FBI

Frank Buttino

Bill Thompson

Even years after the death of iconic FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the agency continued to discriminate against gay agents.

It wasn’t all that very long ago that the FBI was almost exclusively the domain of straight white men.

That is, until an agent named Frank Buttino came along. The FBI fired him after discovering his sexual orientation, but Buttino filed a discrimination lawsuit.

And as a result, the FBI’s homophobic hiring discrimination ended.

I met him in the summer of 1993, while his lawsuit was still pending. He had written his autobiography, a book called A Special Agent .

So here now, from 1993, Frank Buttino.

Frank Buttino died in 2018. He was 73.

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Candace Gingrich
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Roy Hazelwood

Bill Thompson

Roy Hazelwood is widely regarded as the pioneer of profiling sexual predators.

What he accomplished during his career helped lay the foundation for today[‘s FBI profilers.

Hazelwood wrote a book in 1999, reflecting on many of the cases he had worked on. It was called The Evil That Men Do. And that’s when I had the chance to meet him .

So here now, from 1999, Roy Hazelwood.

Roy Hazelwood died in 2016. He was 78,

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Joseph Pistone

Bill Thompson

Have you ever seen the 1997 movie “Donnie Brasco” with Johnny Depp?

Donnie Brasco was a real person. Well, no, Donnie was an identity created by the FBI, back in the 1980s, when they assigned an agent named Joseph Pistone to go undercover, as Donnie Brasco, and infiltrate some of America’s most notorious organized crime familiies.

By the late ’80s, his assignment complete, Pistone wrote a bestselling book about it. I met him in 1989 when he was on a publicity tour for the book — a fact that I had to ask about…..

Here now, from 1989, Joseph Pistone:

Joe Pistone has since written two more books about his undercover experience. He is now 80 years old,