Mr.
Schiff: Hi, welcome to "FBI 100, A Closer
Look." I'm Neal Schiff of the Bureau's Office
of Public Affairs along with FBI Historian Dr.
John Fox. John, the FBI has Special Agents working
24/7 keeping our country safe. Where did the term
Special Agent come from?
Dr.
Fox: "Neal, Special Agent is one of those
positions that kind of grew up as the government
changed over the years. In the late 1800s, Congress
created the Department of Justice and there were
a variety of agents. You had a General Agent who,
in a sense, oversaw a wide array of material.
And then a Special Agent probably meant someone
who investigated something specific under the
General Agent. But of course over the years it
came to be that Special Agent was someone who
was around in the Department of Justice to investigate
anything that came up versus someone who was assigned
to do a specific kind of investigation because
we had Peonage Agents; we had Bank Examiners and
other kinds of accountants who would do examinations
of the accounts of U.S. Prisons or U.S. Courts.
A Special Agent investigated a wide range of other
violations that fell under the law. When the Bureau
was created in 1908 a number of those Special
Agents were hired because it was thought the new
Bureau should investigate anything that came up.
And the term ended up sticking and that's what
our agents have been called ever since."
Mr. Schiff: Who came up with the term and
why?
Dr. Fox: "I don't think you can say who
came up with the term, Neal. It's one of those
where it was thought of at different points, at
different times, and used in different ways. It
came to mean an agent of the Bureau of Investigation
or eventually an agent of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation simply because that was the term
that was used."
Mr.
Schiff:
And of course, John, eventually, when the FBI
was created on July 26th, 1908, Special Agents
were in the ranks of what was then the Bureau
of Investigation as you discussed?
Dr.
Fox: "Of course eventually they came to be
known popularly as G-men in the 1930s; the popular
culture of the time. People thought of government
agents as G-men. It was kind of slang in the underworld.
And the media latched onto it in and applied to
our Special Agents and so we've had that popular
term and we've also had the formal title Special
Agent."
Mr.
Schiff:
Plenty of FBI history on the Internet at www.fbi.gov.
From the FBI's Public Affairs office, along with
Bureau Historian Dr. John Fox, I'm Neal Schiff
with "FBI 100, A Closer Look."
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