Hoover’s First Job and the FBI Files
J. Edgar Hoover was just 18 years old
when he took his first job in government—an entry-level position as a messenger
in the orders department of the Library of Congress.
It was October 13, 1913. No one knew it
at the time, but an important foundation in Hoover’s future career as FBI
Director (and in the Bureau itself) was being laid.
Young Hoover excelled at his work. He
impressed his supervisors and was awarded multiple raises. His position in the
orders department—which acquired books, manuscripts, and other items for the
Library’s collections—included the opportunity to work in the cataloging
department and the loan division. The Library was a half-mile from his house
and allowed him to attend law school at night, where he was studying hard and
learning quickly.
On July 25, 1917, Hoover left the
Library, and he took a job the next day as a clerk in the Department of
Justice, where his story becomes better known.
Hoover’s experiences with the Library of
Congress and its innovative organization of knowledge have often been credited
with influencing the creation of the FBI’s own knowledge management system—the
FBI Files. The filing system he helped architect became almost legendary for
its efficiency and over the years has been fodder for books, news stories,
movies, and even conspiracy theories of all sorts that exaggerate the size and
scope of the files.
But were the FBI files modeled on the
Library of Congress system? Actually, no. The FBI file system is based on the
type of case the file covers. Each file is designated by a classification
number—for example, kidnapping cases begin with the number 7, espionage cases
with the number 65. This is only vaguely similar to the Library’s system. Also,
these classifications were already being used by the Department of Justice;
Hoover’s Bureau simply adapted them for its own purposes.
What is true, however, is that Hoover’s
Library experience did have a significant impact on how the FBI’s filing system
was used and adapted. In a 1951 letter referencing his former position, Hoover
wrote, “[T]his job …trained me in the value of collating material. It gave me
an excellent foundation for my work in the FBI where it has been necessary to
collate information and evidence.”
This ability to synthesize information
was key. In 1921, as assistant director, Hoover oversaw the reform of the
Bureau’s files, which were in disarray after several organizational
restructurings. For the reform, Hoover took something old—the Department of
Justice system—and something new—indexing the files as they were created. And
then he used something borrowed—from the Library of Congress: the idea of
extensive cross-references within the card indices that provided access to the
content of the FBI files. Each cross-reference pointed back to the original
file and allowed for comparison of information across all files. So an agent or
clerk could find a person’s name, an event, a location, or any number of other
things, even if it was spread across dozens of different files at Headquarters
and in the field offices. In a profession that requires intelligence at its
fingertips and the ability to know everything that’s available, this system was
crucial to the success of Hoover’s Bureau as it grew and adapted to its
expanding mission.
In the end, Hoover’s work at the Library
helped the Bureau to create a file system that—in comparison to others of the
day—was “unique unto itself,” as one records manager noted in 1941 when
surveying the state of records across the nation.
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