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History of the San Diego Division  The San
Diego Division of the FBI was
established in November of 1939. Prior to this, Special Agents assigned to the
Los Angeles Division were sent to the San Diego region to conduct
investigations and follow leads. The office was located in the San Diego Trust
and Savings Building on Broadway in downtown San Diego and was home to eight
Special Agents. These Agents were assigned primarily intelligence, government
crime, applicant and theft of motor vehicle investigations.
At the beginning of World War II, the Division grew to approximately 75 Special Agents. In 1959, the office moved to Fifth Avenue next to Balboa Park. In 1976, the office again moved to the newly-constructed Federal Office Building located at 880 Front Street. By February of 1995, the Special Agent population had grown to approximately 200, with over 200 support personnel. During J. Edgar Hoover's tenure, he would travel to San Diego at least once a year for his annual medical examination at a clinic in La Jolla, a beautiful beach front community of San Diego. He would vacation for approximately one month; however, he would also drop into the office from time to time to do a little work. There have been 26 Special Agents in Charge of the San Diego Division since its inception and is ranked 11th in size out of 56 Field Offices. A Brief History of the FBI
The agency now known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was founded
in 1908 when Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte appointed an unnamed force
of Special Agents in late June of that year to be the investigative force of
the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Prior to that time, the DOJ borrowed
Agents from the Secret Service in the U. S. Department of Treasury in order to
investigate violations of Federal criminal laws within its jurisdiction.
On May 27, 1908, Congress voted to permit Secret Service Agents to investigate matters only for the Treasury Department, effectively leaving DOJ without its own investigative force. After requests from President Theodore Roosevelt, Attorney General Bonaparte and U. S. Attorneys, Congress soon voted to appropriate funds for "Special Agents" in the DOJ. Accordingly, on July 26, 1908, Bonaparte ordered the DOJ Special Agents to report to a "Chief Examiner," thus marking the formal beginning of the organization. The Special Agent force was named the Bureau of Investigation on March 16, 1909, by order of Attorney General George W. Wickersham. Following a series of changes in name, the Bureau officially received its present title on July 1, 1935. During the early period of the FBI's history, its Agents investigated violations of some of the comparatively few Federal criminal violations which existed. Major responsibilities included bankruptcy fraud, antitrust crime, neutrality violations, and peonage. The Bureau's responsibilities increased in 1910 with the passage of the Mann Act, which made interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes illegal. During World War I, the Bureau was given responsibility for espionage, sabotage, sedition, and draft violations. Passage of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act in 1919 further broadened the Bureau's jurisdiction. After the passage of Prohibition in 1920, the Gangster Era began. Criminals engaged in kidnapings and bank robberies, and most of these crimes did not fall under federal jurisdiction. This situation changed in 1932, with the passage of a federal kidnaping statute and in 1934 when numerous other federal criminal statutes were passed. Also in 1934, Congress gave Special Agents the explicit power to make arrests and to carry firearms. The FBI's size and jurisdiction during the World War II era increased greatly and included intelligence matters in South America. With the end of World War II and the advent of the Atomic Age, the FBI began conducting background security investigations for the White House and other government agencies, as well as internal security matters for the Executive Branch. Civil rights and organized crime became major concerns of the FBI in the 1960s, as did counterterrorism, white-collar crime, drugs, and violent crimes during the 1970s and 1980s. Today, the FBI's priorities are:
To learn more about the FBI, visit the main FBI website at http://www.fbi.gov |
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