Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Justice Department created a small Bureau of Investigation in 1908, and in 1924 it appointed a young lawyer, J. Edgar Hoover, as its director. Hoover ran the Bureau, renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935, for 48 years until his death in 1972, building it into a powerful agency but also using it to spy on political figures, civil rights leaders, and activists. After his death, Congress required that future directors be confirmed by the Senate, and in 1976 it limited directors to a single term of 10 years.

The Director reports to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General and oversees about 38,000 employees, including special agents, intelligence analysts, and scientists, in 55 field offices and offices abroad. The FBI investigates federal crimes from terrorism, espionage, and cybercrime to public corruption, civil rights violations, and violent crime, and it is a member of the intelligence community. The Director also briefs the President and Congress on threats, oversees background checks and the national fingerprint and crime databases, and testifies regularly before the Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

The 10-year term was meant to insulate the Director from politics, but the President may remove a director at any time, as presidents did in 1993 and 2017. In January 2025 the sitting Director resigned with more than two years left in his term, and his successor, confirmed in February 2025, removed senior officials and agents who had worked on investigations of the President, shifted agents toward immigration enforcement and violent crime, and announced a move of headquarters out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Supporters said the changes refocused the Bureau and ended political bias, while critics said they politicized it and drained experience.