The Federal Bureau of Investigation: Past, Present, and the Consequences of Power Without Accountability
Executive Summary
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was created in 1908 as a necessity—to investigate federal crimes across a nation where state boundaries had become obstacles to law enforcement. For 117 years, the FBI has grown into the world's most powerful domestic investigative agency. Yet history reveals a troubling pattern: whenever the FBI has operated without meaningful external oversight, it has systematically abused its power. The question facing America today is whether institutional memory has faded enough that we're about to repeat this cycle—or whether the recent locking out of state investigators from investigating a federal officer's shooting in Minneapolis signals something more fundamental about the institution's trajectory.
Part I: The Past—Creation and the Original Fear
Why America Didn't Have a Federal Police
When the FBI's predecessor was created in 1908, there were few federal crimes. The U.S. Constitution is based on "federalism": a national government with jurisdiction over matters that crossed boundaries like interstate commerce and foreign affairs, with all other powers reserved to the states. Through the 1800s, Americans usually looked to cities, counties, and states to fulfill most government responsibilities.
This wasn't an accident. The Founders deliberately rejected centralized police power. They had watched European monarchies use secret police to consolidate control. The Constitution didn't authorize a federal investigative service, and that absence was intentional.
The Crisis That Changed Everything
By the early 1900s, that structure broke down. In 1908, there was hardly any systematic way of enforcing the law across America's broad landscape. Local communities and even some states had their own police forces, but at that time they were typically poorly trained, politically appointed, and underpaid. And nationally, there were few federal criminal laws and likewise only a few thinly staffed federal agencies. The United States was dealing with anarchism—an often violent offshoot of Marxism, with its revolutionary call to overthrow capitalism. Anarchists wanted to do away with government entirely and the prevailing anarchistic creed was that government was oppressive and repressive and should be overthrown by random attacks on the ruling class.
Interstate crime, enabled by automobiles and railroads, had become impossible for states to handle alone. Something had to change.
Birth of the FBI: Compromise Between Necessity and Fear
Congress banned the loan of Secret Service operatives to any federal department in May 1908, partly because lawmakers charged it was Roosevelt's grab for executive power. Now Bonaparte had no choice but to create his own force of investigators. In late June, the Attorney General quietly hired nine of the Secret Service investigators he had borrowed before and brought them together with another 25 of his own to form a special agent force. On July 26, 1908, Bonaparte ordered Department of Justice attorneys to refer most investigative matters to his Chief Examiner.
The FBI was born quietly—almost accidentally. Congress didn't want a federal secret police. But it approved the bureau because the alternative (leaving federal crimes uninvestigated) seemed worse.
Importantly, Congress's fear wasn't irrational. Rep. Walter Smith (R-IA) declared that "Nothing is more opposed to our race than a belief that a general system of espionage is being conducted by the general government," and Rep. John Fitzgerald (D-NY) warned against the dangers of a federal secret police.
The FBI was created against Congressional skepticism, with members explicitly worried about government surveillance and abuse. That skepticism proved prescient.
Part II: The Present—How Institutional Power Corrupted Its Original Purpose
The Hoover Era: The Machine That Became a Threat
For 48 years, from 1924 to 1972, J. Edgar Hoover transformed the FBI from a law enforcement agency into something else entirely. In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute people for their political opinions, most notably communists. Some of his aides reported that he purposely exaggerated the threat of communism to "ensure financial and public support for the FBI." At this time he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name COINTELPRO.
The scale of abuse was staggering. COINTELPRO's methods included infiltration, burglaries, setting up illegal wiretaps, planting forged documents, and spreading false rumors about key members of target organizations. Some authors have charged that COINTELPRO methods also included inciting violence and arranging murders.
But the most revealing detail is this: these weren't violations discovered by prosecutors. They were discovered by accident—and only after Hoover died.
The Moment Everything Changed: 1971
In 1971, a group of anti-war protesters broke into an FBI office in suburban Philadelphia, sparking revelations that exposed Hoover's surveillance and harassment of civil rights leaders and political dissidents and led to the discovery of the agency's infamous "COINTELPRO".
