Monday,
April 14, 2008
FBI- 100th Anniversary- 1908-2008 - Founded
By Charles Joseph Bonaparte
The
ANNOTICO Report
Charles
Joseph Bonaparte was a remarkable man. Born into royalty, but taught to be
humble, was a brilliant scholar that graduated from
Harvard , then
Through
Bonaparte's work with the Maryland Civil Service League, he became acquainted
with Theodore Roosevelt who was a member of the Civil Service Commission.
Later, as President, he sought Bonaparte's
services in a series of positions: Board of Indian Commissions,
Prosecute Postal Service Fraud, Secretary of the Navy, then in 1906, when
he was 45, Bonaparte became US Attorney General.
He appeared
before the Supreme Court personally in 560 cases.Twenty of these cases came under the
anti-trust laws, helping to dissolve the American Tobacco Co. and earning him
another epithet - the "trust buster" -
As far back
as 1878 the reports of the Attorney General had called to the attention of
Congress the fact that he had really no force for the investigation of
"official acts, records ad accounts" of district attorneys, marshals
and clerks. Examiners were hired from other departments of the Government
having detective forces. By act of Congress in 1908 this practice was
forbidden.
The
Attorney General was then forced to organize his own Bureau of Investigation.
Thanks to
FBI Celebrates a
Century 1908-2008
From Federal Bureau of
Investigation Web
Site
From
Bonaparte Founded G-Men
As Attorney General Under Theodore
Roosevelt,
Napoleon's Grandnephew
First Organized the Force of Special Agents of the Department of
Justice
By Don Bloch
One of the most
picturesque figures in American politics, the grandnephew of Napoleon, first organized the
"detective force of special agents" of the Department of Justice now
known as G-men.
This was Charles Joseph Bonaparte, Secretary of the Navy and later, Attorney
General, in the cabinet of Theodore Roosevelt. He was a grandson of Jerome,
the younger brother of Napoleon I, who married Betsy Patterson of
Known nationally as the "Imperial Peacock," and more intimately as
"Souphouse Charlie," Bonaparte wrote
prolifically - articles, speeches, essays and books - against public and
private sin, on political and social subjects, for the magazines of the early
1900's. He was regarded as the one of the
sharpest wits of his day and yet wa
s one of the most humorless of men. He was by instinct a
royalist, by profession a democrat and a reformer. He lived his three score
and 10, and died childless and poor, June 28, 1921, already long forgotten.
Wed on Christmas
Eve.
While on a yacht trip in 1803, the 19-year-old Jerome had met the moneyed,
year-younger beauty, Elizabeth of Baltimore. On Christmas Eve these two were
married. Napoleon was furious at his younger brother and refused to recognize
the union. He suggested forthright desertion.
Two years later Jerome and Betsy went back to
Not until 1915 did Betsy get her divorce from Jerome. Then, using her
settlement money, she traveled about and lived among the society of the
Continent until 1840, noted for her beauty, caustic wit and her lavish
expenditures upon her son. He grew up to call himself Jerome Bonaparte-Patter
son, married Susan May Williams of Baltimore and in his turn became the father
of two sons. One of them was Charles Joseph; the other Jerome Napoleon, distinguished himself as a roving soldier in
various campaigns abroad.
Left
Grandsons $1,500,000.
Betsy, now returned to
Charles, born on June 9,
1951, was taught early by his mother to keep out of the pride parade
which he might have marched in because of his royal blood. She sent him first
to a French school near his birthplace in
At Harvard he was a
brilliant scholar,
graduating in the class of '72. Two years later he had completed work in the
Earned
Sobriquet in 1884.
It was at this time, 1884, that he earned a sobriquet which followed him all
his days thereafter. As a Catholic who was never absent from his pew in
Baltimore Cathedral on Sunday mornings, Bonaparte was violently opposed to the
public school system, just then getting on its legs in America. "As
ridiculous the State should provide free schools," he argued, "as
that it should supply free soup houses!"
A newspaper wit took up the
phrase and a descendant of the American line of a reigning royal family in
Through his civil service reform activities,
In 1905, with the expectation of succeeding to the Attorney Generalship on the
retirement of William H. Moody, he accepted the portfolio of Secretary of
the Navy in a long-winded letter to
At the time, there was
great newspaper raillery directed at him; "The grandnephew of the Little
Corporal as head of the United States Navy." But then, as all his life, he
was indifferent to newspaper comment. He was probably one of the most indolent
Secretaries the Navy has ever had. For weeks running his attendance at his
office was limited to an hour a day. He still kept his residence in
Became
Attorney General.
In December, 1906, when he was 45, he became Attorney General. This
office suited his abilities better. He appeared before the Supreme Court
personally in 560 cases during his incumbency and delivered 138 opinions
through the Department of Justice to the President and heads of departments.
