John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States and an American law enforcement administrator. He was appointed as the director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI's predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. Hoover has been credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. Later in life and after his death, Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface. He was found to have exceeded the jurisdiction of the FBI, and to have used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others, including sitting presidents of the United States.. Under Hoover's leadership the FBI used COINTELPRO to smear black civil rights activists and native american groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. His victims include Mark Clark (activist), Assata Shakur, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Marshall "Eddie" Conway. Hoover also oversaw the assassination of Fred Hampton who was executed infront of his 9-month pregnant girlfriend by Chicago police.