Blog

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

I’ve just learned that the FBI is actively trying to throw my Tammen research off track. Here’s what they’ve been up to and how I know

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 examples from 1 to 11:

Andrews
Cherry
Cronin
Greenawalt
Kallapure
Lynch
McCracken
Paulsen
Reynolds
Smith
Wesley

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.

Khalis
Sampson

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…

CIA, FBI Records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records

Some guy using the alias of J.W. Harrison wired a hotel room for Robert Maheu and, to this day, no one seems to know who the heck he was. Ummm…Ron? That you?

Photo by David Vives on Unsplash

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.

Here they are on the Ed Sullivan Show, with the ever-ebullient Phyllis in the center. (You really need to watch this, because I swear she shoves the sister on the left with her hip about 29 seconds in.)

Here she is by herself.

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?

Here’s a link to a photo from Ron Tammen’s junior year in high school for a school club called the Science Forum. (You might have to sign in to e-yearbook.com first. It’s the bottom photo.)

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.

CIA, FBI Records, Ron's Missing Person File

Breaking news: I just learned something wild about Robert Maheu, the person who I believe was Ron Tammen’s informant

Photo by Dulcey Lima on Unsplash

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.

Uncategorized

The deposing of yours truly: things I said and stuff I learned

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. 

A modern high-rise building with a flat-topped design and numerous windows, casting a shadow on neighboring structures in an urban skyline.
Rhodes State Office Tower; Credit: Photo by Tysto – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org

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. 

FBI Records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, Ron's Missing Person File

The FBI told me people’s lives would be in danger if they gave me the FOIA records I’m seeking. I call BS

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. 

To recap: LV 366-PC was an informant for the FBI’s Las Vegas Field Office who, in 1970, gave the FBI information concerning the whereabouts of a mobster named Marty Fenster. I would love to get my hands on LV 366-PC’s FD-209 forms because I also think that, in 1973, LV 366-PC gave the FBI information about Ron Tammen. 

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 view
Click on image for a closer view
Click on image for a closer view
Click on image for a closer view
Click on image for a closer view
Click on image for a closer view
Click on image for a closer view
Click 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?

If you were to line up the three mobsters whom LV 366-PC mentioned to the FBI in 1970—Marty Fenster, Frank Milano, and Pete Licavoli—Licavoli would stand out as the most dangerous. He’d been a mob boss in Detroit before moving to Arizona in the 1940s. Have you heard of the notorious Purple Gang? That’s the group he headed up, supplying liquor to Detroit, Toledo, and Cleveland during Prohibition. He was said to be involved in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Senator Estes Kefauver, who’d led Congressional hearings on organized crime in 1950-51, said that Licavoli was “one of the most cold-blooded and contemptuous characters to appear before our committee.” 

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 view
Click 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.

CIA, Cincinnati Field Office, FBI Records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Records, Hypnosis, MKULTRA, Ron's Missing Person File

‘This means something. This is important.’

Do you remember in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfuss was passionately sculpting his mashed potato rendition of Devil’s Tower at the dinner table as his family looked on in horror? That’s the moment he delivered his classic line, more to himself than to anyone else: “This means something. This is important.”  I can so relate. The only difference is that my Devil’s Tower is the phrase “366 m hau” and my mashed potatoes are two FBI records that the phrase is scribbled on—one Ron Tammen’s and one involving a car bomb that was placed under Ash Resnick’s Lincoln in the parking lot of Caesars Palace. 

Devil’s Tower; this work has been released into the public domain by its author; available at Wikimedia Commons

In my most recent post, I introduced a new theory that the notation may be in reference to an informant in Las Vegas whom the FBI gave the official designation LV 366-PC, where LV stands for Las Vegas and PC stands for potential criminal informant. I also suggested that the letters “m hau” could refer to the informant’s actual name, cryptically scribbled in so that nosy onlookers like us wouldn’t be able to figure out his or her identity. Granted, every bit of my theory is a wild guess, but, if it’s OK with you, this is a question worth obsessing about for a while. I think it could be important. Although there’s always a chance that I may be wrong about who “m hau” is, I don’t think it would offend anyone if I told you where my head is at this moment, would it? 

