in 1936 on a verbal basis and paid by personal check of the Director of Naval Intelligence. He was followed by a small handful of civilian special agents who were seeded throughout the naval districts beginning in 1936, although by September 1937 they numbered only 14 nationwide. In June 1939, President Roosevelt directed that ONI handle the investigation of Navy cases relating to sabotage, espionage and subversive activities. By the fall of 1940, selective call-up of intelligence reservists for investigative and counterintelligence duties was undertaken on a broad scale, and following entry into World War II, the Navy's investigative arm was manned almost exclusively by reserve officers. Their primary tasks related to personnel security inquiries, sabotage and espionage cases, investigation of Japanese activities in the United States, and war fraud matters. A peak was reached in 1943 when over 97,000 separate investigations were conducted by what was known as the "Naval Intelligence Service." At the conclusion of World War II, there was again a general demobilization, resulting in only a small corps of civilian special agents being retained. Although the Secretary of the Navy extended investigative jurisdiction in 1945, no meaningful expansion of personnel occurred until the Korean conflict, when a major buildup of civilian agents took place. NIS and the Cold War Until the late 1950s, District Intelligence Office operations were under the command supervision of Naval District Commandants, and investigative effort was frequently parochial, fragmented, and on occasion, duplicative from one district to another. Workload, manpower, and jurisdiction in investigations and counterintelligence broadened following the Korean conflict. A number of significant changes in organization and policy occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as refinements in mission, which culminated in the establishment of the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) in February 1966. In the early 1970s, an NIS special agent was stationed on for six months. This marked the beginning of the "Deployment Afloat" program, now called the Special Agent Afloat program, which deploys special agents for year-long assignments aboard carrier battle groups and amphibious readiness groups. In 1972, background investigations were transferred from NIS to the newly formed Defense Investigative Service (DIS), allowing NIS to give more attention to criminal investigations and counter-intelligence. The 1970s also saw NIS' first female agent, who was stationed at Naval Air Station Miramar, California in 1975. In October 1981, NIS became a Second Echelon Command under the Chief of Naval Operations.