Happy Halloween, Good Man readers! For the past several days, I’ve been writing a post having to do with my latest rabbit hole, namely, how the FBI has been doctoring its records to mislead the public. But then I started noticing an uptick in new visitors on account of it being Halloween and all. As you know, Halloween is the time of year when people tend to think of Ron Tammen.
So I’m pulling a switcheroo. Instead of posting my latest findings that my diehard readers will surely love, although I’m not sure about anyone else, I’m going to discuss a more relatable topic for all of us. I’m going to tell you the top ten scariest things that have happened to me in my 16 years of researching Ron Tammen’s disappearance. (Note to diehards: we’ll discuss more of the FBI’s antics another day. I promise.)
Here’s my top ten list, starting with 10 and ending with numero uno. Some of these you probably know about. Others I’ve kept to myself, until now:
10. The minute I realized that St. Clair Switzer, Ron Tammen’s psychology professor, was mentioned on a CIA document as a potential consultant for Project Artichoke
Yeah, this scary realization kicked off the whole shebang regarding my theory of what happened to Ron Tammen. Because, if Ron Tammen’s psychology professor was working with the CIA, then they did it. They took him. I’m sorry, but they did. And you can just imagine how scary it was to realize that the person I’ve been inquiring about was taken by the CIA. With every FOIA request I’ve sent them, I’ve wondered if I was becoming a household name to our friends in the intelligence community. So that’s kinda creepy.
9. When I discovered the connection between Ron Tammen and James McCord
For 19 years, James McCord, of Watergate fame, had been employed by the CIA’s Office of Security, which oversaw Project Artichoke. When I discovered that he and Ron shared a stamp combination on their FBI records (ST-102, REC-19), it freaked me out. No, seriously. It was late at night and I remember sitting in my big comfy chair and looking out the window, as if someone out there knew what I’d just discovered. I think that’s when I implemented our current “don’t open the door for anyone unless you’re expecting them” policy. To date, it has proven to be a good strategy. I have one exception: I will open the door when my neighbor pops by with homegrown tomatoes. I have gotten to know his knock. Otherwise, if you’re not dropping off homegrown tomatoes, I’m not home.
8. When I learned that a French terrorist who’d been suspected of assassinating JFK has FBI records that look like Ron’s
The French terrorist I’m talking about is Jean René Souètre, a man I’d heard had been potentially linked to the JFK assassination. I didn’t even know his name at first. On a whim, again, late at night, I figured out what it was and then looked him up on the Mary Farrell Foundation website to see what his FBI records looked like. According to his records, he couldn’t have killed JFK, but the FBI had definitely been interested in finding out if he was anywhere near Dallas on November 22, 1963. When I saw all of the 10s on his records, just like Ron’s 10s, I freaked out again. I think that may have been the moment I thought, did the FBI consider Ron an assassin, just like Jean René Souètre? If so, he would’ve been government-sanctioned since, according to the FBI, he’d never been arrested. That’s…um…really scary.
7. The time in 2013 when some man who lived in the Bronx called my cell and I thought it might be Ron
In 2013, I was still living in D.C., and I was heavy into making phone calls to Ron’s family and friends. One Saturday morning, someone whose name had things in common with Ron’s name called my cell but he didn’t leave a message. I won’t tell you his last name, but his first name was John—Ron’s brother’s name—and his middle initial was H. I don’t know why, but I thought, what if it’s Ron? After all, I’d been emailing my cell number to God and everyone. What if one of those people—his brother John perhaps—forwarded it to Ron. I remember working myself up into a little frenzy. Then I got scared. What if he yells at me? What if he tells me to butt out and to stop calling everyone and to let him live his life? When I called him back later that day, he sounded elderly, which also tracked. Acting as nonchalant as possible, I asked him if he had called me earlier in the day. Mind you, that was a bizarre thing for me to do. I never call strangers who misdial my number, let alone doing so hours later. But this time was different. His response was just as weird. “Oh, I think the kids were playing with my phone.” As you diehards know, I now think that Ron had already died by that time—sometime between 2002, when the FBI expunged his fingerprints because of a conflict with the Privacy Act, and 2010, when the FBI sent me Ron’s missing person records without seeking third-party authorization. But it would have been so cool if it was Ron. And also kind of scary.
6. When I realized that the FBI had been lying to the Butler County cold case detective about not knowing what happened to Ron’s fingerprints
It’s one thing for the FBI to lie to me, which it does all the time. But when the FBI lies to a member of law enforcement, someone in a profession with whom the FBI is ostensibly in a working partnership, that’s saying something. When Butler County’s cold case detective, Frank Smith, contacted the FBI in 2008 seeking Ron’s fingerprints, they pretended not to know anything. Frank knew that they’d had his fingerprints at one time because he saw the fingerprint notations on one of his missing person documents. But when he reached out to them, they merely told him that they’d looked everywhere and couldn’t find them. They gave him no other info. They didn’t tell him that the fingerprints had been expunged in 2002 and they certainly didn’t tell him that they were permitted to expunge them 30 years early due to Record Schedule N1-065-88-3 item 1A, which means that they did so based on a court order or a conflict with the Privacy Act of 1974. (I later narrowed it down to the latter.) Why would the FBI lie to a cold case detective? Because he was investigating something that’s bigger than anyone knows. And now I’ve picked up the baton, which is…you guessed it…scary.
5. Podcasts
You all know I’m an introvert, right? My comfort zone is sitting in front of the fire writing, which is something I happen to be doing at the moment. What’s scary is sitting in front of a Zoom camera for an hour or two trying to reel off the specifics of my 16 years of Ron Tammen research without forgetting anything important. Names, dates, and places are my phobias. Brain freeze is my bogeyman. What’s the lady’s name who lived in Seven Mile who had a guy show up on her doorstep late at night on April 19, 1953? Oh, right, Clara Spivey! What was the little town where H.H. Stephenson saw a guy who looked like Ron eating with several other young men? Of course, Wellsville, NY! What’s the name of the Air Force base near San Antonio where Louis Jolyon West was stationed during a time I believe he was in communication with Ron Tammen’s psychology professor, St. Clair Switzer? It’s Lackland Air Force Base, Jenny. Don’t forget!
I’m grateful to the podcasters, and I’ve enjoyed every interview I’ve done. It was awesome talking with them. Also, I’m sure I will happily accept future invitations to talk about Ron Tammen to get the word out about his story. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be in a subdued state of panic leading up to and during our conversation. Scary, but still worth it.
4. Every time I place a phone call to a potentially hostile source
If you think talking to nice podcasters is scary for an introvert, imagine talking to people who, for whatever reason, don’t want to talk to you about Ron Tammen or various related subjects. These are the hostiles, the people who say things like “Hey, what’s all this about??” or “I think we’re done here!” and hang up on you. They’re the ones who block you after you’ve left a well-meaning message hoping for a sit-down. Most of the people I’ve spoken with have been wonderfully helpful and they, too, are interested in seeking the truth about Ron. But there are others who want nothing to do with me or my project. I can’t imagine pulling one of those 60 Minutes Mike Wallace in-person pop-ins to someone who won’t pick up their phone. That, my friends, is not in my DNA and I’ve had zero training in it. I suppose I’ve gotten a little crustier on the exterior after starting this project, and I’ve made some calls in which I was expecting some pushback but instead had a delightful convo. Let’s put these in the scary, but worth it category as well.
3. Every time my computer acts up
To be sure, I’m no computer whiz. I’ve been known to press the wrong key or to misplace a file from time to time. But I’m also not a beginner. I know…um…things about computers. When one of those AI chat bubbles pops up in the bottom right corner of my screen asking me if I want more info, I will sometimes ask for more info. If I accidentally click on a bad link that has compromised my bank card, I know to jump on my bank’s web page lickety split and cancel that card asap. If MS Word is acting all wonky, I remember to turn off my computer and turn it back on again, without anyone telling me to. I guess you could call me semi-literate. But after I started conducting research into Ron Tammen, it seems that computer problems have happened more frequently to me. One time I lost an entire email conversation with someone from the FBI and I don’t remember hitting the delete key. Maybe this isn’t fair, but every time something happens—every downage, every outage, every blank screen, every lost file, every lost conversation—is, in my mind, courtesy of the FBI or CIA sabotaging my research. That never fails to make me shudder in fear.
2. When I was on my walk-run this past summer
I’ve been living with this secret since this past July or so. One day, while I was on my walk-run, I felt something sting me in my lower right back. It felt like a bee or something and it hurt really bad. But I didn’t see any insects flying away afterward. When I got home, I took a look at it, and there wasn’t just one bite. There were six large bumps and, get this, they were shaped in an arrow formation. I kid you not. Do you know what else? They’re still there. They’re smaller and lighter and I think they’ll go away at some point, but this was no ordinary insect bite. I’ve told people that I thought I may have been hit by a poison dart gun, which was 95% just joking and 5% OMG, what if? I didn’t feel woozy or weird after it happened. It just hurt for a long time. Nevertheless, I’ve changed my walk-run route, and that information will remain classified.
1. When I found out that a retired special agent for the FBI lives really close to me
One day, I was attempting to locate some retired special agents from the FBI to fill me in on their experiences. I wanted operational details. So, imagine my astonishment when I located one of the men and found that he lived mere blocks from me. I wrote him a letter. I’m sure he was surprised to hear from me as well. I won’t tell you his name. I won’t say if we met or not, but I will say this: he knows who I am, he knows what I’m doing, and he knows where I live, which is super close to him. So yeah…the homegrown tomatoes policy still applies.
Greetings! I’m pulling a Saturday pop-in to tell you about two more ‘Hac’ records I found.
First, let’s do a quick tally of the other Hacs we’ve found in the top righthand corner of various FBI records:
–Two Hacs can be found on records from July 1973 concerning Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun,
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
–One 1971 record on the New England chapter of the Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA) has a Hac plus the initials “sd” written nearby,
Click on image for a closer view
–Ten pages of Ron Tammen’s missing person records have the Hac notation in the top righthand corner.
Click on image for a closer view; this is just one of Ron’s 10 pages with a Hac on it
That makes 13 Hacs so far, with Ron’s records carrying the lion’s share of them. As we’ve discussed, my current theory is that Hac stands for Hughes Aircraft Company, and, therefore, could be the FBI’s shorthand for Howard Hughes.
Here’s why I believe Howard Hughes was the noteworthy person that everyone with a Hac had in common:
Howard Hughes and Hank Greenspun
Hank Greenspun had considered himself a friend of Howard Hughes, even though he, like Hughes’ right-hand man Robert Maheu, had never seen him face-to-face. In 1966, Hank had encouraged Howard to move to Las Vegas and invest in properties there. In 1967, Hank had agreed to sell Howard his TV station, KLAS, so that Howard could watch his favorite movies all night long when all the other stations in the area had signed off, which is something TV stations did back then. Ralph Witte, who is also discussed in the two Hac memos, was head of security for Howard Hughes’ Summa operation, formerly Hughes Tool Company. He was one of Howard’s top men. And let’s not forget that the two Hac documents were about an attempted burglary of Greenspun’s safe, which contained hundreds of memos between Howard Hughes and Robert Maheu. Hank Greenspun’s connection with Howard Hughes is rock solid and crystal clear.
Howard Hughes and the CNVA
Howard Hughes was ardently opposed to underground nuclear testing, especially if the nuclear testing was happening in his vicinity. Not only did he detest how the underground bombs being set off at the Nevada Proving Grounds caused his Desert Inn penthouse to shake and sway, but he feared what the radiation was doing to the water. (Howard was right to be concerned, by the way.) The CNVA was the first organization to protest underground nuclear testing at Base Camp Mercury, 65 miles from Las Vegas, in 1957. They were so well known for their creative, peaceful protests, other groups, including Greenpeace, modeled their protests after the CNVA’s tactics. In 1974, Robert Maheu testified that John Meier, one of Hughes’ employees, “was originally hired as part of a Hughes’ scheme to aid groups protesting atomic bomb testing [in] late 1966. Hughes called him to outline a plan to assign ‘somebody with a scientific background’ to assist the various ban-the-bomb groups.” Although the CNVA wasn’t specified, I think there’s a pretty good chance that it was one of those groups.
Howard Hughes and Ron Tammen
I’m still trying to figure out how Ron Tammen would have had a connection with Howard Hughes. My current theory is that Hughes Aircraft Company may have served as a cover for Ron, since that operation frequently worked in cahoots with the CIA. I also think that Robert Maheu, who had a close relationship with the CIA’s Office of Security since 1954, was how Ron would have entered the Hughes orbit.
OK, now let’s talk about the other two records I’ve found with Hacs on them.