You want to try to do this as a Q&A this time? 

Who do you think ‘m hau’ is?

I think “m hau” may have been Robert Maheu.

Who’s that?

Robert Aime Maheu was Howard Hughes’ right-hand man—his go-to. He’d been working for Hughes on an on-call basis since the 1950s, but by 1966, at the start of Hughes’ Las Vegas years, Maheu’s full-time job was to be the face of Hughes to the rest of the world. His official title was manager of Hughes Nevada Operations, and he oversaw the purchase and management of Hughes’ casinos and other Las Vegas properties. But the relationship went deeper than that. Hughes considered Maheu to be his alter-ego. While Hughes was busy being a recluse, doing reclusey things in his penthouse in the Desert Inn, Maheu was carrying out Hughes’ wishes and conducting business in Hughes’ name, generally cosplaying Howard Hughes. Look, I don’t mean to make fun of Howard Hughes. It’s widely believed that he had obsessive-compulsive disorder and was living a hell that gradually manifested in a number of ways, including those for which he’s most well-known: the hair, the nails, and the urine jars. Weirdly, it’s been reported that Maheu had never met Hughes face to face, although they communicated all the time, primarily by telephone and memos.

Wasn’t Howard Hughes married to Jean Peters at that time?

Good! Another old movie buff. Yes, Howard Hughes was married to Jean Peters while he was holed up in the penthouse at the Desert Inn. She wasn’t living there with him though. She was still in Los Angeles in the Bel Air home they’d lived in after they’d gotten married. I’m not sure how well their marriage was going when he moved to Las Vegas, but I can’t imagine that things were great. I’m sure she was having doubts by then, what with Howard’s aversion to leaving the apartment and basic self-care like taking showers and brushing his teeth.

Something you may not know is that Jean Peters grew up in East Canton, Ohio. In fact, she was my husband’s babysitter when he was young. My husband’s grandparents, who lived next door to the Peters family, received Christmas cards each year from the famous couple when they were still living in LA. The cards were signed “Love, Jean and Howard.” Here’s what her family’s former home looks like today:

The childhood home of actress Jean Peters; credit: J. Wenger

Robert Maheu was the guy who made that marriage happen. According to Spooks author James Hougan, Hughes was enamored with Peters, who was beautiful, smart, talented, and soon-to-be married. With Maheu as his accomplice, Hughes hired someone to spy on the couple during their honeymoon, and he arranged for additional surveillance on the husband afterward. When her husband was conveniently away on business in Washington, DC, Robert Maheu arranged a meet-up between Hughes and Peters so Hughes could make his move. She divorced the guy in December 1956 and married Hughes that spring.

What’s your favorite Jean Peters film?

Niagara, hands down. If it’s ever playing on one of the classic movie channels, I encourage you to record it. Not only is it a great film noir but it’s fun to see the town of Niagara Falls (the Canadian one) while it was small and undeveloped—more outdoorsy and less glitzy.

How did Robert Maheu meet Howard Hughes?

According to Hougan, Robert Maheu had been recommended to Howard Hughes by a mutual friend soon after Maheu had begun making a name for himself in the private investigative field. He’d been a special agent with the FBI beginning in 1940 and, during WWII, he served in the FBI’s counterespionage program known as COCASE out of the New York City Field Office. Although he was doing well in the Bureau, in 1947, Maheu’s wife’s health prevented him from moving his young family to his new field office assignment, so he resigned. Over the next several years, he tried his hand at a few other jobs in business and government.

