Year: 2024

Hi there, and welcome to the Ronald Tammen walking tour after-party. You’ve waded through so many scribbly, scrawly FBI docs with me over the past several weeks that I thought we all deserved a little celebration.

Let’s see…beverages are in the cooler, food is over there, and I have some royalty- and copyright-free music all cued up. If you could press play any time you encounter one of these mp3-player thingys ⬇️, that’d be great. As you know, music is essential to any party, even if it happens to be unrecognizable and damn near impossible to dance to.

Music by Kyrylo Momot from Pixabay

Here’s what’s going to happen:

Catching up with old friends: To help get things rolling, we’ll do a quick run-down of the marks we’ve already discussed, whether it was on the tour or at another time. That way, we’ll have all the marks with their proposed meanings together in one place. I also have some updates for you with details that I’ve uncovered since the first time I wrote about a topic.

Meeting new ones: Once we’ve covered the marks we know, I’ll be introducing you to a few of the less prominent ones that we haven’t discussed or that I’ve only mentioned in passing.

Let’s play a game: Finally, I’ll be posting a couple significant marks I’ve been trying to figure out but haven’t been able to. We’re not just talking about someone’s initials. We’re talking about 1 address or phrase and 1 full-on sentence that has been scrawled in and scribbled over on Ron’s docs that I can’t seem to make heads or tails of, no matter how long I stare at them. This is your chance to offer up your ideas, Wheel of Fortune-style. Only in our version, there are no wrong answers!

Ready to have some fun? Let’s go!

Music by Oleksii Holubiev from Pixabay

Catching up with old friends

ST-102, REC-19

These two stamps which appear together on nine of Ron’s docs got the ball rolling for our analysis of FBI markings. Not only did I find a long list of high-visibility cases and people who carry the ST-102 stamp, but I found one person—and, to date, only one other person—who has both the ST-102 and REC-19 stamps together on some of his records. That person is James W. McCord, Jr., who is known for his role in Watergate, but who had a long career before then working for the CIA’s Security Research Staff, which oversaw Project Artichoke. Before he joined the CIA, McCord had been employed by the FBI, so he was well known to them too. That the FBI would assign Ron Tammen, who was ostensibly still missing, the same stamps as James McCord—at roughly the same time, no less—is significant. And by significant, I mean it’s level 10 in hugeness. You can’t get much more significant, except for the “see index” notation, which we’ll be talking about right after this one.

From what I can surmise:

• I’ve never seen an ST stamp without an accompanying REC stamp. However, I have, at times, seen an REC stamp either alone or with another type of stamp.
• REC means “recorded.” I still don’t know what the letters ST stand for.
• ST numbers were assigned to cases of high sensitivity, beginning with 100 and reaching at least into the upper 120s. 
• The lower the ST number, the more sensitive and/or explosive the case appears to be. 
• ST numbers appear to have been assigned by the Domestic Intelligence Division, which oversaw cases involving espionage, foreign agents, internal security, communists, racial matters, sedition, sabotage, etc.—all of the top-tier topics of the day. The FBI’s liaison to the CIA worked in the Domestic Intelligence Division as did the person who oversaw the Security Index.
• Before ST numbers, there were SE numbers, which appear on records for older cases, beginning when the Domestic Intelligence Division was called the Security Division. (Thomas Peasner and Richard Cox both have documents with SE numbers.) In 1975, Domestic Intelligence was renamed the Intelligence Division.
• When I organized the ST-102 stamps in order by their accompanying REC stamps, the list of people is…impressive. Not only is it wild that Ron Tammen was given the same ST-102, REC-19 stamps as James McCord, but he was also tucked in between Santo Trafficante (ST-102, REC-18) and Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo (ST-102, REC-20), both of whom were investigated for possible ties to the Kennedy assassination. That’s just plain weird, don’t you think? Here’s what that list looks like to date:

Update! In an earlier post, I’d noted how strange it was for Ron to have those stamps on his FBI documents because he was still listed as missing. And make no mistake, I still believe that it’s very strange. However, I’ve found one other formerly missing person with an ST number on his FBI records, though it wasn’t an ST-102 like Ron’s. Charles McCullar, who went missing after hitchhiking to Crater Lake National Park in January 1975, and whose skeletal remains were found in an area of the park in October 1976, has an ST-126 stamp on one of his documents. The ST-stamped report was written in 1978 after someone had contacted the Portland, Oregon, Field Office to dispute the crime lab examiner’s conclusion that he was killed by exposure to the elements and not foul play. I have more to say about the McCullar case in the next two categories.

