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In movies, they're stoic people in suits with an almost supernatural ability to find and apprehend criminals. FBI agents are pretty impressive in real life, too, but they're not quite as infallible every bit Hollywood would take you retrieve. Their secretive operations haven't remained entirely confidential, and over the years some crazy details have managed to reach the public. Take a look at these lesser-known facts about the FBI — the skilful, the bad and everything in betwixt.
Art Theft Is No Joke
You might think that major fine art heists just happen in movies similar Ocean's 8, but they're a thing in the real earth, too. After all, well-known pieces of art can be some of the virtually expensive things in the world. What meliorate mode to get rich than by swiping a couple of Van Goghs?
As a result, the FBI created a unit in 2004 to bargain with art theft — and they've been pretty successful at it, too. To date, they've recovered almost $150 meg worth of artwork. So yes, the FBI cares a lot about fine art.
ESP FBI?
Office of the FBI'due south job is to exhaust every possible opportunity for criminal investigations and apprehensions. They look for, test and implement new interrogation tactics, weapons and investigation techniques. They even went so far every bit to investigate whether ESP was a plausible tool for the regime to utilize.
If you're not upward to speed, ESP stands for "extrasensory perception," a.k.a. reading people's minds or using psychic powers to find answers. They ran many tests in the 1950s but, sadly, eventually found there to be no scientific justification for the use of ESP.
FBI Most Wanted
You may accept heard of the FBI's infamous Near Wanted Listing. You certainly don't want to find yourself on it, and the only mode people can be removed is if charges are dropped or the individual is accounted harmless to society.
Once yous get on that listing, withal, at that place'south a good chance you're going to get caught — the FBI has institute 484 of the 518 total names on the listing since 1950. Certain, a couple dozen people may have gotten away, but would you lot want to bet on those odds? Probably not.
They Don't Similar Borat
Y'all know the movie Borat? The mustache-clad Kazakh reporter who offends just about everyone he meets? Well, it turns out the FBI compiled a file on actor Sacha Businesswoman Cohen for the many hijinks he performed while filming Borat. Driving around in an ice cream truck and pranking people was Cohen'southward typical activity at the time.
The FBI received so many complaints about a "terrorist" that they fifty-fifty paid a visit to Cohen's hotel room. He concluded up jumping out the window, however, and then the role player never did get to see a real-life agent.
They Have Songs Seriously
Non merely does the FBI value high-caliber fine art, simply they put a lot of stock into music, as well. Instead of protecting this song, however, they studied it to search for potentially pornographic language. The song in question was "Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen.
Their investigation lasted a surprising 2 years before they came to their senses and dropped the example. Sound similar a strange project for the FBI? Well, information technology did take place back in the 1960s, so at least they can blame it on the times.
A One-human being Show
Nowadays, we imagine the FBI to be an immense organization with many agents in many different sectors — and by all accounts, that's exactly what it is. Information technology wasn't always such a thriving institution, still. Take the FBI laboratory; it'due south currently one of the biggest law-breaking labs on Earth with 500 employees.
When it first got started in 1932, however, it was manned and operated by one lonely soul. That's right. One private was responsible for the entire FBI laboratory and fabricated exercise with a humble assortment of lab tools.
Busting Criminal offence Isn't Cheap
Sometimes to catch the criminals, you take to spend the big bucks. After all, busting crime isn't cheap. Not only do you need to pay your agents, but y'all've also got to have the right equipment on hand to do the job. There was one human being, notwithstanding, who toll the FBI a legendary amount of money.
In the early 1900s, famous gangster John Dillinger robbed many banks, totaling $500,000 in stolen coin. As for how much the FBI spent trying to catch him? A whopping $2 million in Neat Low-era dollars.
J. Edgar Hoover's Controversial Career
It'due south pretty safe to say that running the FBI is no like shooting fish in a barrel job. For some, information technology's proven especially tumultuous. J. Edgar Hoover was the second director of the FBI and spent the better part of his life at the helm. He fabricated great advancements in the organization and was a leader to many.
But his tenure was not without its controversies. For example, he had quite a hostile view towards Martin Luther King Jr., and certain prove of corruption of power came out subsequently his decease. His conclusion allegedly had no limits.
They Disrepair McDonald'south?
Y'all may remember a promotional game designed by McDonald's chosen the McDonald'south Monopoly. The promotion consisted of certain Monopoly pieces that yielded prizes for customers equally small as a free burger and equally big as $ane million in cash. This fun marketing ploy was run past i Jerome Jacobson.
Jacobson couldn't resist temptation and ended up rigging the organization in order to secretly reap all the rewards for himself. This went on for six years before, at last, the FBI defenseless him and sent him to jail. This was one instance that they won hands down.
Some Things Are Never Solved
Equally much as the FBI solves the hardest-to-fissure cases, sometimes they only tin can't get to the lesser of an incident. One of these incidents is the 2003 case of the missing Angola plane. This mystery starts with two mechanics working on a 727 and ends with them inexplicably taking off.
