The Five Funniest FBI Investigations
The FBI is like the final cop boss you have to fight at the end of your video-game crime spree. You know things are serious when they get called in. Sometimes, though, much to their presumed chagrin, they have to investigate some seriously silly stuff. Like…
The Juggalos
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the FBI has been investigating fans of Insane Clown Posse as a gang for more than a decade. They may not seem any different as far as their inclination toward crime than any other fans of hardcore music other than crimes against fashion, but they were classified as a gang in 2011, albeit one engaged in “sporadic, disorganized, individualistic” activities. As evidence, they note that “Insane Clown Posse can’t get its music on the radio, but claims to have 1 million devoted fans,” which might be the biggest burn written in a once-classified document.
‘Louie, Louie’
In 1963, the Kingsmen recorded their famously unintelligible cover of an old sailors’ song, having played a late gig the night before and believing their only take was a practice take. Unfortunately, in the early ‘60s, if someone couldn’t understand what you were saying, they assumed you were sexually harassing them. After getting complaints from parents that the lyrics were secretly dirty, the FBI spent 31 months listening to them, even showing up at the Kingsmen’s shows and standing next to the speakers, before concluding that no one could possibly discern them well enough to be offended.
A Joke Tweet
If you’ve been on Twitter lately, you know it can be pretty hard to distinguish the jokes from the actual threats to destroy civilization, but it’s pretty clear which one journalist Nick Baumann was doing in 2016 when he tweeted, “i love my job working at a voting site in washington dc destroying trump ballots.” It wasn’t even an original joke — it was a meme referencing another joke tweet that got blown out of proportion.
Like a magic spell of irony, however, Baumann soon found himself getting a call from the FBI, who claimed that “when we receive complaints we have to follow them up no matter what.” To be clear, they absolutely don’t. Otherwise they’d have to look into every UFO sighting, and that would just be sill—
Tons of UFOs
Buckle up, everyone: the X-files are real. Obviously, the FBI investigated the Roswell incident, but for several years thereafter, they received tons of tips about UFO sightings, and J. Edgar Hoover himself directed agents to recover any discs found “for their potential impact on FBI responsibilities.” They were considering becoming a mobile operation, apparently. The Air Force primarily handled over 12,000 reports between 1947 and 1969 before concluding that they “revealed no threat or scientific value.” They’re not saying there’s no aliens. They just don’t have to care.
Bigfoot
The FBI has no more business investigating Bigfoot than the aerodynamics of anime cleavage; both should be left to wild-haired men with sunlight allergies and dressers full of the same shirt. In 1976, however, one guy — the assistant director of the bureau’s scientific and technical divisions — received a bag of hair from a prominent Bigfoot researcher, asking for the identification of its origin, and decided on a whim to humor him. It turned out to be deer hair, thus ending the FBI’s relationship with America’s favorite cryptid. As far as we know.