See index

This is the holy grail of FBI notations. If you should ever encounter someone who questions us as to where this story appears to be heading, kindly direct them here. The words “see index” written in the left margin of a person’s FBI documents indicates that they’d been added to the FBI’s Security Index. And if a person was on the Security Index, the FBI and DOJ had determined that they were a danger to society (for whatever reason) and would need to be incarcerated in the event of a national emergency. 

Say it with me three times: Ron Tammen was on the Security Index. Ron Tammen was on the Security Index. Ronald Henry Tammen, Jr., was on the freakin’ Security Index!

Several other people who were on the Security Index are listed below. Note that people who were investigated for possible ties to the assassination of President Kennedy are indicated with the letters JFK. They are:

Ruth Alscher (associate of Julius Rosenberg), Frank Chavez (racketeering/JFK), Judith Coplon (Soviet spy and DOJ employee), Richard Colvin Cox (U.S. Army fugitive), Salvatore Granello (racketeering/JFK), Hank Greenspun (convicted of arms shipments to Israel/JFK), Loren Eugene Hall (Nicaraguan revolutionary activities/JFK), John Timothy Keehan II (potential bombing suspect), Egil Krogh (Watergate), Stanley David Levison (MLK’s speechwriter), Jeb Magruder (Watergate), Edward K. Moss (PR exec who had close ties to the CIA and organized crime/JFK), Thomas Peasner (POW accused of being brainwashed/JFK), Gilberto Rodriguez (Cuban/JFK), Morton Sobell (Russian spy), Charles Tourine (gambling and racketeering/JFK)—the list goes on and on!

Weirdly enough, Lee Harvey Oswald, who has been blamed for singlehandedly carrying out what could be considered the most horrifying, historically impactful crime of the 20^th century, had been on the Security Index in 1959, when he’d defected to the Soviet Union. However, by 1963, despite his pro-Castro and Soviet activities, someone high up in the FBI and the DOJ had determined that he wasn’t a danger after all, and his name should be removed. 

As for when Ron’s name was added to the Security Index, it appears that he was added in 1973, at roughly the same time that someone had anonymously phoned in a tip to the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office that a guy working at Welco Industries was probably Ron. (He wasn’t.) In my opinion, the “see index” handwriting on Ron’s document closely resembles the “see index” written on a July 1973 report regarding an alleged plot to burglarize records stored in the office of Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun of which James W. McCoy, Jr., was an alleged accessory. (Note that Hank had been on the Security Index in his own right for illegally shipping machine guns and ammunition to Israel, an offense for which he was convicted in 1950, but that President Kennedy pardoned in 1961.) Because it appears as if the same person wrote both notes, I think Ron was probably added to the Security Index sometime that same year. I also think that Ron was somehow tied to that alleged burglary plot, or at least the people who were associated with it. It’s still a theory, and I’ll continue investigating.

Update! As it so happens, Charles McCullar was also listed on the FBI’s Security Index. You may recall that we’d spoken of Charles McCullar a while ago and, like Ron, his missing person documents had been stored in the FBI’s “Ident Missing Person File Room,” which was a separate location from where typical missing person records were stored. My theory is that tips called in that might have been considered a little unsavory and NSFW would have been put in the Missing Person File Room. Depending on how jaw-dropping the accusation, it could have also gotten someone onto the Security Index. At any rate, it appears that the FBI may have had some dirt on Charles McCullar.

Here’s what’s different between McCullar’s and Tammen’s cases: I believe that whatever McCullar did to get onto the Security Index, he probably did it before he went missing in January 1975. My reasoning is that I’ve seen no reports of index-worthy activities while he was ostensibly missing, and in 1976, the examiner had deduced that he’d been dead most likely soon after he’d disappeared. The FBI didn’t add dead people to the Security Index—they’re neither dangerous nor incarcerable. Ron’s case was different. My feeling is that whatever got him onto the Security Index happened sometime during the two decades after he went missing.

