Foreign spies and the theft of military and industrial secrets were real threats during the 1930s as the United States faced the impending war. The nation's lack of security on those fronts was also a problem. Enter J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Raymond J. Batvinis, former FBI special agent, presents an early history of the FBI in a lecture at the Library of Congress.

Batvinis discussed his new book, "The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence," in a program hosted by the Center for the Book and co-sponsored by the Manuscript Division, which Batvinis consulted extensively in his research about the FBI's response to the world crises of the 1930s and 1940s.

Batvinis also draws on newly declassified documents and interviews with former FBI agents in his reconstruction and analysis of how the FBI, before World War II, grew from a small law enforcement unit into America's first organized counterespionage and counterintelligence service.