We’re going to take a break from the “see index”es for a little while—but, trust me, we’ll be circling back. There’s something I’m saving for the end of the tour that (in my view) is a rather big deal.
In the meantime, let’s talk about a scribble that’s noticeably prominent in the left margin of a bunch of Ron’s missing person documents. It looks like a lowercase p and h written in cursive—or is it a lowercase p and capital L?
Whatever it is, it’s another one of those identifying marks that seems to be rarely seen on other FBI documents in general, but when you do, it’s an instant thrill. It’s like when a 10-point buck warily steps out of the woods to peer at you from the opposite end of a one-lane underpass just as it’s your turn to drive through (which happened to me a week or so ago!). Or a hummingbird that swoops in out of nowhere and hovers over your friend’s hostas as you’re standing a foot away knocking on her front door (which happened to me in July!). The magnificently elusive ph (or pL…it’s very hard to tell sometimes) was typically reserved for people who weren’t regarded as choir boys. To be sure, many, though certainly not all, of the recipients lived some seriously sordid lives. Other recipients were wonderful people whom the FBI didn’t trust—people like Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Harry Belafonte.
Today I’ll be showcasing all of Ron’s ph’s and/or pL’s along with a gallery of others I’ve found that were unmistakably written by the same person.
I’ll also be presenting similar handwriting that occurs on an FBI document that discusses…well…I’ll tell you at the end when I make today’s announcement.
Here are Ron’s documents that have the ph/pL on them:
And here are other people’s documents. If you’d like additional background, click on the link for each subject.
Angleo Bruno was boss of the Philadelphia crime family from 1959 until his assassination in 1980. He was referred to as “The Gentle Don” because he preferred to resolve issues without resorting to violence.
The FBI’s Extremist Photograph Album (actually, there were more than one) was just that… photo albums of extremists to supply background information and to assist in identification. In this memo, the FBI’s Intelligence Division is discussing the Secret Service’s request for a copy.
HERMAN MILTON GREENSPUN, aka Hank
Hank Greenspun was the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun whose office safe was the target of an “alleged planned burglary” in 1972 by E. Howard Hunt, James W. McCord, and G. Gordon Liddy, among others. In my last post, I wrote about how Greenspun’s FBI documents share notations with Ron Tammen, namely “see index” and Hac. Now we have another notation that they share. By the way, I’m excited to announce that there’s a movie about Hank Greenspun that’s narrated by Anthony Hopkins!
Richard Cox, from Mansfield, Ohio, was a cadet at West Point Academy who disappeared January 14, 1950. His story has some interesting parallels to Ron’s, which we’ve detailed on this blog.
John Roselli was a famous mobster who was recruited by the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro.
BAPBOMB was FBI shorthand for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, by the Ku Klux Klan.
COINTELPRO was a program in which the FBI surveilled and engaged in other illegal activities to disrupt organizations that they felt were dangerous, including the Communist Party, the KKK, the New Left, the Black Panthers, and others. COINTELPRO stands for Counterintelligence Program. NEW LEFT refers to a broad umbrella of people advocating for liberal-leaning social causes. (Note that the ph is on the right side, while all of the others were like Ron’s, on the left.)
SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHP CONFERENCE, RACIAL MATTERS
The SCLC continues to thrive as a human rights organization that had its start with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the organization’s first president.
Klaus Barbie was a notorious Nazi who was nicknamed “the Butcher of Lyon” for the atrocities he committed as Gestapo chief in Lyon, France. After WWII, the U.S. Army helped him escape to Bolivia in exchange for his assistance in reporting communist activities. In 1983, he was spotted in Peru and was extradited to France to face trial for war crimes. He was convicted and died of cancer in 1991 while serving a life sentence.
Now, as promised, I’d like to share with you two pages from a lengthy FBI document that has handwriting that, in my view, looks quite a bit like our ph or pL, though not exactly. The document was sent to members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence in August 1975 in response to a request they’d made. (The House Select Committee on Intelligence preceded the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was created the following year, in 1976.)
Written at the top of the first document, among other notes, are the words “Place in file in folder.” I’m thinking that the “Pl” in “Place” looks a lot like our ph’s or pL’s. On the second page is a ph or PL or pl in front of the word Dean. Again, it looks a lot like the same handwriting to me.
Once you get past the telephone directories, the lion’s share of this FBI document discusses “Informants” and it appears to be part of the FBI’s Manual of Instructions on how agents are instructed to work with and reimburse criminal or security informants. I have no idea if that topic applies to our documents—in fact, I highly doubt that they do. What I do find intriguing and helpful is the source of these documents. On the title page of a section called “Policy – Informant and Informant Payments,” a page that’s near the end of a lengthy “Item H,” someone has written “Cregar Copy.” In fact, “Cregar Copy” has been written on several pages in this document, which leads me to believe that all of the informant pages came from someone named Cregar.
As it turns out, the Cregar in question is William O. Cregar, who headed up the Counterintelligence Section of what was, by then, called the Intelligence Division (as opposed to Domestic Intelligence). Earlier in his career, he’d been the FBI’s liaison with the CIA, though the person in that role in 1975 was Leon F. Schwartz.
I have a guess as to who the person was who made the ph or pL marks on the aforementioned documents, but I don’t think today’s the day for me to go public with that. But here’s what I think we can deduce, which is my next announcement:
I think that whoever made Ron’s ph’s or pL’s was either part of the FBI’s Intelligence Division (likely a staffer in Bill Cregar’s Counterintelligence Section) or someone on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. And if I have to choose between the two of them, I choose the former.
Coming next: 2-D or not 2-D; that’s the conundrum
Thanks to maryferrell.org and blackvault.com for access to these documents.