MCT-49

MCT numbers appear to be another way that FBI agents can inform one another that a case is unbelievably huge while keeping this info hidden in plain view from an unsuspecting, FOIA-wielding member of the public. I’ve tried to find out what the letters stand for, but the FBI isn’t saying. Ron’s MCT number, MCT-49, was assigned to him several months after it was given to a case having to do with an alleged assassination plot against Spiro Agnew. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. But from what I can tell, MCT numbers were closely tied to the Security Index. If a person had been on the Security Index, then they were extremely likely to have an MCT number. Lee Harvey Oswald, who was on the Security Index in 1959, had been assigned MCT-41. Salvatore Granello was also given MCT-41. Frank Chavez was MCT-3. Interestingly, so was Hank Greenspun. Edward K. Moss was MCT-23. So was Klaus Barbie, a Nazi war criminal, who was also on the Security Index.

There’s one exception to the above rule: if the case was older, such as from the early 1950s, and the person had an SE versus an ST number and they were also listed on the Security Index, then they don’t appear to have needed an MCT number. I guess the SE number was all that was needed to convey the message that “this one’s huge.” Two people who had SE numbers and who were on the Security Index but who didn’t appear to have MCT numbers are Richard Colvin Cox and Thomas Rodman Peasner, Jr. 

Update! Charles McCullar had three MCT numbers (MCT-13, MCT-21, and MCT-23), which may lead you to wonder, whoa, who was this guy? Actually, this is in keeping with our theory that MCT numbers were assigned to people on the Security Index, though, admittedly, three MCT numbers seem excessive for an outdoorsy guy who liked to hike and take photos. Also his numbers are interesting. I mean, good heavens, his MCT-23 matches Edward K. Moss’s and Klaus Barbie’s numbers. 

Another possible reason for his MCT numbers may have to do with the heightened degree of interest from U.S. representatives and senators who wrote letters to the FBI and DOJ on behalf of the McCullar family. Charles McCullar’s MCT-21 and MCT-23 stamps were placed on letters to Attorney General Edward Levi from U.S. Senator William Scott, of Virginia. His MCT-13 was stamped on a note from Representative Joseph L. Fisher of the 10^th District. Regardless, I continue to believe that Ron Tammen’s and Charles McCullar’s cases are different despite having some similar markings.  The next four markings were found on Ron’s documents but not Charles McCullar’s.

Hac

This past June, I brazenly suggested that the letters Hac appearing in the upper righthand corner of ten of Ron’s FBI records was someone’s way of referring to the House Assassination Committee. I theorized that it could be shorthand for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).  I said this because Ron’s ST-102 stamp was shared by a large cast of characters who were indeed investigated by the HSCA for JFK’s assassination, as you could see in the graphic above. To be honest, I’m not married to my original theory, since, to date, I’ve only found two other Hac notations in all of the JFK documents. Both were on FBI records for an alleged plot to burglarize records in Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun—a burglary plot in which Watergate participants E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, and James W. McCord were implicated. Both appear to have been written by the same person who wrote Hac on Ron’s documents. 

Update! At the time of the House and Senate investigations into the intelligence community, which began in 1975, the intelligence agencies had created an ad hoc committee to the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) to keep tabs on what materials Congress was seeking and, you know, make sure everyone was in cahoots. Its official title was the Ad Hoc Coordinating Group on Congressional Review of the Intelligence Community, but sometimes they referred to themselves as “The Ad Hoc Group” or just “The Group.” You can tell which memos the FBI provided to The Group by the words “Ad Hoc” written in the bottom lefthand corner.

Although I’m still attempting to figure out who wrote Hac at the top of Ron’s and Hank Greenspun’s documents, I have a theory. My theory is that it was written by the FBI’s liaison to the CIA at that time, a guy named Leon Francis Schwartz. (He went by Frank.) The reason I think so is because the Hoc in Ad Hoc looks a lot like the Hac at the top of Ron’s pages. Also, Frank’s initials, LFS, are written beneath one of those Ad Hocs. 

I need to point out that the Ad Hoc notations were made on documents from 1975 and beyond and my current theory is that the Hac from Ron’s and Hank Greenspun’s documents were made in 1973. Also, Schwartz ended up leaving his post in December 1975 to work for the House Appropriations Committee, whose acronym also, sadly, sadistically happens to be HAC. 

