 1908, Bonaparte officially requested the money and authority to create the FBI. Congress came back with an emphatic no.
Members of the House saw through the innocuous language of the request and figured out exactly what the president and AG were doing—creating a secret police force that was answerable only to them.
House Democrats like Joseph Swagar and John J. Fitzgerald and Republicans like Walter I. Smith and George Waldo all loudly condemned the proposal, saying it called for a “system of espionage” comparable to the Tsar’s secret police in Russia that stood in stark contrast to the very principles at the heart of the American system. Congress explicitly forbade the AG from creating this new Bureau.
So what did Bonaparte do? He waited for Congress to break for the summer and then went ahead and created the FBI anyway.
Congress was only notified about the new federal police force half a year later when Bonaparte included a quick throw-away line at the end of his annual report: “It became necessary for the department to organize a small force of special agents of its own.”