Edwin Atherton

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Edwin Newton Atherton (10/12/1896 - 8/31/1944 ) was born in Washington D.C. Foreign Service Officer, FBI Agent, Private Investigator and head of the college athletics organization, the Pacific Coast Conference in the 1940s.

Studied law at Georgetown University(1914), entered the consular service (1916) during World War one and served in Italy, Bulgaria and Jerusalum. After the war, Atherton served in Canada. He resigned and joined the Department of Justice in 1924. He served in New York, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles and headed the Department of Justice office in San Francisco California.

His service in the FBI was notable for his having worked on the 1924 capture of a neo-revolutionary army of Mexican nationals under the leadership of General Estrada at the California border. He resigned from the FBI in 1927 and started a private investigating firm in Los Angeles with a partner, Joseph Dunn called Atherton and Dunn.

Atherton's firm was hired to investigate graft and corruption and wrote the so-called Atherton Report on corruption in San Francisco Police Department in the late 1930s.

[edit] Sources

• Who's Who in America - 1938
• FBI http://www.fbi.gov/page2/aug03/estrada081503.htm