Howard Hughes and Larry O’Brien (June 17, 1972)
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
The first new Hac is on a record dated June 17, 1972, the day of the Watergate break-in. It’s a teletype from the FBI’s Miami Field Office to the Washington Field Office as well as Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray and the Domestic Intelligence Division. The teletype has to do with Larry O’Brien, then-chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Miami told Washington that they had a source who said that five burglars had been arrested in the office of Philip Seib, Larry’s assistant, attempting to burglarize materials there. Even though the burglars were in Seib’s office, I’m sure everyone’s antennae went up when they saw Larry’s name in the teletype. (If you think it’s weird that the guys in Miami are informing the Washington Field Office, the office of origin for Watergate, about who was arrested in what office, you’re in good company. I’ll have more to say about this memo in a later post.)
OK, so I need to come clean about something. We’ve actually seen this teletype before. However, when I showed it to you the first time, I was discussing how similar the “H” looked to the H in Ron’s Hacs. The letters are extremely light, and not as easy to read as Ron’s bold Hacs. But the word appeared to be longer—at least five or six letters. I thought it may have been someone’s name, possibly the same person who wrote the letters H-a-c at the top of Ron’s and Hank’s documents. (I hadn’t discovered the CNVA document yet.)
I now believe that the June 17, 1972, teletype has a Hac too, followed by two initials, similar to the initials “sd” that follow the Hac on the CNVA document. Heck, the initials might even be “sd” on Larry O’Brien’s document too.
If this is indeed another Hac sighting, and if Hac is indeed shorthand for Howard Hughes, then it makes total sense that someone would write those letters on this teletype. Larry O’Brien had an incredibly strong connection to Howard Hughes. He’d been hired to serve as Hughes’ lobbyist in Washington, D.C., influencing senators and tweaking proposed legislation for Howard’s sole benefit, before he became chair of the DNC. In fact, according to Michael Drosnin, author of the book Citizen Hughes, O’Brien was still working for Hughes while he was chair of the DNC, since the latter was an unpaid position. (Apparently, that’s no longer true—the latest figure I’ve seen that the DNC chair earns is $350K/year.) This arrangement likely drove Richard Nixon crazy. Picture it like this: here was the chair of the DNC, whose primary goal was to defeat Richard Nixon in the 1972 election, likely having full knowledge about the $100,000 in bribe money that Hughes had paid to Nixon through Nixon’s buddy in Miami, Bebe Rebozo. Nixon’s most overriding fear was that the $100K bribe would become public knowledge, destroying his chances for reelection. No wonder Liddy, Hunt, and the rest of the Watergate Seven had tried to bug O’Brien’s office. So, again, the Howard Hughes connection to Larry O’Brien is crystal clear.
Let’s move on to the second new Hac. When I stumbled onto this one, let’s just say that the subject’s ties to Howard Hughes were less than clear to me. In fact, I thought this person’s pursuits were so different from Howard Hughes’ priorities, I was going to have to walk away from my theory that their paths had ever crossed. Even worse, I was going to have to report back to you that our theory about our favorite reclusive billionaire had officially been shred into a billion tiny pieces.
Well, good news, guys. I’m happy to report that the theory is still intact.
Howard Hughes and Susan Heiligman Frank (Sept. 14, 1972)
Click on image for a closer view
Susan Heiligman Frank and her husband Richard Cyril Frank were being closely watched by the FBI for quite some time. The FBI was always putting out feelers for Susan and Richard, trying to find out what they were up to and using whatever means they deemed necessary: field offices and LEGATS, informants, electronic surveillance, you name it. The reason for the FBI’s ongoing interest in the Franks was their former membership in the U.S. communist party, as well as their infatuation with the People’s Republic of China. They were staunch advocates for the Chinese people and seemed to have friends in high places over there.
So imagine my surprise when I found the above memo with some familiar notations.
First, I saw the FD-217 (followed by an NY)
Then, I noticed the 10-2.
Then I saw the Hac.
What’s weird is that these notations were misplaced. They’re in the left margin of the memo instead of the upper righthand corner. I ignored the other notations for the moment and focused on the Hac. There was no question about it. That was a Hac, all right.
I don’t know much about Susan Frank—only what the FBI has written about her, which isn’t very flattering. Nevertheless, I couldn’t see any connection whatsoever with Howard Hughes. She wasn’t his type, to put it mildly. When I saw the Hac, I was bummed. I walked away for a while. I think I poured myself a glass of kombucha. There may have been chips and salsa involved as well.
A few days later, I found another memo.
“Hold on,” said I. “I guess she was his type after all.”
On October 15, 1968, the New York City Field Office had reported that the FBI’s Paris LEGAT had somehow gotten their hands on Susan’s address book when she was visiting the City of Lights. (See what I mean about her being watched constantly? Girlfriend couldn’t even take a nice European vacay without having some Parisian intelligence officer rifling through her purse and stealing her stuff.)
The New York office flagged two names in her address book that they felt J. Edgar Hoover should know about ASAP. One guy was an Iranian national who might be with the KGB. That one didn’t interest me. The name that did interest me was David A. Robinson. And the reason that David A. Robinson interested me was because they added this comment to his entry:
“Above the name of ROBINSON was a notation “HUGHES’ friend…”
Click on image for a closer view
Hughes’ friend? There’s only one Hughes who could have drawn that kind of attention from the FBI at that time. It had to be Howard.
My next question was: who was this David A. Robinson and how did he become friends with Howard Hughes? Howard Hughes didn’t have “friends,” so to speak, at least not then. From the books I’d been reading about Howard Hughes, I’d venture to say that he had zero friends at that point in time. Jean Peters had divorced him by then because she never saw the guy. Even if they happened to be in the same building, which wasn’t often, he wouldn’t let her into his room. He was a recluse, for goodness’ sake. Recluses, as a rule, don’t have friends.
I delved more into David A. Robinson.
David A. Robinson was born in Tianjin, China in 1925. His father, Arthur, had moved to China in 1913 and served as a secretary for the YMCA there for 13 years. In 1926, when David was about 6 months old, Arthur and his family moved back to the United States, but not for long. Three years later, David’s parents both became commissioned missionaries based in China, where the family remained until around 1937.
When Susan Frank met David Robinson, he was living in Wellesley, Massachusetts. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, he was a respected minister with the Boston Theological Institute, working to improve relations with China. One of his key advocacy issues was for China to become part of the United Nations. I understood why David Robinson’s name would turn up in Susan Frank’s address book. What I couldn’t understand was how David Robinson managed to strike up a friendship with Howard Hughes.
I needed to dig a little deeper into David A. Robinson’s family history. With all the talk about China, I needed to develop a better understanding of where David’s roots were. Who did Arthur and the fam visit over the holidays or during family reunions? With whom did David Robinson hang?
Do you know who else grew up in Waterville, Maine? Robert Maheu. Both the Robinsons and Maheus were well-established in Waterville. You could say they were the OGs of the Watervillians.
Don’t get me wrong. David Robinson and Robert Maheu weren’t classmates or anything like that. David had spent a large chunk of his formative years in China and Robert’s and David’s ages don’t match up either. Robert Maheu was born in 1917, so he was 8 years older than David Robinson. Also, when the Robinsons moved back to the states in 1937, they were living in Auburndale, Massachusetts, about three hours from Waterville. Still, both families were well connected in the community. Maheu’s father Ephrem owned a carbonated-beverage bottling company called Elm City Bottling that he operated in a barn behind the local grocery store that he also ran from 1916 until his death in 1954. Ephrem Maheu also dabbled in politics, having served as an alderman for several terms as well as a state legislator for two terms.
As for David Robinson’s grandparents, Increase and Elizabeth Robinson, they were also stalwarts of Waterville. Increase worked as a contractor and builder in town and later as an insurance agent. They were also active in the Congregational Church. After Increase died in 1916, his wife Lizzie left Waterville to live with a daughter. But Arthur maintained a close relationship with Waterville even after his parents were no longer there. A 1906 graduate of Colby College, whose campus is in downtown Waterville, he kept in close contact with his alma mater. He was a big deal in the community, often returning to give talks about his work in China at college commencements and church gatherings. He even collected donations from the citizens of Waterville for famine relief in China. As a young man, Robert Maheu would have been reading about Waterville’s local hero in the newspaper, the Morning Sentinel. Likewise, I’m sure Arthur and David would have stopped into Ephrem’s store, where Robert was known to help out, for an orange soda during one of their visits. After WWII, Robert Maheu and his wife moved back to Waterville for a little while to help her recover from a terrible bout with tuberculosis. Maheu at that time was still with the FBI, and J. Edgar Hoover allowed him to open up an FBI Field Office in Waterville, Maine, of all places.
With Robert Maheu being the extrovert that he was, I’m certain that Robert Maheu knew David A. Robinson and even called him a friend. Likewise, I’m sure David Robinson told Susan Frank about his friendship with Robert Maheu, who, during the 1950s and ‘60s, was the alter-ego of Howard Hughes. That would make the notation in her address book, “Hughes’ friend,” understandable.
I think we’ll stop here for now. If you ever find yourself in Waterville, Maine, be sure to visit Pine Grove Cemetery, where Arthur and his siblings are all buried in the family plot, in addition to Increase and Lizzie. Then make the short trip to Saint Francis Catholic Cemetery, where Robert Maheu, Maheu’s wife Yvette, and Maheu’s parents Ephrem and Christine are buried.
Rev. David Arthur Robinson died on August 13, 2007, in Brooklyn, NY. Unfortunately, I’m unable to determine the location of his remains.
Can we talk a little more about my trip to the National Archives (NARA) this past summer? As you may recall, I’d contacted NARA in June, telling them that I’d be visiting them on the 14th of August in hopes of reviewing the FBI missing person records from a FOIA request I’d submitted back in 2022. The records I’d be reviewing had been transferred from the FBI to NARA in 2017, and they covered missing person cases from 1947 through 1980. My original FOIA request had been to review the full list of records, which totaled 87, but, because I’d been informed that they were experiencing an eight-year backlog, I whittled that number down to 18. Put simply (and kind of morbidly), I wanted to see them before I died, so I scaled back my request.
In my June email, I said that, if they happened to process any more of the missing person records after they’d completed processing my 18, I’d like to see those too. They let me know that they had, and those records would also be set aside for me to review. I was a little taken aback by their response—Why would they keep processing the missing person records after they completed my request?, I wondered—but I took it as good news.
I arrived on August 14, and found that all the records except one—a total of 86—were ready for viewing, with the final 20 having been processed after our conversation in June. Interestingly, it had taken them two years to process my 18 records but only two months to process the last 20. What they handed me was far beyond the scope of my request and way ahead of schedule.
Don’t get me wrong—I was grateful, but I was growing a little suspicious.
“How often does a FOIA rep give a person more than what they’ve asked for?” I asked myself.
“This is NARA we’re talking about,” I answered. “NARA employs helpful people who believe in FOIA.”
I agreed and got to the task of reviewing the digitized records.
I noticed that two different FOIA numbers had been assigned to the missing person case files. Eighteen envelopes had my FOIA number on them, which was RD 67625. The rest of the envelopes were labeled RD 87542, a number that was a lot higher than my FOIA number—by nearly 20,000. I could be wrong about this, but if NARA assigns its FOIA numbers in consecutive order, which seems like a logical thing for them to do, RD 87542 had been submitted 19,917 submissions after mine.
This is my FOIA request numberI’m trying to figure out the origin of this mystery number
I felt intimidated. Who was this RD 87542? I pictured him or her as some erudite-looking NARA regular with interests similar to my own but with vastly superior FOIA skills. Other questions I had were: how did RD 87542 come to be interested in the missing person records too, which were listed in one lonely line item among hundreds of line items on a spreadsheet posted online by Government Attic? When did they submit their request and how did they manage to obtain all (minus one) of the missing person records so quickly in comparison to my measly 18 records? And was this person a local, able to visit NARA whenever they felt like it, or did they agree to spend the $760 to have copies made, which was the quote NARA had given me in 2022 if I requested all the records?
But mostly, I wondered why NARA was working so hard to complete RD 87542’s FOIA request by August 14 when it was just me, and not the erudite regular, who was coming to town to review them?
When I got back home, I sent a follow-up email asking about the record that hadn’t been processed and also if I could have a copy of FOIA request number RD 87542. I knew they’d probably redact the person’s identifying information, but I didn’t care. I wanted to learn whatever I could about that request and its requester.
My contact from NARA asked: “Could you elaborate on what you mean when you ask if you can ‘obtain a copy of FOIA request RD87542’?”
I elaborated and was subsequently told that it wasn’t a FOIA request. Here are her exact words:
“RD 87542 was the number assigned to a proactive review project for Entry UD-15D 33 Classification 79 (Missing Persons) Headquarters Case Files. There was no FOIA request for these records.”
