The General Intelligence Division: J. Edgar Hoover and the Critical Juncture of 1919

摘要

Critical junctures are significant because they change the path of future developments. In the case of institutional development, when new bureaucracies and practices are created they establish precedent for further institutional changes. Expertise is developed, personnel and institutions develop practices, and key individuals develop ideas and perceptions that will stay with them as they progress and extend their influence in the institutional system. 1919 constitutes a critical juncture in the development of the IC. A shift in threat perceptions regarding the level of the danger posed by radical elements in the United States allowed for an opening in the American political system to establish a peacetime intelligence and analysis agency that would not have been possible a few years earlier.