(MONEY Magazine) – Controversy erupted as soon as then SEC chairman Harvey Pitt began pushing for William Webster, former director of the FBI and CIA, to head the new accounting oversight board in late October. Many wondered why, if not to hobble reform, a guy with little accounting experience would be tapped for the job. A look back in time, however, reveals that Webster is but the latest in a line of men to stand at the nexus of law enforcement and accounting. --SCOTT MEDINTZ

1890s: While investigating "The Greek Interpreter," super-sleuth Sherlock Holmes reveals that his seldom-mentioned elder brother Mycroft, who is said to possess even greater deductive skills than Sherlock himself, "audits the books in some of the government departments."

1920s: Upon appointment as director of the FBI in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover revives an earlier policy requiring all G-men to be lawyers or accountants.

1930s: Because they were unable to tie mobster Al Capone to the overtly illegal activities of his crime syndicate, the feds bust him for income tax evasion and put him away for 11 years. Later, an IRS recruiting poster would brag that "It took an accountant to nail Al Capone."

1990s: Two American C.P.A.s, Jim Weikart and D. Larry Crumbley (writing under the pen name Iris Weil Collett), pioneer a new publishing genre--the accounting thriller--with titles like Costly Reflections in a Midas Mirror (Crumbley) and Harry's Last Tax Cut (Weikart).

2001: Soon-to-be-disgraced accounting firm Arthur Andersen is contracted by the Department of Justice to review the FBI's record keeping, technology and human resources practices following the agency's embarrassing failure to turn over documents to lawyers for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

2002: Webster resigns as head of the auditing committee of U.S. Technologies--which, in addition to investing in young Internet companies, runs a contract labor company using prison inmates--after the company tells him he can no longer be indemnified against shareholder claims stemming from accounting irregularities.