On the missing person envelopes, RD 87542 is explicitly written as a FOIA number, but I didn’t quibble. I was too busy becoming more suspicious. By that point, I was beginning to wonder if the FBI had stepped in, making it possible for me to see all those records in record time. I felt as though they wanted to steer me in a direction other than the one in which I’d been headed with regard to the numbers in the upper righthand corners of Ron’s FBI records. (The 10’s…I’m talking about Ron’s 10’s.) As I’ve discussed in prior posts, I think the FBI has been cherry-picking its records to mislead the public about the meaning of those numbers and they wanted me to see the missing person records in their entirety (minus one) so that I would arrive at the intended erroneous conclusion. Whereas I think the numbers are indicative of a high-level person who received one or more copies of a designated record, I believe they want to make it appear as if the numbers are based on some yawn-worthy alphabetized clerical system that no one should care about. Their personal preference is that everyone should just move on.
I thanked my contact and then reached out to NARA’s operational FOIA office—the office that handles FOIA requests that pertain to how NARA conducts its own business versus the archival records it manages for other agencies. I asked for the internal operational records pertaining to NARA’s “proactive review project” for the FBI’s missing person records.
Specifically, I said, “I’m interested in one or more records that were created when the project was initially assigned by someone in a supervisory role plus any additional related instructions/guidance provided by a supervisor regarding that proactive review project.”
What I really wanted to know was if NARA had initiated this proactive review project because they wanted me to have as many records as possible even after I’d whittled down my request, or did someone else tell them to do it? And if someone told them to do it, who was that person and why were they so interested in my request for missing person records?
My new request regarding the proactive review project was simple and straightforward. Find the person who sent the email or emails instructing NARA staffers to finish processing all of the missing person files, make copies of those emails, and send them to me. If the instructions had come from in-house, then everyone involved is likely in the same building. Any questions that someone might have about my request could be resolved with a walk down the hall. Also, the timeframe wasn’t that long ago so the emails should still be on everyone’s servers. And I wasn’t asking for every email on the subject. I was asking only for the emails that came from one or more supervisors giving instructions or guidance about this particular proactive review project. How hard could that be?
Incidentally, this was a request that someone in charge should have relished. They were being proactive and it was a nice opportunity for them to brag a little.
On September 16, I received an email from NARA telling me that my request fell under one of their “unusual circumstances” categories, which means that they needed more than the requisite 20 business days to respond.
Their reason for the additional time was:
“…we need to search for and collect potentially responsive records from an office separate from our office [emphasis added] which is processing the request,” they wrote.
They also said that they would need “an additional 10 working days from the date of this letter.”
After 12 working days had passed and I received no word, I wrote to them seeking a status update.
Here’s the status update I received today:
“Our estimated time to completion is 58 months from today. This is a conservative estimate, and cases may move more quickly through the queue. If you do not receive a response within this estimated completion time, please contact us again for a status update.”
Hilarious, right? The first person guesstimated 10 additional working days, which ended several days ago, but the second person said, whoops, our bad! See you in 4.83 years, sucker!
Apparently, my simple, straightforward FOIA request has made its way to the complex FOIA queue and I’m number 579 in line.
Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but my guess is that it has to do with the office that’s “separate” from NARA’s FOIA office. Gosh, what office could that possibly be?
I have my suspicions.
***********
ADDENDUM: I’m seeking assistance from the Office of Government Information Services, which is also part of the National Archives, to mediate my FOIA request regarding NARA’s proactive review project. They get a lot of requests, but I figured it was worth a shot. Here’s the email that I sent them today:
In my August 27 post, I made a wild claim about the FBI. I had the gall to accuse them of cherry-picking the records they release to the public to try to mislead us. I knew I was putting myself out on a limb by saying it, but I felt confident, so I said it anyway.
Well…thanks to you, my insightful readers, I’ve had an epiphany on this topic, which provides us with more supporting evidence that the FBI has been misleading the public for a long time with regard to its record releases.
I know that many of you are busy watching football tonight, so I’ll try to keep this brief. Also, while we may be rooting for different teams, I like to think that there’s one individual who unites us all, win or lose, through thick or thin, whether we beat the spread or fall short.
And that is Kirk Herbstreit’s dog, Peter. 🐕 ❤️
OK, let’s get down to it. There’s no other way to do this than a Q&A.
When you say the FBI has been cherry-picking, are you talking about more than just Ron Tammen’s records?
I am. This is more than Ron’s records. I’m now talking about all, or at least most, of the records the FBI has released to the public—JFK, RFK, MLK, Watergate, etc., etc., etc., and so on, and so forth.
The reason that I think they’re cherry-picking their records is that they don’t want the public to figure out what the numbers in the upper righthand corners mean.
How are they cherry-picking their records?
They want us to think that the numbers in the upper righthand corner represent some sort of alphabetical grouping based on the subject of the document. According to their made-up system, names beginning with an A are given a 1; some names beginning with B get a 1, while others get a 2. Some Cs get a 2, while others, along with the Ds and Es, get a 3. At the opposite end, some of the S’s, all of the T’s, and all of the U’s get a 10. The V’s are a virtual free-for-all—I’ll be showing you why later. The W’s through Z’s get an 11. It would be an insane system with no discernible purpose, which is why I don’t believe they used it.
When I say they cherry-picked, I’m saying that they tried to make it appear as if it was an alphabetical system by only releasing the records of subjects from a certain part of the alphabet for each number while holding back the records for subjects representing the rest of the alphabet. They’re making it look like it’s an alphabetical system in order to hide the true meaning behind the numbers.
Why would they care if we found out about the true meaning of the numbers?
My hypothesis is that the numbers refer to important people who received one or more copies of that record. In previous posts, I’ve suggested that they’re the FBI liaisons to various federal agencies, but I’m not married to that idea. They could be other categories of people. The only qualifying factor is that they occupy an important office somewhere—be it inside or outside the FBI—and the FBI felt that they should be kept in the loop. But I don’t think the FBI wants us to know who was privy to their records. It might open up a can of worms or something.
So while I may not understand the specifics of why they’re doing it, I do have additional evidence that they’re doing it, thanks to my recent epiphany.
You said that your readers helped you arrive at your epiphany. Who exactly are you referring to?
I hope I don’t embarrass anyone, but I’m referring to comments made by two readers. The first comment was made by someone who goes by the username Whereaboutsstillunknown. Shortly after I uploaded my August 27 post—and I’m talking maybe within 15 minutes—this person made an observation that completely upended the way I saw things. Then, a second commenter whose username is a long string of numbers and letters told me about the existence of a document that discusses FBI indexing, which I was able to find online. When I considered Whereabouts’ observation alongside the information in number-guy’s document while reviewing the original FBI missing person records—namely, the ones that are in color—it finally dawned on me who was writing the numbers in the righthand corner. All of the sudden, everything made sense.
Who was writing the numbers in the righthand corner?
Don’t you want to know what Whereabouts said in his or her comment first?
OK. What was Whereabouts’ comment?
It had to do with a scribbled notation I’d found on several missing person records: “o’d on yellow.” I thought the “o” represented an o, as in the letter o, and I thought it might have stood for the word “office” or “official.” That’s just how my brain works—it sees an o, it thinks of the vowel that comes after a, e, and i and precedes u, and that’s pretty much all it thinks of. I knew that the word yellow referred to a Message Relay sheet, which was a routing cover sheet printed on yellow paper that included a list of federal agencies with neighboring boxes to check. The FBI used them when they wanted to send copies of certain records to one or more other federal agencies. In my theory, there was no reason to write anything on those sheets other than its recipients. Also in my theory, “o’d on yellow” meant that they’d written a number in the upper righthand corner of a Message Relay sheet to represent an office or official who’d been cc’d.
As a corroborating example, I’d pointed out a different notation that said “7 circled on yellow.” They were explicitly saying that they’d written the number 7 on a Message Relay sheet and circled it. In my theory, adding a number to the top right corner of a Message Relay sheet confirmed that a person represented by the number 7 received a copy.
In my closer, to get reader input, I asked for other suggestions of what the o might have stood for.
Shortly after I hit the “post” button, Whereabouts asked this amazing question:
“…since someone had written ‘circled on yellow,’ my initial guess is that those might be drawn circles and not o’s?”
That’s brilliant, thought I. Seriously, seriously brilliant.
“That’s a great guess!”, I stated in an understated way.
Still, I had questions. Notations on other Message Relay sheets, whenever I was lucky enough to find one, didn’t seem to fit the “number circled on yellow” scenario. Namely, I wasn’t seeing any circled numbers on Message Relay sheets. I’d found an “o’d 2” on Lady Bird Johnson’s Message Relay and a few “op2” on other people’s Message Relays. Then I read the detailed document about how the indexing system worked plus a few other helpful documents and the fog lifted.
What did you learn when you put everything together?
I learned how important the Files and Communications Division was in the grand scheme of FBI operations. The Files and Communications Division, which was later renamed the Records Management Division, took in all mail, no matter the source, and routed it to the most appropriate recipient(s) while saving copies in its enormous Central Records filing system. Files and Communications were the eyes, ears, noses, and tastebuds of the FBI—the ones who, after being presented with totally new information, determined who all needed to see it.
Seriously, try to imagine all of the mail that FBI Headquarters receives in a day covering a range of wildly different topics. A college student from Cleveland goes missing from his dorm; several men are caught in the wee hours at DNC headquarters, one of whom used to work for the FBI and CIA; a wiretap is found in Dan Rowan’s Las Vegas hotel room; a U.S. president has been assassinated in Dallas. Who should they forward it to? Who needs to know?
In addition, Files and Communications staff were the ones who typed the index cards that made up the General Index—the colossal indexing system (at one time totaling 65 million cards!) that was the starting point when an agent wanted to access a particular case file. They were also the people who assigned a classification number and case number to every single FBI case, which also numbered in the millions. Not only were they the eyes, ears, noses, and tastebuds of the FBI, I guess you could say they were the prefrontal cortex too.
Most significantly to you and me, they were the people who wrote on the FBI records in blue pencil.
Are you saying that they were the ones who wrote the numbers in the upper righthand corner?
Indeed, I am. I’m also saying that they likely wrote the other phrases that were typically found in blue on an original FBI record, including “see index,” “FD-217,” and “o’d on yellow.”
What was with those ridiculous little circles?
Please don’t disparage the little circles. Those little circles had purpose. They were what helped me figure everything out.
One of the first things a Files and Communications employee would do when they were handed a piece of mail was to locate the name or names that would require an index card. Sometimes the index card had already been made, such as for longstanding ruffians Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante. Other times they’d need to create a new one. It didn’t matter. On every incoming piece of mail, the Files and Communications folks would always, always, always draw a circle in front of the person’s last name (if we’re talking about a person) or another important reference word. And those circles were always, always, always written in blue.
You know what else was always written in blue? The classification and case numbers.
What about the notes written in blue? How and why would the Files and Communications Division write those notes?
Keep in mind that the Files and Communications Division was massive. One unit was doing the indexing, another unit doing the classifying, another assigning case numbers, another assigning the serial numbers at the end of case numbers, and so on. (I’m not saying that the jobs were exhilarating. I’m just saying that there was a lot to be done.) You also had a unit doing routing. Separate from all of that, another unit was conducting background checks for other federal agencies. Plus you had unit supervisors, section supervisors and, ultimately, a division head.
Here’s a nice flow chart to help you picture the operation. (As far as I can tell, it was called the Records Branch before it was Files and Communications.)
Click on image for a closer view
If, as I believe, the Files and Communications Division was writing the additional notes in blue, that would explain:
The numbers in the righthand corner – someone high up in routing might add one or more numbers from 1 through 11 to indicate the important people or office who should receive a copy of the record. Sometimes they’d follow the number with a hyphen and the number 1 or 2 to indicate how many copies they should receive.
See index – Someone high up would write this on some records to notify the agent assigned to the case that the subject was on the Security Index.
FD-217 – When a field office didn’t know the case number, they’d include this form with their report, which, I believe, also provided information about what number to put in the upper righthand corner. Someone high up in routing would sometimes reference the FD-217 form when they added the number in the upper right.
o’d on yellow – This one is a little trickier.
How is “o’d on yellow” trickier? And what about the unresolved issue you had with the phrase “o’d on yellow” when there weren’t any numbers circled on Message Relay sheets?
Wow. You really do love frolicking in the weeds, don’t you? OK, so my unresolved issue had to do with the Message Relay sheets that said “o’d 2” or “op2” but that didn’t have any numbers circled. As it turns out, those notations weren’t referring to the numbers in the upper righthand corner. They were in reference to the circle placed in front of a last name, which happened to be on page 2 of the record that was being relayed.
Remember Lady Bird Johnson’s o’d 2 from my blog post? On page 2 of that transmission, they’d placed a circle in front of the name Johnson, probably in blue, but, unfortunately, I don’t have the original so I can’t confirm that. Likewise, the op2 people also had circles in front of their last names on page 2, also probably in blue. (The p stands for page.)