One red flag concerning Maheu’s character popped up when he was seeking investors in a dairy company he’d started. A lawyer in Maine wrote an impassioned letter to J. Edgar Hoover in January 1953 telling him of Maheu’s dishonesty and unethical behavior and warning him that the good name of the FBI was being sullied because Maheu liked to brag about his former employer. In 1954, Maheu opened his private investigative firm, Robert A. Maheu Associates, in Washington, DC. Almost immediately, he began approaching current and former special agents with job offers, which didn’t exactly win him any points with the big boss. Although Maheu attempted to keep the lines of communication open with the FBI, he was known to veer out of his lane at times. For the above reasons, J. Edgar Hoover had issued this warning to all special agents regarding Maheu and his new business venture:

“I want all Special Agents advised of the existence of this organization and instructed that they must be most circumspect in all dealings with Maheu or any of his representatives. In the event any investigative personnel should receive any information regarding the activities of this organization, or if any investigative personnel are contacted by representatives of this organization the Bureau should be immediately advised.”

Because he ran a private business, Maheu could take on jobs that were unconstrained by governmental rules, regs, ethics, and principles. His specialty was jobs that were tricky and/or dangerous and maybe even a little unsavory. According to Hougan, the TV show Mission: Impossible was based on Maheu’s agency. When I think about that show, I think of actor Greg Morris always crouching in some tight space as he installed a listening device into someone’s telephone or air vent. Bugging devices and illegal wiretaps were the sorts of things that Maheu’s firm excelled at.

The CIA was one of Maheu’s first long-term contracts, which should also tell you something about the kinds of jobs he would accept. 

Your theory that ‘m hau’ is Maheu is interesting…but that’s not how he spelled his name.

I know. One reason could be that FBI agents struggled with the spelling of Maheu’s name, which was French in origin. (Because his parents were both French-Canadian, he was fluent in that language.) I’ve seen his name spelled Mayhew, Mahew, Mayheu, and even Mahieu. There may have been other iterations as well. It could have been that the agent who’d written the note had no idea how to spell his name plus, like I said before, he wanted to be cryptic. Both things could be true. 

Also, is it me, or does the “a” in “m hau” on Ron’s record look like a cross between an “a” and an “e,” as if the person was having trouble deciding what to put?

Incidentally, I think the person who made the notation on Ron’s record was the same person who made the notation on Ash’s record. That’s wild to think about too.

The “366 m hau” on Ron’s FBI document; click on image for a closer view

The “366 m hau” on Ash Resnick’s FBI document; click on image for a closer view

What else can you tell us about Robert Maheu?

He had a commanding presence. He compensated his average-sized frame with a big personality, he had a voice that people paid attention to, he was generally likeable in most people’s estimation, and he was a snazzy dresser. I’m going to say it: I think he was pretty dang hot when he was in his 20s and just starting out with the FBI. But by the 1970s, when he was in his 50s, most of the hair in the middle of his head had vanished and he was unapologetically embracing his male pattern baldness like a trooper.

Robert Maheu as a young man

Robert Maheu led an outwardly respectable life that included all the things that people are frequently measured by: a wife, kids, money, and prestige. (I’m sorry to report that people are rarely measured by what’s in their heart, which would be so much better for this world.) He was living the dream in the most amped-up way possible. His friendships occupied a broad spectrum ranging from those at the highest places in society to those populating the seamy underworld. One day he might be having drinks and hors d’oeuvres with the governor of Nevada and the next day he might be bailing famed mobster Johnny Roselli out of jail. In short, Robert Maheu knew a LOT of people.

What makes you think Robert Maheu was FBI informant LV 366-PC?

I have six main reasons:

1) He’d be perfect.

Robert Maheu would have been the perfect informant because of all the people he knew and all the information he was undoubtedly privy to. He was close friends with mobster John Roselli, aka “Handsome Johnny,” who also knew a lot of people, and he was the confidant of one of the richest men in the world. He also had contacts at the FBI and CIA. The FBI’s Las Vegas Field Office would have been crazy not to approach him.

2) He’d been an unofficial informant in the past.

