1917 was a year of great upheaval. The Romanov dynasty fell in Russia, and the Bolsheviks came to power in the fall. The United States, which had remained neutral up to this point, entered the First World War. At this time, the young lawyer Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), an incredibly passionate and ambitious man who was to have a huge impact on the political life of the United States, began his career. Immediately after his appointment in 1924 as director of the Bureau of Investigation, he took a number of measures that transformed the small detective agency into the current Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a powerful organization for combating government and political crimes. The head of this institution, Hoover, became essentially the shadow ruler of the United States. Being a very persistent and demanding person, Hoover firmly believed that you can achieve any goal if you only put in enough effort. He strengthened and maintained his secret power for a long time by manipulating classified information about the personal lives and public activities of prominent American citizens. The FBI director had a wide circle of acquaintances among politicians, entrepreneurs, actors and even criminals. However, communicating with him did not bring pleasure to the vast majority of his acquaintances. They always expected provocations from him. Even US presidents were afraid to argue with Hoover. They came and went, but Hoover remained - not leaving the post of FBI director until the last day of his 77-year-old life. Operating within the framework of a democratic system, Hoover was able to essentially remove the FBI from government control and treated the intelligence agency as his own private company. It was only in 1976 that the US Senate publicly acknowledged that Hoover had negatively influenced the course of American history and, in particular, carried out widespread unfounded persecution of citizens for political reasons. According to the results of a total audit of FBI cases on the topic of “internal security”, carried out in 1975, it turned out that only four out of 19,700 (!) investigations found a crime, but these cases had no connection with issues of national security. However, the FBI headquarters still bears the name of J. Edgar Hoover.