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
Here’s the op2 for Sam Giancana:
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
As for the “o’d on yellow” folks, the Files and Communications Division would sometimes write the subject’s name on the Message Relay sheet and add the circle in front of the person’s last name. That’s what I believe they’d done in several designated missing person files. (Unfortunately, they neglected to include the Message Relay sheets in their files so I can’t confirm.) Nevertheless, here’s an example of our old friend James McCord’s Message Relay with the circle in front of his last name:
Click on image for a closer view
The take-home here is that “o’d on yellow” referred to the circles in front of last names corresponding to the alphabetized index cards in the General Index. Those were different from the “7 circled on yellow” example, which I believe was referring to a 7 that had been written in the righthand corner of a Message Relay sheet. In both examples, the notation for circle was the same, but the reason for the circles differed.
OK, enough shop talk. Let’s talk about the most important reason for this blog post.
What about the additional evidence you have that the numbers refer to actual people and that the FBI has been cherry-picking the records it releases to the public?
First and foremost, if the Files and Communications Division was responsible for the numbers in the upper righthand corner, there’s no way that those numbers had anything to do with some internal, arbitrarily subdivided alphabetical system that would benefit no one. Those staff members were working too hard at maintaining the General Index system, which was 100 percent alphabetical, as well as the case filing system, which was purely numerical. An FBI staffer would look up a name in the General Index, which supplied them with one or more case numbers in the Central Records System, prefaced by its classification group, which was also numerical. It was a perfectly logical system and the Files and Communications Division was married to it. There was no reason for them to add arbitrarily subdivided categories within a classification group to the betterment of no one.
OK, so hear me out. What if there was some internal operational reason for the numbers? For example, what if they were written to help the people who were responsible for filing the records in the Central Records System? You’ve said yourself that it was a huge filing system. What if those numbers referred to room numbers to help them know where to go?
That’s sweet. But there’s no way they would do that. Files and Communications staff would draw the circles, they’d write the classification and case numbers, and they’d write the special notes, all of which were helpful to the agents reading the records. And let’s focus solely on the Message Relay sheets. The recipients represented the White House, the CIA, the Attorney General’s office, and the like. There’s no way that someone from the Files and Communications staff would write helpful little notes to their colleagues who filed the records, and, what’s more, to do so only on occasion, if they were feeling big-hearted. It was the filers’ job to know where to go.
Do you have other evidence thatthe numbers refer to actual people and that the FBI has been cherry-picking the records it releases to the public?
Absolutely. Just for fun, I created an Excel sheet of all of the missing person records I recently obtained from the National Archives. Next to each person’s name, I placed the number or numbers that were in the upper righthand corners in their own box or cell. Then I added other well-known subjects to the list—such as Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante—with their respective numbered boxes to find out if anyone fell outside of the made-up, arbitrarily subdivided system.
Granted, there weren’t a ton of people who fell outside. I imagine someone’s job was (and maybe still is?) to pull only the records that match the arbitrarily subdivided system, and they’ve gotten good at it. Thankfully, nobody’s perfect and everyone can have an off day now and again. Listed below is a sampling of the more well-known people and organizations who have one or more records that fall outside of the FBI’s made-up system.
For your assistance, I included a circle in front of the names that had been indexed. Also, note that I believe the numbers after the hyphens are the numbers of copies that the designated official received. A 3-1 versus a 3-2 tells me that official 3 received 1 copy in the first example and two copies in the second. If only the number is listed or a number plus a hyphen, I believe they received 1 copy.
Bella oAbzug
Should have had a 1, but was assigned a 3-1 instead.
Click on image for a closer view
Spiro oAgnew
Should have had a 1, but received a 10 instead after a possible assassination attempt.
Click on image for a closer view
Princess oDiana and Prince oCharles
Although the 2-2 and 3-2 would fit the made-up system for Charles’ and Diana’s names, their Message Relay sheet, which preceded a report for a potential bomb plot, had an added 10-2 as well.
Click on image for a closer view
oCentral Intelligence Agency’s Intentions to Send Hoodlums to Cuba to Assassinate Castro
Should have had a 2 but was given an 8- instead.
Click on image for a closer view
Judith oCoplon, Soviet spy and DOJ employee
Should have had a 3, but got a 7-1 instead.
Click on image for a closer view
John oDenver
Was given a 10-2 and 11-2 in addition to his 3-2 for threats against his life
Click on image for a closer view
Meyer oLansky
Should have had 6’s, but received a 9 on two records and a 10-, and 11 on one.
Click on image for a closer view
Carlos oMarcello
Should have received 7’s but received 8’s on two records.
Click on image for a closer view; because this page is an original, you can see that the 8 is written in blue pencil
Santo oTrafficante
Should have received a 10 but got a 9 instead.
Click on image for a closer view
Werner oVon Braun
Should have received an 11, but received on several records: 2-1; 3-1; 4; 7 and 7-1; 8; 9, 9-, and 9-1’s; and, OK, a couple 11s and an 11-1. (This is what I mean when I say that the only V example I have is a free-for-all.)Here are a few examples:
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
Illinois Governor Dan oWalker
Should have received an 11, but got a 2 instead.
Click on image for a closer view
I also need to tell you about one interesting missing person document.
What’s that?
This was a tragic case involving a 13-year-old African-American girl named Dorothy Sampson. Dorothy had gone missing in Fayette, Mississippi, on December 8, 1970, after running an errand for her neighbor. She was subsequently found in an oil field on Christmas day of that same year, sexually assaulted and murdered. The story is too grim to include here, however the reason I bring it up is that civil rights leader Charles Evers, the mayor of Fayette and older brother to famed civil rights leader Medgar Evers (who was assassinated on June 12, 1963), had been implicated by informants as having been involved in the murder. Although Charles was no angel, I don’t believe it for one minute. He was never charged. The racism in this case was off the charts, and Dorothy’s file makes me sick to my stomach.
What I want to share with you is a record dated 9/13/72. You can see the circle in front of the name oSampson. You can also see a circle in front of a name that has been redacted, which I believe to be Evers. There are two blue numbers in the upper righthand corner—a 6 and a 9. Because Dorothy’s last name is at the front end of the S’s, her 9 is consistent with the FBI’s made-up system, even though later S’s received 10’s. (See what I mean about their arbitrary subdivisions?) But Charles Evers should have gotten a 3, not a 6. Now look more closely at those numbers in the righthand corner. Can you see where the numbers 3-1, 10-1, 11-1, and 5-1 were once there, but were subsequently erased? The 10, 11, and 5 don’t fit the FBI’s made-up system. Other writing was erased too.
Click on image for a closer view; note that, because these are originals, the numbers are written in blue pencil
Now look at the bottom of the page, under LEADS, written in regular pencil. It reads (to the best that I can tell): “No dissemination to White House as no pertinent info developed on Evers.”
Did someone overrule several of the numbers in the righthand corner and is that why some of them were erased? Does that notation confirm that the numbers are in reference to the FBI’s secret dissemination list? Could one of the erased numbers be in reference to the White House? I could be wrong due to the placement of the note on the record and the fact that a similar note had been written on several other records, but I thought I should let you know.
OK, I think I’ve said enough today. Have a great weekend, and, as always, if you spot anything I’ve missed, please feel free to weigh in!
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that, after I learned that the notation “366 m hau” wasn’t in reference to Robert Maheu that I’d probably given up on a Robert Maheu connection to Ron Tammen altogether. But that’s not the case.
I have absolutely, 100%, not given up on a Maheu connection. The reason is that I continue to believe that Ron’s “Hac” notations could be in reference to Howard Hughes. HAC was a commonly used acronym for the Hughes Aircraft Company, which, according to Larry DuBois and Laurence Gonzales in their explosive 1976 Playboy article, had a cozy relationship with the CIA. My theory is that Hac was FBI shorthand for Howard Hughes. Supporting evidence is that Hac is also found on at least two of Hank Greenspun’s FBI records as well as one record for the New England chapter of the Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA). Hank Greenspun was friends with Howard Hughes as well as Robert Maheu, Howard’s long-time public-facing representative after Hughes began living life as a recluse. The CNVA was opposed to underground nuclear testing, an issue that Hughes also felt passionate about, especially if the testing was conducted near Las Vegas. I think it’s entirely feasible that Hughes supported them financially.
If I’m correct that Hac stands for Howard Hughes, then Robert Maheu knew Ron Tammen.
And so…remember when I discussed the possibility that a man with phone-tampering skills who went by the alias J.W. Harrison and who worked for Robert Maheu just might have been our Ron? I haven’t given up on that possibility either. In that post, I showed a handwriting sample of Harrison’s and suggested that, at some point, we might want to hire a forensic document examiner to compare his writing to Ron’s signature. I then wondered if it would be possible to obtain at least two other writing samples of Ron’s that were lengthier than just his signature.
Well, guess what, Good Man readers. Our dear friend Grace, Ron Tammen’s date to his senior prom, has kindly provided those samples to us. Better yet, she provided, not two, but three samples.
Here they are:
From the 1950 Maple Leaf yearbook; Ron was a junior and Grace was a freshman.From the 1951 Maple Leaf yearbook. Ron was a senior and Grace was a sophomore.Also from the 1951 Maple Leaf, where Ron also signed his picture: “My best wishes always, Grace. Ronald Tammen”
Are those great, or what?
Now, for your comparison, here’s the hotel registration written by J.W. Harrison in October 1960, nine years after Ron Tammen signed Grace’s sophomore yearbook.
Click on image for a closer view
Look, I’m no expert, and I definitely see differences. But nine years is a long time, and our handwriting does change over the years. I used to be so careful with my own handwriting, and now I can’t read it.
For me, I can see two similarities: the balloon-like initial J compared to Ron’s R, and the curlicue in the front of the F in San Francisco.
Ron made curlicues too. You can see a big one at the front of “My” over Ron’s picture above. You can see other attempted curlicues in the front of the T in Tammen in the signatures below, which were written in other people’s 1950 and 1951 yearbooks.
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
In my post on J.W. Harrison, I said that it probably wasn’t Ron, but it’s still a question worth asking. Right now, I need to save my pennies, but when the time is right, I’ll definitely be hiring a specialist to give us the final word.
In the meantime, happy Labor Day and thank you to all of America’s workers.
***********
Addendum: Just for fun, I’ve made a comparison of some of the similarities between Ron Tammen’s and J.W. Harrison’s handwriting. Obviously, there are differences. For example, Harrison sometimes switched from conventional cursive letters to a printing style (see his r’s in Harrison and the S in St.). As I’ve mentioned, I will be hiring an expert to review everything at a later date.
I need to tell you about my recent visit to the National Archives (aka NARA), the one in College Park, Maryland. The reason for my visit was to review old missing person files that the FBI had transferred to them in 2014 and that I’d found out about thanks to the good folks at The Government Attic. I’d requested the records through a FOIA request I submitted in June 2022. In November 2022, someone from NARA wrote the following to me:
“The estimated total page count for your request is approximately 950 pages. Requests between 701 and 3,000 pages are assigned to our second-tier processing queue. To give you an indication of our existing second-tier backlog, we are currently processing requests received in February 2014.
Once we notify you that processing is complete, you may either visit our College Park, MD facility to view the file at no cost, or order a reproduction. Our current fee for reproductions is 80 cents per page, so we estimate the total cost will be $760.00.”
Waiting out an 8-year backlog for the pleasure of forking over $760 seemed a little much to me. Also, College Park is about 350 miles away, so it’s not exactly a day trip.
The other possibility they suggested was to narrow my request, which I did. I asked to see 18 of the files that I chose somewhat randomly from their list of 87 names I’d never heard of. Two years later, in August 2024, they informed me that my files were ready. Just about two years after that, in June 2026, I told them I was planning a visit to College Park in August. I asked them if I could see the 18 files I’d originally requested and then, on a whim, I said that if they happened to process any more of the 87 files on the list, I’d like to see those too.
I was in luck, they responded. They’d processed more of the files. Great, said I. See you in August.
And see them, I did. When I showed up to NARA’s Textual Records reading room, an archivist handed me a box that held two CDs. The CDs contained 86 of the 87 files of the FBI’s missing person cases from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. For the amazingly low price of $5.00, another NARA archivist handed me a thumb drive upon which I could transfer copies of all those cases, which I did.
I suppose for one fleeting moment I wondered why they’d made me drive all the way to College Park to view records that had been digitized and could have been mailed to me on CDs that would’ve cost far less than $760, but I didn’t really care. I was there now, and what I was looking at on the computer screen made everything worth it. I was now able to compare Ron’s missing person records with a larger sample of people who were also missing during roughly the same period. I could get a sense of which markings were typical, run-of-the-mill missing person markings and which were truly special. I could finally see if Ron’s 10’s and Hacs and underlined lf’s and 366 m hau’s and all the other scribbles I’ve written about over the years held any meaning whatsoever.
Today’s post will be in show-and-tell format. I’ll be sharing several things I learned about Ron’s case after my trip and offering examples from the missing person files that led me to those conclusions.
