J. Edgar Hoover transformed the FBI into a law and order machine

The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son in 1932 and the discovery of his body two months later was considered the crime of the century. It took almost three years to catch the child’s kidnapper, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no involvement in the investigation or arrest for two reasons.

First, kidnapping was not a federal crime at the time, so the organization had no jurisdiction.

Second, in those days the FBI was so little known or little thought of that the Lindberghs were not even interested in talking to its headman.

John Oller writes: “The baby’s parents, Charles and Ann Morrow Lindbergh, even rejected (FBI Director J. Edgar) Hoover’s offer to meet.” “Gangster Busters: How Hoover’s G-men Defeat America’s Deadliest Public Enemies” (Dutton, 26 November).

Founded in 1908, the FBI’s initial mission was to investigate corporate corruption and fraudulent government land deals.

It had nothing to do with chasing bootleggers (the Treasury Department’s enforcement agency) or tax evaders (the Internal Revenue Service, who caught Al Capone) during Prohibition.

The FBI “isn’t a very dangerous job,” Oller writes of agents’ workloads. “It’s not the type of activity that would require the use of a deadly weapon.”

After becoming director in 1924, the 29-year-old Hoover insisted that the FBI hire only certain types of agents.

He wanted all-American men who were loyal and morally upright, at least six feet tall, athletic or slim, smartly dressed, and behaved like gentlemen. Ideally, they should also be college educated and fraternity members.

The job paid extremely well during the Depression, so Hoover selected the applicants. Many expected an easy desk job pushing paperwork because they “had no idea of ​​the shoot-to-kill future that awaited them.”

“These were not tough guys with years of experience fighting crime. These were almost boys,” said office assistant Doris Rogers.

By the 1930s the FBI was changing and Hoover was its key change agent. After the so-called “Lindbergh Act” made kidnapping a federal crime, the FBI began to become more actively involved in combating violent crime. His first high-profile target was notorious bank robber Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd.

In 1924, Floyd stole $12,000 from payroll couriers, and one of his victims described his attacker as having “a pretty face.”

Floyd, who was eventually caught and imprisoned for bank robbery, escaped by jumping from a moving train during a prison transfer in Kansas.

Shortly thereafter, “Pretty Boy” and an accomplice killed two men whose wives the criminals wanted to “date”.

In 1931, Floyd shot and killed a U.S. Prohibition agent, then shot and killed a sheriff who tried to arrest him. Regret did not enter his mind. “It was either him or me, so I let him,” “Pretty Boy” said of the slain sheriff.

Hoover desperately wanted the FBI to catch Floyd, but he remained a fugitive for years.

But it wasn’t the best of times for the “Pretty Boy”, who was said to be tired of life on the run.

It seemed the only way Floyd could relax was by baking a pie.

The crime-fighting FBI’s early success came in 1933, when an informant linked the kidnapping of oil magnate (and FDR friend) Charles Urschel to George Kelly.

It was said that Kelly was able to write his own name “with bullets coming out of a gun”.

The man was quickly captured by FBI agents one morning in Memphis; here “Machine Gun” Kelly is captured half-asleep in her underwear, docile from a night of heavy drinking.

During the arrest, Kelly may have also said the statement that exemplified Hoover’s FBI. “Don’t shoot, G-men!” Kelly was known to yell.

“It was the greatest victory ever for J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI,” Oller writes of “Machine Gun”’s arrest.

But the FBI’s early days were also filled with unforgettable mishaps; most especially when he was hunting “Public Enemy No. 1” John Dillinger. Dillinger was nearing 30 in 1933, but he had yet to rob a bank, when he was released from prison for “hitting an old grocer in the head.”

On his father’s advice, John pleaded guilty but was later sentenced to a shocking 10-20 years in prison. Dillinger always said that injustice determined your fate. “I entered as a carefree child, but I turned out to be tough against everything…”

In 1933, Dillinger began a bank robbery spree unparalleled in American history. His flamboyant signature move was jumping the meters and cracking cheerful jokes, ingratiating him with the bank-hating American public during the Depression.

Dillinger became so romantic that movie audiences would erupt in cheers whenever his face appeared in newsreels.

Hoover made Dillinger’s arrest a top priority for the FBI, but efforts to capture the popular thief did not go well.

John was captured in Tucson by local cops using FBI information and FBI fingerprinting techniques, but after being extradited to East Chicago, he escaped from prison either by using a wooden gun or by bribing his captors.

His legend was burnished when, during this escape, Dillinger was said to have sung the chorus of a popular song: “Go, little dog, go…”

The FBI’s pursuit of Dillinger was hampered by numerous clues regarding John’s whereabouts.

One said she was wandering the streets of Chicago dressed as a nun, the other said she was a law student at Hoover’s alma mater, George Washington University, while a drifter on the streets of Washington, DC, insisted that she was America’s “Public Enemy No. 1.” He’s hiding in Minnesota.

Not finding her on the SS Duchess of York FBI agents traveling to Glasgow, Scotland, captured at least one international fraudster wanted in London. Hoover praised the arrest as a way to focus his organization’s unsuccessful pursuit of Dillinger.

In three weeks, John Dillinger evaded FBI capture four times. He watched as federal agents descended on a Chicago tavern to arrest his girlfriend, and John nonchalantly walked away from the scene after dropping off his girlfriend.

He walked outside, blood oozing from a gunshot wound to his calf, and surrounded St. Louis before escaping through the back door. He was surrounded in a safe house in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Worst of all, after the press reported that FBI agents had imprisoned Dillinger and his gang in a Wisconsin lodge called Little Bohemia, John and his accomplices jumped out the back window to escape from them, while federal agents only killed an innocent bystander.

Carter Baum, the FBI officer who killed the bystander, was so traumatized that he swore he would never fire his gun again, which later caused him to pause when he brought Dillinger’s accomplice, Baby Face Nelson, into view. But the conscience of the murderer Nelson did not slow him down and he immediately shot and killed Baum.

“Little Bohemia was a debacle for the FBI like no other before or since,” Oller writes. “But from the ashes of a shootout in a remote, snow-covered Wisconsin location, the modern FBI was born.”

He would soon become known for always finding the FBI’s man. Federal agents eventually shot Dillinger dead in the street outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre. Baby Face Nelson killed 2 FBI agents in a shootout in Barrington, Illinois, but the gangster was shot in the stomach later that day and was “done”. Even Pretty Boy Floyd couldn’t escape forever, getting shot by Hoover’s G-men while trying to escape an Ohio cornfield.

Each of these criminals was once labeled America’s “Public Enemy No. 1”; Their deaths ultimately increased the FBI’s reputation so much that its agents came to be seen as more heroic than the gangsters they had once been.

“For Depression-era Americans, violent criminals had finally lost their romantic appeal, replaced by the image of the incorrigible G-man.”