In 1952, Maheu was working in Washington, DC, as the director for the Office of Compliance and Security in the Small Defense Plants Administration (SDPA), a precursor to the Small Business Administration during the Korean War. Maheu had taken it upon himself to write a 2 ½ page, single-spaced letter to Hoover discussing an incident in which an SDPA employee had struck up a conversation in a park with a Russian man who worked at the Soviet Embassy. The conversation was benign, focusing on hard-hitting questions such as “how does America compare to Russia?”, and nothing else happened. Maheu filled Hoover in on as many details as he had access to in the event they might be useful to the FBI. Indeed, the Washington Field Office followed up on the lead to determine who the Russian might be and whether the SDPA employee might one day be pursued as a double agent. In the write-up, the word “Informant” was written next to Maheu’s name. So I have to ask: if he played that role in the past, would he ever consider playing it again?

3) LV 366-PC knew Ash Resnick and so did Robert Maheu.

If Robert Maheu was LV 366-PC, then he would’ve had to know Ash Resnick well enough to hear something worth sharing about that car bomb plot. Well, how does next-door neighbor sound? That’s right. From the latter part of the 1960s to 1976, Ash Resnick and Robert Maheu were next-door neighbors in one of the newest, swankiest neighborhoods Las Vegas had to offer at that time: Paradise Palms. Ash lived at 3515 Cochise Lane until 1976 and Robert lived at 3525 Cochise Lane until he died in 2008. You just know that they used to shoot the breeze together when they bumped into one another picking up their newspapers or collecting their mail. You just do.

I’m still trying to learn more about that car bomb plot. One interesting thing I’ve learned is that Ash was in on the sting. In July 1974, UPI reported that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department had “set up the incident on an informant’s tip in an effort to produce a lead in the unsolved bombing death of Las Vegas attorney William Coulthard,” a case that is still unsolved. In a 1978 article, an LVMPD detective said that Ash Resnick had “agreed to be a ‘pigeon,’ putting his life in danger so that police could gather additional information” about the Coulthard bombing. But here’s what I find most confusing: in another 1974 article, the officers said that they’d found “dummy dynamite with some detonator caps” at the scene. So the alleged bomb wasn’t even allegedly real, and yet a guy named Donald Lee Wayton was allegedly sent to prison for six years for it. As I said, I’m still trying to learn more. And, what the hey, I’m attempting to learn more about the Coulthard bombing too. 

Can’t you just picture Ash Resnick standing at his mailbox telling Robert about his role in the sting? It sounds like quite a story. If so, then I can also see Robert feeling the need to let the FBI know what the LVMPD had cooked up with Ash. Incidentally, I don’t think that Robert was the informant who tipped off the LVMPD about the car bomb in the first place. I think that informant likely belonged to the LVMPD.

4) Robert Maheu had two possible sources for a tip LV 366-PC made in February 1970.

In February 1970, the informant identified as LV 366-PC had provided info to the FBI concerning a mobster named Marty Fenster. The information he shared was:

MARTY FENSTER is now working for FRANK ROGER MILANO at the Clark County Vending Company, Las Vegas, Nevada. This target stated that at one time, FENSTER operated the Grace Ranch near Tucson, Arizona for PETE LICAVOLI. The target stated that FENSTER left the Grace Ranch about a year ago, moved to Los Angeles, California and about a month ago came to Las Vegas at the invitation of MILANO.

In my earlier post, I said that the informant likely picked up this information because he had business ties with the Clark County Vending Company and/or Frank Roger Milano, its owner. As it so happens Frank Milano had an interest in obtaining the vending contract for the Frontier Hotel as well as another hotel called The Plainsman. In May 1967, he and other related players went through the necessary Mob channels to do so. According to an FBI report, “A source said that these efforts were successful.” Interestingly, Howard Hughes purchased the Frontier Hotel in December 1967, with Robert Maheu now directly overseeing that property. So it’s possible that Maheu learned about Marty Fenster’s whereabouts through his business ties with the Clark County Vending Company.