Also, as I mentioned in the headline, I’ll be providing evidence that the FBI is attempting to mislead us about the meaning of a certain set of marks in the upper righthand corners of people’s FBI records, including Ron’s. (Spoiler alert: I’m talking about the 10’s…they’re attempting to mislead us about the meaning of Ron’s 10’s.) They’re doing this through a common deceptive practice known as cherry-picking and, I kid you not, I believe that I have the FBI to thank for ensuring that I received almost the entire batch of available missing person records (sans one) so that I’d arrive at the conclusion they wanted me to arrive at. Happily, I’m onto them big time and I have hard evidence that shows everyone what they’ve been up to. So hang on to your Stetsons, cowboys and cowgirls, as we catch the FBI red-handed in some rip-snortin’ cherry-pickin’ trickery. You’ll see what I mean soon.
Let’s go!
Discovery #1: I don’t think that 366 m hau is in reference to Robert Maheu after all.
This discovery has taken me well over a week to come to terms with. I’d been so sure that we had this mini-mystery all figured out…that 366 m hau was the same person as LV 366-PC and that person was Robert Maheu, right-hand man to Howard Hughes. But there, staring at me from a September 13, 1972, missing person report was the phrase “366 m hau.” The report concerned a missing woman from Culpeper, VA. It had nothing to do with Las Vegas. I doubt that she knew Howard Hughes, Ash Resnick, or Ronald Tammen either. Therefore, I don’t believe it pertains to an informant broadly or to Robert Maheu specifically, which sucks bigly.
But it does provide some information. Below the 366 m hau, in the same handwriting, are the words “Crim & Dead.” Above it, also in the same handwriting is…I can’t tell. It looks like a 9 with a t and something else, probably someone’s initials. Also, it’s written in regular, graphite-colored pencil, which I believe indicates that it was written by someone in the Identification Division. (That’s versus the blue, red, and green pencil markings I’ve seen on other original FBI records.) As for what “Crim and Dead” stands for, it means “Criminal and Dead,” because I saw that exact phrase written on another person’s missing person record. As I was trying to figure out what that phrase could mean, I discovered that, from roughly 1971 to 1994, there was a Deceased Criminal Identification Files list, which was housed in the Identification Division. The people who were on the list were ostensibly known criminals who were now deceased. Maybe they were referring to that list. Or maybe 366 m hau had checked two lists: the criminals and the dead criminals. The missing woman was deemed a fugitive in three states, so that would warrant the “criminal” description. I don’t know when she died. Also, the Deceased Criminal Identification Files list is available on Ancestry.com, and she isn’t on it. I’m not printing her name because her two daughters appear to be living.
So, bummer-and-a-drag, 366 m hau wasn’t Robert Maheu. But as I mentioned in a recent Facebook post, it doesn’t mean that Robert Maheu didn’t know Ron Tammen. We still have the Hac scribbles on Ron’s pages, which match Robert Maheu’s good friend Hank Greenspun’s Hacs and which did not appear on the 86 missing person files I reviewed. It’s still my theory that Hac refers to the Hughes Aircraft Company, which was a front for the CIA, and might have served as a cover for Ron. The letters Hac could have been FBI shorthand for Howard Hughes, which absolutely would still involve his alter-ego Robert Maheu. We just don’t have a direct reference to Maheu on Ron’s records. It’s OK. It was a fun theory, but I’ve moved on.
Discovery #2: The FBI continued sending form letters with check boxes to families of missing persons after J. Edgar Hoover died. For some reason, they stopped sending them to the Tammens.
Every few years after Ron disappeared, the FBI would send a form letter to Mr. and Mrs. Tammen asking if Ron was still missing (check this box) or if he’d been located or his location was no longer desired (check this box instead). The Tammens would dutifully check that he was still missing and send the form back. Mr. Tammen continued doing so after Mrs. Tammen died in 1964. But you know what? The last form letter received by Mr. Tammen was in October 1970. In 1972, at roughly the time when the Tammens were due to receive another letter, J. Edgar Hoover died and the form letters stopped arriving.
I’d wondered if that was just a Hoover practice, and once Hoover had died, the practice was discontinued. But I now know that, even after Hoover died, Acting Director L. Patrick Gray continued sending the same families their form letters, and then Director Clarence Kelley picked up the baton after that. Nevertheless, Mr. Tammen had stopped receiving his form letters about Ron. If I could pinpoint the date that the FBI’s Identification Division stopped caring about Ron’s case, I’d guess it was June 5, 1973, when Ron’s missing person records were “removed from Ident files.” This was shortly after the Cincinnati Field Office had fingerprinted the guy from Welco Industries and sent those fingerprints to Headquarters to run a comparison to Ron’s prints. Something that the FBI had discovered about Ron’s case as they were tracking things down led them to remove Mr. Tammen from the rotation.
Hmmm…what could it be? I wonder.
Sir Edward Massengill
J. Edgar Hoover checks on the whereabouts of missing person Sir Edward Massengill.L. Patrick Gray checks on Massengill’s whereabouts after Hoover has died.
David M. Smart
David Smart went missing in August 1971, which preceded Hoover’s death. Although there isn’t a form letter from Hoover in Smart’s file, we see that L. Patrick Gray sent one to the FBI’s field office in Birmingham in 1973.Clarence Kelley continued checking in on Smart’s whereabouts in 1976.
Discovery #3: A bunch of missing people had ‘see index’ written on their FBI records; likewise, many files were stored in the Missing Person File Room.
I’ve been learning that the people who went missing weren’t perfect angels. They had stories. Some had committed crimes. Many of them probably had good reasons for running away. So I guess it wasn’t too surprising to find that a lot of them had their files stored in the Missing Person File Room, room #1126 of the Identification Building, just like Ron did. I mean, if the FBI sees fit to set aside a special room for the NSFW missing person files, which is my guess regarding its purpose, there are going to be occupants. Still, not all of the missing people had their files stored there. Something was keeping these files apart from the others.
As for the people with the phrase “see index” scribbled on one or more of their records, if I’m right that it refers to the Security Index, then the FBI did add missing people to the Security Index even if they didn’t know their whereabouts. So I was wrong about that. Also, you might think that if you’re going to have “see index” written on your records, your file is probably going to wind up in the Missing Person File Room, but that’s not the case. There were “see index” people who weren’t in the Missing Person File Room and there were people in the Missing Person File Room who didn’t have “see index” written anywhere. Ron had both. Whether they knew Ron’s whereabouts when they wrote down that phrase on page one of his records, I can’t say. But by June 5, 1973, I think they had a pretty good idea.
Discovery #4: The 10’s on Ron’s records continue to be significant. Maybe they’re even more significant than I realized.
I have a story to share. There I was, reading through the missing person files and organizing them on a spreadsheet of sorts by last name. Next to each person’s last name, I’d type in a few notes, such as whether the person’s file was in the Missing Person File Room, whether the phrase “see index” was written somewhere, plus a few others, including what the number was in the upper righthand corner of their record.
It wasn’t long before I noticed a pattern emerging regarding those numbers. The people who had last names beginning with an A or B had a 1 in their righthand corner; people who had a last name beginning with a C or D had a 2 in their corner; and so on all the way to the S’s and T’s, which had 10’s. The three people whose names started with a W had an 11. There were outliers, but the pattern was undeniable.
What…the bloody…hell, thought I, as my entire world began to implode. I think I became light-headed. Ron’s 10’s are central to my theory that he was living a life of danger for the CIA. The other cases in which I found 10’s described some remarkable circumstances as well.
But if Ron’s 10’s are there simply because his last name starts with a T, then I’m officially done here. Game over. I’ll take down my blog site, remove myself from society, and live my life in solemn quietude. Maybe I’ll get another cat…or 10. I can think of several people out there who’d be overjoyed with this development. In all seriousness, this may have been the closest I’ve come to a full-on existential crisis.
As many of you know, my theory has been that those numbers refer to an official within the FBI who received a copy of the record. Sometimes the numbers are followed by a dash followed by a 1 or 2 or sometimes an even higher number, indicating how many copies they received. I also posited that the official was the FBI’s liaison to a federal agency and that Ron’s 10’s were in reference to the FBI’s liaison to the Secret Service. To be honest, I wasn’t as sure about what agencies they represented—maybe they represented outside agencies or maybe they represented certain offices within the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI—but I was certain that the number in the righthand corner represented a person. And now this.
But…but…but…(thought I)…it didn’t make any sense for them to alphabetize names within a classification group. It doesn’t follow FBI protocol. FBI protocol at that time was simple and straightforward. First, they checked the general index, which consisted of thousands, and probably hundreds of thousands, of index cards organized alphabetically by people’s names and other identifiers, all meticulously cross-referenced. The index card would then provide the appropriate case number (or numbers) for that person, with the first part of the case number being the classification group, which for missing persons is the number 79. The FBI staffer would then stroll over to where the case files were housed, find the 79 classification group, and pull out the respective file. Ron’s number was 79-31966. Richard Cox’s number was 79-23729. Ronnie York’s was 79-32021. Anna Marie Altmeier’s was 79-31499. And so on. (Oh, I know, I know. What about the Missing Person File Room? I’m thinking that the index card likely mentioned if the file was in there instead, where they’d also be filed by their case numbers. No biggie.) Nowhere have I read that the FBI grouped files alphabetically within a classification group. And think about it: A case file is much easier to locate by its case number than by having to also know some sort of alphabetized section number assigned to it and written in the upper righthand corners of some, but not all, of that person’s records. And what if there were two or more numbers, which sometimes occurred? Does that mean that copies were made so that the files would be in multiple places within the classification group? That would be insane.
So what’s a girl do when she’s presented with this kind of life-altering, book-project-killing information? I’ll tell you what she does. She pours herself a glass of passion fruit kombucha and continues reading the missing person records while taking notes.
Here’s what she found.
The dashes, 1’s, and 2’s
Many of the numbers had dashes followed by 1’s and 2’s too. Why would they have those additional numbers if they were organized alphabetically within the classification group, which, again, would be insane?
Here are two examples of outliers in which multiple numbers are listed. In the Sampson example, according to my theory, FBI reps #3 and #9 received 1 copy of the record, and reps #1 and #9 received two copies of the enclosures.
KhalisSampson
The FD-217’s
Several of the missing person records have the notation “FD-217” scribbled near their number. As you may recall, many of the non-missing-person records also have the FD-217 notation near their number, as if that notation was the reason for that particular number being assigned.
To recap from a while ago, the FD-217 was an FBI form titled “Notification of Bureau File Number,” which, to the best of my knowledge, was generally submitted by field offices along with a report if they didn’t know the person’s case number. I think it provides more interesting information than that though, since I can’t get my hands on one, not even one that’s blank. The FBI claims that they can’t find it, even though I pointed them to a page number in the FBI Form Book’s Table of Contents.
Someone’s initials are usually written near the number and FD-217 notation, as if they’re saying “I checked the FD-217 and it provided this number.” If the numbers were merely some sort of alphabetical shorthand (e.g., 1= A-B, 2=C-D, etc.), they wouldn’t need to check the FD-217. They could just hang an alphabet chart on a wall somewhere.
The blue pencil
Unlike other missing person records I’ve seen over the years, including Ron’s, these missing person records are originals, which is especially helpful, because I can see what colors the notations are written in. Consistently, the number in the upper righthand corner is written in blue pencil, just like the phrase “see index,” FD-217 (usually, except for the one on pink above), and the accompanying initials. For some time, I’ve believed the blue pencil indicates that it was written by someone in Domestic Intelligence, Division 5, because of the notations, with “see index” being the biggest giveaway. I continue to feel that way.
The yellow sheet
If I were a practitioner of inverted-pyramid journalism versus my usual preference of romping through the weeds on my way to completing a full circle or, if the situation calls for it, a 3-D rhombus, I would’ve led with this next finding. It’s a big deal.
Sometimes, I noticed the phrase “o’d on yellow” or “o’ed on yellow,” also in blue pencil, in the top right of a page that had no number. It was as if the phrase was written in lieu of the number. I had no idea what the phrase meant, but I typed it into my quasi spreadsheet anyway.
Here are 6 examples. The writing is sometimes small and light, but it’s always in blue in the upper right.
Then I read the missing person records associated with Edward Theodore Myers, who, in 1954, at the age of 50, had been missing for about 10 years when his mother wrote to the FBI. At the top of the page on which her letter was affixed, on both sides, someone wrote “7 circled on yellow.”
“What’s with all the yellow?” I wondered.
I soon learned that the word yellow was referring to the preprinted “Message Relay” cover sheet, which is yellow in color. When the FBI passed along information about a missing person case to a senator, the attorney general, or another important person or agency all the way up to the White House, they’d use the Message Relay cover sheet. It had two purposes: to specify the officials on the distribution list and to hide from casual view the contents of the document being transferred. The fact that someone wrote the number 7 on a Message Relay cover sheet for Edward Theodore Myers tells us that whoever 7 is, they were on the distribution list and they should get a copy too.
As for what the “o” in “o’d” or “o’ed” stands for, I wish I could tell you. Maybe it stands for “office” or maybe “official.” As bizarre as it sounds, maybe it was FBI lingo to write that they’d “o’d on yellow” if they’d written the office’s or official’s designated number on the Message Relay sheet. As further confirmation that the numbers in the top right corner correspond to the numbers written on a Message Relay sheet, I found a Message Relay sheet for Lady Bird Johnson in which the phrase “o’d 2” is written in the top right.
It appears that an agency official with the 2 designation had been kept in the loop about Lady Bird Johnson, whose name, I feel the need to point out, doesn’t start with a C or a D. I also have located non-missing-person examples in which the number on a Message Relay sheet matches the numbers assigned to the regular FBI records. In short, the numbers in the upper righthand corner correspond with the numbers on Message Relay sheets, and none of them have anything to do with where a person’s name falls in the alphabet.
Incidentally, this is also evidence that the FBI didn’t save all of its missing person records. Even though they wrote “o’d on yellow” on someone’s records, they didn’t bother to save a copy of the Message Relay sheets for the missing person files. “TMI,” they likely thought.
The file envelopes
For additional corroboration, let’s talk again about FBI protocol. When an FBI staffer pulled someone’s file, the individual records were stored in a manila envelope. Stamped on the envelope on the righthand side was the case file number, because, as we’ve discussed, that’s how the files were organized. Nowhere on the outer envelope is a number ranging from 1 to 11 that corresponds to the numbers written in blue pencil in the top righthand corner of some of the pages of a person’s records—numbers that the FBI would have us believe represents some sort of secondary alphabetized system. Those numbers aren’t on the envelopes because, again, that would be insane.
To conclude this section, the above examples confirm that the numbers in the upper righthand corner hold meaning, Ron’s 10’s continue to be significant, and I don’t need to go dig a hole in which to live out my days.
I’d mentioned earlier that I found some 10’s in the missing person records as well. As with Ron’s 10’s, not all are clear as to why they earned them, but here are several that do seem a little more self-explanatory and far juicier than the other, lower-numbered records:
David Smart, aerospace engineer for NASA who disappeared on his way to work
Roger Alan Smith, a Marine who’d just completed training in counterintelligence and was being sought by Naval Intelligence
Andrew J. Tyler, a college student in the Air Force ROTC who had participated in marches against the Vietnam War
Discovery #5: I now believe that the FBI is actively attempting to mislead us
Here’s the question that’s on most of our minds: Why does it appear as if the numbers from 1 to 11 on the missing person records are based on the alphabet? Answer: the FBI cherry-picked the records. When the FBI released the missing person records to NARA in 2014, I strongly believe that they chose records to make it appear as if the numbers were alphabetically based. To represent the 1’s, they chose people with 1’s on their records whose last names started with A’s and B’s—and only those people. For the 2’s, they chose people with 2’s on their records whose last names started with C’s and D’s, and so on. As a result, I think there are a lot more missing person files out there from that era.
In an April 14, 1952, article in Life about Richard Cox’s disappearance, authors Herbert Brean and Luther Conant estimated that roughly a million Americans “excluding criminals” attempted to disappear each year. They also said that 95 percent of those cases were solved by missing person departments. Still, that leaves roughly 50,000 people per year who managed to stay hidden. In comparison, the FBI transferred 87 files representing the years 1947 to 1980. Eighty-seven.
I don’t think the FBI was cherry-picking their files because of me. Those files were transferred to NARA long before I started my blog and got all vocal about the numbers in the upper righthand corner. It could be that that’s how the FBI, as a rule, releases its records, in case anyone should question those numbers and as a time-saver to reduce the number of redactions they’d have to make.
I do, however, think that I was on the FBI’s and NARA’s minds in June 2026, when I let them know that I’d be coming to town. After they finished my request in August 2024, NARA continued working on the rest of those files for a year, processing 48 more. Then they took a 9-month break. Maybe they thought I didn’t care about the files anymore. Maybe they thought I’d moved onto other things so they felt they could expend their time and resources elsewhere. But then, when I told them in June that I’d be coming to College Park in August, they flew into high gear. They processed 20 more files, totaling 86.
Look, I’m extremely grateful to NARA for making all of those files available to me so quickly. They accomplished that feat in only four years when I’d been forewarned that they were still working under an 8-year backlog. But I don’t think that the FBI has ever forgiven me for asking for NARA’s assistance in determining why the FBI was able to expunge Ron’s fingerprints 30 years earlier than their normal record retention period would permit. I think it’s highly likely that someone at the FBI read NARA the riot act for giving me information that led to my conclusion that it was due to a conflict with the Privacy Act, and, if so, Ron was probably alive in 2002 and the FBI knew it. I’m thinking there’s probably a note in red somewhere on my NARA researcher profile telling them to contact the FBI whenever I ask for anything that pertains to the Bureau. I think they probably told the FBI that I was coming and I think the FBI told them to finish the files (sans one). If anyone from the FBI has been reading my blog, they knew that I’d be looking at those numbers. I think the FBI wanted me to see its handiwork, and I’m here to say that I did. It’s just that I’m not buying what they’re selling. Sorry, but I’m not.
And you? What do you think? Any ideas on what the “o” stands for in “o’d on yellow”? How about questions…surely, you have a question or two about all of this…
One of the most difficult parts of figuring out what happened to Ronald Tammen is the inconvenient truth that he had to have reinvented himself. He no longer went by the name Ron Tammen, at least not on paper. He never used his Social Security number, his Selective Service number, or any of the other numbers that had been assigned to him during his formative years ever again. His former life was wiped clean and the feds were keeping mum about whoever it was that he became. It’s likely that very few people were in-the-know then, and, as the years roll by, even fewer are in-the-know now. So what’s a researcher who wants answers to do?
She keeps her eyes peeled for anyone who mysteriously shows up in FBI reports who isn’t identified, like, ever. And she starts with the FBI reports concerning the most in-the-know person she can think of: Robert Maheu.
I now have a candidate for someone who could conceivably be Ronald Tammen. Oh, I know, I know. It’s likely that this guy was NOT Ron Tammen. However, what I’m about to share with you is evidence that there were people running around doing Robert Maheu’s dirty work and they were doing it anonymously, under assumed names. What’s more, I now know for a fact that Robert Maheu was what’s known in the literary world as an unreliable narrator. In his autobiography, the more important the topic, the more likely it was that he glossed over crucial details or flat-out lied. He kept the really big secrets—including the name of someone who performed a highly sensitive illegal wiretap for him—to himself until the day he died.
Our story begins in October 1960, when Robert Maheu was working on the Fidel Castro assassination plot with Mafia men John Roselli, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante, as well as his pals at the CIA. One day, Roselli approached Maheu and asked him if he could find out if Giancana’s girlfriend was having an affair with one of the guys from Laugh-In.
You want to do this as a Q&A? Good, that works for me too.
What’s Laugh-In?
It was a TV show that ran from 1967 to 1973. It had its funny moments but the writing relied heavily on catch phrases like “Sock it to me” and “You bet your sweet bippy,” which (imo) got old. Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were the comedic co-hosts, with Rowan being the easy-on-the-eyes straight man and Martin being the funny one.
Now, when Roselli approached Maheu, he didn’t mention Laugh-In per se because that show was still seven years in the future. In 1960, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were mostly playing nightclubs, especially the ones in Las Vegas.
Who was Sam Giancana’s girlfriend?
Sam Giancana was in love with Phyllis McGuire, one of the McGuire Sisters, and I’ve read in various accounts that the feeling was mutual. The McGuire Sisters were three sisters from Middletown, Ohio, all of whom wore bubble cuts and had matching everything, right down to their suntan-tinted pantyhose and orange patten-leather pumps. They sang familiar fare—sometimes in unison, other times in harmony, never very complicated. Phyllis was the cute, perky one with the wildly flailing arms.
Was Phyllis McGuire having an affair with Dan Rowan?
That’s what Sam Giancana suspected, and I guess so do I. What can I say? She was a glamorous, vivacious Las Vegas singer. He was a chain-smoking, wisecracking Vegas comedian. Even though she was crazy for Giancana, she may have given into temptation while he was away in Miami Beach plotting Castro’s murder. You have to hand it to Rowan though: if he indeed started things up with McGuire during that period, it was a gutsy, if not insanely stupid move. But then again, if Phyllis was into bad boys, what could be badder than a guy who wasn’t afraid to be seen around town with the girlfriend of Chicago’s Mob boss?
Why did Maheu get involved?
Even a Mob boss can feel fragile at times, and Sam Giancana was feeling especially mopey and vulnerable. He loved Phyllis McGuire so much, he could barely concentrate on the task at hand, which was the assassination of Fidel Castro. Maheu needed to find out if Phyllis was fooling around with Dan Rowan so that Sam could think more clearly about the work he was conducting for the CIA. Dan and Phyllis’s allegedly illicit affair had thus become a matter of national security. If Maheu didn’t find out whatever was going on, Sam was going to go there himself, which, for the good of the country, Maheu needed to prevent. Maheu briefed Sheffield Edwards, the CIA’s director of the Office of Security, about the plan of action, which was to bug Rowan’s hotel room at the Las Vegas Riviera. Shef gave him $1000 for the job but warned Maheu to keep the CIA out of it.
Who did Maheu hire to do the bugging?
Robert Maheu hired a private investigator and former FBI special agent he knew from Miami named Edward DuBois to send two of his men to Las Vegas to conduct the bugging operation. The men who were scheduled to go were Arthur Balletti and a former FBI special agent named Fred T. Harris. According to Maheu’s autobiography, the plan was for them to book a room next to Rowan’s room and have them put a listening device on the shared wall so they could listen to whatever was going on in Rowan’s hotel room without having to break in.
At the last moment, however, Maheu contacted DuBois and told him to send only one man for the job and that Maheu would be sending the second. DuBois sent Balletti, while the other man, the man sent by Maheu, went by the alias J.W. Harrison. Balletti and Harrison met at the Miami International Airport and flew to Las Vegas together, with Harrison using Fred T. Harris’ airplane ticket. At least that was DuBois’ story.
In his book, Maheu only describes one man doing the job—the one who got caught. He never mentioned a second man.
Someone got caught?
Yeah. Arthur Balletti was caught and arrested on October 31, 1960, which happened to be the day after Maheu’s 43rd birthday. Maheu’s guy, the guy who went by the alias J.W. Harrison, got away.
What went wrong?
It’s hard to say what exactly happened because the stories differ depending on who’s talking. One minor difference was that Rowan’s room was below Balletti’s and Harrison’s room, not next door. A major difference was that, in addition to bugging Dan Rowan’s room, they wired his phone.
In his autobiography, written in 1992, Maheu expresses utter bewilderment as to why in the world DuBois’ PI—Balletti—would wire Rowan’s phone when the whole point of the job was to listen to bedroom banter, not to intercept phone calls. “Just why he thought tapping Rowan’s phone would help determine details about his love life, I’ll never understand,” Maheu mused for the people who’d spent good money on his book of occasional facts in a sea of fiction.
But in an FBI interview in 1962, Maheu readily admitted that he authorized the wiring of Rowan’s telephone too. The reason for the change in plans was the CIA had reason to believe the Castro plot was being leaked, beginning with our three swingin’ singles. Giancana could have told McGuire, McGuire could have told Rowan, and heaven knows where it might have traveled after that. What if Dan Rowan told Dick Martin? What if Dick Martin mentioned it to his caddy? What if Dick Martin’s caddy told his bartender? And let’s not forget about everyone’s hairdressers. It could have gotten out of hand fast.
J.W. Harrison, the man who DuBois said was sent by Maheu but who Maheu denied ever knowing, installed the wiretap, while Balletti conducted the bugging part of the operation. The bugging was considered lawful since they didn’t break into Rowan’s hotel room. The wiretap part, which did involve breaking and entering, was 100 percent in violation of the federal Wiretapping Statute. First the sheriff’s department got involved, then the FBI, then the Department of Justice. And since Harrison had managed to hightail it out of town beforehand, Balletti was on his own.
How did he get caught?
Again, the stories differ. I’m going to go with the summary that was written for the Church committee, compiled from FBI reports, because it makes the most sense:
The hotel manager advised that “…according to hotel records, Arthur J. Balletti checked into the hotel on October 26, 1960 and was assigned Room 331 and that the registration card bears the notation, ‘in room with Harrison.’ Since Balletti’s hotel bill was in excess of $100 and he was not known, the manager and the chief of security for the hotel went to Room 331 and no one was in the room when they entered. At this time, they observed a yellow pad with the notation of time and a date which referred to Dan Rowan and the hotel manager observed in the top desk drawer what appeared to be a recording device. After discussing the bill with Balletti and receiving a somewhat uncertain identification, the hotel manager subsequently notified the Clark County Sheriff’s Office that he had observed what appeared to be a recording device in Balletti’s room and suspected that a listening device might be installed in Rowan’s room.
“The hotel manager and Deputy Sheriff Eversole and another Deputy, name unrecalled, entered Rowan’s room and the hotel manager observed what appeared to be some type of microphone taped to the rear headboard on the bed in Rowan’s room with wires running to the telephone wall box. The hotel manager observed the Deputy Sheriff remove the article from the headboard.”
If you’re wondering why the manager and security chief felt that a $100 hotel bill was worth paying a visit to Balletti’s room, that amount would be equivalent to over $1100 today. Still, it seems like a weird reason for them to go rifling through Balletti’s desk drawers while he was out, but I’m glad they did.
Then what happened?
You know how the CIA relies on “plausible deniability” to get out of every potential scrape they find themselves in? That didn’t happen this time. With all of his meticulous planning and troubleshooting, Robert Maheu forgot to instruct the men what to do if they got caught.
When Balletti was asked who he was working for, he immediately pointed to DuBois who, in turn, directed law enforcement straight to Maheu. Eventually, after lying to the FBI about why he hired DuBois, Maheu vaguely stated that he was using the surveillance to help the CIA obtain intelligence about Cuba through the “hoodlum element.” The DOJ was considering prosecuting Maheu for the wiretap until Sheffield Edwards stepped in and told the DOJ to back off because the prosecution of Maheu would expose sensitive information about “the abortive Cuban invasion in April 1961” (i.e., the Bay of Pigs), which occurred months after Balletti’s arrest and wasn’t exactly pertinent to the issue at hand. In April 1962, the head of the DOJ’s Criminal Division advised Attorney General Robert Kennedy that “it is clear that the national interest will preclude any prosecution resulting from the Nevada wiring case,” and that “prosecutive action will be declined.” In May 1962, Robert Kennedy was fully apprised of the CIA-Mafia plot to assassinate Castro.
Thanks to the hard-loving Sam Giancana, the fast-living Dan Rowan, and the arm-waving Phyllis McGuire, the FBI and DOJ learned about the Mafia-CIA Castro assassination plots early in the game and we got to learn about a mystery man who went by the alias J.W. Harrison.
To this day, the mystery of J.W. Harrison has never been solved. In 1979, a staff report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations stated, “Clearly someone arranged for Harrison’s presence and knows his true identity.” My money is on Maheu, despite his staunch denial of ever knowing J.W. Harrison. You’d think that Maheu would’ve at least mentioned in his book that a guy who went by the alias J.W. Harrison had wired Rowan’s room, though he didn’t have a clue who he was. Perhaps he understood that no one would believe him.
Did they learn anything else about J.W. Harrison?
A little. We have a writing sample, we have an address, and we have a physical description.
— J.W. Harrison’s handwriting
Here’s J.W. Harrison’s handwriting sample when he signed in at the Las Vegas Riviera on October 26, 1960. The FBI Laboratory attempted to compare his handwriting to another guy’s—someone named J.A. Rolliins—but they came up empty.
I tried to compare J.W. Harrison’s handwriting to Ron Tammen’s. Unfortunately, I don’t have a large enough sample of Ron’s handwriting to make an adequate comparison—just a couple yearbook signatures plus his hand-printed application for college. The big, loopy J in J.W. reminds me of the similarly balloon-like R at the front of Ronald. Other aspects are conceivably similar. But there are notable differences too. J.W. Harrison’s capital “F” in San Francisco and Ron’s capital “T” in Tammen look nothing alike, even though, in cursive writing, people tend to make their capital T’s and F’s the same way except the F gets a crossbar. But handwriting is tricky and it can change. Sometimes it changes gradually over time, and sometimes it happens abruptly, when a person writes a certain way on purpose.
As I was lamenting my lack of Ron’s handwriting samples, it occurred to me that I may be able to obtain two additional samples of Ron’s handwriting—lengthier ones. I’ve written to someone who hopefully still has them and I’ll be back in touch if she does. If so, and if some of the letters do look similar, this may be one of those times when it’s worthwhile to hire a professional.
–– His address
The address that J.W. Harrison wrote on the hotel registration was 214 W. Water St., San Francisco. Although there is a Water Street in San Francisco, it’s an alley the length of one block with no West or East designations. Also, the house numbers are in the double, not triple, digits. Lastly, if the FBI was attempting to find him, and they were, surely they would have sent someone from the San Francisco Field Office to Water Street to knock on doors. The fact that they weren’t able to locate him tells me the address isn’t real.
— His physical description
On December 14, 1960, the Miami Field Office sent a report to the FBI Director with the subject head “Arthur James Balletti.” In it, they provided updated information from DuBois and Balletti, including Balletti’s description of J.W. Harrison. The description Balletti gave of J.W. Harrison was as follows: “white, male, age 50, 5’10”, 200 pounds, brown hair, balding.”
If these descriptors are true, then J.W. Harrison is without a doubt not Ron Tammen. In October 1960, Ron was 27 years old, so his age is way off. I don’t think Ron would have been balding either. His father and brothers had full heads of hair in their later years. His height is consistent with the description as well as his hair color. I suppose it’s possible that he put on 25 pounds since his sophomore year in college, but I doubt it.
Here’s my issue with that description: For a guy who had little to say about his mysterious counterpart, Balletti seemed to be able to reel off his exact age and dimensions with no room for error. All of the numerical measurements he gave were precise. There’s not even an “s” after 50 to indicate a general age range. Arthur James Balletti was 28 years old when he bugged Dan Rowan’s hotel room. He barely knew his accomplice. To someone in his 20s, 50 is considered way up there. Besides, 50 is old for someone doing undercover intelligence work, particularly someone who’s working on assignment with a low-level investigator like Balletti. Between 1978 and 1987, the average age for CIA operatives was from the upper 20s or low 30s to the mid-to-upper 40s. When James McCord was bugging the Watergate Hotel in June 1972, he was 48. E. Howard Hunt was 53 during Watergate, but he was one of the planners, along with G. Gordon Liddy, who was 41. So while it’s feasible that J.W. Harrison was 50, he would have been at the high end of the spectrum and not typical for his line of work.
I’m wondering if, by the time his interview had been conducted, Balletti had been coached. Balletti worked for DuBois, and DuBois was a friend of Maheu’s. It’s possible that Maheu told DuBois that they needed to keep Harrison’s identity secret and to make up some of the identifying characteristics to throw officials off. We already know that Maheu was capable of lying to the FBI when he wanted to protect the CIA. He lied to them when he first told them why he hired DuBois. Maybe he convinced DuBois and Balletti that, in the interest of national security, they should lie too.
Is it possible that J.W. Harrison was Ron Tammen?
I think it’s improbable that J.W. Harrison is Ron Tammen. However, I also see it this way: we have evidence that Ron Tammen had ties to the CIA’s Office of Security, and it appears he also was known to Robert Maheu. Those two things both apply to J.W. Harrison. It also appears from Ron’s FBI records that Ron was involved in dangerous, perhaps deadly acts—maybe even assassination. But that couldn’t have been all that he did for the CIA. Assassinations didn’t happen that frequently. A hypnotic assassin (if that’s what Ron was) had to have some down days, right? What could Ron Tammen be doing on one of his quieter days?
In the photo, Ron is sitting at a table between his brothers John and Richard. Ron’s attention is focused on what looks like two tall cans, or maybe they’re batteries, that he’s lined up and wired together. The wires lead to the body of an old telephone, which another student at the end of the table is sitting next to while talking into the receiver. By all appearances, Ron’s wiring is making it possible for that guy to talk to whomever he’s talking to. If Ron Tammen was comfortable wiring up a phone in 1950 when he was still in high school, it’s possible that he could become proficient at wiretapping a phone ten years later.
But if it wasn’t Ron? Well, who’s to say that old, overweight, balding J.W. Harrison wasn’t a colleague or mentor of Ron Tammen’s? At least we now know that, if Robert Maheu did know Ron Tammen, he would have done everything in his power to protect his identity.
********************
Note: I’ve been spelling John Roselli’s last name with one ‘s,’ which is consistent with many FBI records, Congressional reports, and newspaper articles that spelled it that way. I’ve now come to learn that the official spelling was Rosselli, with two s’s. In today’s post, I’m spelling it with one ‘s’ to keep things consistent. From here on out, I’ll be spelling it with two s’s. John Roselli’s/Rosselli’s birth name was Filippo Sacco.
I have a big announcement. Robert Maheu, the man who I believe was informant LV 366-PC for the FBI, and the man who I also believe informed them about Ron Tammen’s whereabouts in 1973, lived in Tucson, Arizona, during 1960 and 1961, and possibly a little longer. I know this through several ways, the most compelling of which is that his oldest son Peter had graduated from Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson in 1961. Unlike his two younger brothers, Peter frequently showed up in news articles in the Tucson Daily Citizen throughout his senior year.
This is a very big deal.
As you may recall, in 1970, LV 366-PC had informed the FBI about Marty Fenster, who had been managing the Grace Ranch in Tucson for mobster Pete Licavoli. The informant let the FBI know that Marty was now working for the Clark County Vending Company in Las Vegas under Frank Milano.
In a follow-up post, I shared that Robert Maheu could have encountered Marty Fenster at the Frontier Hotel, a Howard Hughes–owned property where the Clark County Vending Company ostensibly had a contract. Maheu’s office was in the Frontier Hotel. That could be how he knew about Marty’s whereabouts in 1970.
This new discovery is much bigger. I think it’s now safe to surmise that, with Maheu living in Tucson during 1960 and 1961, it’s entirely likely that he became acquainted with Pete Licavoli, Grace Ranch, and perhaps even Marty Fenster at that time.
Chauncey Holt, author of “Self-Portrait of a Scoundrel,” who had CIA and Mob ties, had said that Pete Licavoli was friends with John Roselli and Sam Giancana. Robert Maheu was friends with Roselli and Giancana too, and, in 1960, he’d just begun working with them on a Castro assassination plot.
Holt also said that Licavoli and others were conducting training at Grace Ranch for Operation Mongoose, one of the CIA’s Castro assassination plots. So, if Holt is to be believed, at roughly the same time that the CIA and Mafia were conducting their trainings at Grace Ranch for the assassination of Fidel Castro, Robert Maheu, who was also working with the CIA and Mafia to assassinate Castro, was living in a gorgeous house in the Catalina foothills only about 12 miles away.
I’m no gambler, but I’d say the odds of this happening without them bumping into one another would be pretty high.
For the past 2 ½ years, I’ve been involved in a public records lawsuit against Miami University. I can’t say much about it because we’re still in litigation. However, I thought I could at least write something short and sweet about my deposition. There will be more coming, which I imagine will be the opposite of short and sweet. I’m picturing a long-winded, fact-filled umami bomb. Also, I’ll be able to provide some interesting visual aids by then. For now, this will have to tide you over.
My deposition took place on Tuesday, August 26, 2025, on the 20th floor of the Rhodes State Office Tower, which is at 30 East Broad Street in downtown Columbus. The person who would be cross-examining me (because that’s what it is—a cross-examination) was a representative of the Attorney General’s office for the state of Ohio. I’d never been deposed by anyone before, let alone by someone in the AG’s office. I was a trembling, wide-eyed baby deer all dressed up in business attire and sitting at the end of a conference table. To the left of me was my lawyer. Picture a cross between David Spade and Stanley Tucci, one of whom should play him if this were ever made into a movie. To my immediate right was a court reporter and her tape recorder. Next to her was the lawyer for the AG’s office. Sitting next to that person, farther down the table, was a representative of Miami University, who is also a lawyer.
Every person who’s ever been deposed has most likely been given the same piece of advice by their lawyer. That advice is to listen carefully to each question, allow yourself some time to breathe while formulating the answer in your head, and then state your answer in as few words as possible. If you can answer in one or two words, you should absolutely do that. You’ll be glad you did, come transcript time. Also, don’t forget that you’ll be answering under oath, so you have to respond truthfully. That’s it. That’s all you need to know.
I’d like to add one more piece of wisdom that I picked up after the fact: you can take as long as you want to answer a question. There’s no buzzer that goes off. Nobody says, “Time’s up.” When the transcript comes back, all that it documents is your answer. It doesn’t say how long it took for you to come up with it.
Weeks later, the transcript arrived in my email inbox. I was inwardly cringing as I clicked on it, afraid to see if what I remembered saying that day corresponded in any way with the words that the court reporter had typed up. For the most part, I was relieved when I read my answers. Of course, they were the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I’m all about truth-telling. That’s what I do. But I was also happy to see that many of my responses were succinctly put. Nice going, you, thought I.
