The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in general, is rated rather favorably by the public. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the FBI is not the police, and in theory, concentrates on federal crimes of national interest as opposed to local crimes committed within a community. In addition to that, the FBI is generally treated rather favorably by television and the movies, as well as by the mass media. For whatever reason, valid or not, the FBI is often perceived to be of a more professional and experienced nature than your typical law enforcement agency.
Not too surprisingly, the reality of the situation is that the FBI pretty much does things about the same way that most every law enforcement type agency does things in America, which is to "game" the system so as to increase their conviction rates and to thereby demonstrate their effectiveness to the credulous public. For instance, during the endless reign of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, Hoover often claimed that there was no such thing as organized crime, even though, he was well aware that this statement was false. The reason for such a mindset by the FBI, has more to do with not desiring to confront the deep resources of both organized crime as well as the depth of corruption that organized crime reaches into, to which, by investigating such, the FBI was sure to have to confront powerful vested interests that were held in high respect and authority in their given community. Instead, similar to most law enforcement agencies, the FBI prefers to commit their resources to convicting the poor, the ill-educated, and the powerless, of which the most typical crime conviction for the FBI is drug related. The next highest category of crime that the FBI achieves convictions of is white-collar crime, often because the criminal is relatively easy to track with a minimum amount of shoe leather being necessitated, because their dirty white-collar transactions leave their digital footprint on computer devices and the FBI loves to concentrate its resources on the lowest lying fruit of criminal enterprises so as to impress the impressionable.
Then there is the list of FBI's ten most wanted, which to the uninitiated, you might think reflects the ten most wanted and most dangerous fugitives in the entire United States, but in fact, is more a reflection of pure propaganda. In other words, the FBI wants to sell the illusion that they are an effective law enforcement agency, to which, nothing gives them much more pleasure, on the unsuspecting public, than to see the FBI nail the really bad guys, when, in fact, the ten most wanted is carefully constructed so as to provide the FBI with a high percentage of perpetrators that will be brought to justice by the FBI. The hammillpost.com states that 470 out of the 500, or 94%, of the most wanted have been apprehended or located since the list was created, as compared to the fact that the national "clearance rate" for murder in America as of 2013 was only 64%.
In point of fact, the FBI cares much more about constantly burnishing its own image, as opposed to tackling the most dangerous criminal elements in America, mainly because the FBI fears looking bad and rather than risking opprobrium, the FBI concentrates a significant amount of its efforts on bullying the poor underclass.