The FBI Story

This film follows the career of fictional FBI agent Chip Hardesty. It starts off with the 1955 airline bombing by Jack Graham who placed a bomb in his mother's suitcase so he could collect the insurance and killed 44 people in the process. The story then goes back to 1924 when a dissatisfied Hardesty is thinking of leaving he agency. His interest is reignited with appointment of J. Edgar Hoover as the new Director and a renewed sense of mission for the FBI. Working with his good friend Sam Crandall, he tells the story of some of the major cases he worked on: the fight against the Ku Klux Klan; the case of Oklahoma Indians who were being killed for their oil-rich lands; and the fight against the slew of high profile 1930s bank robbers including Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger and Ma Barker. During World War II their focus was on Nazi spies and subversive elements. By the 1950s, the focus was on communist spies.