What emerged was systematic targeting of political enemies. In the 1960s, Hoover's FBI monitored John Lennon, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali. The COINTELPRO tactics were later extended to organizations such as the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party, King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference and others.
The tactics were not abstract. Hoover detested King, whom he called "one of the most reprehensible … individuals on the American scene today," and urged his agents to use "imaginative and aggressive tactics" against King and the SCLC. To this end, agents bugged King's hotel rooms; tape-recorded his infidelities; and mailed a recording, along with a note urging King to commit suicide, to the civil rights leader's wife.
Even more disturbing: One "imaginative" COINTELPRO suggestion was sending a fake letter from US to the Black Panthers warning that US planned to "ambush leaders of the BPP in Los Angeles." Antiwar activists were given oranges injected with powerful laxatives. Agents hired prostitutes known to have venereal disease to infect campus antiwar leaders.
The Constitutional Reckoning: Church Committee
This program remained in place until it was exposed to the public in 1971. COINTELPRO's activities were investigated in 1975 by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, called the "Church Committee" after its chairman, Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho); the committee declared COINTELPRO's activities were illegal and contrary to the Constitution.
The Attempted Fix That Didn't Work
Congress ultimately limited the term of the director of the FBI to ten years, to be served at the pleasure of the president, a safeguard designed to ensure that no single individual could again run the bureau indefinitely and without check.
This was the response to institutional corruption on a massive scale: a term limit. It was necessary, but it was not sufficient.
Modern Erosion of Trust
The fears that created these safeguards have returned. According to the most recent survey by Gallup, public trust in the FBI has fallen in recent years. Where 57 percent of U.S. adults said that the FBI was doing either an "excellent" or a "good" job in 2019, this fell to 44 percent in 2021.
If polls are to be believed, almost half the country now lacks trust in the FBI over concerns it is doing the bidding of one political party over another. That is a disaster for the bureau — unprecedented in magnitude — and could translate into an existential threat to one of the nation's most important agencies as political fault lines shift.
The specific trigger points vary depending on political perspective, but the underlying concern is consistent: the FBI is protecting its own and investigating its political enemies. Whether that perception is entirely accurate is less important than the fact that half the country now believes it.
Part III: The Present Crisis—Minneapolis ICE Shooting and the Pattern Repeating
The Sequence of Events
In January 2026, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis. A joint investigation between the FBI and Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) was initially agreed to—the model that checks and balances.
Then the agreement was reversed. The U.S. Attorney's Office unilaterally decided the FBI would handle the investigation alone. State investigators were locked out of evidence, crime scenes, and interview materials in their own jurisdiction.
Why This Matters
This decision embodies every fear Congress had in 1908 and 1975:
Concentration of power: Federal law enforcement investigating itself, with no external oversight.
Removal of checks and balances: The normal system (federal and state investigators working together) was dismantled.
No transparency mechanism: State prosecutors cannot access the evidence or direct the investigation of officers operating in their territory.
The appearance of self-protection: An agency investigating one of its own, behind closed doors.
This is not a controversial observation. An expert on federal investigations explained that such cases are typically handled as joint investigations, with courts viewing state and federal governments as coequal. The reversal here was unusual and unexplained.
The Institutional Self-Perpetuation Problem
Here's what makes this case a turning point: when institutions are allowed to investigate themselves with no external oversight, and when they appear to prioritize protecting their own over justice, they lose the legitimacy that justifies their existence.
The FBI's power rests on public trust. When half the country no longer trusts it, the institution becomes a liability rather than an asset.
Part IV: The Future—The Inevitable Reckoning
The Pattern in History
Throughout American history, when unchecked power is exposed, the political system moves to dismantle or radically reform the institution that held it. This happened after Hoover's abuses. It will likely happen again.
