The unexpected story of the FBI. What did he have to do with Napoleon's family and how a US Agency for Accountants arrived

One of the most famous justice agencies in history was born 117 years ago on the American continent. It was founded by an ancestor by the famous Napoleon Bonaparte and today investigates a wide range of federal crimes, such as terrorism or organized crime.

FBI agents training on the roof of the FBI.Gov photo headquarters

The famous crime investigation agency has as a motto “fidelity, bravery, integrity”. In short, it is about Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Crime Investigation Agency belonging to the United States Department of Justice. This agency investigates a wide range of federal crimes including terrorism, organized crime, public corruption, cyber crime, civil rights violations but also economic crimes. The FBI has a double mission, that of applying the law, but of information, both with a crucial role in protecting the United States territory. Federal Bureau of Investigation is based in Washington DC and the story of its beginnings is little known to the general public. Few know that this powerful agency, which has also has an office in Romania, owes the existence of Napoleon Bonaparte's great -grandfather and was initially founded with a team of accountants.

A amergice of prosperity, but also of criminal groups and assassinations

At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States had become a new world power. After the completion of the civil war, America reunited and stretched from one ocean to the other. Revolutionary inventions such as telegraph, telephone, but also the extension of railways from east to west, reduced the huge distances that connected the states of the American Federation. This vast territory had important resources and the increasing industrialization had managed to exploit many of them transforming the United States into a rich and powerful state. The cities were developing seeing with their eyes.

Until 1908 there were 100 large urban agglomerations with over 50,000 inhabitants. With the development, however, problems of public order have also multiplied. In these big cities, with overcrowded homes full of emigrants, many of them poor and disillusioned by the American dream, often erupted conflicts, and crime was constantly growing. To all these were added the conflicts between the workers on the strike and their bosses from factories that became more and more violent. The great American metropolises, especially the immigrant neighborhoods, became nurseries of a new generation of professional criminals, famous American gangsters. In Brooklyn, Al Capone was born in Chicago – “Baby Face” Nelson, and in Indianapolis – John Dillinger (the famous leader of Dillinger Gang from the prohibition period). To small or organized crime, corruption was added, with political machines and misappropriations, but also serious economic crime, with illegal monopolies and funds. In front of this criminal landscape so diverse and dangerous to national security, there was no systematic way of applying the law on a territory as vast as the United States.

There was only one federal agency, the secret service, with insufficient staff to solve problems at the level of the whole federation. Local communities and US states had their own police forces, but at the beginning of the 20th century it was poorly prepared, subjected to political and insufficiently remunerated interests. Colac, over the stern, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the next one, anarchists, followers of Marxism and declared enemies of capitalism began to become more dangerous. It all culminated in the assassination of Leon Czolgosz (28 years old), who in 1901, after losing his job at the factory, embraced the current of the Berkman and Goldman anarchists. Entered by the teachings of the anarchists, Czolgosz makes a radical decision: he made the train to Buffalo, bought a revolver and shot the president of the United States William McKinley. On September 14, the president died.

Napoleon Bonaparte's ancestor's ambition

The new president of the United States, Theodor Roosevelt was determined to change things. At least in terms of national security. Roosevelt was a progressive and believed in the involvement of the federal government in applying the law throughout the United States. He did not tolerate corruption and, following the experience as the head of the New York police department, believed in the strict application of the law. This is why Roosevelt understood that in the United States there was a need for a federal force to apply the law and to watch over national security.

Including all forms of terrorism, organized crime and great economic crime. The one who would create, for Roosevelt, an organism to combat all the forms of federal crime, especially the above, was the great -grandfather of Napoleon Bonaparte. This is Charles Bonaparte, an American lawyer and prosecutor, nephew of Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westfalia, the youngest brother of the French emperor Napoleon. Charles Bonaparte shared Roosevelt's ideas and political program so he was called the second General Prosecutor of the United States. Charles Bonaparte was an extraordinary reformer and a man of the law. This is why Roosevelt trusted Napoleon's great -grandfather in Baltimore. Bonaparte laid the foundations of the FBI.

It all happened within a few years. Bonaparte, from the position of Attorney General, realized that he had his hands tied in his desire to combat the growing wave of crime and corruption that had settled in America the beginning of the 20th century. He had no teams of investigators to be sent in different missions and was based only on agents borrowed from the Secret Service. And those few and above very expensive. This situation frustrated on Bonaparte, who had little control over his own investigations. “Bonaparte made the problem of Congress known, who asked why investigators of the Secret Service, when there was no specific provision in the law for this. In a political confrontation with the Congress, which involved what the legislators have accused of being an executive power by Roosevelt, the Congress forbade the service of the service”is shown on FBI.Gov.

From accountants to justice of America

Charles Bonaparte has been forced to create their own investigators and agents to apply federal law throughout the United States. It started with a team of accountants, obviously specialized in the detection of economic crimes, corruption and fraud. Later, with the approval of President Roosevelt, at the end of June, the Attorney General Bonaparte hired, without too much van, nine of the Secret Service agents, those he had borrowed. Then he managed to hire another 25 investigators forming a force of special agents, chosen on the eyebrow. “On July 26, 1908, Bonaparte ordered the lawyers of the Justice Department to send most of the investigative issues to his chief examination, Stanley W. Finch, to be managed by one of these 34 agents. The new force had his mission – to carry out investigations for the Department of Justice – so this date is celebrated as the FBI”adds FBI.Gov. This is how Federal Bureau of Investigation was born.