Mind you, it’s still a theory, and I have a couple other possible contenders in mind as well—one from Domestic Intelligence and one from Legal Counsel. But if the FBI official who had an inside line to the people at the top of the CIA and, by extension, the Ad Hoc group, was the same person who was writing Hac on ten of Ron’s docs, that seems, again, huge. 

2-D

The 2-D on page one of Ron’s documents indicates that two copies of Ron’s file were sent to the Department of Justice. It’s a big enough deal for one copy to be sent to the DOJ, so for two of them? Say it with me: huge.

Update! Oddly enough, with all of the documents that the DOJ should have on Ron Tammen—namely the FD-122 form that the FBI submitted to them in order to add Ron’s name to the Security Index, plus two copies of his file—they don’t appear to have them anymore. I’d submitted a FOIA request to them seeking his FD-122, and they suggested I contact the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which, yeah, they don’t have it. I’d already asked NARA for anything on Tammen back in 2016 to no avail. I’ll continue trying to find someone who has Ron’s FD-122. Also, I’ll submit a FOIA request reminding the DOJ about the two copies of Tammen’s file that the FBI had sent them, and asking for one of them. I think we can all guess what their answer will be.

lb or lf

The weird little lf notation (I’m pretty sure it’s an lf, not an lb) shows up on four of Ron’s documents. From my experience, they’re incredibly rare. In my blog post, I shared only two other cases that had lf’s on their documents, and they had to do with James W. McCord and his Watergate accomplices and the alleged burglary plot of Hank Greenspun’s office implicating James W. McCord and his Watergate accomplices. After writing my post, I found one more lf on a document having to do with the Watergate hearings. Are you detecting a theme here? Same. For this reason, plus all of the other reasons discussed above, I think Ron Tammen was somehow affiliated with James W. McCord and may have been working for him.

ph

The letters ph (or pL, but I’m going with ph) are scribbled in the left margin of ten of Ron’s documents, and as I discussed in walking tour stop #5, I think it was written by someone in the Domestic Intelligence Division (or, if it was after 1975, Intelligence). My reasoning is that someone made similar markings on a document dealing with FBI informant protocol from the files of William O. Cregar, who was in charge of Counterintelligence. Cregar also happened to sit on the Ad Hoc Group, by the way.

By now, this shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. We already know that Ron was on the Security Index. The person who oversaw the Security Index was housed in Domestic Intelligence. I believe Ron’s ST-102/REC-19 numbers were assigned by Domestic Intelligence as well, not to mention his MCT-49. And my current theory is that a person in Domestic Intelligence had written the Hac at the top of his documents. Honestly? During the summer of 1973, as I was turning into my adorably angsty, self-conscious, and perpetually embarrassed 15-year-old self, I’m picturing a bunch of serious and sedate Domestic Intelligence agents handing off Ron’s papers to one another while occasionally being called into impromptu side conferences, usually behind closed doors. 

Update! My theory is that the person who made the ph’s was an assistant to one of the bigwigs in that division. The person I have in mind is Theresa D. Poston, who was an assistant to Frank Schwartz, the CIA liaison, in addition to other higher-ups. She often typed up Schwartz’s memos. She was clearly a trusted employee who was privy to sensitive intelligence information. Included below are Theresa’s initials, which I think look as if they were written in the same handwriting as the ph’s. I have another person in mind as well, but I thought I’d open this possibility up for discussion.

As for the meaning of the ph, I don’t know. Although it’s possible that it could mean an informant of some type, it doesn’t appear as if every person with that mark would have served in that capacity. I’ll continue digging.

Ron’s missing person (MP) numbers

Ron’s most commonly cited missing person number is 79-31966, which is the number that was assigned by FBI Headquarters. Because Ron’s case originated with the Cleveland Field Office, his number there was 79-0-615-B. (The B is likely a subcategory.) It’s perfectly normal for a case originating at a field office to have one number from the field office in addition to another number assigned by Headquarters.

What’s not normal is for Headquarters to assign a second missing person number. At the top of page one of Ron’s documents, they’ve written “MP# 17699, Posted 6-2-53,” accompanied by the letters Jh. Note that the 79, which precedes all missing person cases, is left off, probably to save the writer a little time.