The two flew away, never to be found over again, despite the FBI and the CIA's strongest efforts. The question remains to this twenty-four hour period: Why did two men leave on an empty plane, and where in the world could they hide such a monstrous car?
Strange Connections
You can't accept a successful FBI program without making some connections — and some unlikely ones, at that. The FBI has ever relied on a certain number of informants to let them know when shady behavior is taking place, or to keep an eye on specific individuals.
Surprisingly enough, Mr. Walt Disney was one of those informants. Yep, that would be the Mickey Mouse Walt Disney. In exchange for filming perks, Disney snitched on potential communists in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. He was 1 of the FBI's right-hand men.
An Embarrassing Moment
When you're meant to investigate the strangest, nigh subconscious operations in the U.South., you lot're spring to stumble upon some false leads. Every bit it turns out, the FBI is non immune to embarrassing slip-ups now and again, and that's what happened in 2005.
FBI agents latched on to a cult chosen "The Church of the Hammer" and invested two years into investigating it. One twenty-four hour period, someone realized the cult's website had an interesting disclaimer: It wasn't a real cult at all, but a parody. Hopefully the agents saw the humor in this gaffe.
You Tin Find More Than You Think
Practice yous always find yourself curious about what information lurks behind the FBI's walls? Of class, we'll never truly gain admission to all their juicy files (unless you gear up your sights on becoming an agent yourself) but there's a surprising corporeality of information available to the public.
The Liberty of Information Act means the FBI must make files available upon request to anyone interested in seeing them. All their intel on Steve Jobs, Marilyn Monroe, Whitney Houston and others could exist handed over to you lot in the blink of an eye.
They Don't Like Webcams, Either
You lot might tease your dad for keeping a piece of tape over his computer's webcam, only he might not be far off rails when it comes to virtual monitoring. Organizations like the FBI practise, in fact, use webcams to investigate groups or people.
Even the former managing director of the FBI James Comey reportedly keeps his webcam covered at all times — and if he's doing it, it's got to be true. Yous might non be a loftier-profile criminal, but yet, taping upwardly your webcam gives y'all an added layer of privacy.
They Might Have Your Fingerprint
Even if you've never committed a crime, the FBI might take your fingerprints in their database. Many jobs require applicants to provide their fingerprints as function of a background check, and these go direct to the FBI'due south Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification Organization along with 100 million others.
But don't worry. This shouldn't pose a problem unless you find yourself at the scene of a crime. Logging your fingerprints is simply one of the ways the FBI ensures the public's protection. Without this expansive database, many crimes might have gone unsolved.
1234? Effort Again
Not all criminals are masterminds, and some of the biggest names on the almost wanted list take been caught for the simplest reasons. Ane infamous cyberhacker, Jeremy Hammond, was captured thanks to his flimsy reckoner countersign: His cat's proper name, plus the numbers 123.
If you lot're not a hacker, it might not be such a large deal to accept a unproblematic password — but it'south never a bad idea to make things only a tad more than circuitous. After all, the criminal hackers out there could one solar day try and hack your computer.
Strict Qualifications
E'er dreamed of condign part of the FBI? Well, before you get your hopes upward, take a quick look at their qualifications before sending in an application. For starters, if you aren't betwixt the ages of 23 and 37, you're out of luck.
You too take to undergo rigorous physical exams — and so make sure you're in tip-top shape — and you can't have partaken in any marijuana use for the previous 3 years. That'due south simply the commencement, too; FBI agents truly must be the best and brightest the country has to offer.
Behind the Bend
While the FBI likes to market themselves as a cutting-edge, avant-garde organisation, they were shockingly backside the curve when information technology comes to digitizing records. Before the twelvemonth 2012, they were still using paper trails for every case. Talk about ancient!
Originally, the transition from paper to computer was supposed to happen in 2010, but someone on the squad fudged the coding. This mistake delayed the process and fabricated the FBI seem even more than out of date. Someone probably received a good for you chewing out for that mix-up — if not a boot out the door.
Enough of Samples
When you retrieve about the sheer number of crimes happening on a solar day-to-day basis, information technology makes sense that the FBI must keep the growing quantities of evidence stored upwards somewhere. When a case has been candy, they can't merely throw the hair, blood and fingerprint samples away — they've got to box them up.
The most mutual piece of show in the FBI's possession? Hair. They have over 5,000 man and fauna hairs on file simply for apply as references and comparisons. After all, they need to measure current samples against something.
An Unlikely Target
It'south mutual cognition that the FBI keeps tabs on certain persons of interest. You might be surprised, notwithstanding, at only who those persons turn out to be. Not everyone knows that 1950s superstar Frank Sinatra was someone the FBI kept a close spotter on over the years.
His shut friendship with John F. Kennedy and alleged connections with the mob meant Sinatra was no stranger to the federal regime. During his lifetime, the FBI amassed more than 2,000 pages on the singer. Nowadays, you can see these pages yourself if you get looking for them.