But there’s another possible link, Pete Licavoli. As I mentioned briefly in another post, Robert Maheu had been the CIA’s liaison to organized crime for the Castro assassination plots. It was Maheu who’d recruited John Roselli, who, in turn, rounded up other mafia members, most famously Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante. However, according to a man with Mob and CIA ties named Chauncey Holt and the website Spartacus Educational, Pete Licavoli was a mobster who was purportedly friends with Sam Giancana and John Roselli. Licavoli owned the Grace Ranch in Arizona, that, according to Holt, had been used as a training ground for Operation Mongoose, one of the CIA’s Castro assassination projects. While Roselli, Giancana, and Trafficante were the big-ticket names who have always been associated with those plots, Holt asserts that Licavoli was involved too.

If Chauncey Holt is to be believed, then Robert Maheu had a direct connection to Pete Licavoli through their days preparing for Project Mongoose (which obviously never came to pass). It’s possible that it was either through that direct connection or through his friend Johnny Roselli that Robert Maheu could have learned of the whereabouts of Marty Fenster.

5) Robert Maheu had strong connections with the CIA’s Office of Security, the same office that ran Project Artichoke.

If Robert Maheu, LV 366-PC, and “m hau” were the same person, then Robert Maheu must have had knowledge about Ron Tammen’s whereabouts at some point after he disappeared. But how? As it turns out, Robert Maheu had strong ties to the same people who were involved with Project Artichoke: the CIA’s Office of Security. As we’ve discussed often on this site, it’s my theory that Ron Tammen was a victim of Project Artichoke’s hypnosis experiments, having first been exposed to them through his psychology professor, St. Clair Switzer.

Robert Maheu had been helping the Security guys out since he opened his business in 1954, when Project Artichoke was at the top of their list of priorities. Do you know who else was employed by the CIA’s Office of Security during that time? James W. McCord, Jr., the only other person who shares the same ST-102/REC-19 stamp combination as Ron Tammen on his FBI records. 

In 1960, Sheffield Edwards, director of the Office of Security, approached Maheu seeking access to his criminal connections to assassinate Fidel Castro, and Maheu immediately went straight to Roselli’s doorstep. As for the question of whether Robert Maheu has ever been directly linked to the Office of Security’s mind-control tactics used in Project Artichoke and MKULTRA, including hypnosis, the answer is yes. In her book A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, acclaimed author Lisa Pease provides compelling evidence that Sirhan Sirhan couldn’t possibly have killed RFK, since, among other reasons, the bullets that had struck victims in the pantry where Kennedy was shot didn’t match Sirhan’s gun. What’s more, Sirhan was found to be highly hypnotizable and has no memory of the event. According to Pease, Sirhan was hypnotized to serve as the patsy in the crime by hypnosis experts affiliated with the CIA’s MKULTRA program. She also asserts that Robert Maheu is “the most credible high-level suspect for the planner of Robert Kennedy’s assassination,” drawing bold arrows to, among other things: his background in assassination planning; his ties to investigators in the LAPD, DA’s office, and sheriff’s office; and his connections to the men who were at ground zero of the CIA’s hypnosis experiments, the Office of Security.

6) It would have been the perfect time for him to become an FBI informant.

You might ask why Robert Maheu would have wanted to become an FBI informant. Wouldn’t he be giving up the goods on his friends or even himself? Also, guys in intelligence are known for their secrecy. They’re as close-lipped as they come.

But Maheu had been experiencing a rough patch at precisely the time that Ron Tammen’s, Ash Resnick’s, and Marty Fenster’s names had been brought up to the FBI. In December 1970, he was abruptly fired from his position with Hughes Nevada Operations for reasons that seemed flimsy and unsubstantiated. The month prior, on Thanksgiving eve, Hughes had been whisked out of the Desert Inn on a gurney—Maheu preferred to use the word “kidnapped”—and flown to the Bahamas to live, even though Hughes had ruled out the Bahamas as a possible home after reading a negative report. An internal power struggle within the Hughes empire was the reason for the upheaval. A team of executives had staged the takeover with a newly created private intelligence service, known as Intertel, stealing Hughes and ousting Maheu and several others. 

