Return to Article J. Edgar Hoover Hoover was selected at 24 years old to lead the Radical Division of the Bureau of Investigation. He served the intelligence agency for the rest of his life, including 37 years as director of the FBI. Fred Hampton Fred Hampton, a young and charismatic Black Panther, was shot in bed by the Chicago Police Department. A COINTELPRO informant had infiltrated his organization and may have assisted in the police raid that took Hampton's life. National Security Agency The NSA logo features an eagle and a key. Edward Snowden Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden Charles Bonaparte President Theodore Roosevelt had selected Charles Bonaparte, his attorney general, to set up an agency for domestic surveillance, but Congress rejected the idea. Frank Church Frank Church chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, or Church Committee, which scrutinzed domestic surveillance activities and revealed many of the shadier operations of the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Pinkertons In this 1884 newspaper illustration, Pinkerton detectives accompany strikebreakers to work. "Stop Watching US" American citizens protest domestic spying at an October 2013 rally in Washington, D.C. Photo by Slowking. McKinley Assassination This drawing shows anarchist Leon Czolgosz shooting President William McKinley in 1901, prompting some to advocate keeping political dissidents under surveillance. A. Mitchell Palmer Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer created the Radical Division of the Bureau of Investigation in 1919 to root out domestic subversive activity. NSA '85 The National Security Operations Center of the National Security Administration looked like this in 1985. Around that time, the agency was classifying 100 million reports annually. William Sullivan Sullivan, a highly decorated veteran of World Wars I and II, helped J. Edgar Hoover launch COINTELPRO. Protesting the Vietnam War The CIA infiltrated the antiwar movement in the 1960s. Here protesters hold a sit-in at an entrance to the Pentagon in October 1967. Martin Luther King, Jr. The CIA infiltrated the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., might be the only major American political figure spied on by both the CIA and Russia's intelligence agency, the KGB. Richard Helms and Richard Nixon Richard Helms, director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1966 to 1973, is photographed here with President Richard Nixon. Nixon would fire Helms for refusing to help cover up the Watergate scandal. "You Should Use Both" In this PowerPoint slide leaked to the Washington Post by Snowden, NSA agents are urged to both collect data en route to its destination and harvest it wholesale from providers whose logos are arranged at the top of the slide. "Heat Map" Recreated from a snapshot of the NSA's own map, this one shows how much surveillance each country was subjected to, ranging from dark green (least) through yellow to orange and finally, red (most). Return to top