Insider Lingo
As with whatsoever top-level system, the FBI has its ain hush-hush linguistic communication agents use to communicate. Many of their codewords are unknown to the public, but a few accept get common knowledge. The discussion "bucar," for case, refers to a special FBI machine.
An FBI "brick amanuensis" is 1 who works out on the streets in the middle of the action. There are plenty of other secret phrases, just the funniest might exist the codename other groups give to the FBI: "Famous but Incompetent." Conspicuously, not everyone thinks highly of them.
The Overworked Agent?
You might accept an idea in your head of the overworked FBI agent who has no life outside of their job. This may not always be the instance, even so. It turns out that the FBI has part-fourth dimension roles for those individuals who don't want to spend every waking infinitesimal going over gruesome criminal cases.
These people work only sixteen hours a week. They get more than enough time to recuperate from the stressful, oftentimes explicit cloth of their cases before coming back to the office. Sounds like a pretty expert bargain!
Tough on Alcohol
During the time of Prohibition — 1920 to 1933 — the government had an unfavorable view on alcohol. In our electric current twenty-four hour period and historic period, when yous can see 10 different liquor stores in the aforementioned expanse, a ban on booze seems preposterous. In the 1920s, however, information technology was no simple thing.
The FBI took Prohibition so seriously that they tapped people's phones in an try to catch them smuggling or making alcohol. In fact, this was when phone borer kickoff became a thing, and information technology's an FBI practice that's survived to this day.
Humble Beginnings
Our land's law enforcement organisation was not always as robust every bit it is today. The Federal Bureau of Investigation saw its apprehensive beginnings in the year 1908, nether President Theodore Roosevelt'south supervision. During this fourth dimension, the unabridged Justice Department was fabricated upward of only 38 individuals.
This wouldn't last for long, yet. The FBI made fast advancements in size and ability, and quickly earned themselves a reputation with the American people. For many, their existence was a positive thing. The public generally saw crime as out of control at the fourth dimension.
Less-Than-Admirable Decisions
Before the FBI officially became the FBI, information technology was headed by a man named Stanley Finch. Finch had a tough view on offense, which was all well and good, except his main focus was on busting prostitution. He saw the practice as inherently evil and detrimental to society.
To combat it, he played a major role in creating the 1910 White Slave Traffic Act targeting the transportation of women. Unfortunately, by singling out white women, it just made minority women all the more vulnerable to sexual practice trafficking. This one was a bust for the FBI.
Abuse-gratuitous?
Fifty-fifty systems meant to combat corruption are vulnerable to being corrupted. One would promise that the FBI of all organizations would be resistant to abuse, merely FBI director William J. Burns proved otherwise. He constitute himself in a 1920s oil scandal chosen the "Teapot Dome Scandal."
Essentially, a cloak-and-dagger deal was made between private oil companies and the U.South. Navy involving the sharing of resources. When one senator began questioning the deal, Burns was given the job of keeping things serenity. Looks similar the government isn't every bit sparkly make clean as we like to think.
A Boys' Club
It's non surprising that the FBI was male-dominated in its early years, but it'southward still a disappointing truth. Non only was it generally harder for women to get in, merely director J. Edgar Hoover actively took deportment against women FBI agents.
Hoover prohibited the few women agents from smoking cigarettes at their desks — even though men were allowed to practise so. He also required women to wearable skirts or dresses to work. Hoover besides didn't hire women; the only women on the team had been hired before he was managing director.
Intelligence Is Intimidating
The FBI likes having smart people within its ranks, but they're suspicious when highly intelligent people appear on the exterior. This is why one Albert Einstein caught their eye in the mid-1900s. He was and so incredibly smart that they feared the things he was capable of.
Einstein was such an important effigy that they collected 1,800 pages of information on him — still not as many pages as Frank Sinatra, but nothing to bat an eye at! One tin simply imagine what Einstein would have thought about this exhaustive surveillance.
Communists Beware
Another 1 of J. Edgar Hoover'due south less-than-mannerly traits in his day was his detest of so-called communists. He saw the threat of communism everywhere and was constantly on the sentinel for a person, place or affair to accuse of communist sympathizing.
One of his targets? The hit Christmas flick Information technology's a Wonderful Life. If you remember, the motion-picture show's banker Mr. Potter was non depicted in such a favorable light, and this led Hoover to believe the movie was dispersing communist ethics. Was information technology actually undercover propaganda, or just Hoover's paranoia?
Undercover Agent Gone Awry
Everyone loves a good story virtually an hush-hush agent. It seems like such a thrilling task, as if it's rife with drama and adventure. The truth, however, is not always then glamorous. I clandestine agent named Craig Monteilh was sent to Muslim mosques to grab terrorists.
What he found was then mundane and uneventful that he began trying to trap people by bringing up terrorism and weapons himself. Muslim people around him were so frightened by this that they chosen the FBI themselves — little did they know he was working for the organization.
Source: https://www.life123.com/lifestyle/crazy-fbi-facts?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740009%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex