The Watergate Complex. The break-ins occurred in the office building in the center.

During the 1970s, more women began joining the ranks of the FBI, including (for the first time since the 1920s) as special agents.

In response to criticism of the Bureau’s Cointelpro operation, for example, he reorganized FBI intelligence efforts. In February 1973, the General Investigations Division took over responsibility for investigating domestic terrorists and subversives, working under more strict guidelines and limiting its efforts to actual criminal violations. The Intelligence Division retained foreign counterintelligence responsibilities but was renamed the National Security Division

Kelley’s most significant management innovation was shifting the FBI’s longstanding investigative focus from “quantity” to “quality,” directing each field office to set priorities based on the most important threats in its territory and to concentrate their resources on those issues.

And what were those threats? During the 1970s, domestic terrorism and foreign intrigue remained key concerns, as the radical unrest of the 1960s had spilled into the next decade and the Cold War was still raging. The FBI had its hands full with homegrown terrorist groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army—which wanted to lead a violent revolution against the U.S. government and kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst to help its cause—and the Weather Underground, which conducted a campaign of bombings that targeted everything from police stations to the Pentagon. And spy cases still abounded—from the “Falcon and the Snowman” investigation that uncovered two former altar boys from wealthy families selling secrets to the Soviets…to “Operation Lemon-Aid,” where the FBI used a double agent to unmask Soviet diplomats working as KGB spies.

The Bureau was also increasingly turning its focus to big-time crime and corruption across the nation. For the first time, Kelley made combating organized crime and white-collar crime national investigative priorities. And the Bureau went after them in a big way.

Organized crime was certainly nothing new in America. The Italian imported “La Cosa Nostra”—literally translated as “this thing of ours”—had come to the nation’s attention in 1890, when the head of the New Orleans police department was murdered execution-style by Italian and Sicilian immigrants. In the 1930s, Charles “Lucky” Luciano had set up the modern-day La Cosa Nostra, creating the family structure (led by “dons” or “bosses”) and ruling body (“the Commission”) and running the entire operation like a business.

The FBI moved into its massive new Headquarters building in Washington, D.C., beginning in June 1974.

By the 1950s and 1960s, organized crime had become entrenched in many major cities, and the collective national impact was staggering. Mobsters were feeding American vices like gambling and drug use; undermining traditional institutions like labor unions and legitimate industries like construction and trash hauling; sowing fear and violence in communities; corrupting the government through graft, extortion, and intimidation; and costing the nation billions of dollars through lost jobs and tax revenues.

Though somewhat limited in its authorities, the Bureau had begun targeting mobsters early as the 1930s, using a mixture of investigations and intelligence to break up mob rackets. Following revelations at Apalachin, New York, the FBI had stepped up its efforts. By 1970, the FBI had gained some important new tools to go after mobsters—including court-authorized wiretaps, jurisdiction over mob-infiltrated businesses, and the ability to target entire crime families and their leaders instead of just bit players and isolated wise guys.

An cryptologist at the FBI Laboratory works to break codes in the 1970s.

In the mid-1970s, the FBI began pioneering some tools and strategies of its own. It started turning high-level mobsters into secret informants, breaking the code of silence, or “Omerta,” that had protected top Mafioso for so long. And it began using long-term undercover operations—governed by new guidelines and policies—to penetrate the inner circles of organized crime. The courageous work of undercover agents like Joe Pistone—who almost became a “made” Mafia member while gathering invaluable intelligence as “Donnie Brasco” for nearly six years—and of cooperating witnesses like businessman Lou Peters—whose Cadillac dealership became the basis for a long-term operation that targeted the Bonnano crime family in California—injected new energy into FBI investigations and intelligence work.

Using these strategies and tools, the Bureau started racking up unprecedented successes against organized crime. Beginning in 1975, for example, a case code-named “Unirac” (for union racketeering) broke the mob’s broad stranglehold on the shipping industry, leading to more than 100 convictions. In a two-part operation launched in 1978, the FBI struck a major blow against organized crime leadership in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Chicago, Kansas City, and Las Vegas through an investigation that uncovered the mob’s corrupt influence in Las Vegas and in the Teamsters Union. And in the 1980s, the groundbreaking “Commission” case led to the convictions of the heads of the five Mafia families in New York City—Bonnano, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese.

Among white-collar crimes, public corruption remains the most insidious. Watergate had opened the nation’s eyes to the seriousness of crime in government, and the FBI became convinced that it must be a leader in addressing the problem. Using many of the same tools as in its battle against organized crime, including large-scale undercover operations, it began working to root out crookedness in government.

One major undercover operation, code-named “Abscam,” led to the convictions of six sitting members of the U.S. Congress and several other elected officials in the early 1980s. “Operation Greylord” put 92 crooked judges, lawyers, policemen, court officers, and others behind bars in the mid-1980s. The “Brilab” (Bribery/Labor) investigation begun in Los Angeles in 1979 revealed how the Mafia was bribing government officials to award lucrative insurance contracts, and a major case called “Illwind,” culminating in 1988, unveiled corruption in defense procurement.

Other kinds of white-collar crime began to mushroom in the 1980s. As the United States faced a financial crisis with the failures of savings and loan associations during the 1980s, for example, the FBI uncovered many instances of fraud that lay behind many of those failures. In the coming years, frauds involving health care, telemarketing, insurance, and stocks would become major crime problems.

All during this time period, the FBI also had been expanding its capabilities and technologies and integrating new responsibilities into its work.

In 1978, the same year that Judge William Webster became Director, for instance, the Bureau began using laser technology to detect nearly invisible or “latent” crime scene fingerprints. At the new, modern FBI Academy, the Behavioral Sciences Unit pioneered work in criminal profiling—applying psychological insights to solving violent crimes. In 1984, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime was established to further this research and to provide services to local and state police in identifying suspects and predicting criminal behavior.

President Ronald Reagan right after being shot by John Hinckley on March 30, 1981. Following the attack, the FBI launched a massive investigation to determine Hinckley’s motives and whether or not others were involved in the assassination attempt. Tracing Hinckley’s life and movements across the country, the FBI concluded that he had acted on his own.

In 1982, the FBI was given concurrent jurisdiction with the Drug Enforcement Agency over federal anti-narcotics laws, which led to stronger liaison and division of labor in tackling the growing drug problem in America. That same year, following an explosion of terrorist incidents worldwide, Director Webster made counterterrorism the FBI’s fourth national priority. The Bureau was ready: it had already begun building new partnerships and skills to respond to and prevent both domestic and international terrorist attacks. The first Joint Terrorism Task Force in the nation, for example, had been created with the New York Police Department in 1980 to serve as the front-line defense against terrorism in the city. And in 1983, the Bureau had stood up a specially-trained Hostage Rescue Team to use negotiation and tactical response techniques to save lives during terrorist attacks and other hostage situations.

Director Webster also pressed for changes in the rules covering FBI national security investigations. In 1983, Attorney General William French Smith modified the guidelines for conducting intelligence investigations; the next year, Congress authorized the Bureau to pursue criminals who attacked Americans beyond our shores. That paid off quickly with the arrest of Fawaz Younis, who in 1987 became the first international terrorist to be apprehended overseas and brought back to the U.S. for trial. And with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that had been passed in 1978 and new laws that protected classified information in trials, so many moles in the U.S. government were arrested in the mid-1980s that the press dubbed 1985 the “Year of the Spy.”

The Hostage Rescue Team, created in 1983, trains at Quantico. The team has been involved in many high-profile cases and deployed on more than 200 missions in the U.S. and abroad.

The FBI Laboratory continued to break new ground as well. By researching processes to match DNA samples obtained from evidence at a crime with samples obtained from suspects, FBI scientists contributed to a whole new field of forensic science that helps catch the guilty and free the innocent. In 1988, the FBI Lab became the first facility in the nation to perform DNA analysis for criminal investigations, and it launched a national DNA database as a pilot program three years later.

By this time, Director Webster had left the Bureau—he was asked to serve as the Director of Central Intelligence and head of the CIA in the summer of 1987. He was replaced later that year by another federal judge, William Sessions, who would oversee the Bureau as the Cold War ended and its priorities gave way to the challenges of a multi-polar, globalized world.