THE FBI: UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

ONCE THE MOST ESTEEMED FEDERAL AGENCY, THE FBI COMES UNDER ATTACK FOR SLOPPY WORK

It was the idea of a guy named Bonaparte to invent the FBI in 1908 (Charles Joseph, the Emperor's descendant who served as Teddy Roosevelt's Attorney General), and once initial suspicions were allayed that it would turn into some big, secretive, czarist police force, it did precisely that. The bureau quickly built its empire of white men in white shirts, chasing anarchists and Bolsheviks in the '20s, gangsters and bootleggers in the '30s, fascists in the '40s, communists in the '50s and civil-rights leaders and antiwar protesters in the '60s. The enemies, always changing, are changing still, and the agency that...

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