What do you know about the FBI? Most of our perception of the Bureau comes from various movies and TV shows. In real life, the FBI is both weirder and more dangerous than you can imagine. Don't believe it? Just check out these FREAKY FBI facts from r/todayilearned.
1
An FBI informant secretly wore a wire to breakfast with a city official suspected of bribery, and met the suspect at the WTC Marriott. In the middle of getting a confession, the informant ends up making what is believed to be the only uninterrupted audio recording of the Sept. 11 attack.
2
Operation ABSCAM was an FBI sting operation carried out in 1980 to trap corrupt politicians, which included a senator and six congressmen.
3
Today I learned about Bradford Bishop, who allegedly killed his wife, mother and three sons in 1976. Bishop was only removed from the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted List in 2018, due to his advanced age, and is still being pursued by the FBI, as there have been sightings of Bishop across Europe for 40 years.
4
Joseph Pistone was an FBI agent who infiltrated one of the five big families of the Italian Mafia in New York. The operation lasted from 1976 to 1981 and led to over 200 indictments and over 100 convictions of Mafia members.
5
Today I learned of the August 26, 1980 Harvey’s Lake Tahoe casino bombing. Three men in maintenance uniforms rolled in a device covered in cloth labeled IBM to a 2nd story empty office with a note demanding $3 million. The FBI was forced to detonate it after failing to defuse it.
6
An FBI whistleblower reported multiple problems in forensic cases. After years of the FBI seeking to ruin him, his claims were investigated and a report showed that forensic hair analysis was flawed or inaccurate over 90% of the time.
7
Ernest Hemingway's paranoia has been ascribed to everything from alcoholism to bi-polar disorder to CTE, but he was indeed being followed by the FBI due to his extensive ties in Cuba.
8
Mark Felt, who notoriously provided reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with critical information about the Watergate scandal under the a pseudonym was nearly nominated to serve as Acting Director of the FBI after the resignation of L. Patrick Gray in 1973.
9
Operation Rocky Top was an FBI investigation in 1986 to uncover illegal activities in charity bingo including the sale of illegal bingo licenses. In the end, over 50 were convicted. Seven politicians were incarcerated which included the leader of the House of Representatives in Tennessee.
10
An underachieving Princeton student wrote a term paper describing how to make a nuclear bomb. He got an A but his paper was taken away by the FBI.
11
In the 1940s, filmmaker Orson Welles was under investigation by the FBI as they believed he had ties to communist activities because of his film “Citizen Kane.” He was considered such a threat that the FBI had him on a list of people who should be apprehended in case of a national emergency.
12
Chase National Bank helped raise over $20 million for the Nazis between 1936-1941, by selling Reichmarks to German-American citizens at a discounted rate, and escaped federal prosecution through threatening to leak FBI secrets.
13
In May 25, 2003, two men boarded an empty Boeing 727 at an airport in Angola and flew off into the sunset. The FBI and CIA conducted a massive search, but neither the men nor the plane was ever seen or heard from again. it is one of the largest aircraft ever to disappear.
14
Jack Barsky was a former KGB agent who lived in the US. The FBI bought the property next door and monitored him for 3 years. He was caught and confessed. Barsky later became close friends with the FBI agent tasked with monitoring him and he is now a godfather to Barsky's child.
15
In 1933, FBI Director John Edgar Hoover learned of a namesake who had failed to pay a debt of $900 to a store in Washington. As Hoover was particular about paying his bills on time and so did not want to be associated with this disreputable behavior, he changed his name to "J. Edgar Hoover."
16
FBI agent Robert Hanssen was tasked to find a mole within the FBI after the FBI's moles in the KGB were caught. Robert Hanssen was the mole and had been working with the KGB since 1979.
17
In 1995 a policy known as “The Wall" was created. It discouraged info sharing between the CIA and FBI, playing a critical role in the inability to stop 9/11. It got so bad agents played a CD with Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" into the phone as they were told their access was denied.
18
Washtub was a joint Air Force and FBI stay behind operation that trained Alaskan citizens in espionage, sabotage, and rescue in case of a Soviet invasion. Alaskan natives were disregarded for their supposed questionable allegiance.
19
Alaska Packard Davidson, sister of the founders of the Packard automobile company, became the first female FBI special agent in 1922. Following the resignations of Davidson and two other women in the 1920s, the FBI had no female agents until 1972.
20
Today I learned about the infamous 1986 FBI Miami shootout. A small group of field agents for the FBI attempted to apprehend William Russell Matix and Michael Lee Platt, which resulted in 4 deaths and 5 injuries. The whole event reads like an action movie.
21
In 1977, the FBI started to build a tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C to eavesdrop on the Soviets; the construction took years, was riddled with complications, and worse yet - the Soviets knew about the tunnel because of a tip-off.
22
In 1980 the FBI formed a fake company and attempted to bribe members of congress. Nearly 25% of those tested accepted the bribe, and were convicted.
23
The FBI has struggled to hire hackers because of the FBI hiring rule that the applicant must not have used marijuana during the last 3 years.
24
A US law firm set up honeypots on torrent-sharing site The Pirate Bay and then sued people who downloaded their torrents. The matter reached the FBI and the pirate site accepted to collaborate with the feds resulting in the crooked lawyers getting jail time.