But then there were other times… 🤦🏻♀️
Here’s something about myself that you may not know: When I’m writing, I try to separate one thought from another thought through the use of complete sentences. But when I’m talking to someone…saying things out loud and whatnot…I find it harder to keep my thoughts separate. I tend to interweave sentences together, interrupting one sentence to insert another one if I think the situation calls for a few additional details and some backstory. Apparently, much to my lawyer’s delight no doubt, I’d felt the situation warranted some added filler several times that morning.
Another endearing trait of mine is that I occasionally will choose the wrong vocabulary word, especially when I’m speaking in front of a group of people. The word seems right at the time, and you don’t have a thesaurus at the ready so, you know, you just go with it and hope for the best. Alas, that happened during my deposition when I chose to use the word “reprieve” when describing a project related to my research that had been put on hold. If only I’d double-checked the ol’ Merriam Webster beforehand, I would’ve been reminded that the first definition of that word is “to delay the punishment of someone, such as a condemned prisoner.” That’s right. I told a roomful of lawyers that my side project and I had been granted a temporary stay of a death sentence. Cool cool cool.
You get the picture. Depositions are stressful. I can just imagine what my BP reading would have been if someone had sauntered by with a sphygmomanometer and strapped it to my arm. But I’ve also come to discover that depositions are a two-way street. While you, the person being deposed, are providing information to the opposing side that they may or may not try to use against you, they are also providing information to you about where the opposing side’s heads are. They do this through the questions they ask and, perhaps even more telling, the questions they don’t ask.
I can recall a dramatic moment during my deposition when I was asked if I remembered what someone had said during their deposition the day before. I said that I did. The AG’s lawyer probed further, asking me if I didn’t accept what they’d said, and I gave her my answer. I told her that what they said was different from what I’d been told originally. Her follow-up question initiated a back-and-forth between my lawyer and the AG’s lawyer having to do with my constitutional right to protect my sources. On that basis, my lawyer instructed me not to answer.
She moved on to another line of questioning.
What was particularly eye-opening about that moment is that there was an obvious question that didn’t get asked of me, one that I think would have occurred to anyone else if they’d been sitting in the room and likely one that my lawyer wouldn’t have objected to. My cross-examiner didn’t ask that question.
She didn’t want to know what I’d been told originally.
What she wanted to know was who I was talking to.
See what I mean? Telling.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to take questions or comments at this time.
Can we talk a little more about FD-209 forms, the official forms that FBI agents submit every time they interact with a confidential informant? I love FD-209 forms. I’m probably the number one fangirl of FD-209 forms these days…but not just any FD-209 forms. I’m unquenchably thirsty for the FD-209 forms concerning a confidential informant known as LV 366-PC.
On May 27, 2026, I submitted a FOIA request for LV 366-PCs FD-209 forms. Just six days later, two of which fell on a weekend, the FBI refused my request. I’m not gonna lie—their words were intimidating.
In their reason for their denial, they cited subsections D and E of exemption 7, which applies to records compiled for law enforcement purposes. The acting section chief then spelled out the harm that I’d be inflicting if those FD-209s ever got into my impertinent little thirsty fangirl hands.
“Release of records responsive to your request would reveal confidential informant identities and information,” which applies to exemption 7D, “expose law enforcement techniques,” which applies to exemption 7E, “and endanger the life or physical safety of individuals.” That last one was the kicker, since it went above and beyond what exemptions 7D and 7E say. Seriously, if that last part were true, then they could have, and probably should have, cited exemption 7F, which deals with that very issue.
Someone. Could. DIE.
Credit: Clipart.com
You know what? I think they’re bending the truth. You know what else? I think they’re flouting the law.
First, a little background:
On March 15, 2022, in celebration of Sunshine Week, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland provided guidelines to all federal agencies with regard to the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016. In it, he addressed the excessive use of exemptions by staff members when responding to FOIA requests. The goal, both in 2016 and 2022, was to improve openness in government.
“Information that might technically fall within an exemption should not be withheld from a FOIA requester unless the agency can identify a foreseeable harm or legal bar to disclosure,” he wrote. “In case of doubt, openness should prevail,” he added.
After the release of his guidelines, the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) issued additional guidance, especially pertaining to the foreseeable harm standard, a term that was left open to interpretation. They advised: “The foreseeable harm analysis should be made on a case-by-case basis and agencies should individually consider the applicable harms for each record or similar category of records.”
They then cited the 2021 decision of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which had ruled that federal agencies need to “‘articulate both the nature of the harm [from release] and the link between the specified harm and specific information contained in the material withheld.’” Also: agencies can’t just say in general terms that something bad “could” happen if the information were released. They need to provide information supporting the conclusion that it “would” happen, which is ostensibly why the acting section chief told me that the lives or physical safety of individuals would be in danger if they released the FD-209s for LV 366-PC after all these years.
I think the FBI is bending the truth.
Reason 1: How can people’s lives be at stake if everyone is dead?
The subject of LV 366-PC’s conversations with the FBI in 1970—mobster Marty Fenster—is long dead, and two other mobsters who were mentioned along with Fenster—Frank Roger Milano and Pete Licavoli—are dead as well. Milano, the youngest, died in 2004; Fenster died in 1996; and Licavoli, the highest ranking and most well-known of the three, died in 1984. And the informant? Although it’s impossible to know if he’s alive or dead since we don’t know who it is, my money is on the latter. If my theory holds that LV 366-PC is Robert Maheu, then we know for sure that he’s dead, since Maheu died in 2008. But even if it’s not Maheu, chances are good that LV 366-PC is also dead since he was hanging out with men who were in their 60s 56 years ago.
But honestly? Whether the informant is alive or dead doesn’t much matter because the most likely people to be mad at the informant for talking to the FBI about Marty Fenster’s whereabouts are no longer a threat. In fact, I’d argue that the FBI should feel confident that if they were to give me LV 366-PC’s FD-209 forms concerning Marty Fenster’s whereabouts, literally no one would be in danger because the people whom the FBI considered dangerous are permanently out of the picture. You feel me?
Reason 2: Some confidential informants are treated more confidentially than others.
As I mentioned in my last post, the FBI has released dozens if not hundreds of FD-209s in the past. Some have only the identifying information redacted, while others are almost redaction-free. Many of the FD-209 forms that I’ve found online, available on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website, are from the FBI’s investigation into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
So I just have to ask: how is it that the FBI feels that the person who told them 56 years ago about the whereabouts of deceased mobster Marty Fenster and two of his also-deceased associates is deserving of a far greater degree of protection than what informants who spoke with them about the assassination of MLK received? Can someone from the FBI please explain?
Here are several of the many FD-209s that I found among the MLK records that are available on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. The bottom one even concerns Carlos Marcello, who, it could be said, was most definitely a person who would “endanger the life or personal safety of individuals” if he ever got wind that they were talking to the FBI.
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
Reason 3 (my favorite): The FBI has released FD-209s on other informants who’d provided information about Pete Licavoli. Why won’t they do it for me?
And yet…and YET…the FBI had no problem releasing the FD-209 forms for two, and possibly three, other confidential informants who’d squealed on Licavoli, not to mention a slew of other mobsters. Here are links to the full records, which I obtained from the Mary Ferrell Foundation website:
LV 25-C(Las Vegas Field Office)
Click on image to view the entire record
DE 868-C-TE(Detroit Field Office)
Click on image to view the entire record
DE [redacted]-C-TE(Detroit Field Office—it’s possible that this is the same informant as DE 868-C-TE)
Click on image to view the entire record
So I have to ask a similar question to the one I asked before: how is it that the FBI feels that the person who told them 56 years ago about the whereabouts of deceased mobster Marty Fenster and his friends Frank Milano and Pete Licavoli is deserving of a far greater degree of protection than the informants who’d told them about Pete Licavoli and all those other mobsters?
I think the FBI is flouting the law.
According to Attorney General Garland, the whole point of implementing the foreseeable harm standard is to ensure that exemptions are used less, not more. You heard the man: when in doubt, “openness should prevail.”
Isn’t it just like the FBI to take that well-meaning guidance and turn it around so that, not only can they use the same exemptions they always have, but they can now defend their stance even more intimidatingly than before? They *appear* as if they’re following the letter of the law, when evidence suggests they aren’t.
Reason 1: After the Garland memo, exemption use increased.
One might predict that Merrick Garland’s guidelines would immediately result in fewer exemptions claimed by the FBI, but, for at least two-plus years, that’s not what happened.
Included below is a bar chart for exemptions 7D (re: confidential informants) and 7E (re: law enforcement techniques) that the FBI claimed for fiscal years 2020 through 2025. After Garland’s guidance in 2022, 7D and 7E exemptions actually went up, not down, with 2024 reaching peak levels.
With that said, there was a sizable drop in 2025, where the FBI claimed roughly 1000 fewer 7D exemptions than 2024’s levels and 7E exemptions dropped to slightly below 2022’s levels. This decrease could be partially due to the 43-day government shutdown in 2025, since the FBI processed roughly 2000 fewer requests that year than in 2024.
Click on image for a closer view; data provided by FOIA.gov
Still, when we look at the percentage of processed FOIA requests that received exemptions, 2025 seems to be an outlier. According to data compiled by the website FOIA.gov, 7D exemptions accounted for roughly 10% of all FOIA requests processed by the FBI for the years 2020-2023. Fiscal year 2024 experienced a higher percentage of 7D exemptions, at roughly 12%, but then 2025 demonstrated a significantly lower percentage, at 7.5%. Likewise, 7E exemptions were more in the 23-24% range for all FOIA requests for the years 2020-2023. This means that nearly one-quarter of all FOIA requests received by the FBI were slapped with a 7E exemption. In 2024, the percentage shot up to 27%, but in 2025, it fell back down to 23.8%.
Maybe we’re witnessing a downward trend in 7D and 7E exemptions—let’s hope so. I, for one, can’t wait to see the 2026 numbers when they’re in. Still, it does make me wonder: if the FBI is finally making an effort to limit the number of 7Ds and 7Es that they dole out to FOIA requesters, how is it that they’ve determined LV 366-PC and his friends Marty Fenster, Frank Milano, and Pete Licavoli to be the line that shouldn’t be crossed? And why was it OK for them to cross that line the other three times for Pete Licavoli?
Reason 2: There’s a fool-proof way to release FD-209 forms while protecting information that’s exempt from disclosure. The FBI isn’t using it.
Merrick Garland said something else in his guidance that I think is applicable to my case. In essence, he told federal agencies not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. OK, he didn’t use that phrase per se, probably because A) it’s bizarre and disturbing, and B) has anyone ever done that?? Merrick chose these words instead, quoting from the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016:
“When an agency determines that it cannot make full disclosure of a requested record, FOIA requires that it ‘consider whether partial disclosure of information is possible’ and ‘take reasonable steps necessary to segregate and release nonexempt information.’”
This is exactly what I’d suggested that the FBI do when I disputed their response, asking them to redact the portions that are exempt from disclosure and to release the rest. They didn’t care for my suggestion. Instead, they insisted that they’d followed the FBI’s standard operating procedures and stuck with their original response, Soup Nazi style—no FD-209s for you.
But the FBI has elected to use the partial-disclosure method in the past. Here are two examples in which the FBI redacted the identifying information on FD-209 forms and released the rest to the public. You can see other places where information has been blacked out under the MLK and Licovoli FD-209s above.
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
Which leads me to this question: how can the FBI say that they’re following standard operating procedures when their operating procedures vary so drastically, day to day and FOIA requester to FOIA requester?
Reason 3: When in doubt, the FBI appears to choose obstruction over openness.
As I mentioned earlier, the foreseeable harm standard leaves much open to interpretation, and OIP has given agencies a choice in how they should conduct their analysis. They can consider each record individually or they can analyze similar records as a group. They get to choose which.
In addressing my request, it appears as if the FBI chose to lump all of LV 366-PC’s FD-209 records together, which resulted in a broad and vague and intimidating explanation. Remember how they’re supposed to “‘articulate both the nature of the harm [from release] and the link between the specified harm and specific information contained in the material withheld.’”? The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia wants specifics, please. But I didn’t get any of those. I received no explanation as to how people would be endangered by the “information contained in the material withheld,” whether we’re talking about the Marty Fenster/Frank Roger Milano/Pete Licavoli case or any other case the informant helped them out with.
Also, if FOIA staffers were truly following Merrick Garland’s rule of thumb, “In case of doubt, openness should prevail,” wouldn’t they want to review each FD-209 record individually in hopes that they might be able to give me something—anything—that would be responsive while not putting anyone in harm’s way?
Instead, they gave me a stern no and an implied “how dare you?”
I don’t think Merrick Garland would approve.
I’ll let you know how the OIP rules on my appeal.
SINCERE THANKS TO THE MARY FERRELL FOUNDATION FOR MAKING ALL OF THE ABOVE RECORDS AVAILABLE.
