The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Intelligence Community and reports to both the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. Unlike the Central Intelligence Agency CIA , which has no law enforcement authority and is focused on intelligence collection abroad, the FBI is primarily a domestic agency, maintaining 56 field offices in major cities throughout the United States, and more than resident agencies in smaller cities and areas across the nation.
At an FBI field office, a senior-level FBI officer concurrently serves as the representative of the director of national intelligence. These foreign offices exist primarily for the purpose of coordination with foreign security services and do not usually conduct unilateral operations in the host countries.
These activities generally require coordination across government agencies. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D. The FBI has a list of the top 10 most wanted fugitives. Currently, the FBI's top priorities are: [ 11 ]. In , the National Bureau of Criminal Identification was founded, providing agencies across the country with information to identify known criminals. The assassination of President William McKinley created a perception that the United States was under threat from anarchists.
The Departments of Justice and Labor had been keeping records on anarchists for years, but President Theodore Roosevelt wanted more power to monitor them. The Justice Department had been tasked with the regulation of interstate commerce since , though it lacked the staff to do so.
It had made little effort to relieve its staff shortage until the Oregon land fraud scandal at the turn of the 20th century. President Roosevelt instructed Attorney General Charles Bonaparte to organize an autonomous investigative service that would report only to the Attorney General.