In general, the FBI numbered its missing person cases in chronological order, whereby a new case would be given the next available number under the 79 classification. I’ve stumbled upon the occasional outlier, but for the most part, this was the system. At the FBI’s Cleveland Field Office, Ron was the 615^th missing person case on the books. At FBI Headquarters, he was listed as the 31966^th missing person case according to their most cited number. But what about the other number—the 17699? It’s interesting, because 17699 is so much smaller than 31966—to the tune of roughly 14,267 missing person cases smaller. 

As I described in my November 27, 2022, blog post, my theory is that Ron was assigned number 79-17699 on June 2, 1953, when the FBI was younger and more nimble and only had 17,698 other missing person cases to contend with. However, that number was ostensibly retired at some point, as if the case had been, I don’t know, closed or canceled or something? When the Cincinnati Field Office wrote to Headquarters 20 years later, in May 1973, asking them to compare the man from Welco Industries’ fingerprints to Ron’s, the folks in the Identification Division were likely pretty confused. They had to look around for wherever Ron’s missing person documents were hiding and then they had to assign a new missing person number to them, with the next one available being 79-31966. Then, inexplicably, they turned around and removed Ron’s newly renumbered missing person documents “from Ident files,” which sounds very much like they didn’t view him as missing anymore. 

Update! I continue to view June 1973 as a pivotal time when a lot was happening with Ron’s missing person documents. Considering how other notations and stamps were ostensibly added during that period as well—namely ST-102/REC-19, “see index,” MCT-49, Hac, lf, etc.—this theory still stands. I’d just really love to know what led them to retire the 17699 number to begin with.

F 189

The F numbers are perhaps the most flummoxing of all the FBI’s marks. (Maybe the F stands for “flummox.”) Lots of people and subjects have one, and they’re assigned with no discernable rhyme or reason. The F numbers are handwritten in the bottom left corner of an FBI document, and as far as I can tell, always near a date stamp. Most F numbers are three digits and, as of today’s date, I haven’t seen an F number that exceeds 500. 

Ron’s F number is F 189, which is at the low end, and in his case, there are a couple repeats. The other two men who appear to have been assigned that number are Edward K. Moss, who has both the F and the 189, and gay activist Harry Hay, who has the 189 in the correct spot, but not the F. 

Update! Currently, I’m not putting a ton of stock in someone’s F number in comparison to other marks. That may change if any clear patterns emerge.

Meeting new ones

Music by Sergio Prosvirini from Pixabay

Pitchfork/U with long line

Ron has a pitchfork-looking mark on three of his documents. The document dated May 26, 1953, has one pitchfork to the right of the first paragraph, which was a description of the items Ron had left behind as well as the law enforcement agencies who’d been notified. The undated letter from Ron’s father referencing an Associated Press photo of a soldier in Vietnam published in the October 2, 1967, Plain Dealer has a pitchfork next to the first paragraph mentioning the FBI and the Selective Service Act. The document dated 5-9-73 has three pitchforks: one is next to his name, a second is next to his official fingerprint jacket number (358-406-B), and the third is next to a stamp that is most interesting of all. I’ll discuss that stamp a little later. 

When I consulted the book Are You Now or Have You Ever Been in the FBI Files, I found no mentions of pitchforks. I did however find discussions about free-floating letters that looked like C’s or U’s, which I surmised someone may have drawn a line through. Ron’s marks look more like the letter U, which has two possible meanings. If it’s found on a search slip that agents filled out when researching case files, the U means “unavailable reference.” If it’s on a regular FBI doc, the U stands for “Unclassified,” which means that the classifying officer had made a conscious decision not to classify a key detail that they perhaps could have classified if they felt like it. It’s kind of like they’re telling their superiors that “I’m not shirking my duties. I’m very much aware that this is a detail that would normally be classified, but I think it’s better if we leave it unredacted this time.” As for the long line through the U, that’s not addressed in the book. Could it mean that a conscious decision was made to undo the unclassified decision?  If so, shouldn’t there be a redaction instead? Or maybe it’s an indication that someone else looked it over and agreed that the info shouldn’t be classified. I have no idea.

