William John Burns

William J. Burns

William John Burns (born October 19, 1861 in Baltimore , Maryland , † April 14, 1932 in Sarasota , Florida ) was an American investigator.

Secret Service Special Agent

Burns gained his first experience as a criminal investigator during his time as a special agent for the Secret Service , which at that time was still the only federal investigative agency in the United States.

1901 Burns was in this capacity, the lead investigators of the Secret Service in the case of theft of 30,000 dollars from the Mint San Francisco . Burns was the main witness for the prosecution against the accused Walter N. Dimmick, but was in turn accused of having members of the jury followed and threatened by hired gangsters during the trial .

Private detective

After retiring from the civil service, he worked as a private detective and founded and directed the William J. Burns International Detective Agency . A first spectacular success was the investigation of the bomb attack on the editorial building of the Los Angeles Times on October 1, 1910, which made Burns and his detective agency famous throughout the USA. In addition, the Burns International Detective Agency, under Burns' leadership, conducted the investigation that proved Leo Frank's innocence in the high-profile Mary Phagan murder trial. The detective agency subsequently became the second largest American private detective agency after the Pinkerton detective agency in the 1910s and, in addition to private crime investigations and adultery investigations , primarily dealt with the suppression of unions and the persecution of labor leaders. During this time Burns acquired the reputation of the "American Sherlock Holmes ". He had the ability to market himself well and published spectacular reports of his cases in newspapers, and appeared in a film as himself in 1914.

Director of the Bureau of Investigation

After the scandals following the so-called “ Palmer Raids ” in 1920 and the - unrelated - resignation of BOI director William J. Flynn , Burns was to usher in a new, clean era. On August 22, 1921, he became director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), the predecessor of the later Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) . During his tenure, the Bureau's size and budget were radically reduced, and the activities against left-wing activists that it began during the Red Scare were partially scaled back, but remained a major element of the period. The number of permanent employees fell from 1,200 in 1921 to less than 600 by the end of Burns' tenure. For this, Burns brought many so-called “Year Men” or “Dollar Men” to the BOI: People with mostly shady backgrounds who committed themselves for only one year and an annual salary of only one dollar, and then during that year the powers as BOI - Abused the agent for their own private purposes and took bribes to make large sums of money. In 1924 the BOI was seen as a corrupt, inefficient and politically instrumentalized authority.

The Teapot Dome scandal , a corruption scandal that began in 1922, indirectly resulted in the so-called Daugherty Burns scandal of 1924, in which Burns and his superior, Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty, were accused of misusing BOI resources for political purposes. Daugherty tried to obstruct the Congressional investigation into corruption and bribery against himself and other members of the Harding administration . He instructed Burns to have Senator Thomas J. Walsh shadowed by special agents of the BOI in order to be able to blackmail him with the knowledge gained. When Congress heard of these events, Burns was summoned and instructed to submit the BOI's files on the Walsh case to the appropriate investigative committee. Burns refused, however. When the press reported on Burns' misconduct, he dispatched special agents from the BOI to several newspaper offices to intimidate the unpleasant journalists. However, these attempts only increased public pressure on Burns. At the end of the scandal in 1924, both Daugherty and Burns were forced to resign. On May 9, 1924, J. Edgar Hoover took over the office of BOI director, which he held until his death in 1972.

After the resignation

In 1927, William J. Burns and his son, William S. Burns, who now ran the Burns International Detective Agency, were charged with influencing a jury. On behalf of Sinclair Oil , which is at the center of the Teapot Dome scandal, employees of the detective agency shadowed the members of the jury in the trial against Harry F. Sinclair. The father and son defended themselves by saying that they were only trying to make sure that the jury would not be intimidated by the government. William J. and William S. Burns were eventually found guilty, the father was sentenced to 15 days in prison and his son was fined $ 1,000. However, the two appealed and were acquitted by the Supreme Court in 1929 .

Burns wrote detective novels after retiring from active professional life . He died on April 14, 1932 in Sarasota , Florida .

literature

• William R. Hunt: Front-Page Detective. William J. Burns and the Detective Profession, 1880-1930. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green OH et al. 1990, ISBN 0-87972-495-1 .
• Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones: The FBI. A history. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-300-11914-5 .
• Regin Schmidt: Red Scare. FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United States, 1919-1943. Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen 2000, ISBN 87-7289-581-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ According to: William R. Hunt: Front-Page Detective. William J. Burns and the Detective Profession, 1880-1930. Bowling Green 1990, p. 1: William Jerome Burns.
2. ^ Matt Novak, Unlocking the Mystery of the $ 10 Million California Time Capsule. In: paleofuture.gizmodo.com . March 4, 2014, accessed March 4, 2014.
3. ↑ The $ 5,000,000 Counterfeiting Plot in the IMDb , accessed April 2, 2014.
4. ↑ Reference date today: May 2, 1972 - the anniversary of the death of FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover. ( Memento from January 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) WDR ZeitZeichen . In: gffstream-2.vo.llnwd.net . Retrieved January 13, 2013 (MP3; 7.1 MB).