1Roving bug
In 2006, the FBI convicted a crime family using evidence collected by remotely enabling the microphone on a cell phone. This is called a "roving bug."
2. Mob boss John Gotti would offer coffee to the FBI agents assigned to tail him.
3. The inventor of Tickle Me Elmo (Mark Johnson-Williams) was suspected by the FBI of being the Unabomber.
4. A set of notes, written in an unknown cipher, was found in the pocket of a dead man (Ricky McCormick) in 1999 and the FBI and leading cryptographers have been completely unable to crack the code.
5. The FBI used mail delivery robots (Marvin) in their field offices that navigated the buildings by using cells of black lights to follow an invisible fluorescent paint sprayed onto the carpet to designate its route.
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6Citizens' Commission
In 1971, a small group calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office in Philly, stole over 1000 documents, exposed the extreme surveillance program COINTELPRO, and then sent these documents to the press, leading to the FBI shutting it down.
7. A former FBI agent named John P. O'Neill was obsessed with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and warned of the threat of an attack on US soil. He took a job at the World Trade Center in the summer of 2001 and died on September 11th.
8. A wanted pimp named Dante Dears had such a sophisticated pattern lock on his android phone that the FBI was unable to crack it. They had to serve Google with a warrant to try and help them.
9. In 2013, after receiving a warning from the FBI on his PC, Jay Matthew Riley turned himself into police for possessing child pornography. The warning was fake and generated by a worm that had infected his computer.
10. An FBI agent named Robert Hanssen sold secrets to the Soviets and Russia for 22 years, and when caught said, "what took you so long?"
11ABC network
In 2010, the Walt Disney Company nearly sold the ABC network. The sale was canceled because of an FBI investigation into insider trading.
12. A security guard named Richard Jewell discovered a pipe bomb at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and alerted police. He helped evacuate the area, was later considered a suspect by the FBI and presumed guilty by the media. He was exonerated when a homegrown terrorist confessed 9 years later.
13. 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sent the FBI on wild goose chases, literally, by claiming that some geese in Central Park had explosives stuffed up their a*s.
14. In 2013, the government of Iceland asked several FBI agents to leave after they lied to the local government and told them they were investigating terrorist hackers. It turned out they were investigating WikiLeaks.
15. The FBI had a 12-page file on George Carlin because he made jokes about government.
16Craig Monteilh
The FBI tried to infiltrate a mosque in Irvine by sending one of their agents (Craig Monteilh) to incite terrorism. The people of the mosque reported him to the FBI instead.
17. Actor James Woods observed and reported suspicious behavior from four passengers, with no apparent luggage, casing the plane. Six weeks later, these same passengers carried out the 9/11 attacks. The FBI received Woods' FAA report the evening of September 11.
18. Helen Keller's outspoken political radicalism throughout her adult life resulted in the FBI tracking her for years.
19. The FBI and government are allowed to lie in courts for the sake of "national security".
20. An FBI agent named Joseph D. Pistone also known as "Donnie Brasco" infiltrated the mob for 6 years to the point that he was going to be "made" but was pulled out because his superiors decided that the operation was becoming too dangerous.
21Hasan Elahi
In 2003, fed up with being interrogated by the FBI on suspicion of terrorism, artist Hasan Elahi created a website to document his location at all times. It's still running.
22. John Delorean (designer of the Delorean DMC-12 "back to the future" car) was arrested for conspiracy to traffic narcotics, after being set up by FBI. Delorean was saved from prison after publisher Larry Flynt obtained and released tapes and documents that proved his innocence.
23. The FBI maintains their own Bitcoin wallet that consists of seized Bitcoins.
24. The FBI accidentally registered an internal interrogation manual with the Library of Congress. Anyone with a library card is able to read this secret government document.
25. Ernest Hemingway grew paranoid and talked about FBI spying on him later in life. He was treated with electroshock. It was later revealed that he was in fact watched, and Edgard Hoover personally placed him under surveillance.