Lots of FBI documents have C’s and U’s, and some also have slashes through them. What I’ve been looking for are U’s with lines through them that are up-and-down versus slanty and longer than normal. One document that I’ve found so far that fits the bill is dated March 21, 1975, and has to do with the Rockefeller Commission, which was also investigating CIA activities at that time. The memo is from W. Raymond Wannall, who headed up…wanna take a guess?…the Intelligence Division. (Its name was changed from Domestic Intelligence that year.) In the “to” line is James B. Adams, who was an associate director at the FBI overseeing all of the investigative divisions: Intelligence, Legal Counsel, General Investigative, and Special Investigative. He was a big deal. (Remember his name. You’re going to need it later.) In the bottom lefthand corner is the pitchfork, next to the word “Enclosures,” and the letters FJC:aso. FJC are the initials for Fred J. Cassidy, who was another senior official in Intelligence who’d worked as a CIA liaison before Fred Schwartz. (Alas, I can’t find who aso was.)

I’m sure there are more pitchforks out there, and I’ll let you know when I find them. But for now, the takeaway is that if you see a pitchfork on Ron’s documents, I believe it signifies a detail that the FBI felt could have been classified or redacted, but, for some reason, they chose not to. More on this at the end.

Jas cy per WSH 

I’d now like to direct you to the letter dated October 11, 1967, from J. Edgar Hoover to Mr. Tammen, This was Hoover’s response to Ron’s father after he’d written to Hoover, asking whether the soldier in the Associated Press photo might be Ron.

Hoover’s letter couldn’t have been more of a cop-out. Rather than having someone like Helen Gandy or Clyde Tolson contact the AP to find out who the soldier was and having his Identification staff run a comparison of fingerprints between the soldier and Ron, both of which they had on file, Hoover told Mr. Tammen that he should check with the adjutant general of the Army. Yeah, no. Not helpful.

At the bottom of Hoover’s dismissive missive are some notes that were typed onto the FBI’s copy about Ron’s Selective Service violation and whatnot, and above that is a scribbled message that looks something like “Jas cy per WSH.”

Well, guess what, you guys? I know precisely who wrote that incomprehensible scrawl, thanks to some similar scrawls below. We can all be grateful to the person who asked him to spell out his last name in the third example since his first name is consistently illegible:

It was written by James B. Adams of the March 1975 Rockefeller Commission memo fame! In 1967, Adams was working in Personnel, which was part of the Administrative Division, and his boss was William Stewart Hyde, aka WSH. It appears that Adams was signing memos for WSH quite a bit at that time. (Don’t ask me what the cy stands for. I have no idea. There’s also a chance that it could be an M, in which case I have no idea what an M would stand for either.) 

I have a few thoughts about James B. Adams’ signature on Hoover’s letter to Mr. Tammen. First, I wonder why someone in Personnel would be signing off on it. Wouldn’t someone in Personnel be concerned with, you know, personnel matters as opposed to a letter from the parent of a missing person? Was Ron employed by the FBI in some way? Who knows—maybe Ron was on the FBI’s payroll as an informant, as the ph notation we discussed above might represent. 

Second, you might wonder if Adams had helped the folks in Identification figure out who Ronald Tammen was when Cincinnati sent them the Welco guy’s fingerprints in 1973. Hoover could have told Adams everything he knew about Ron back in 1967, and I imagine those would be details a guy couldn’t easily forget. The folks in Identification would have seen Adams’ signature on the Hoover letter and asked him about it. In 1972, Adams was 1600 miles away from D.C. serving as special agent in charge of the San Antonio office, but in 1973, he was back at Headquarters heading up the Office of Planning and Evaluation. The next year, in 1974, he was named deputy associate director and was overseeing all investigative operations. So it’s possible that Adams would have been able to shed some light on the Tammen case.

Lastly, do you remember when I told you about the FBI official from Oxford, Ohio, whose mother used to work for the Oxford National Bank at the same time that Ron Tammen and Dorothy Craig had checking accounts there? His name was Richard G. Hunsinger and, according to the university’s website, he graduated from Miami University in 1947 after having served in WWII. In 1971, Hunsinger was in the Administrative Division overseeing the FBI’s Equal Employment Opportunity program. James B. Adams was the FBI’s personnel officer, and by all indications, he was Hunsinger’s direct boss. Several years later, in 1975, Hunsinger was the deputy assistant director of the Administrative Division when James B. Adams was deputy associate director of investigative operations. Both men were at the top of their respective ladders at the FBI, they knew each other well, and they also knew something about Ron Tammen. Do you think they ever talked about him?

