50 Interesting Facts about FBI

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.

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. The FBI and government are allowed to lie in courts for the sake of "national security".

30. Helen Keller's outspoken political radicalism throughout her adult life resulted in the FBI tracking her for years.

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.

32. 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.

33. The FBI had a 12-page file on George Carlin because he made jokes about government.

34. 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.

35. 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.

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.

37. In 2010, the Walt Disney Company nearly sold the ABC network. The sale was canceled because of an FBI investigation into insider trading.

38. 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?"

39. 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.

40. 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.

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.

42. 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.

43. 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.

44. 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.

45. The inventor of Tickle Me Elmo (Mark Johnson-Williams) was suspected by the FBI of being the Unabomber.

Mob boss John Gotti would offer coffee to the FBI agents assigned to tail him.

47. 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."

48. The founder of the FBI (Charles Joseph Bonaparte), who had also served as Secretary of the Navy and US Attorney General was the great nephew of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

49. A nurse named Eileen Luongo in Florida reported seeing the 9/11 hijackers in the hospital she worked at. She reported this to the FBI and was subsequently fired from her job.

50. In 1965, when Viola Liuzzo, a woman from Detroit who came to Selma, Alabama to march with MLK Jr. in protest of voting discrimination, was killed by 4 members of the KKK and one of them was an FBI informant named Gary Rowe. The FBI spread lies about Viola in order to make them look better.