Tom White Credit 34President Theodore Roosevelt had created the bureau in 1908,
hoping to fill the void in federal law enforcement. (Because of
lingering opposition to a national police force, Roosevelt’s
attorney general had acted without legislative approval, leading
one congressman to label the new organization a “bureaucratic
bastard.”) When White entered the bureau, it still had only a few
hundred agents and only a smattering of field offices. Its
jurisdiction over crimes was limited, and agents handled a
hodgepodge of cases: they investigated antitrust and banking
violations; the interstate shipment of stolen cars, contraceptives,
prizefighting films, and smutty books; escapes by federal
prisoners; and crimes committed on Indian reservations.
Like other agents, White was supposed to be strictly a fact-