John Edgar Hoover, an American criminologist and government official, directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for 48 years. Hoover was born on January 1, 1895 in Washington, D.C. After standing out among his peers, Hoover went on to study law at George Washington University. After receiving a law degree from George Washington in 1917, Hoover joined the staff of the U.S. Department of Justice where he earned $1200 a year. Two years later, Hoover was named special assistant to the U.S. attorney general. Soon, in 1924, he was named head of the Bureau of Investigation of the Justice Department. Later, in 1935, when the department became the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hoover was appointed its director. He was leader of the FBI under every president from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon. As director, John Edgar succeeded in establishing an exceptional record of positive changes in law enforcement, establishing intense training schools for teaching crime detection methods to special agents, and creating an organized fingerprint file on millions of Americans. Despite these improvements and contributions, Hoover was often accused of abusing his power and exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI. Under Hoover's reign as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the power of the FBI was greatly abused. Hoover's FBI carried out thousands of illegal break-ins, illegally monitored and recorded conversations, manipulated the Supreme Court, interfered with the American people's official and constitutional rights to freedom of speech and freedom of political expression, and blackmailed hundreds of congressmen, senators, and presidents. To this day, Hoover's past actions still provoke controversy.

             Under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI held millions of detailed files and illegal wiretaps that contained top-secret information on millions of Americans. These files and recordings contained damaging facts about sexual, political, and financial information of the country's most powerful and influential people.