◆ SpookStack

hey” ONE ~4- . We give our men their choice of three types of pistois or revolvers, the .38 special, the .38 supcer~automatic on a .45 frame, or the .45 automatic. _ However, I would not. have you believe that we spend all of our time shooting it out with desperate criminals. As a matter of fact, we have _had to kill only 9 criminals out of the 12,000 taken into custody during the last three years. The fact that we are well trained in the use of firearms has proved to be a rather good investment in safety, since the criminal, knowing that we are capable of protecting our own Lives, and will do so when necessary, rarely chooses to shoot it out with us. I would also like to take this opportunity of dispelling the er- roneous idea that we spend most of our time in the United States chasing kidnapers or bank robbers, in solving the more spectacular front-page types of crimes. The investigation of these types of crimes forms a necessary and dangerous part of our work but a comparatively small part. By way of il- lustration, last year - that is during the fiscal year 1936 - we obtained eonvictions in 31 kidnaping cases, in 86 extortion cases, in 484 cases ift volving thefts from inter-state shipments, and in 1570 cases involving ‘whe theft and inter-state transportation of an entomobile. Incidentally, that is the only federal crime the notorious John Dillinger ever committed. During this same year we sent up 298 White Slave Traffic Act violators and 209 individuals for stealing or embezzling money from National, Federal Reserve or Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation member banks. You may be ‘surprised to learn that we sent up almost three times as many bankers and bank employees last year as we did bank robbers. We sent up 94 Anti-Trust law violators, 124 bankruptcy law violators, 73 bank robbers and so on dovwn the list. a We obtained convictions in almost 95% of all the cases we inves- tigated last_year, brought to trial during that year. These convictions to- taled almost 4,000 and included 2 death sententes, 9 life sentences, 7,000 years in actual sentences, 11,000 years in suspended sentences and nearly. "3,000 years “in probationary sentences. We also saved the Government of the United: States last year in fines, recoveries and War Risk Insurance cases defeated, more than 65 millions of dollars, compared with our total appro- priation of a little more tnan 5 million dollars. We feel that that is a sound economic investment. , am often asked what the tynical man of our oreanization nake * WAL Ni We asnea Stele wai ati aitaa dk Nk Mf VA wh bX ee oe ee A ee Like. There is literally "ho such animal. However, you will srobably be interested in learning what some cf our men did prior to entering the Bu- reau, To begin with, 190 of our 630 Special Agents speak one or more of 25 different foreign languages, some of them speaking as many as 8 different foreign languages. Our Special Agents have earned their livings in 79 dif- ferent professions, businesses and lines of work. Twenty of our Special Agents were aviators; thirteen, mining engineers; and ninc, civil engineers. We do our own undercover work. One of our Special Agents may be working “in a National bank under cover on an alleged embezzlement, while another may be living in a kidnaper's or bank robber's hideout. Our Special Apents*in- clude: bakers, blacksmiths, boiler makers, carpenters, chauffeurs, commis- ‘gary workers, construction cngineers, cooks, divers, draftsmen, electricians,