Who was J Edgar Hoover?

Answer 1

John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), and actually helped found it from its predecessor (Bureau of Investigation) in 1935. He also built the FBI into the large, efficient crime-fighting agency it is, and bettered police technology, like adding a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.

Answer 2

J. Edgar Hoover, the first and most controversial FBI Director, was also arguably the most influential of them all. When the former Justice Department worker was made head of the Bureau in 1924, agents could not investigate crimes across federal boundaries and did not have the authority to arrest suspects. Hoover's reforms led to the creation of a new, much more powerful FBI and the adoption of scientific crime fighting methods against spies and American criminals. His agents were responsible for ending the careers of notorious criminal masterminds like John Dillinger and "Machine Gun" Kelly as well as Soviet agents such as Harry Gold and David Greenglass. His paranoia and smear tactics may have been infamous, but without Hoover there definitely would not have been a modern FBI.