J Edgar Hoover

J EDGAR HOOVER d1972. The first director of The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of The United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924. He was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935 where he remained director until his death. He is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. Later in life and after his death Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive actions and private life became known. His critics have accused him of exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI ; that he used the FBI to harass political dissenters / activists / he amassed secret files on political leaders and collected evidence using illegal methods. He consequently amassed a great deal of power. To quote one journalist in the 1960s ; "Hoover does not have to exert pressure, he is pressure". He died of a heart attack aged 77 in 1972