jwenger

CIA, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, Hypnosis, Miami University, MKULTRA, Office of the Surgeon General, Psychology Department, United States Air Force

The sabbatical, part 2: Supporting evidence of two theories I have about St. Clair Switzer’s role in Project Artichoke

Well, hello! Lately, I’ve been doing some behind-the-scenes work on the Ron Tammen case, and haven’t had much time to think up, let alone write, a blog post. That’s probably a good thing since I’m not really at liberty to talk about most of what’s going on anyway. There will come a day when I’m able to go public with what it is I’ve been doing, but alas, today’s not that day.

Still, I’ve recently made a few discoveries that I am able to divulge, two of which I’ll be divulging now. They have to do with the years 1956 and 1957, when St. Clair Switzer took time off from his professorship at Miami University to go on a sabbatical. I’m intensely interested in this period because I’m trying to figure out what he was doing during that sabbatical and who he was doing it with.

The two discoveries are as follows:

1) We were right! The ARTICHOKE researcher whose personality was so off-putting to Air Force brass that he was required to work through a hand-picked liaison to the Surgeon General was Louis Jolyon West!

Back in September 2023, I posted about how it appeared that a young Louis Jolyon West had a personality that didn’t exactly mesh with buttoned-down military types, even though he himself was a major in the U.S. Air Force’s Medical Corps. In a memo dated July 24, 1953, Morse Allen, who was chief of the Technical Branch in the CIA’s Office of Security, was describing how a promising ARTICHOKE researcher whose name was redacted had elicited several red flags during a recent full-field investigation. Allen reported to his boss that, sure, the guy was “‘talkative,’ somewhat ‘unconventional’ and a ‘champion of the underdog’ but, according to all informants, he does not discuss classified information and can be trusted with Top Secret matters.” (I have a question though: what were those aforementioned informants doing chit-chatting about classified intel with this young researcher before he had clearance? Sounds to me as if they’re the ones who couldn’t be trusted with Top Secret information, ya’ know?)

Later in that post, I shared a CIA memorandum written months earlier, on September 23, 1952. In that memo, whose author’s name is redacted, two individuals were being discussed, one of whom had a “propensity to talk.” The other was described as having “nothing to contribute in the line of research,” however it appears that he had redeeming qualities too. When addressing how to ameliorate their talker problem, the author stated that “I could assure Col. REDACTED that any project involving REDACTED would be coordinated with him. In accordance with the new procedures for handling ARTICHOKE, OTS [Office of Technical Service] will be obligated to check with OS [Office of Security] and OS would automatically check with REDACTED in view of the fact that REDACTED is a consultant of, and of primary interest to the Surgeon General.”

The memo went on to say that a colonel who’d spoken with a representative of the Office of the Surgeon General had called to say that the new protocol successfully allayed their concerns. What’s more, the representative “had advised him that he thinks very highly of REDACTED and that it will be essential to keep him cut into the picture.”

In that post, I hypothesized that the talker was Jolly West and the Surgeon General’s proposed liaison who was to be “cut into the picture” was St. Clair Switzer. I pointed to the words “air research” that had been written above the liaison’s name as supporting evidence, since Switzer had worked in the Air Research and Development Command in Baltimore in the summer of 1951.

In another post, I zoomed in on the scratched out name of the proposed liaison, which clearly started with the letter S and had roughly the same number of letters as Switzer. Here, I’ll show you again:

The Surgeon General at that time was Harry G. Armstrong, who had close ties to Wright Patterson AFB, which is how I think he’d come to know and trust Lt. Col. Switzer. But again, this was all just a hypothesis.

Two years have gone by since I made those bold assertions, and so far, they’ve been sitting quietly on my blogsite with barely a mention from anyone. (It’s fine. I’m fine.) Today, I’m presenting supporting evidence that Jolly West indeed had to work through a liaison with the Surgeon General’s Office, even though the new evidence is a document from 1956, three and a half years after the September 1952 memo, when Harry G. Armstrong was no longer the Surgeon General.

My new evidence is Jolly West’s proposal for a second year of funding for his now infamous MKULTRA Subproject 43, Psychophysiological Studies of Hypnosis and Suggestibility. His cover letter was addressed to SG—Sidney Gottlieb—who, as head of the Chemical Division of the Office of Technical Service, had been put in charge of MKULTRA. Near the end of the letter, West mentions work he’d been doing for the Air Force and says that he may be traveling to Washington, D.C., very soon. “REDACTED will know about it before I will; if you want to see me, get in touch with him and find out whether the Surgeon General is going to be calling me up there next week.”

Thanks to MuckRock for making this document available. Click on image for a closer view.

Interesting, isn’t it? By that time, Louis Jolyon West was chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Neurology and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine; he’d just completed his first year overseeing his major MKULTRA subproject (which was considered admirable back then); and he was in charge of a project requested by USAF Headquarters to develop recommendations on “training for survival and resistance to interrogation” (also impressive). Still, apparently, there were channels he was expected to go through, and he needed to wait for someone else to tell him if the Surgeon General wanted to see him or not.

And so, there we have it. In February 1956, a few months before Switzer’s sabbatical began, the system that had been worked out in 1952 was ostensibly still in place. West would communicate with Gottlieb’s Office of Technical Service. Gottlieb would consult with someone presumably from the CIA’s Office of Security, who would touch base with a contact sanctioned by the Surgeon General’s Office as to whether the Surgeon General would be summoning Jolly West for a sit-down. Granted, this is just one-half of my hypothesis. We still don’t know if St. Clair Switzer was the other half, though, if he was in 1952, I’m thinking he wasn’t in 1956. (I’ll tell you why in a second.) But any amount of corroboration is good corroboration and I think worth mentioning.

2) I have more proof that St. Clair Switzer was an employee of the CIA!

Back in 2022, I brazenly hypothesized that St. Clair Switzer was an employee of the CIA, not just a consultant. My logic was this: In December 1956 and February 1957, which was in the middle of Switzer’s sabbatical, someone who sounded a lot like Switzer had written two letters to Switzer’s former colleague and fellow Clark Hull protege Griffith W. Williams about a classified project that was exploring ways to hypnotize people through a variety of means ostensibly without their knowledge. We know for a fact that the recipient was Griffith Williams because the first letter refers to the recipient’s post at Rutgers, where Williams was a psychology professor, and the second letter refers to his recent bout with arthritis, which was a health condition that Williams had endured for years.

What was perplexing to me was the letter “A” next to the writer’s redacted name. In the 2022 post, I’d attempted to crack the CIA’s code of letters and numbers written on MKULTRA documents and concluded that A stood for Agency, since people who were known CIA employees consistently had an A by their name, whether their name happened to be redacted or not. The letter C, which is next to Williams’ redacted name, stood for consultant, I’d deduced.

If you’d like to see what I mean, here are a couple examples of memos in which known CIA officials Morse Allen and R.L. Bannerman have As by their names as opposed to the Cs, which are next to blackened names of people with whom they were consulting:

Sample 1

*Document provided thanks to* TheBlackVault.com; click on image for a closer view

Sample 2

And so…because I was 99.9 percent positive (and still am) that the two letters were written by Doc Switzer and because the letter writer had an A next to his name, then logic would dictate that Switzer was an Agency insider.

And there that blog post sat for three years with nary a peep from anyone. (Again, it’s fine. I’ve come to terms with the fact that people have interests outside of Ron Tammen. I don’t understand it, but I’ve come to terms with it.) Incidentally, this is also why I don’t think Switzer was the Surgeon General’s liaison in 1956. In Jolly West’s cover letter for his MKULTRA proposal, the person who is supposedly the Surgeon General’s liaison has a C next to his name. Note that Jolly West also has a C next to his name.

Aaannnnnyyyway…remember the hypnosis expert I recently wrote about who liked to use the word “injunction” when he described giving a hypnotic subject a basic command like “relax” or “go to sleep”? Until I came across that person’s missives, I’d only seen the word injunction used to describe an order that was handed down in a court of law by a judge or magistrate. To date, I’ve found no other hypnosis experts during that time period or any time period who have ever used the word injunction when describing that part of the hypnotic process. And trust me, I’ve looked. In fact, I’ve never come across anyone who has used that word in that way at all.

Nevertheless, I found this very rare usage of the word injunction in three Project ARTICHOKE documents. It first appears in a write-up dated March 28, 1952, three days after St. Clair Switzer’s name (I’m 100% positive) was proposed by Morse Allen as a possible consultant for ARTICHOKE. Griffith Williams was another suggested name (I’m quite sure).

Then, in October 1955 and February 1956, several months before Switzer’s sabbatical, the word popped up several times in two reports discussing the covert, or disguised, induction of hypnosis. Based on my inability to find any other hypnosis expert occupying the planet at the time who used that word in that way, I hypothesized that all three documents had been written by the same person.

But here’s what’s intriguing about that hypothesis: the author of the March 1952 write-up was clueless about Project ARTICHOKE. He’d ostensibly been given a few broadbrush details about what they were looking to do in the area of hypnosis and the collection of information from an enemy and he did a little brainstorming. He then hand-delivered a write-up of his ideas to someone whose office was within driving distance who obviously did know about the program, even though they ostensibly weren’t with the CIA. According to their cover letter dated October 1, 1952 (Happy Anniversary, by the way!) to the official now in charge of ARTICHOKE, injunction guy was still very much in the dark. For these reasons, I think we can state with 100 percent certainty that the March 1952 writer was not an Agency insider.

Do you know who was an Agency insider? The person who wrote the February 1956 report. He had an A next to his name.

I still think that the three documents were written by the same person. However, my theory has evolved and branched out. I now think that, sometime between 1952 and 1956, injunction guy was hired by the CIA—not unlike the person who wrote the two letters to Griffith Williams during the 1956-57 academic year, whom I also believe was CIA.

This could be evidence that we’re talking about one person and one person only, St. Clair Switzer.

Wouldn’t it be so great if, despite everything that the CIA has done to try to withhold the identities of its long-dead ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA actors, what with its over-the-top use of redactions and the deceptive games it likes to play with the American people, pretending to comply with FOIA and all…wouldn’t it be great if the singular feature that would help us identify one of its own would be someone’s inflated ego? I can just picture him then, seated at his typewriter, marveling at his importance, striving to impress. How could he, someone who viewed himself a writer, have known that his instinct to use a fancy word that no one ever uses in that context instead of a more typical word that would enable him to blend in would ultimately lead to his unmasking? I’d call that poetic justice.

Coming later this month, another interesting discovery about Switzer’s sabbatical

This past July, I was interviewed again by Miami Student journalists Taylor Powers and Sarah Kennel for their podcast Bizarre Butler County. In that discussion, the three of us talked more about the Tammen mystery, and I provided a little breaking news that I hadn’t shared with anyone. I still haven’t shared it with anyone.

I’ll give you a hint: It has to do with Doc Switzer’s sabbatical and a small clue regarding who he may have been working with. Because I like to honor the breaking news that I provide to fellow journalists, I won’t be breaking it here. You’ll need to wait until that podcast episode, which I’ve been told is going to air later this month. I’ll let you know the date as soon as I know. I’ll also write up a blog post with supporting documentation to accompany that episode after it drops.

CIA, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, Hypnosis, Miami University, MKULTRA, Office of the Surgeon General, Psychology Department, United States Air Force

Injunction dysfunction: How a 1950s researcher’s fondness for a weird word when describing the hypnotic process could help us figure out his role in Project Artichoke

Today we’re going to talk about the word injunction. Whenever I stumble upon the word, I think of a legal order, handed down by a court of law, telling someone that they need to do something or to stop doing something. In fact, it’s often used alongside the word court, as in a court injunction. Wikipedia has a very nice write-up on the word injunction, which you are welcome to read at your leisure.

But our friend Merriam Webster has provided a second meaning for the word injunction, as if we needed one. And that meaning is: an order or admonition.

P.S. Of any kind.

P.P.S. No court of law required. Just, you know…someone gives you an injunction to do something (or to not do something) and you do it (or not). The thing is: No one uses it this way.

No, seriously, I’ve been living on earth for a while now, and I’ve even been in the presence of some very smart people with very large vocabularies, and not a soul has ever used the word injunction in this way when I was with them.

Like have you ever heard a kid say: “My dad gave me an injunction last night to do my homework or else.”

Or has your boss ever said: “I need you to have the report on my desk by the end of the week. That’s an injunction.”

Or, after visiting the dentist, have you ever told someone, “The appointment went fine, except she kept giving me injunctions to open my mouth wider.”

Exactly. No one talks that way. That would be weird.

Except, there once was a person who did use the word injunction in this way…sometimes repeatedly.

This person was a hypnosis expert in the 1950s, when the federal government was on the prowl for as many hypnosis experts as it could find. Even though I’ve found no other hypnosis experts of that time period (or ever) who used the word injunction to describe a hypnotic instruction, command, or suggestion, it was this person’s go-to. For example:

“…a man might be given hypnotically (with injunction to ‘forget’ the incident) a strong compulsion to keep a secret diary.”

“Injunctions to forget the hypnotic indoctrination might be tried.”

“Injunction to accept subsequent non-hypnotic instructions from an ‘agent’ might be tried out.”

Those three injunctions were found on page one of a two-page write-up dated March 28, 1952, on how hypnosis might be used to gather intelligence from an enemy. While most hypnosis experts were never tempted to use the word even once in that way throughout their careers, he or she (Who am I kidding? It’s the CIA in the early ‘50s—I’m pretty sure it’s a he) found reason to use it three times in one two-pager.

We’ll talk more about this write-up shortly, because I find its timing to be noteworthy in addition to the route it took to reach the people in charge of Project Artichoke.

But right now, let’s jump to 1955…October 25, 1955, to be exact. On this date, an expert in hypnosis is writing a summary on the various ways in which the CIA could induce a hypnotic trance within a subject without their knowing it—what he refers to as disguised induction. In the memo, he discusses using such methods as anxiety-reducing drugs as well as medical instruments that serve as an object of fascination for the subject while providing an excuse for an operator to encourage the subject to relax without raising suspicion. Among the medical instruments he mentioned were an electrocardiograph (EKG), which measures electrical activity of the heart, and an electroencephalograph (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain.

In paragraph 7, he says this about the EKG and EEG: “These machines offer a situation where the subject is in a resting condition and amenable to direction of his sensory powers at the machine (fascination) which coupled with relaxation injunctions may result in achieving hypnosis.”

Relaxation injunctions? Could this be the same guy as the one on March 28, 1952?

Four months later, on February 28, 1956, someone is writing an interim report titled Hypnosis and Covert Operations. Disguised induction of hypnosis is still the end game. Among other techniques, the report leads with the use of the polygraph as a disguised pretest of someone’s hypnotic susceptibility, as well as a way to measure a person’s physiological changes as they are entering and exiting a hypnotic trance.

In paragraph 6, which discusses a far riskier technique involving a subject’s carotid arteries, the author says this: “It is possible to combine a stern injunction of ‘sleep!’ with carotid pressure to obtain hypnosis…,” before cautioning the reader about how dangerous the method is, how it requires a lot of practice and perfect timing, and in no way could it be considered a disguised induction of hypnosis. I mean, good grief, he’s got his hands around the subject’s neck!

In the very next paragraph, he’s back to describing medical instruments, and is singing the praises of a BMR machine, which measures basal metabolic rate. In addition to diverting the subject’s attention and helping them to relax, “the BMR has the added advantage of control of inspired air. Breathed through a mask (which is the measuring device), the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide inhaled can be controlled. With the oxygen decreased, the subject is rendered more susceptible to hypnosis. This can be coupled with injunctions to ‘relax,’ ‘go to sleep if you like,’ ‘sleep,’ [sic] so that induction might be accomplished.”

I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t permit just anyone to control my oxygen intake, especially if someone with the CIA happens to be in the room. But hey, we’ve found one more “relax” injunction and three “sleep” injunctions, so that’s good news. Also, is it me, or is this guy beginning to sound as if he’s trying to make the word “injunction” catch on? Despite his efforts, I haven’t seen any evidence that it did.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: sure, it’s weird that the word keeps popping up from time to time, and it does appear that the writer in October 1955 and February 1956 is the same person, since he’s writing about the same topic. But how can we be sure that it’s the same person as the writer of the two-pager of March 1952? And if it is the same person, how can we figure out who the person is?

Two great questions. I suggest we address them backwards. First, I’m going to tell you who I think it is, and then I’m going to tell you why.

I think it’s St. Clair Switzer. (But I think you already knew that.)

My reason has to do with three clues:

Clue #1: The number/letter combo in the top right of the October 1955 and February 1956 memos

As we’ve discussed in the past, many, but not all, of the CIA’s MKULTRA documents that were released to the public have a combination of numbers and letters in the top right corner. Here’s an example:

Here’s another one:

The series starts with an A/B, which, according to Colin Ross, M.D., stands for Artichoke/Bluebird. Then, there’s a single number, often written as a Roman numeral, which I believe represents a major grouping. The range for these numbers is I (1) through VII (7). Then there are two numbers separated by either a comma or a slash. The first of the two numbers is a smaller category within the large grouping, while the second represents a document’s number in a series within that category.

The October 1955 memo has the following number/letter combo: III, 6/15

The February 1956 memo has the following number/letter combo: III, 6/19

Picture it like this: Think of a file cabinet with seven drawers. The III group occupies the third file drawer, and within the III drawer are (from my count) seven file folders. Each file folder within the III drawer contains a stack of documents, which vary in number. The thickest stack is in folder #2. It contains at least 135 documents. Within the #6 folder is a much smaller stack, numbered from 1 to 19, though several documents are missing. The October 1955 memo and the February 1956 memo both occupy the III file drawer in the #6 folder.

Do you know what other record occupies the III file drawer in the #6 folder? The March 25, 1952, memo in which Morse Allen tells Cmdr. Robert J. Williams that he’s spoken with legendary hypnosis expert Clark Hull, and Hull suggested that they contact his two prized former assistants, namely St. Clair Switzer and Griffith W. Williams. (The names are redacted, but I’m positive of this.)

The number at the top of the March 25, 1952, memo is III, 6/9. In other words, whoever did the numbering decided that the three memos have something in common and should be categorized accordingly. Note that I don’t think all of the memos in the #6 folder involved St. Clair Switzer, but I believe these three memos do.

Clue #2: The date of the March 28, 1952, two-pager

Three days after St. Clair Switzer and Griffith Williams were identified as individuals to be contacted for Project Artichoke, someone typed up the two-pager about possible ways to use hypnosis to obtain information from the enemy. What’s intriguing about this write-up, other than its over-the-top usage of the word injunction, is that it’s forwarded to someone at the CIA by way of a memo written by a third party. The cover memo is dated roughly six months later. We’ll get to that memo in a second.

Because Morse Allen wasn’t the type to sit around and wait, I think that he or perhaps another official reached out to both Switzer and Williams on or around March 25 (a Tuesday). By March 28 (a Friday), someone—it seems logical to infer that it would’ve been one of those two men—had typed up the document after giving the matter some serious thought. Based on what I know about Doc Switzer, my money is on him. He would have treated a phone call from Morse Allen or another official as an assignment to be handled with utmost urgency. (An injunction, if you will!) I’ve seen his response time in other situations—he could turn around a lengthy request from a person in a high place within a day. What the two-pager’s author did next offers up another important clue to his identity.

Clue #3: The date of the cover memo introducing the March 28, 1952, two-pager

Whoever wrote the two-pager had hand delivered it to someone who was in-the-know about Project Artichoke. Strangely, the cover memo is dated 1 October 1952, which seems like a long time for that entity to be sitting on something that the CIA and military were clearly interested in.

Here’s a copy of the cover memo:

It’s short, so I’m going to write it up here as well.

Memorandum for: [REDACTED]

Subject: Matter Possibly Related to Project ARTICHOKE

1. Attached hereto is a memorandum delivered to this office by [REDACTED]. This was one of a number of operational suggestions that Mr. [REDACTED] brought to this office which he understood was interested in new ideas. He has no knowledge of Project ARTICHOKE and has been informed that his suggestion has been forwarded to the interested office.

2. The memorandum is being forwarded to you since it is understood that your office has assumed overall direction of Project ARTICHOKE and the matter appears to be related to some aspects of Project ARTICHOKE.

Who I think wrote the cover memo

Unfortunately, the writer and their workplace are both redacted, but I still think I know its origin. I believe the cover memo writer was someone on a military base. Think about it: the only insiders regarding Project Artichoke were a select group of people within the CIA and the military, and no one would dare pull a pop-in at the CIA.

As for which military base, I think I know that too. We discussed above that the two most likely authors were either St. Clair Switzer or Griffith W. Williams. And of those two men, the only one who had an association with a military base was St. Clair Switzer.

Therefore, I think the origin of the cover letter was someone at Wright-Patterson AFB—most likely the Wright Air Development Center’s (WADC’s) Aero Medical Laboratory, where Switzer was well known. The person who called him on or around March 25 likely gave a broad description of the kinds of questions that they were seeking answers to, but they wouldn’t have given him the full details of the program—not yet. They certainly hadn’t disclosed the name Artichoke. They were probably assessing his interest and availability regarding a classified project having to do with hypnosis, and he wanted to show them just how interested and available he was.

Why I think it was so late

So why would someone at Wright Patt wait until October 1 to forward Switzer’s memo to the officials overseeing Project Artichoke?

I can think of two reasons. First, on September 30, 1952—the day before the cover memo was written—Project Artichoke was officially transferred from the Office of Scientific Intelligence to the Inspection and Security Office (I&SO), where Morse Allen was employed, with research support from the Office of Technical Services and Medical Sciences staff. (They’d been discussing this transfer for months, but this appears to be the final word.) The changeover involved a major reorganization in which duties were transferred from one person to another and copious files were handed over as well. To forward a memo on the first day of Artichoke’s new management structure doesn’t seem late at all. In fact, it seems really on the ball.

Second, a memo that was probably fresh in their brains, dated September 23, 1952, may have also played a role. In the last paragraph, it was mentioned that the Surgeon General of the Air Force—a man named General Harry G. Armstrong—had requested that someone be “cut into the picture” for Project Artichoke. Of course, that person’s name was redacted, but in my September 19, 2023 post, I go deep into why I think Switzer was the person named in that memo. Namely, Armstrong had strong ties to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, so they shared that connection. What’s more, Switzer had been stationed for a portion of the previous summer at the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC) in Baltimore, which oversaw the Wright Air Development Center. I think that carried a lot of weight, since someone had handwritten “air research” above the person’s redacted name.

My theory is: the people at Wright-Patterson AFB probably hadn’t waited six months to send the two-pager to the CIA. They’d likely forwarded it in March 1952 to someone at OSI. However, when Project Artichoke was switched over to I&SO’s purview, someone at Wright Patt probably thought it wouldn’t hurt to forward the two-pager to them as well, especially now that they knew that the Office of the Surgeon General would approve.

If I’m correct that St. Clair Switzer had written the injunction memos of 1952, 1955, and 1956, you can be sure that this will open up new areas of study. It also confirms one guess I’d made a long time ago concerning two other documents that I believe Switzer wrote. But we’ll save that discussion for another day.

Any thoughts? Have you ever used the word injunction in this way before? If not, try it out on your friends, coworkers, and anyone else you know and tell us about it!

Many thanks to The Black Vault for making these documents accessible.

CIA, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, MKULTRA, United States Air Force

Did you know that there was another Top Secret project at Wright-Patterson AFB in the early 1950s involving the CIA’s most controversial group?

Me neither

It’s been a long time since you and I have chatted about Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (aka Wright Patt) and its ostensible ties to Project Artichoke and/or MKULTRA. If you’re new here, Wright-Patterson AFB is located about 55 miles north of Oxford, Ohio, home of Miami University. Ron Tammen’s psychology professor, Dr. St. Clair Switzer (aka Lt. Col. St. Clair Switzer), knew it and its brass well. I’ve hypothesized that Wright Patt was stop number one after Ron was (ostensibly) driven from Miami’s campus late at night on April 19, 1953. A couple days ago, I decided to check to see if any new information had been posted online concerning the people who worked at Wright Patt in the 1950s and the experiments that they conducted there.

And so…into the weeds I hopped…

…and then I became Energized…

Because, although my attempts to find new information on hypnosis and drug experiments at the Dayton facility came up empty (for now), I discovered a document that told me of another Top Secret project that researchers at Wright Patt and the CIA were collaborating on. Its name?

Project Rabbit.

Have you heard of it? Neither have I! No, seriously, I’m finding nothing about a Project Rabbit online anywhere that fits what this memo is talking about. There’s info on a past program of the Departments of Defense and State involving the processing of visas for refugees from Afghanistan. There’s a book with the title Project Rabbit Hole, which is on a different topic. There’s an album with that title too. But I’m finding no Project Rabbits anywhere, and trust me, I’ve checked—and rechecked—all of my go-to places.

Here’s the document that I’ve found, dated December 18, 1952, that mentions Project Rabbit. This memo was made public as part of the JFK releases—first in 2017 and 2018, and then in 2022, with the latest version disclosing the name of the second guy in a list of three.

The 2022 release of the December 18, 1952 memo; click on image for a closer view

Because it’s difficult to read, I’ll rewrite it here:

*******************

18 December 1952

Commanding General

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Dayton, Ohio

Attention: PMGO [? I’m not 100% sure about these letters; I’ll explain my logic later, below], Air Force Development Center

Subject: CHRIST, David L.

HEYERT, Martin

DRISCOLL, Walter G.

Dear Sir:

We have been requested to advise you of the security clearances granted by this Agency to the above mentioned persons, who are scheduled to attend a conference at your Command on 23 December 1952 in connection with Project “Rabbit.”

Please be advised that, based on full field investigations and National Agency name checks, the above mentioned persons were granted security clearance for access to CIA information classified through Top Secret on the dates set forth opposite their names below:

CHRIST, David L. 24 November 1950

HEYERT, Martin 11 June 1952

DRISCOLL, Walter G. 25 May 1951

If we can be of further service in this matter, please advise.

FOR THE ASSISTANT DEPUTY/INSPECTION & SECURITY

Ermal P. Geiss

Acting Chief, Security Division

I&SO/ACS:kad

CC: Files of subjects

Chrono

Security Officer, Armament Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB

*******************

I don’t want to dwell too long on this topic since I don’t think it has a ton to do with Ron Tammen or the people with whom he came into contact. However, I’m sharing it because I think it shows that the higher-ups at Wright Patt—the PMGO, if you will, and whoever else—were in communication with one of the more controversial groups at the CIA in the 1950s. I’m talking about TSS, aka the Technical Services Staff, the same people who were up to their eyeballs in Project Artichoke and MKULTRA.

The three people who are mentioned in this memo—David L. Christ, Martin Heyert, and Walter G. Driscoll—were in the Applied Physics Division of TSS. They were experts in things like radio signals and transponders and other topics about which I know very little. Let’s put it this way: to the best of my knowledge, they weren’t conducting hypnosis and drugs research, unlike the folks in the Chemical Division, headed by Sidney Gottlieb. However, it’s within reason to think that they were developing the tools and technologies that the folks over in Chemical (plus anyone else, for that matter) needed to do the things they were doing. In 1967, Gottlieb was put in charge of the entire TSS operation, but in 1952, a guy named Willis A. Gibbons, who’d formerly been in the rubber manufacturing business, oversaw TSS. Gibbons was Gottlieb’s immediate boss. His signature is at the bottom of many of the MKULTRA Subprojects.

So who were these three guys who were planning a trip to Dayton, Ohio, to discuss matters of utmost secrecy, camouflaged by the name of an adorable woodland creature, two days before Christmas? (No seriously, what was so urgent about Project Rabbit that the head honchos at Wright Patt thought December 23 would be the perfect day to talk about highly sensitive and probably scary stuff of national import, thus forcing the attendees to drive or fly back to their homes and families roughly 24 hours before Christmas, while their wives were expected to hold down their respective forts while doing all the last-minute preparations for the big day? I’m sorry, but that’s just bizarre—and thoughtless—even for the fifties.)

Back to the three guys…

David L. Christ

Yowza—talk about kicking things off with a bang. David Lamar Christ is probably the reason that this Wright-Patterson memo was released with the JFK assassination records. David Christ was a radio and audio engineer, which was a useful skill for people who liked to listen in on other people’s convos without their knowledge. Because CIA operatives loved their pseudonyms, he also went by the name Daniel Carswell as well as Philip Alpher.

One noteworthy thing about David L. Christ, Daniel L. Carswell, and Philip L. Alpher was that he’d been imprisoned in Cuba for three years—beginning with his arrest in September 1960 and ending with his release through a prisoner exchange in April 1963. Apparently, he’d been setting up audio surveillance equipment in a Chinese news agency in Havana and got caught. After a military trial, and a couple stopovers at Cuba’s military intelligence headquarters and a prison in Havana, he and two other Americans were soon performing hard manual labor on the Isle of Pines. He remained there until his release.

Also, remember the three so-called tramps who were spotted in the boxcar of a stopped train near the Texas School Book Depository and marched across Dealey Plaza immediately after JFK’s assassination? According to Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield, coauthors of “Coup d’Etat in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy,” David L. Christ (or Daniel L. Carswell or Philip L. Alpher) was one of the tramps. The other two were (allegedly) Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt, two people we’ve become very familiar with on this website. As we’ve discussed in earlier posts, Frank Sturgis and Ron Tammen both share the distinction of having the number 10 scribbled in the top right corner of several of their FBI records.

So, 8-plus years before all of that ☝️ ☝️ ☝️occurred, David L. Christ, THE David L. Christ, was sitting in a conference room at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, about an hour away from Oxford, Ohio, discussing Project Rabbit.

Martin Heyert

I don’t know a lot about Martin Heyert, but I do know a few things. I know he was a physicist who had expertise in such subjects as radar systems and devices for locating targets. I know that, in 1953, he attended a radio engineering convention in New York along with about 10 other people in TSS, including David Christ and Walter Driscoll. And I’m pretty sure that I know why the CIA had redacted his name in the 2017 and 2018 JFK releases of the December 18, 1952, memo, but unredacted it in 2022.

Either the 2017 or 2018 version of the December 18, 1952, memo; click on image for a closer view

Whereas David L. Christ had died in 1985 and Walter G. Driscoll had died in 1993, Martin Heyert passed away only recently, at the age of 94, in 2022, the same year that the CIA released his name to the public. So I think that they withheld his name while he was still alive and then released it after he died.

What I find interesting about that is that they cited exemption 3 when they redacted his name. Exemption 3, which is also referred to as exemption (b)(3) in the Freedom of Information Act, says that a federal agency can withhold information that is exempted in another statute, which is a super vague catch-all category. They used exemption (b)(3) when they exempted Clark Hull’s and St. Clair Switzer’s names in the March 25, 1952, memo too, for example. Why they didn’t lift the redactions on Hull’s and Switzer’s names after they died is because the (b)(3)’s were accompanied by (b)(1)’s in the March 25 memo, which is more specific and has to do with information “to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.”

March 25, 1952, memo with Clark Hull’s and St. Clair Switzer’s names redacted. Note all of the (b)(1)’s and (b)(3)’s in the righthand margin; click on image for a closer view

Does the CIA overuse national defense as a reason for keeping information classified? You betcha! For example, they’ve kept the (b)(1) designation next to the title of Clark Hull’s 1933 classic book (paragraph 2, lines 5 and 6), which is:

[ ] (b)(1).

Just kidding! It’s “Hypnosis and Suggestibility: An Experimental Approach.” Martin Heyert is buried in Baltimore’s National Cemetery.

Walter G. Driscoll, Ph.D.

Physicist and biomedical engineer Walter G. Driscoll, Ph.D., probably had the most distinguished career of the three men. From 1940 to 1946, he was working for the FBI as chief of the Chemistry and Physics Laboratories, solving crimes through the analysis of paint, wood, soil, you name it. After receiving his Ph.D. in engineering in 1951, he began his brief stint with the CIA. I can’t tell if he was embarrassed by his association with the CIA or if he was instructed not to tell a soul about it, but his online bio omits his time at Langley as if it never happened. In a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), he described his past position as chief of the Applied Physics Division as if it was with the Department of Defense instead of the CIA.

But make no mistake: he worked at CIA Headquarters from at least May 1951, when he received his Top Secret security clearance, through 1953. It was during that period that he’d become aware of some of the things his colleagues in the CIA were doing through Project Artichoke. Case in point (see the Mary Ferrell Foundation website for all the details): there was an incident described in a January 1952 memo written by Morse Allen in which “our people” (I presume the CIA) had sent a Bulgarian expat to a U.S. military hospital in Panama because they were concerned that he would become a double agent. They declared to the hospital staff that he was psychopathic, even though they knew it was a lie. The man, named Dimitrov, though the CIA referred to him as Kelly, was so angry about his treatment that the CIA considered using the “Artichoke approach” to help foster in him warm, fuzzy thoughts toward the United States. (A memo from 1977 says that it didn’t happen.) It was Walter Driscoll who’d provided information about this controversy to Morse Allen, perhaps the most in-the-know foot soldier for Project Artichoke ever. And if Walter Driscoll is bringing Morse Allen up to speed on issues pertaining to Project Artichoke, he must have known a lot. Roughly 12 months after that conversation with Morse Allen, Driscoll was attending a meeting on Project Rabbit at Wright Patt.

Shortly thereafter, Driscoll made the decision to get out of the spook business. In 1954, he moved to Cambridge, MA, and became director of research for Baird Associates, a manufacturer of scientific instruments. He continued moving up the ladder, being named director of university research at his alma mater, Boston College, and later, director of research and facilities development at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, as well as director of its new Department of Biomedical Engineering. See what I mean? He was a solid researcher who led a distinguished career who just so happened to know something about Wright Patterson AFB and Project Rabbit.

You know what we haven’t done in a little while? A Q&A!

What are you hoping to achieve by telling us about Project Rabbit, since it doesn’t appear to pertain to Ron Tammen?

I’m telling you this because A) even though Project Rabbit most likely doesn’t pertain to Ron, I believe that Wright-Patterson AFB and the CIA’s Technical Services Staff most likely do pertain to him. And B) at the very least, we’re helping humankind by uploading Project Rabbit into the great Googlesphere. From this point forward, if anyone should conduct a search for “Project Rabbit,” they’re going to wind up here. I want to help that person or persons get started on their journey.

You’d mentioned earlier that you had a guess as to what PMGO stood for. What’s your guess?

Although I’m not 100 percent positive, I think that the letters after the word “Attention” are PMGO, and if so, they likely stand for Provost Marshal General’s Office, even though that’s an Army term, not the Air Force’s. As it turns out, the writer of the memo, Ermal P. Geiss, had been a lieutenant colonel in the Army, so he may have written it out of habit in describing the number one person in charge of policing and security at a military facility.

As long as we’re on the subject, I believe that Ermal got the name of the center wrong too. He called it the Air Force Development Center, which didn’t exist at Wright Patt. The facility he was attempting to contact was the Wright Air Development Center, aka WADC, which was the center in which all research and development was conducted on the base. The WADC was a subsidiary of the Air Research Development Command, or ARDC, located in Baltimore, which was the R&D hub for the entire Air Force. As you may recall, St. Clair Switzer spent a portion of the summer of 1951 working at the ARDC.

Are there any clues regarding what Project Rabbit was about?

Yes! You’ll notice at the bottom of the memo that one of the carbon copies went to the Security Officer of the Armament Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB. The Armament Laboratory was one of 12 laboratories at WADC. Another laboratory, the Aero Medical Laboratory, was where the biological and psychological experiments were conducted. The Aero Medical Laboratory was also responsible for supervising research and development into biological warfare.

Based on the notation at the bottom of the memo, I believe that Project Rabbit had something to do with research coming out of the Armament Laboratory at Wright Patt. I know, I know. If you’re anything like me, who has zero interest in armaments and armament-related accessories, you may have briefly dozed off just now. But armaments can be interesting too, especially armaments that involve Top Secret knowledge courtesy of the CIA. I have additional thoughts concerning what that Top Secret knowledge might pertain to, but I’ll hold off until I have more information.

Do you plan to do anything more with this info?

I’ve submitted a FOIA request to Wright-Patterson AFB asking for all materials—agenda, attendees list, abstracts, and proceedings—of the Project Rabbit conference of December 23, 1952. I’ll post their response as soon as I receive it.

Hey, wasn’t Ron Tammen’s birthday yesterday?

Correct! It was! Yesterday — July 23, 2025 — was Ron’s 92nd birthday. Happy Belated Birthday, Ron Tammen, wherever you may be. 🎂 If you’re alive, reach out!

Thanks to the National Archives and Records Administration and the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making these documents accessible.

FBI Records, J. Edgar Hoover/FBI Investigation, Ron's Missing Person File

A French terrorist who was investigated for being in Dallas on November 22, 1963, has a bunch of 10s on his FBI docs, just like Ron’s

As you probably know, I’ve been spending untold hours comparing the stamps and scribbles on the FBI’s JFK, MLK, and RFK records with the markings on Ron’s FBI missing person records. My aim is to see if I can find any similarities among them and hopefully some accompanying clues regarding how Ron spent his adult years, post-disappearance.

Last night, I decided to look up someone who some JFK researchers have theorized was the shooter on the grassy knoll on November 22, 1963. I wanted to see if the FBI had a file on him and, if so, what kinds of marks they’d made all over his records. I could only remember that he was French and that he was supposedly an assassin. I looked up his name online and plugged it into the Mary Farrell Foundation search bar to see what his FBI records looked like.

That man’s name is Jean Rene Souetre.

And wow. There’s quite a lot of info on this person.

Here are a few specifics, which I obtained with special thanks to the exhaustive research conducted by J. Gary Shaw and a couple other sources:

He was born on October 15, 1930, and he died June 18, 2001.

He’d been a captain in the French Army, serving in Algeria from 1955 to 1959.

Soon thereafter, he deserted the French Army and joined an extreme-right-wing group called OAS (Secret Army Organization), which was vehemently opposed to President Charles de Gaulle’s signing of the Evian Accord, thus granting independence to Algeria.

He was reportedly heavily involved in OAS’s assassination attempt on de Gaulle at Petit-Clamart on August 22, 1962.

He ostensibly was thought to have two aliases—Michel Roux and Michel Mertz—though, as it turns out, those names belonged to other individuals.

During the time period of March 4 – March 13, 1964, Monsieur Souetre was on the FBI’s radar in a big way.

The excitement started when the legal attache (Legat) in Paris had contacted the FBI’s New York field office seeking information on Souetre, in addition to his (mistaken) aliases of Roux and Mertz. The Legat had received word that Souetre had been in Fort Worth and Dallas on November 22, 1963, and, 18 hours later, had been expelled from the United States to either Canada or Mexico. Their concern stemmed from the fact that de Gaulle was planning a trip to Mexico in the spring, and they wanted to know why Souetre was expelled and where he was going when he left the United States.

The FBI first tracked down a dentist in Houston named Lawrence Alderson who’d met Souetre when he was in the Army stationed in France in 1953. Since that time, Alderson had traded Christmas cards with Souetre every year, but he hadn’t heard from him for over a year. So no leads there.

It was when the FBI caught up with a man named Leon Gachman, of Fort Worth, that they were able to clear up the confusion. Michel Roux, who was, presumably, a very nice, very non-violent person, was working in a hotel in Paris when Leon was visiting the City of Lights in October 1963. When Michel told Leon of his dreams to open a hotel or restaurant in the United States, Leon magnanimously invited Michel to look him up if and when he came to America. One month later, on November 20, 1963, Michel did just that, and he telephoned Gachman from Houston. Roux arrived in Fort Worth on November 21, and attended classes with Gachman’s son at Texas Christian University on November 22. They’d learned of Kennedy’s assassination when they were eating in a café. Michel went back to Houston, and then, shortly thereafter, to Mexico City to find work until he could secure a visa to live in the United States. That must not have panned out, however, because he soon moved back to Paris to be with his family.

I could be wrong, but based on the documents that have been released, it doesn’t appear that Souetre was in the United States during Kennedy’s assassination. Not only did we learn that, but we also deduced that Lawrence Alderson , D.D.S., could have probably been a little more selective in the choosing of his friends. Also, I mean no disrespect to poor Michel Roux, but wow. His timing for taking a risky leap at career advancement was…not awesome. But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters where we’re concerned. What does matter is that the FBI had thought that French terrorist and assassination plotter Jean Souetre had been in Dallas on November 22, 1963, when they were doing their investigative work in March 1964. The scribbles in the righthand corners on those documents? From the heart.

They gave him 10’s.

Just like Ron’s.

As a reminder, I think that the records with 10s signify that the FBI’s liaison to the Secret Service was cc’d on that document, which likely means that the Secret Service was notified as well. Sometimes there were other numbers, such as 9 and 7. But if there was only one number, it was always number 10.

Who but the Secret Service would want to be alerted if a would-be presidential assassin had been in a country on the Friday that the country’s president had been assassinated?

I can’t think of anyone else.

Here are Souetre’s 10’s:

For comparison, here are Ron’s.

Interested to hear your thoughts.

Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making these documents available.

FBI Records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, J. Edgar Hoover/FBI Investigation, Ron's Missing Person File

Happy Fourth of July 🇺🇸

(You OK? Day 7)

July 4, 2025

It’s the fourth of July, and we’ve reached the end of our week-long journey. So what have we learned? We learned that I consistently wait until around 9 or 9:30 at night to get these bad boys out. We learned that I can’t help but get all wordy even when I say I’m going to keep things brief. On a personal level, I’ve learned that I should probably hold off on making promises that require a week-long effort, especially if it involves sitting in my sweats and writing a blog post on a morning when I really should be sleeping in or having breakfast in bed. (Happy birthday to me!) And, oh yes. We learned that Ron Tammen’s FBI documents have proven themselves to be seismic in their significance.

Today I’m going to present several additional documents I’ve recently found to be interesting. Each will be accompanied by a few sentences of background info, which is more in line with how I wanted these posts to be when I started this series last Saturday. We won’t be coming to any big conclusions right now. Observations, maybe; conclusions, hardly. Here we go!

1. Hey look! It’s L’Allier

In my April 19, 2025, post, we learned all about Rolland L’Allier, the FBI’s French-speaking legal attaché in the 1950s who headed up the Domestic Intelligence Division’s Liaison Section in 1960-62. I raised the question of whether he may have scribbled on the first page of Ron’s FBI records based on his distinctive abbreviated L’_A. Here’s his full signature, written in regular pencil, on one of Carlos Marcello’s records.

Click on image for a closer view; L’Alllier’s signature is on the bottom left, as well as the bottom right.

2. Hey look! It’s that Ci notation from a while ago

When we first began discussing the numbers in the upper-righthand corner, I pointed out a notation on a visa application for Marina Oswald. The document originated with the State Department, but this was the FBI’s copy, because it has marks all over it that are distinctively FBI. In the box midway down, on the righthand side, the words “VISA SECURITY CASE” are typed, and above that are the letters Ci and the numbers 8-1. Recently, I found a couple more Ci’s, which are written in blue pencil on Carlos Marcello’s records. It might be a person, but I’m thinking it may also stand for Counterintelligence, which was part of the Domestic Intelligence Division.

Marina Oswald’s Ci

Carlos Marcello’s Ci’s

3. Someone has circled Carlos Marcello’s ST- and REC- numbers on a couple of his documents; also, the word “classifying” is written nearby in blue and underlined in green

I’m thinking that these two docs tell us that the FBI indeed views the ST- and REC- numbers as a unit or complementary pair, just like we’d surmised. For the most part, they belong together. Have I seen an REC- number by itself? I have. Have I seen two different REC-numbers on one record? Not gonna lie, I’ve seen that too. But I’ve never, ever seen an ST- number without an accompanying REC- number. Also, the fact that someone wrote “classifying” nearby indicates that the pair of circled ST- and REC- numbers has something to do with how the FBI’s Classifying Unit, which is in the Records Division, categorized the case.

4. Like Ron, Carlos Marcello had a sealed enclosure too, but the word “Sealed” is handwritten.

I don’t see many FBI records with the word “Sealed” on them, which tells me that they’re especially secret. Here’s one for Carlos Marcello.

5. So far, I’ve found only two people who have the same “SEALED ENCL” stamp as Ron Tammen.

I believe that the sealing of an enclosure was considered a big deal for the FBI, and for someone to have the foresight to use the “SEALED ENCL” stamp means that it wasn’t just an afterthought. I think they meant to seal those contents from the get-go. Here are two people on which the FBI used the same stamp as Ron’s. One you met on Day 2 of this series. The other one was famously kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army on February 4, 1974.

Ron Tammen

Wayne B. Williams

Patty Hearst

OK, I think that covers it for today. Have a happy Fourth, everyone. Get your rest, stay hydrated, and let’s keep fighting the good fight for democracy.

Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making these documents available.

FBI Records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, J. Edgar Hoover/FBI Investigation, Ron's Missing Person File

LOOKS LIKE!

(You OK? Day 6)

July 3, 2025

Today we’re going to talk about the notation FD-217, which is scribbled in blue on a bunch of Carlos Marcello’s FBI documents. If you’ll recall on Day 2 of this series, we also saw that someone had written “FD-217” in lowercase cursive next to Marjorie Swann’s 10. In the past, we’ve noted that references to FD-217 are often written near the number in the upper-righthand corner, no matter the number or the person. For Carlos Marcello, it’s written near the number 7. Marina Oswald’s is written near an 8. Sam Giancana’s is written near his 4. Rolando Cubela y Secades (a Cuban revolutionary) has an FD-217 near a 3-1 and 9-1.

Here are two of Carlos Marcello’s FD-217s, which accompany 7s:

Click on image for a closer view; note that the FD-217 is super light

It’s important to note that Ron Tammen’s records don’t have an FD-217 written on them. However, because FD-217 appears to be so closely linked to the FBI’s numbering system, I think it’s worth delving into.

One thing that we know for sure about FD-217 is that it’s an FBI form, which is benignly titled “Notification of Bureau File Number.” If I can get my hands on a blank FD-217 form, I think we could learn, once and for all, what their numbering system was all about and why Ron was given a number 10.

Granted, I think I may have already figured out the system. I think that the numbers refer to the FBI’s special agents who served as liaisons with other federal agencies. Based on clues regarding which cases received 10s—for example, those involving presidential candidates, vice presidents, and foreign dignitaries—Ron Tammen’s, Marjorie Swann’s, Frank Sturgis’s, Santo Trafficante’s, Wayne B. Williams’ and everyone else’s 10s appear to pertain to the FBI’s liaison to the U.S. Secret Service. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have the FBI’s confirmation of that hypothesis?

To do that, I decided to submit a FOIA request for the blank FD-217 form. (This next part is a recap of my two FOIA submissions and appeal to the Department of Justice. If you already know this sad story from previous posts, feel free to jump to the DOJ’s response.)

On February 10, 2025, I submitted a simple and straightforward request: “I am seeking a sample copy of FBI form number FD-217.” On February 26, I received their first response, which said the following:

“Based on the information you provided, we conducted a search of the places reasonably expected to have records. However, we were unable to identify records subject to the FOIPA that are responsive to your request. Therefore, your request is being closed. If you have additional information pertaining to the subject of your request, please submit a new request providing the details, and we will conduct an additional search.”

That same day, I sent in my follow-up, which said: “I suggest you consult the FBI Form Book to locate the form. You can find a link to the description of the 2003-2004 version of the Form Book here: https://www.governmentattic.org/44docs/FBIforms_2003-4.pdf. I’m attaching one page of the Table of Contents, which lists it as being there.”

Here’s the TOC that I included. FD-217 is smack dab in the middle of the page.

On February 28, they wrote this:

At this point, I was peeved. I submitted an appeal to the Department of Justice. In addition to providing them with the above details, I said this:

“I am appealing this request because their response that the FBI is unable to locate a blank copy of form FD-217 is not credible, particularly after I pointed them to the FBI Form Book and the relevant page in the Table of Contents. If it were classified information, that would be a different situation. However they’re claiming not to know where it is, which is clearly a false statement. Under FOIA law, there is no exemption for information that the FBI simply would prefer I not have access to. Therefore, I ask that you remand my request and order them to provide to me what I’m entitled to receive.”

DOJ response

Would you like to know the DOJ’s response? Here you go:

To paraphrase their response, they said: the FBI told us they couldn’t find the form, and by golly, we believe them. If you want to try forcing the issue, feel free to sue us, small person, because we know you have limited resources and you have to pick your battles, and we very much doubt that you’ll pick this one.

Mmmkay.

Here are the four take-homes I got from this little charade:

1) The FD-217 form is important.

2) We are on the right track.

3) There’s a course of action they neglected to mention that doesn’t involve hiring a lawyer or going through a complex mediation process.

4) I’m going to take it.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making these documents available.

FBI Records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, J. Edgar Hoover/FBI Investigation, Ron's Missing Person File, Uncategorized

DEMOCRACY!

(You OK? Day 5)

July 2, 2025

We’re going to spend the next three days examining several of the FBI’s recently released records on Carlos Marcello, the one-time Godfather of the New Orleans Mafia, and all-around horrible person. In the book Fatal Hour, G. Robert Blakey, who headed the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and coauthor Richard N. Billings allege that organized crime members were responsible for JFK’s assassination, with Carlos Marcello at the helm. Serendipitously, on November 22, 1963, Marcello had been sitting in a New Orleans courtroom on the final day of his trial for fraud against the government. At 3:20 p.m. Central Time, 102 minutes after Walter Cronkite had announced on national television that President Kennedy had died, the jury returned their verdict of not guilty.

Carlos Marcello as a younger man (public domain). To view a photo of him when he was running the New Orleans Mafia, go here.

To be sure, the FBI viewed Marcello as, um, colorful. That’s why it’s so fitting that his recently released records look the way they do.

Today’s short post showcases several of the Marcello records. What’s fun about them is that they’re copies of original documents as opposed to copies of copies. This means that we get to see what the scribbles and stamps we’ve become familiar with on Ron Tammen’s records actually looked like in real life. In addition to scrawled names in graphite gray, some scribbles were written in red pencil and others were written in blue. The stamps were in different-colored inks as well, such as teal and magenta.

An editing pencil of yore

Not only do the colors make it easier to spot a given scribble in question, but I think they may provide clues into which division made them.

And so, without further ado, I give you several of Carlos Marcello’s FBI docs.

Do any scribbles and stamps jump out at you as looking familiar? And did you notice that MSL makes an appearance on one of them? What other thoughts do you have?

See you tomorrow.

Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making these documents available.

FBI Records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, J. Edgar Hoover/FBI Investigation, Ron's Missing Person File

WHAT!

(You OK? Day 4)

July 1, 2025

This next update will probably be discouraging for you, but that happens in research too. Plus we’re ramping up to more…um…colorful revelations later this week, so we’re bound to have at least one slow day, right? Welcome to your slow day.

Do you remember MSL, the person who (ostensibly) wrote “Removed from Ident files” on Ron’s missing person documents on June 4 and 5, 1973? For years, I’ve tried to identify who that person was. If they’re still alive (which is growing less likely), imagine the intel that person could share about why they removed his documents from the Ident files, as well as, gosh, just what was up with the mysterious Missing Person File Room? Unfortunately, to this day, the name of the person with the initials MSL remains unknown.

With that said, I may have found a few clues regarding their career trajectory at the FBI.

MSL shows up in two ways on Ron’s documents. The first was in 1967, when Ron’s father wrote to J. Edgar Hoover to ask him if the soldier pictured in his newspaper could be Ron. It was MSL who, with assistance from someone with the initials mjb, wrote J. Edgar Hoover’s response to Mr. Tammen on October 11, 1967.

This aligns well with an MSL whose initials are typed at the bottom of Teletypes that are sent from FBI Headquarters to designated field offices and attaches in the early 1960s. For this reason, I think that MSL worked in the FBI’s Communications Section from at least August 1961 up through at least October 1967.

MSL’s initials are written in the top center of page 1; click on image for a closer view

MSL’s initials are typed in the last line of page 2; click on image for a closer view

The next time we bump into MSL is in June 1973, when Ron’s documents are removed from the Ident files. I think MSL was fairly high up the chain of the Identification Division by this time, because, on a document dated May 22, 1973, they initialed the line next to Fletcher Thompson’s name. Thompson was the head of the Identification Division.

Our final encounter with MSL is on March 3, 1975. They’ve added their initials to an addendum of a memo with the important subject head of SENSTUDY 75. SENSTUDY 75 was the FBI’s nickname for the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. You and I know it better as the Church Committee, named for its chair, Senator Frank Church. MSL initialed the document behind the initials JH, or John Hotis, of the FBI’s Legal Counsel Division. John B. Hotis was a highly regarded official who’d held a number of supervisory roles for the FBI. He worked as a special assistant to William Webster when he was director of the FBI, and, in 1987, when Webster moved over to the CIA to direct that agency, he took Hotis with him.

