# FBI history article, "The Bureau and the Great Experiment" (24 January 2020)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/fbi-bureau-and-great-experiment/

FBI history article on the Bureau of Investigation's role in Prohibition: support for the Treasury's Bureau of Internal Revenue, a 1922 Savannah conspiracy case, and a 1927 move of enforcement to the Department of Justice, as the article states it.

The FBI's article of January 24, 2020, "The Bureau and the Great Experiment: How Prohibition Fueled Bootleggers, Mobsters, and Corruption," says the Treasury Department's Bureau of Internal Revenue took over enforcement, supported by the Bureau of Investigation where Internal Revenue was stretched thin. It says that by the end of the first six months of Prohibition, Bureau of Investigation special agents had conducted investigations leading to the arrests of 269 people. It describes a Savannah conspiracy case in 1922 that drew more than 50 agents, and says that in 1927 "Congress moved prohibition enforcement to the Department of Justice, creating a Bureau of Prohibition" that stood apart from the Bureau of Investigation.

The ATF timeline filed here puts the creation of the Bureau of Prohibition in 1927 but the transfer to Justice in 1930 (the Prohibition Reorganization Act of May 27, 1930). The two federal accounts conflict, and this page does not resolve them. The article uses Library of Congress photographs; those are not covered by this record's federal-work basis, and one of them is filed separately in this archive.

## Sources

- Federal Bureau of Investigation: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/the-bureau-and-the-great-experiment-012420