J. Edgar Hoover

1895-01-01 - 1972-05-02 Contemporaries

J. Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who led the Bureau of Investigation from 1924 and became the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935. He remained FBI director for 37 years until his death in 1972, serving a total of 48 years leading both agencies under eight presidents. He expanded the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency with modernizations such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories, but later became controversial as evidence of his secretive abuses of power surfaced.