LFP

In my July 3, 2024, post, I pointed out a three-letter stamp at the bottom of the 5/9/73 memo from the Cincinnati Field Office which had been scribbled over so thoroughly that it looks purposely redacted. I theorized that it stood for ESP, as in espionage, and I thought that might be proof that the FBI had determined Ron was working as a spy, which has always been my hope for Ron. What wasn’t working for my theory was that whenever I’ve seen the letters ESP stamped on FBI documents, the letters SEC follow, as in the Espionage Section of the Domestic Intelligence Division. So I don’t think it’s ESP after all. 

Today, I am revising my theory and saying that the three-lettered stamp is actually LFP, which stands for latent fingerprints. I believe that people in the Latent Fingerprint Section of the Identification Division were consulted to compare the guy from Welco’s fingerprints to Ron’s fingerprints. In my July post, I posted two versions of the memo: a lighter version, which I’d obtained from the FBI’s FOIA office in 2010, and a darker version, which I’d obtained from the Butler County Sheriff’s Office. The darker version shows the L and F quite clearly. Mystery solved.

Here’s the rub though: A latent fingerprint is generally a poor-quality, partial print that’s left at a crime scene on such items as wine glasses and windowsills and door handles or on evidence such as guns thrown into wooded areas or murky ponds. Because they’re incomplete, they’re a lot harder to examine than when the FBI has a full set of inked prints. But the FBI had 10-finger inked prints for the Welco guy as well as Ron Tammen, albeit from when he was in the second grade. Why did they ask the latent fingerprint experts to step in? 

Maybe they didn’t think Ron’s prints were very good, although they should have been satisfactory. He’d been fingerprinted by a law enforcement officer in his town. Alternatively, is it possible that they had a set of latent prints from a 20- or 30-something year old Ronald Tammen that had been left at some sort of crime scene? In addition, why did they feel the need to cross out the LFP stamp so that it was basically unrecognizable? They didn’t feel the need to blacken the LFP stamp when they were looking at James Earl Ray’s possible latent prints in their investigation into the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., as shown in the below memo. 

Division numbers

Throughout this post, I’ve been referring to the FBI’s various divisions by name. However, to simplify things, the FBI assigned each division a number, which would periodically be written or stamped on a relevant FBI report. Let’s review each division’s assigned number, at least two of which, and possibly three, were stamped or written on Ron’s missing person documents. 

It should be noted that one division number, and possibly two, doesn’t appear on Ron’s documents even though we know people from that division were reviewing his documents. (I’m looking at you, Domestic Intelligence! Also possibly you, Legal Counsel!) Perhaps they didn’t want the FOIA-wielding members of the general public to know they were somehow involved.

The division numbers and their associated divisions in 1975 are as follows:

• ONE – Identification Division
• TWO – Training Division
• THREE – Administrative Division
• FOUR – Files and Communications Division
• FIVE – Intelligence Division (formerly Security Division and Domestic Intelligence Division)
• SIX – General Investigative Division
• SEVEN – Laboratory Division
• EIGHT – External Affairs Division
• NINE – Special Investigative Division
• TEN – Inspection Division
• ELEVEN – Legal Counsel Division
• TWELVE – Computer Systems Division
• THIRTEEN – Office of Planning and Evaluation

Here are the numbers that appear on Ron’s documents:

ONE

No surprises here. Ron’s FBI documents have the number ONE either stamped or written on multiple pages. In fact, his docs were probably living in Division ONE, the Identification Division, and more specifically the Ident Missing Person File Room, for roughly 20 years after he went missing. Because of the words “Removed from Ident” on several of his documents, we know that they were moved out of the Identification Division in June 1973, after the Cincinnati Office requested a comparison of Ron’s fingerprints with the guy from Welco Industries.

NINE

On the same memo where the LFP stamp resides (5-9-73 Cincinnati memo), the number NINE is stamped at the bottom right. This tells us that Ron’s documents had made their way to the Special Investigative Division. According to the booklet Know Your FBI, published in 1969, the Special Investigative Division oversaw investigations dealing with organized crime; the Security of Government Employees program, which investigated government employees who were potential security risks as part of Executive Order 10450; and fugitives. 

