This study covers a time (1908-1917) in the development of the federal Bureau of Investigation (BI) – renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935 - that arguably laid the foundation for the modern organization we know. Despite the over 100-year time difference, the book presents striking similarities between the BI operated in then and the FBI does now, especially with respect to political influence, counterintelligence challenges in an unstable world, and inter-agency rivalries. Founded as the result of a political disagreement between the Roosevelt administration and Congress in 1908, the BI evolved from a fledgling federal law enforcement agency to the premier intelligence and counterintelligence organization of the US government by 1917. The way the bureau enforced the neutrality laws had an impact on implementing American foreign policy.
Alexander Bruce Bielaski
The towering figure, largely ignored in the historiography, was A. Bruce Bielaski, the second chief of the BI (1912-1919). Bielaski steered the bureau through unprecedented growth, funding shortfalls, lack of trained personnel, with local courts, citizenry, politicians, and law enforcement agencies often sabotaging investigative and prosecutorial efforts. This study covers a period of significant challenges for the US: The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and World War I (1914-1918). Unrest in Mexico started in 1908 with the Flores Magón opposition to Porfirio Diaz violating US neutrality laws, progressed through the Madero presidency, military dictatorship, and violent civil war, to culminate in Pancho Villa’s attack on Columbus (1916) and U.S. military intervention. The BI and its leader Chief Bielaski met these massive challenges generally with success.
The study debunks the myth the BI amounted to little before J. Edgar Hoover took the helm in 1924 (Athan G. Theoharis with Tony G. Poveda, Susan Rosenfeld and Richard Gid Powers, The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide from J. Edgar Hoover to the X-Files (New York: Checkmark Books, 2000)), that FBI counterintelligence started in the 1930s (Raymond J. Batvinis, The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007)), and that the BI before Hoover had lost its mission (Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The FBI: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)). This study’s close look at the BI’s investigations into German intrigues clearly shows that despite one notable attempt to usurp the BI’s mission in 1915 (a rogue mission without presidential approval), the US Secret Service during World War I had no involvement in counterintelligence.
The book is a comprehensive analysis of declassified BI reports on Mexico. Where German intrigue intersected the story, BI reports on Germany are included. Complementing the BI source material are federal and local court records, Mexican foreign office and other government records, US State, Justice, and Military Intelligence Department records, German foreign office and war department records, private collections including from families of BI agents, newspaper and magazine articles, and secondary literature for comparative analysis. The audience for this 600-page study with over 2,000 footnotes will be largely academic.
This project started in 2008 with Louis R. Sadler and Charles H. Harris III sorting through the entire collection of RG 65 BI Old Mexican Files, which on microfilm is largely jumbled. After years of illness, Louis Sadler passed away in 2021 before the book could be written. To complete this project, Charles Harris partnered with Heribert von Feilitzsch. The book has approximately 250,000 words. A sequel is in the works.