Only three of these latter were not completely his own. He argued 49 cases
orally before the court and submitted seven on briefs. Twenty of these cases
came under the anti-trust laws, helping to dissolve the American Tobacco Co.
and earning him another epithet - the "trust buster" - which
only amused him.
While in this capacity he aided in the organization of a body of special agents
which in later days have come to be known as "G-men." They
gained no great reputation during his regime, it is said, because, wishing
"to make his own mistakes," Bonaparte kept such tight check on his
detective force that he left them little room for initiative.
An interesting sidelight on
this point would reveal the origins of this force of men about whom so much has
been in print lately but about whose beginnings little has been told.
Contrary to prevalent
opinion, the G-men are in no sense a recent governmental development. A
specific act of Congress of May 27, 1908, is responsible for their
establishment and J. Edgar Hoover, far from being their first head, is their
sixth.
Archives Aid Story.
Pieced together from interviews with two men - David D. Caldwell and Staley
Finch, both still active in the Department of Justice - and old records from
the archives for the Attorney General, the story, briefly, is this:
Part of the reason Bonaparte had been appointed to the office of the Attorney
General by Roosevelt was to give over his special talents to the prosecution of
offenders in the vast land fraud activities going on in the West at that time -
1905-10. When he came into office the newspapers were also carrying frightful
stories of timber frauds, peonage and crimes against the Treasury laws of one
sort or another.
As far back as 1878 the reports of the Attorney General had called to the
attention of Congress the fact that he had really no force for the
investigation of "official acts, records ad accounts" of district
attorneys, marshals and clerks. The following year a small appropriation was
provided for such a group of examiners. The report for 1884 shows that the
Attorney General was using examiners to look up the accounts of the court
offices in the field where there was also much corrupt practice.
Records then become vague for a time, but it is certain that these examiners
were being hired from other departments of the Government having detective
forces. It is certain also, that not a few men were impressed from the Treasury
Department secret service branch, but being paid by the Department of Justice
out of special funds appropriated for this usage.
Organized Own
Bureau.
By act of Congress in 1908 this practice was forbidden. The Attorney General
was forced to organize his own Bureau of Investigation.
In 1906 the Attorney General had reported that criminal identification records
were accumulating at the Federal penitentiaries. He recommended that Congress
authorize the collection and classification of those records and their exchange
with the States. In 1908 he announced that arrangements were being made for the
exchange. The following year, the records had been transferred to
Before 1908 the Department of Justice's group engaged in collecting evidence of
Federal law v iolations then was a mixed group hired
from other departments, but paid for from different appropriations from the
Department of Justice. They were called an office of examiners, and subdivided
into seven services - for land and timber frauds, peonage, etc., investigations.
Executive
Force Lacking.
Then came Bonaparte. His first report, for 1907-8,
says in part: "The attention of Congress should be called to the anomaly
that the Department of Justice has no executive force, and, more
particularly, no permanent detective force under its immediate control.
This singular condition arises mainly from the fact that before the office of
Attorney General was transformed into the Department of Justice a highly
efficient detective service had been organized to deal with crimes against the
Treasury laws, which force has been in effect lent from time to time to this
department to meet its steadily increasing need for an agency of this nature,
without, however, being removed from the control of the Treasury
Department."
[p.4]
He further suggests that if the Department of Justice "had a small,
carefully selected and experienced force und er its
immediate orders, the necessity of having these officers (i.e. the mercenaries
from the Treasury Department, etc.) suddenly appointed as special deputies,
possibly in considerable numbers, might be sometimes avoided, with greater
likelihood of economy and a better assurance of satisfactory results."
But behind this
recommendation there had been an inter-office memorandum from one David D.
Caldwell, then a young attorney in the office of the Assistant to the Attorney
General, Bonaparte. It had been suggested, in the early months of 1907, that
this force of hired men from the Secret Service and elsewhere, who had been
doing the criminal investigation for the Department of Justice, be made a
permanent part of the office of the Attorney General, under the head of one man
there. These Secret Service men, loaned by John E. Wilkie,
then their chief, were doing good work - riding bumpers and rods on trains out
West, gathering information, and arresting their men at straggling village
water tanks. But they were not under the controls of the Department of Justice.
Caldwell, now attorney with the Department of Justice, saw this as a situation
likely to need correction. He is perhaps the first man who planted the seed w hich later grew into the Department of Federal
Investigation.
Finch Headed
Examiners.
Within the Department of Justice at this time, as nominal head of the
examiners, was Stanley W. Finch, now attached to the Accounts Division of the
Department of Justice. He had been connected with the Department since 1893,
and by 1908 was chief bookkeeper in the division which took charge of
investigations.
He, too, saw the great need of organizing this heterogeneous group of examiners
under on head in the Department of Justice. Therefore, with the advent of
Bonaparte, he prepared
[p.6, c.1]
memoranda for
the Attorney General which would bring about such a result.