10

Whenever you see the word Hac in the top righthand corner of Ron’s documents, you also see the number 10 close by. Every single time. While it’s possible that the number signifies the Inspection Division, which was the division that annually evaluated the activities of every other FBI division and field office, I’m not so sure if that’s what it means here. First, it doesn’t make sense that an inspector would write the number 10 on every document he or she had reviewed. If that were the case, you’d think that pretty much all FBI documents would have the number 10 on them at some point. Other than Ron’s, I’ve seen none.

Second, the placement isn’t correct. Typically, division numbers are written or stamped in the bottom right, not the top right. 

Lastly, I’ve seen various single-digit numbers in the top right corner of other people’s FBI files. For example, Charles McCullar has 7’s on many of his records. On Hank Greenspun’s documents that, like Ron’s, have Hac written in the top right, there’s another number nearby. On one document, it’s 4- and on another one it’s 4-1. I still don’t know their meaning, but I have a theory, which we can discuss more if you’d like. Regardless, I feel it’s worth mentioning and I’m still working on it.

Sealed Encl.

Let’s revisit the 5-9-73 Cincinnati memo with the LFP stamp and the three pitchforks. The pitchfork in the bottom left is drawn directly through a stamp that says “SEALED ENCL.” From what I can tell, very few people have the word SEALED stamped on their FBI record. Charles McCullar most definitely doesn’t have that stamp. Neither does anyone else on the Security Index that I’ve found so far. I’m sure there must be others—otherwise, why have a stamp made?—but it isn’t common.

At least for now, the only person for whom I’ve seen the words “Sealed” (which is written) and “Enclosure” (which is stamped) in the bottom left corner of his records are, wait for it, Hank Greenspun.

This particular record is from 1967 when he was a victim of extortion. I did manage to find a document from 1977 that discusses the need to seal envelopes having to do with the relocation plan for members of Congress in the event of a national emergency. Those sealed envelopes were to be kept in a “strict security location” in Los Angeles.

If the word sealed is as loaded as I think it is, then it makes sense that someone at the FBI would need to make the conscious decision regarding whether it should be classified or not. As for why they chose to unclassify it on Ron’s documents, well, I have an idea about that. We can talk about it in the comments if you’d like.

Let’s play a game

Music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

Whew! I feel as if I’ve been doing all the talking at this party! It’s now time for me to shut up and let you all take a look at two notations and provide a little help. Both can be found on the 5-9-73 Cincinnati memo. I won’t be giving you my thoughts so I don’t bias you in any way. 

Here they are, all blown up. What do you think they say?

Mark #1

366 what? (don’t worry about the date)

Mark #2

What does the writing in the left margin say?

Thanks for coming!

OK, I think it’s time to wind things down tonight. Thanks so much for coming. Also, as usual, a big thanks to The Black Vault and the Mary Ferrell Foundation for access to these documents.

Music by Oleksandr Stepanov from Pixabay

I think I’ve found a clever little way to tell us roughly when Ron—or whatever his new name turned out to be—was added to the FBI Security Index. Was it 1953? 1973? After that?

I think we can tell by the handwriting. 

I’m not talking about handwriting analysis, for which I don’t hold a license and am completely unqualified. I’m talking about the side-by-side comparison of two signatures or initials or phrases to see if they look as if they were written by the same person. Unlicensed people with two good eyes have been asked to compare signatures in a variety of important ways over the years, not the least of which is when we go to the voting booth, or to a bank deposit box, or remember traveler’s checks? That’s how businesses could tell if the check you handed them was yours or if it had been stolen—by comparing your signature while you were buying your traveler’s checks to your signature while you were on vacation.

I’ve gotten to know an awful lot of FBI initials and signatures in this exercise, and I’ve also seen a lot of ways that someone might write the words “See index” in the lefthand margins. Here are just a few of the ways.

As a reminder, here’s how “See index” is written in the left margin of the first page of Ron’s missing person documents. 

Now, look at this “See index,” which is written on a document that was created on July 30, 1973.

They look the same, don’t they? (The ‘s’ is the giveaway.) This tells me that they were written by the same person, likely at roughly the same time.

So here’s today’s announcement: 

I think Ronald Tammen was added to the FBI’s Security Index sometime after the Cincinnati Field Office had sent in the Welco guy’s fingerprints for comparison to Ron’s in May 1973.

If you’re wondering why we’re only looking at the left side of the document, it’s because I’m saving the right side for our next announcement.

Coming next: you guys, I think we’ve been hacked…in a good way.