Federal Bureau of Investigation Timeline of Events

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Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...

Timeline of Events

1908

7.26.1908

United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation).

1924

5.10.1924

J. Edgar Hoover is appointed the Director of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation, and remains so until his death in 1972.

1932

11.24.1932

In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.

1933

6.17.1933

Union Station Massacre: in Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash.

1934

10.22.1934

In East Liverpool, Ohio, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents shoot and kill notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd. thumb with six-day weeks.]]

11.27.1934

Bank robber Baby Face Nelson dies in a shoot-out with the FBI.

1942

1.2.1942

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) convicts 33 members of a German spy ring headed by Fritz Joubert Duquesne in the largest espionage case in United States history—the Duquesne Spy Ring

1949

6.8.1949

Celebrities Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Party members.

1964

5.7.1964

Pacific Air Lines Flight 773, a Fairchild F-27 airliner, crashes near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.

1972

6.23.1972

Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation's investigation into the Watergate break-ins.

1980

2.2.1980

Reports surface that the FBI was targeting allegedly corrupt Congressmen in the Abscam operation.

1986

4.11.1986

The FBI Miami shootout between eight Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and two heavily-armed and well-trained gunmen.

1990

1.18.1990

Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting.

1992

5.26.1992

Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems, Inc. is kidnapped at gunpoint from the Adobe parking lot in Mountain View, California and is held hostage for a ransom of $650,000 in a rented house in Hollister, California. The FBI rescues him four days later.

8.22.1992

FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi shoots and kills Vicki Weaver during an 11-day siege at her home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

2001

2.18.2001

FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He is ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

2002

1.23.2002

"American Taliban" John Walker Lindh returns to the United States in FBI custody.

2003

3.18.2003

FBI agents raid the corporate headquarters of HealthSouth Corporation in Birmingham, Alabama on suspicion of massive corporate fraud led by the company's top executives.