Later, in a phoned-in press conference, Hughes or perhaps someone imitating Hughes said that he fired Maheu “Because he’s a no good, dishonest son of a bitch, and he stole me blind.” Maheu filed a defamation lawsuit against Hughes’ corporation, which he won. In 1972, Maheu found himself under the microscope over the Hughes memos that likely implicated Richard Nixon in accepting illegal campaign funds, memos that were being stored in Bob Maheu’s friend Hank Greenspun’s safe. Those memos were a key reason behind the Watergate scandal. In December 1973, he was indicted with Hughes and a few others over the charges that they’d manipulated Air West’s stock prices so that Hughes could acquire the airline in 1970. In 1975, he was testifying before the Church Committee about the Castro assassination plots. He had a lot going on during those years, most of it bad. Karma was closing in and jail was probably even a possibility.

Perhaps most notably, there’d been a falling out between Maheu and the CIA. According to author Jim Hougan, the CIA may have played a role in Maheu’s ouster. Intertel was run by former intelligence officials, including those in the National Security Agency and the CIA. It seems to me that, by that point, the one relatively solid relationship Maheu still had was with the FBI. If there was a good time to be a paid informant, maybe the years 1970 through 1974 would have been it. 

How can we find out if you’re right?

I’m still trying to find evidence concerning informant LV 366-PC to see if that person continues to fit my theory. 

On May 27, 2026, I filed a FOIA request for the forms (called FD-209s) that field agents filled out every time they interacted with a confidential informant. I was requesting all of LV 366-PC’s FD-209 forms for 1970 through 1974. They responded quickly, on June 2. Here’s what they said:

The material you requested is exempt from disclosure pursuant to FOIA exemptions (b)(7)(D) and (b)(7)(E) [5 U.S.C. §552 (b)(7)(D) and (b)(7)(E)]. Release of records responsive to your request would reveal confidential informant identities and information, expose law enforcement techniques, and endanger the life or physical safety of individuals.

Additionally, the release of these records could reasonably be expected to disclose procedures or guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions and risk circumvention of the law. Therefore, your request is being closed. 

They provided an email address that I could write to if I wished to dispute their response, and I did so. I included 12 pages of FD-209 forms that had already been released to the public as examples of FBI precedent that they appeared to be ignoring. Some had redactions over the exempt portions. Others were almost fully unredacted. In an attempt at being empathetic to their concerns, I asked them to redact the portions that were exempt from disclosure and to release the rest of the info. 

I received my answer yesterday and that answer was no. 

Will I appeal? Oh, sure. I’ll continue going through the motions. But I have a strong feeling that I’m not going to be seeing those FD-209s anytime ever.

Do I believe that the release of LV 366-PC’s FD-209s would endanger the life or physical safety of individuals? That seems unlikely, since I’m pretty sure LV 366-PC is no longer with us, especially if it turns out to be Robert Maheu. Neither are the people that LV 366-PC was informing the FBI about. 

Just fyi, here’s a link to an example of a fully unredacted FD-209 that’s been released on an informant known as CG 6606-C.The CG stands for Chicago. I’m guessing no lives were lost when that FD-209 was released.

I don’t know, maybe we’re getting close to finding out something new about Ron Tammen—maybe something meaningful. Maybe something important.

Cincinnati Field Office, FBI Records, Ron's Missing Person File

The informant: I think I know who squealed on Ron Tammen to the FBI in May 1973

This is going to be a quick one, since I really didn’t plan on writing anything today and I have other things I was hoping to do. However, what I’ve recently discovered is too big to sit on plus it’s gross outside, so the other things can wait.

