J. Edgar Hoover
FBI director
Died when: 77 years 122 days (928 months)Star Sign: Capricorn
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI's predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972.
Hoover built the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and instituted a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.
Hoover also established and expanded a national blacklist, referred to as the FBI Index or Index List.Later in life and after his death, Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface.
He was found to have routinely violated the very laws the FBI was charged with enforcing, to have used the FBI to harass political dissidents, to amass secret files for blackmailing high-level politicians, and to collect evidence using vigilantism and many other illegal methods.
Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others.