The ball had begun to roll.
The seven services were congealed, and Finch was given the title of chief
examiner. Then the prisons branch was lopped off and put in charge of R. V. La
Dow, and that department is now known as the Bureau of Prisons, with Sanford
Bates director.
Finch Gathers 25
Aides.
With the title of chief examiner, Finch became first head of what was later to
be known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. By authority of Bonaparte,
Finch grouped about him approximately 25 men - the original G-Men. Together,
Finch and the Attorney General went over the list of men available for this
special investigating work. First, a set of standards was worked out,
corresponding very much to present-day qualifications; the men, of course, were
to be physically fit; they were to be well educated - preferably graduates of
some college and members of the bar; they were not to be unusual in appearance,
so that they could pass unnoticed in a crowd; they were to have a knowledge of
language, if possible. They were to be appointed by Bonaparte, upon Finch's
recommendation. In this first batch appointed were half a dozen of the men
formerly fired, from the Secret Service. These taught
shadowing and "policing" to the others. One of them, Finch recalls,
was a linguist who came form the Immigration Service; some came from the
Treasury and other departments' accounting divisions. All were competent
criminal investigators of one sort or another.
In the report of 1908, Bonaparte describes these first G-Men as "Special
Agents, under direct orders of the Chief Examiner, who receives from them daily
reports and summarizes them for submission to the Attorney General *** directly
controlled by this department, and the Attorney General knows at all time what
they are doing and cost."
In his last report, he said, "The last six months shows clearly that such
a force is, under modern conditions, absolutely indispensable to the proper
discharge of the department, and it is hoped that its merits will be augmented
and its attendant expense reduced by further experience."
Office Name
Changed.
Under George W. Wickersham, who succeeded Bonaparte, it was built up to a
"substantial force," says Finch who remained in the position of its
head until 1911. Still further to augment his division and strengthen its
position, he prepared two letters which Bonaparte signed. One changed the name
of this Division from Office of the Chief Examiner to Federal Bureau of
Investigation. The other named him chief of the newly named bureau. The first
real activities of the G-Men, as such, were to gather details and make arrest
in the then all-important "bucket-shop" cases which sprang up all
over the country, and to break up the strong rings of violators of the Mann
act.
Thus were born the G-Men of today, really a governmental body 27 years old.
With the retirement of
President Roosevelt in 1909, Bonaparte went back to his law practice in
For the remainder of his life he remained active in politics, however. As a
lawyer, he was sharp in repartee, was an eloquent speaker, noted for his wit,
vocabulary and sarcasm - "keen as a
Florid,
Complex Style.
He wrote continuously and voluminously for newspapers, magazines and in book
form. He was frank in his writing, hating waste and hypocrisy in a deadly
way. His style was florid and complex, with sentences 500 words long a
commonplace. Books, speeches and essays now moulder
forgotten.
His relationship
undoubtedly got him a certain prestige, but he never mentioned it. Once,
denounced as a "transplanted Frenchman" and therefore sinful, he
promptly replied that he was Italian and Scotch, and without a drop of
French blood. He never visited France or the Bonaparte family in
He had few intimates during
this latter portion of his live, visited no places of amusement, and was seen
rarely at social functions. He became a values advisor to Cardinal Gibbons, and
seems to have made this great Catholic his main companion. In this capacity,
and as trustees for many years of
He is described by those
who knew him as tall, sturdy, with a large, strong neck and a massive head:
"A vast round, rugged head; a double-decker head; a cannon ball head, like
a warrior's, with room for two sets of brains, bald and shiny." His hair
and eyes were jet black, his hands and feet small. He had the clear ruddy
complexion of an outdoorsman. He constantly wore black, carried an umbrella -
not a cane - and looked like a "studious professor."
He did much of his thinking on the street, striding briskly along, his massive
head-"with curious rises over the temples"-swaying from side to side.
Thus in transit he seldom recognized his most intimate friends until roused.
Newspaper men liked to
interview Charles Joseph. He was always good for an interview, always
"good copy." They liked to say, "Beneath the forehead lurks the
Bonaparte smile. It is there all the time." His interviews show him to
have been conscientious, a man of many peculiar tastes, but with few sympathies.
His property gradually slipped through his fingers, although he was diligent
with his accounts and never missed a day at his office. When not at work in the
modest legal quarters he maintained, he divided his time between his town and
his country house. This latter was Bella Vista, about 15 miles from
He was fond of the life of
a gentleman farmer, and on his 300-acre place, stocked with blooded horses, 33
cows, fine sheep, hogs and poultry, he maintained a studious neatness, from
stable to dog houses. He was a good judge of horseflesh and fond of French
harness.
For seven months of the year, from May to December, he lived as a
Thus he passed his last days. As a neighbor once said, "sensible
folks like him, and the damn fools don't."
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