Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), chief investigative agency of the United States federal government and a division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The FBI is charged with investigating violations of most federal criminal laws and with protecting the United States from foreign intelligence and terrorist activities. It also provides services to other law enforcement agencies, including fingerprint identification, laboratory analysis of criminal evidence, police training, and access to a centralized crime information database. Because of its broad mandate, the FBI is one of the most powerful and controversial agencies in the government. The bureau traces its origins to 1908, when the attorney general appointed a small group of investigators within the Department of Justice. The FBI has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The agency is led by the FBI director, who reports to the attorney general of the United States. The director is nominated by the president of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. The director may serve a maximum term of ten years. By tradition, the director of the FBI is not replaced when a new president takes office. The FBI has 56 field offices located in major U.S. cities and one field office in Puerto Rico. The field offices, in turn, oversee approximately 400 satellite offices in smaller cities and towns known as resident agencies. Outside the United States, the FBI has 44 foreign liaison offices, also called legal attaché offices, or legats for short. The FBI has about 28,000 employees. Nearly 12,000 are special agents, who have the authority to make arrests and use firearms. The rest are professional support personnel, a category that includes chemists, psychologists, language specialists, computer specialists, attorneys, clerical workers, and many other types of employees. The FBI’s annual budget is approximately $3 billion dollars and is appropriated by the Congress of the United States. FBI headquarters comprises 13 divisions: the Administrative Services Division, the Counterintelligence Division, the Counterterrorism Division, the Criminal Investigative Division, the Criminal Justice Information Services Division, the Cybercrime Division, the Finance Division, the Information Resources Division, the Investigative Technologies Division, the Laboratory Division, the Records Management Division, the Security Division, and the Training Division. An assistant director heads each division, and four executive assistant directors supervise groups of divisions. The headquarters also includes a number of offices, including the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs, the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Office of the General Counsel, and the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity.