Scenarios for the FBI's Future
Scenario 1: Structural Collapse Congress could determine that an FBI with this much power and this little external oversight is incompatible with democratic governance. Rather than trying to reform it further, Congress could return investigative authority to states and create smaller, specialized federal agencies with explicit jurisdictional boundaries and mandatory state participation in investigations of federal officers.
This would echo the original constitutional design—decentralized law enforcement with federal authority only for genuinely national crimes.
Scenario 2: Radical Restructuring The FBI could remain but be radically redesigned. State investigators would have unalterable rights to participate in investigations of federal officers within their jurisdiction. Leadership could be subject to bipartisan congressional confirmation. Investigative decisions could be subject to external judicial review.
The agency would survive, but as something fundamentally different—a specialized unit rather than a dominant force.
Scenario 3: Institutional Decline If the FBI continues operating as it has, public trust will erode further. Witnesses will become less cooperative. Sources will dry up. The organization will become increasingly ineffective at its core mission. It will still exist, but it will become a zombie institution—present but impotent, eventually replaced organically by other agencies.
Why None of These Outcomes Are Guaranteed
The danger is complacency. In the Hoover era, the FBI's abuses remained secret for decades because there was no mechanism to expose them. When they were finally exposed, reform was necessary.
But reform is fragile. The discoveries went well beyond Hoover, though, and well beyond the FBI. According to the Church Committee reports, every federal intelligence agency had engaged in widespread civil liberties abuses over the previous 30 years. The result was a new system of oversight—institutions like the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the FISA courts that govern intelligence activities today. When they were created, these new mechanisms were supposed to stop the kinds of abuses that men like Hoover had engineered. Instead, it now looks as if they have come to function as rubber stamps for the expansive ambitions of the intelligence community.
The oversight mechanisms that were supposed to prevent future abuses became enablers of them.
Part V: The Consequences of Concentrated Investigative Power Without Accountability
Loss of Legitimacy
An agency that appears to protect its own will lose the public trust necessary for legitimacy. When legitimacy is lost, the entire institution becomes vulnerable.
Operational Effectiveness Decays
When trust diminishes, the FBI loses access to cooperation it used to have. When cooperation is lost, fewer crimes are solved.
A federal investigative agency without public cooperation cannot function. Witnesses won't come forward. Sources will disappear. The organization becomes self-defeating.
Democratic Accountability Disappears
An agency that investigates itself without external oversight becomes a tool of whoever holds executive power at any given moment. It ceases to be a law enforcement agency and becomes a political instrument.
History shows this is not speculative. It happened under Hoover. The mechanism was the same: the power to investigate combined with the absence of meaningful external checks.
Political Pressure for Radical Reform Becomes Inevitable
When institutions lose legitimacy, political movements arise to dismantle them. The more the FBI appears to serve power rather than justice, the stronger those movements will become.
The irony is profound: by refusing to submit to normal oversight (allowing state investigators to participate in investigations of federal officers), the FBI accelerates the conditions that will eventually force it to submit to much more radical restructuring.
Conclusion: The Question Before Us
The FBI was created because the original constitutional system—decentralized, state-based law enforcement—couldn't handle modern crime. But that creation came with a warning: Congress feared exactly this outcome.
For 117 years, that warning has been validated repeatedly. Every time the FBI has escaped external oversight, it has abused that freedom. Every time abuse was exposed, the political system has demanded reform.
The Minneapolis ICE shooting investigation is not exceptional. It's exemplary. It demonstrates the mechanism: federal power investigating itself, state oversight removed, the public locked out.
If history is any guide, this pattern will not persist indefinitely. Either the FBI will be reformed to require mandatory state participation in investigations of federal officers—restoring the checks and balances that work—or the institution will eventually be dismantled and replaced with something more compatible with democratic governance.
The choice is not whether change will come. It's whether that change will be deliberate and thoughtful, or forced and destructive.
Those who built the FBI 117 years ago worried that centralized federal investigative power would eventually corrupt. That worry is being validated in real time. The only question is whether the institution learns that lesson, or whether it learns it the hard way—by ceasing to exist.
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