Video: 'Death of J. Edgar Hoover' (May 2, 1972)

(Tuesday, May 2, 1972, body discovered at about 8:30 a.m. EDT) — J. Edgar Hoover, who directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for 48 years and built it into a dominant and controversial force in American law enforcement, died during the night from a heart attack attributed to cardio-vascular disease.

Hoover, who at 77 years of age still held the FBI firmly within his control, died in his bedroom after working a full day in his office yesterday. He was found by his housekeeper at 8:30 this morning, slumped on the floor beside his bed at his home near Rock Creek Park in the northwest section of Washington, D.C.

Video: 'May 2, 1972 - President Richard Nixon's Remarks on the Death of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover'

Video: 'LBJ & Richard Nixon, May 2, 1972'

Hoover was appointed 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. Hoover built the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and instituted a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.

Hoover also established and expanded a national blacklist, referred to as the FBI Index or Index List, renamed in 2001 as the Terrorist Screening Database which the FBI still compiles and manages.

Video: 'Secrets of J Edgar Hoover'

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, amass secret files on political leaders, and collect evidence using illegal methods.

Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others, including multiple sitting presidents of the United States.