Here's a nice site about the FBI -
TRAC: FBI Site - Comprehensive, independent, and nonpartisan information about FBI. I don't know about you, but the crime that fascinates me even more Chandra Levy's abduction by minions of the evil Condit � oops, I�m just speculating, really no need to get out your libel lawyers - is the continuing saga of Whitey Bolger, the eminence coupable of South Boston, who is being chased using the usual Keystone Cops method by an FBI that has every reason not to want him caught. Bolger, for those of you who haven�t read BLACK MASS, had the Boston FBI pretty much on his salary in the 80s. And if recent stories are true, the Boston office has always had a chummy relationship with certain gangster types in the Boston area � they even, obligingly, hid evidence to frame a guy for murder in the 60s, because the faux perp was a great cut-out for the real perp, who was being protected as an �informer.� See Boston Herald's coverage in particular - . I know, it is a Murdoch-y paper, but I do love the classic tabloid crime coverage - Weegee in Boston style.

One of the great myths of the FBI, abetted by movies and television, was that of an incorruptible national police force. There�s a historic background to that myth. In the late twenties, the FBI evolved out of the very corrupt Bureau of Investigation. There's a nice little summary of the history at CCrime Library. Prohibition gave the then Bureau of Information an impetus to corruption that was not present when Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's attorney general, was rousting anarchists - rousting them, in fact, right out of their constitutionally guaranteed rights. Politicals are notoriously an impoverished lot. But practicing the raid, the employment of informers, the agent provocateur, on the anarchists provided wonderful exercises in policework that could be applied on rum-runners and bootleggers - and it was. Under Harding, however, these tools were simply potential - the Bureau of Investigation was apparently on the cutting edge, seeing in the suddenly enlarged pool of �criminal� behavior a definite source of graft.

When Harding's corrupt cronies were exposed, an interesting thing happened - instead of questioning the definition of drinking as a crime, the press presented the issue as one of honest law enforcement versus corruption. Honest law enforcement is thus quietly separated from the laws it enforces, even if they are inherently dishonest. This binary opposition has carried over to this day.

In fact, there's no reason to suppose that the FBI is any less corrupt than any other large police organization. The unappealing fact that Hoover refused to even recognize that the Mafia existed up until the 60s, and his well known dislike for messing with it, have always been attributed to some quirk in his character, even though Hoover's sex life and penchant for gambling are now pretty well established facts about his life, and excellent handles for either subtle forms of bribery or blackmail.