After Timothy McVeigh went on trial for the terrorist murder of those who died in the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal office building, rumors began to leak out that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab was corrupt, from tailoring laboratory tests to favor the wishes of prosecutors to systematically building evidence that purposefully illustrates the guilt of the accused. Many were shocked by the revelations, wondering why and for how long such corruption existed. According to Robert Unger, Harvard professor and author of The Union Station Massacre, since the beginning of the FBI’s existence. As Unger states about the Union Station Massacre, a killing spree in which federal FBI agents and an informant were gunned down, forever, “The FBI didn’t go bad; it was born bad, right there in the blood of Union Station. The file doesn’t speak of a proud birth. It describes original sin” (Unger 236).
Many acts of corruption are well-known about the modern FBI, from illegal wire-tapping and surveillance to evidence tampering. However, many argue that these corrupt acts were the product of the final years of J. Edgar Hoover’s legacy, an era when his senility and obsession with power caused him to throw caution and justice to the wind. Unger’s thesis contradicts this contention. He argues that corruption of all kinds was evident from the first “big” case handled by Hoover’s infant FBI, and that it was intentional because Hoover knew failing to bring about swift justice and resolution to the case would keep his foundling agency from developing the power and legal jurisdiction he was determined it have. Yet, Unger also argues that the shocking degree of corruption inherent in the organization in 1933 is not as significant as the results of it. He argues that because of the perceived “success” of the Hoover-run agency, the FBI became even more powerful and even more removed from proof of corruption, ...