Edwin Newton Atherton was born in Washington D.C. and served as a Foreign Service Officer, BOI Agent, Private Investigator and later, appointed head of the college athletics organization, the Pacific Coast Conference

Pacific Coast Conference

The Pacific Coast Conference was a college athletic conference in the United States which existed from 1915 to 1959. Though the Pacific-12 Conference claims the PCC's history as part of its own, the older league had a completely different charter and was disbanded in 1959 due to a major crisis...

 in the 1940s.

Atherton studied law at Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

 (1914) and was said to be a fraternity brother of J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover

John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...

. After graduation, he entered the consular service (1916) where during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 he served in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

 and Jerusalem. After the war, Atherton served in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. He resigned from consular duties 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 BOI (later FBI) was notable for his having worked on the 1924 capture of a neo-revolutionary army of Mexican nationals under the leadership of General Enrique Estrada

Enrique Estrada

Enrique Estrada Reynoso was a Mexican General, politician, and Secretary of National Defense.Born in Moyahua, Zac. In the year 1890. His parents were Camilo Estrada Reynoso and Micaela...

 at Engineer Springs on the California border. He resigned from the BOI 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 police graft and corruption and wrote the so-called Atherton Report on corruption in the San Francisco Police Department

San Francisco Police Department

The San Francisco Police Department, also known as the SFPD and San Francisco Department Of Police, is the police department of the City and County of San Francisco, California...

 in the late 1930s.

Sources

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