The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1954-05-10

and grapevine gossiping. If any.
body has got grippe, l tell my
people to 60 to someone who can
the grippe to me. l just won't have
belly-aching behind the barn door"
Just what kind of a bureau did
Hoover want to develop when he
took over the dictatorship in 1924?
What was his concept of FBI
responsibilities?
when l was a special assistant
to the attorney general in the
early '2Os" he said, 81 saw the
defects in the evidence with which
attorneys had to work. There was
a need in the department for per-
sons trained in the gathering of
evidence.
I'm our law schools we study
subjects such as equity, evidence,
procedures and codes. But l mar
vel at the lack of instruction on
how to go out and build a case
that will stand up in court.
What I saw in 1880 was that
cases were not built. Evidence
was gathered haphazardly and
with no continuity, although evil
dence is the basis for proving
innocence or guilt.
''In the FBI, I tried to build on
the basis of what you find in a
large law office where one section
deals with the trial, another with
briefs, another with evidence, etc.
After all, the Department of JUS
tice is just a large law office for
tn" American people and in the
FBI we have the agency that
gathers the facts.
eve don't try the case. We
don't evaluate the evidence. We
merely act as the service agency.
II thought our agents should
have legal training or be exper-
fenced in accounting, and that is
our standard.
There's still crying need to-
day in our law schools in teaching
the gathering of evidence. There
is a large gap in the legal training.
We have requests from law schools
for agents to lecture classes on
FBI methods of gathering evil
dence.
"This lack in our law schools is
a glaring deficiency and we see it
plainly when young lawyers come
into the FBI. They must learn
this phase of the law in our own
training school"
Hoover recalled the first months
of his career with the FBI. "There
were some marvellous fights in
side the bureau" he said. "Some
of the old-timers complained we
were getting Boy Scouts to do the
work that could be entrusted only
to the two-gun men,"
Those first years were ones of
reorganization, building up a corps
of agents trained in law and &C.
counting, and establishing uniform
rules of conduct and procedure.
Then came the gangster era
the wild rampage of gang rule,
gang murders, kidnapping, bank
robberies and reigns of terror by
underworld mobs working with
crooked politicians, cooked courts,
crooked police officers.
The kidnapping of Charles A..
Lindbergh Jr., stirred the nation.
And then pretty Boy" Floyd,
Vern Miller and Adam Richetti
slaughtered four police officers in
irving to free a pal, Frank Nash,
from their custody. This was the
bloody kansas City Massacre" of
June II. 1888. Ironically, the hood
lluns killed Mash too in the wild
shooting.
In the breakdown of local law
ENLARGEMENT, enraged citizens de-
manded action from the federal
nassed a series of crime bills
which almost overnight changed
the FBI from an unarmed force
with no authority into a crime
fighting organization.
FRI men were authorized to
carry arms and make arrests. II
hacame a federal crime to kill a