FDR Authorizes FBI to Investigate “Subversive” Activities
President Franklin Roosevelt on this day placed the FBI in charge of all investigative work related to national security, and asked all state and local law enforcement agencies to turn over to the FBI any information they had about possible “espionage, sabotage, and violations of the neutrality laws.”
Previously, on August 24, 1936, President Roosevelt had given Hoover authority to investigate “subversive” activities. FDR’s order ended twelve years of FBI political spying that had been ordered by Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone on May 13, 1924 (although there may have been some small and little known violations of Stone’s order).
The third paragraph of FDR’s statement on this day, however, also contained an additional reference to “subversive activities.” While the other three activities all involved criminal law violations, “subversive activities” is an undefined term and was used by the FBI to cover political beliefs, expression, and associations that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover did not like. This included a broad range of liberal, left-wing, civil rights and civil liberties groups and activities.
It is likely that Hoover quietly slipped the reference to subversive activities into the third paragraph in order to give him and the Bureau broader investigative authority.
Historians generally agree that for decades to come, Hoover used Roosevelt’s order on this day as official authorization for his investigations of, and spying on, political groups. Hoover perfected a talent for “stretching” presidential directives or understandings to justify a range of activity beyond anything that was imagined.
The violations of civil liberties by the FBI were not fully known until the 1976 Senate Church Committee investigations and reports in 1975-1976 (see below).
Learn more: Athan Theoharis, The FBI and American Democracy: A Brief Critical History (2004)
Read Roosevelt’s statement: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=15804
Learn more; Read the Senate Church Committee report on FBI abuse: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports_book3.htm
Learn more: Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (1991)