Changes

It was during the 1930s that the Bureau became well-known and caught the imagination of the public. Eastwood’s movie shows the notorious Lindberg case as changing the fortunes of Hoover and the FBI. In the 2011 motion picture, Hoover and his G-Men are portrayed as playing an integral role into the 1934 kidnapping of the baby son of the great aviator Charles Lindbergh (1932). It shows the main character is asked to intervene and solve the case by President Herbert Hoover and helping to apprehend the kidnapper.

In reality, the FBI played only a limited role in the case, and Hoover’s new forensic techniques did not lead to the capture of the criminal who kidnapped the Lindberg baby.<ref>Gentry, P 319</ref> In one scene the central character is challenged by a Senator who claimed that he should not be the country’s top cop because he had never arrested anyone. An enraged Hoover is shown as flying into a rage and arresting some gangsters in response to the Senator’s jibes. The head of the Bureau could not arrest anyone because of a Congressional rule, and he was not that bothered by the Senator’s claims.