By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

A new book, “The Birth of the FBI: Teddy Roosevelt, the Secret Services, and the Fight Over America’s Law Enforcement Agency,” argues the FBI was not created by its first director, J. Edgar Hoover, as many people claim.

The origin of the FBI is traced back to 1908, when President Theodore Roosevelt created the Special Agent Force under the Justice Department. Later that year, the agency was renamed the Bureau of investigation.

By 1935, when the FBI was created, Hoover was the third director of the Bureau of Investigation.

Author Willard M. Oliver, a professor for the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State, argues Roosevelt should be credited with creating the FBI because of the agencies that preceded it.

FBI Special Agent Melissa R. Godbold.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Melissa R. Godbold, a 22-year veteran of the FBI, has been named special agent in charge of the Oklahoma City Field Office.

Godbold, who most recently served as the chief of staff for the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., began her career as a special agent at the Washington Field Office, where she investigated international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction cases. Godbold also was in charge of the FBI’s hazardous materials operation at the Pentagon following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Godbold received a promotion in 2010, serving as a supervisor over personnel security matters in the Washington Field Office.

Two year later, she was a unit chief in the Human Resources Division at headquarters. In 2013, she was promoted to assistant section chief for the FBI’s Counterterrorism Internet Operations Section, overseeing investigations into terrorists’ use of the internet.

In 2015, Godbold was promoted to an assistant special agent in charge at the Dallas Field Office. In 2017, she became director of the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force in the Cyber Division, where she led the FBI’s partnership to coordinate, integrate and share cyber threat information for investigations and intelligence analysis.

Growing up in Oklahoma, Godbold graduated from Putnam City North High School in Oklahoma City and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in geology and a Master of Science degree in hazardous and waste materials management from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.