J. Edgar Hoover was director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for 48 years, reshaping that organization from a small, relatively weak arm of the federal government's executive branch into a highly effective investigative agency. His aggressive methods targeting organized groups and specific individuals, politicians, celebrities and political activists, made him a powerful but controversial figure throughout most of his career, and particularly after his death, when the full extent of the FBI's intrusive (and probably illegal) surveillance activities became known.