I’m thinking that MSL must have been a pretty big deal by 1975 to be working for John Hotis.

As it turns out, that’s also the year that I think MSL may have retired or found a job outside of the FBI. Or, just my luck, if MSL was a woman, she may have gotten married in April, May, or June and changed her name. Whatever happened to MSL, I think it happened sometime after they initialed the SENSTUDY 75 memo and before the July 1 edition of the FBI telephone directory was printed. They’re not in it.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: how do we know that the MSL who worked for John Hotis in 1975 is the same MSL who worked for Fletcher Thompson in 1973 or the MSL who worked for the Communications Section from at least August 1961 through October 1967, and possibly later.

All I have to go by is MSL’s initials and how they wrote them. For Ron’s documents, MSL is written in all caps, but for the others, everything is in lowercase. What makes me think it’s the same person is the “m.” Whether it’s lowercase or capitalized, that “m” always has a little flourish in the front.

********************************

1962: Communications Section

********************************

1973: Identification Division

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1975: Legal Counsel Division

It has crossed my mind that MSL might have been a special agent versus an administrative staff member. If so, they should be included in the FBI’s “Dead List,” which is a compilation by the Records/Information Dissemination Section of deceased FBI officials as well as random famous people and criminals. Unfortunately, there are no individuals with the initials MSL in the 2022 version, which I believe is the latest online version, and the most comprehensive listing available.

I know, I know…I could be wrong. We could have three different people with the initials MSL for all I know. However, in all my searching, I’ve yet to find anyone—anyone—with those initials. I’m no math whiz, but wouldn’t that increase the chances that it’s the same person?

Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making these documents available.

FBI Records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, J. Edgar Hoover/FBI Investigation, Ron's Missing Person File

IS!

(You OK? Day 3)

June 30, 2025

Hello! Today’s post has to do with a three-letter notation in the top righthand corner of ten of Ron’s FBI documents. In past posts, we’ve learned that Hank Greenspun, former publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, has the same notation on two of his FBI records from July 1973. We’ve also discussed that Hank Greenspun has Watergate ties, since the same people linked to the Watergate burglary had planned to break into Hank’s office in Las Vegas in early 1972. Their plan ostensibly fell through.

The notation we’re discussing today is “Hac,” which is written with an always slanty, sometimes loopy, sometimes angular, “H,” and my news is as follows: I’ve found another person who has those three letters on her FBI records. What’s more, you already know her. That person is…

Marjorie Swann!

That’s right, the pacifist bookkeeper from Connecticut whom the FBI labeled as “subversive” has an unquestionable, undeniable “Hac” written in the top righthand corner of one of the FBI records in her file. She isn’t named specifically on the document, but the New England Committee for Non-Violent Action (NECNVA) is. According to an October 1975 document from the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Marjorie Swann had co-founded the organization. Plus, I’ll say it again: the record is in her file.

Marjorie’s Hac resembles Ron’s and Hank’s Hacs so much, that I could swear they’re written by the same person.

Here’s Marjorie’s Hac:

Here’s one of Hank Greenspun’s Hacs, which resembles Marjorie’s:

Here’s one of Ron’s Hacs, which resembles Hank Greenspun’s Hac, which resembles Marjorie’s:

But that’s not all. In a former post, I’d speculated that one of the top contenders for the person whom I believe was the author of Ron’s Hac was Russell H. Horner, of the FBI’s Intelligence Division. In 1974, which I believe was the year of his retirement, Horner was chief of the Special Records and Related Research Unit. That may sound deadly dull to you, but it’s not. He oversaw some of the most sensitive records the FBI had to offer, including those having to do with the FBI’s highly controversial electronic surveillance program as well as their highly confidential Administrative Index, successor to the Security Index. To have “R.H. Horner’s” scribble on your document in the 1970s meant…wow. I imagine it was super significant.

Well, guess what? Russell Horner was following Marjorie Swann and her NECNVA closely. You can see his slanty, loopy signature in the upper righthand margin of the following document as proof:

Here it is blown up:

What does all of this mean? We still don’t know. And I’ll be the first to admit that I could be wrong. But if Russell H. Horner had written “Hac” on one or more of Ron’s ten pages, then all bets are off regarding what the FBI knew about Ron, not to mention how they obtained that knowledge.

Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making these documents available.

FBI Records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, J. Edgar Hoover/FBI Investigation

THIS!

(You OK? Day 2)

June 29, 2025

Welcome back! Today’s entry concerns two individuals who also were assigned the elusive number 10 at the top righthand corner of some of their FBI records.

Wayne Bertram Williams/The Atlanta Child Murders

Wayne Bertram Williams is an African American man who, in 1981, became the primary person of interest for murders that were taking place in Atlanta beginning in 1979. These murders were referred to as the Atlanta Child Murders.

According to the FBI, a law enforcement task force had been conducting a late-night stakeout at one of the bridges traversing the river where several bodies had been found, when they heard a loud splash. The driver who sped across the bridge shortly after the splash, at around 2:52 a.m., was Williams. In 1982, he was tried and convicted for the killing of two young African American men, Nathaniel Cater (whose body was found a couple days after Williams’ encounter with police and was the likely source of the splash) and Jimmy Ray Payne. Law enforcement also linked Williams to 20 of 29 kidnapping-murders of primarily male African American children, teens, and young adults that had occurred between 1979 and 1981. They did so by comparing fibers and hair from Williams’ home and car with those found on the victims. Williams was never tried for the murders of the other victims, however.

Here are several of the reports that were written up before Williams became a suspect:

So, here we are with another convicted murderer, likely a serial killer, who shares the number 10 with Ron Tammen. As we discussed in an earlier post, the Sharon Tate murders by Charles Manson’s followers also appear to have warranted a number 10, though it’s harder to tell for those documents.

Marjorie Swann

Our second example is Marjorie Swann, who was a bookkeeper and pacifist whom the FBI labeled as a subversive. Marjorie belonged to an organization known as the New England Committee for Non-Violent Action, or NECNVA. There were other CNVAs around the country as well, but Marjorie belonged to the chapter in Voluntown, Connecticut. They did what your typical peace-loving org does: convene and plan, hand out fliers, write letters, stage protests, things like that, though, judging by the below document, it appears she was engaged in riskier activities too at times.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that being a convicted murderer and alleged serial killer is way different than belonging to a group that speaks openly about their opposition to the Vietnam War. And you’d be right. However, remember what our current hypothesis is: that the 10 indicates that the FBI’s liaison to the U.S. Secret Service received a copy of the memo.

Nevertheless, it does lead me to ask: does our hypothesis still hold for these two people?

Although the Secret Service isn’t the agency whose primary responsibility is investigating murderers and alleged serial killers—that job belongs to the FBI—I’m sure they would want to be kept in the loop about their actions. For example, there might be a chance that an alleged serial killer could present a danger to the people who the Secret Service does normally protect. So I think our hypothesis still holds for Wayne Williams.

But what about Marjorie Swann? I was wondering if I should abandon my hypothesis, since I thought the Secret Service would have less of an interest in her, though I thought it was possible that her Paris meeting had raised red flags with them. As it turns out, it appears they were interested in antiwar activists in general.

In a memo written by J. Edgar Hoover on September 26, 1969, he alerts a whole slew of federal officials and agencies about “Student Agitational and Antiwar Activity in the United States.” The U.S Secret Service is one of the agencies listed in his “To” column, and indeed, the New England Committee for Nonviolent Action is listed as planning a demonstration in Groton, CT, when the Secretary of Defense was visiting. So I think our theory still holds for Majorie and the NECNVA too.

By the way, did you notice the “fd-217” scribble next to Marjorie’s 10? We’ll be discussing more on that topic later this week.

OK! That’s all for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Thanks to the FBI Vault and the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making this document available.