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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: 80 Years Ago: Gangster Dillinger Helped Create the FBI 80 Years Ago: Gangster Dillinger Helped Create the FBI Tuesday marked the 80th anniversary of the shooting death of gangster John Dillinger at the hands of law enforcement officials — an event that has been credited with helping to create the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Dillinger was the most notorious of several gangsters and bank robbers of the early 1930s. He held up at least 12 banks, took part in raids on police stations to obtain guns and ammunition, and was accused of murdering an Indiana police officer. In 1934, he became the first American to be declared "Public Enemy No. 1." Because Dillinger operated across state lines, his crimes became federal offenses. Enter J. Edgar Hoover. In 1924, Hoover was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation. The bureau was created in 1908, and its first official task was visiting and making surveys of houses of prostitution in preparation for enforcing the "White Slave Traffic Act," or Mann Act, passed in 1910. Hoover's bureau — renamed the Division of Investigation (DOI) in 1933 — was under considerable pressure to apprehend Dillinger and others, especially after an embarrassing failed raid in Wisconsin. DOI agents attempted to capture Dillinger and several other gangsters who were holed up in a summer lodge, but an agent and a civilian bystander were killed and the gangsters escaped. Hoover reportedly realized his job was on the line, and he ordered an all-out effort to capture the culprits. On July 22, 1934, DOI agents and police, operating on a tip from an informant, closed in on the Biograph Theater in Chicago, where Dillinger was watching a Clark Gable gangster movie. Hoover instructed them to wait outside for Dillinger to emerge to avoid a possible gun battle inside the theater. Dillinger left the theater with two female companions, and was shot and killed when he resisted arrest. Some accounts claim he took a gun from his trousers and attempted to flee before he was shot. "The nationally publicized campaign to capture John Dillinger helped bring Hoover and his 'G-Men' to prominence," according to Ed Krayewski, an associate editor at Reason.com. "The next year Congress approved the creation of the FBI, an independent [Department of Justice] agency." Hoover was the FBI's first director, and he remained in that post until his death in 1972 at age 77. Krayewski added: "Hoover presided over a bureau that transformed from an agency meant to enforce the anti-prostitution Mann Act and other 'interstate commerce' crimes to one that conducted widespread surveillance and counterintelligence operations against various dissident groups in the '60s and '70s." Poster Comment: Dillinger was killed outside the Biograph theater in Chicago on July 22, 1934. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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