For today’s post, let’s all think back to the halcyon days of Sunday, February 8, 2026. Temps in my neighborhood were around 20 degrees Fahrenheit, wind gusts approached 10 mph at times, and gas prices were averaging $2.91 per gallon at the national level and $2.67 in the Midwest. Speaking of gas prices, that’s roughly $1.65 less per gallon than we’re paying now at the national level and approximately $2.09 less per gallon in Ohio, which, P.S., is one of the “top 10 most expensive gasoline markets” nationwide. Yeah, those were some good times.

Anyway, it was on that date that I posted about a second tie to Las Vegas for Ronald Tammen. The first tie had to do with Hank Greenspun, about whom we’ve been getting to know quite a bit lately. We won’t be talking about Hank today. My announcement back on February 8 had to do with a scribble on Ron Tammen’s FBI record dated 5/9/73 that matches a scribble on Ash Resnick’s FBI record dated 1/8/74. 

Ash Resnick was a greeter at Caesar’s Palace in whose parking lot someone placed a stick (or two) (or eight) of dynamite beneath Ash’s Lincoln four-door sedan. Thankfully, an informant had alerted the police before anything bad happened and three ATF agents had caught the alleged perpetrator in the act. For some reason, the FBI has elected to hide that person’s identity, but newspaper accounts have tied a couple names to the alleged bomb plot, one being James Carl whose fingerprints matched those of Donald Lee Wayton. In the end, Wayton was sentenced to six years in prison for the crime. 

The scribble in question is the number 366 followed by an “m” followed by a space and then something that looks like “hau.”

Here’s Ron’s “366 m hau” on the document in which the Cincinnati Field Office asked FBI Headquarters to compare Ron’s fingerprints to the guy from Welco Industries:

Here’s the “366 m hau” on Ron’s FBI record…
…and here’s the whole document

Here’s Ash’s “366 m hau” on the document describing the suspect in the attempted car bombing:

Here’s the “366 m hau” on Ash’s FBI record…
…and here’s the whole document

Because the timeframe is different, I don’t know if Ash’s attempted car bombing had anything to do with Ron Tammen. Here’s what I do think: I think “366 m hau” was an informant who spoke to the FBI about both cases.

Why do I think this? I think this because the FBI had a lot of informants on its rolls whom they identified with letters and numbers. They did this so that they wouldn’t put a valuable source of information in harm’s way. Generally, the first two letters were the field office’s initials, which, in the case of Las Vegas, were LV. The initials would subsequently be followed by a number. Usually the numbers were fairly low, but they could climb pretty high in the bigger cities. If the number 366 belonged to an informant in Las Vegas, they would officially be known as LV 366 perhaps followed by a PC, which would stand for “potential criminal” informant. But was there such a person?

There was!

Recently, I found a July 20, 1970, record in which informant LV 366-PC was updating the FBI on the whereabouts of a mobster named Martin (Marty) Fenster. Here’s a summary of what LV 366-PC had to say about Fenster, which you can find on page 2, paragraphs 2 and 3, of the below document (circled in red):

On 2/19/70, LV 366-PC advised that MARTY FENSTER is now working for FRANK ROGER MILANO at the Clark County Vending Company, Las Vegas, Nevada. This target stated that at one time, FENSTER operated the Grace Ranch near Tucson, Arizona for PETE LICAVOLI. The target stated that FENSTER left the Grace Ranch about a year ago, moved to Los Angeles, California and about a month ago came to Las Vegas at the invitation of MILANO.

On 4/1/70, LV 366-PC advised that MARTY FENSTER was residing at 2030 McCarran Street, North Las Vegas, Nevada, apartment 2.

page 1 of the FBI record in which LV 366-PC is cited as an informant
page 2 of the FBI record in which LV 366-PC is cited as an informant; pertinent part is circled in red

Among other things, I’m looking into the Marty Fenster and Clark County Vending Company connection to see if I can learn anything more about the informant. For now, I think we can arrive at these conclusions:

  • The informant is in Las Vegas, as witnessed by the use of the phrase “came to Las Vegas.”
  • The informant has ties to the Mob.
  • Because of the “PC” in his informant number, he may be a Mob figure himself.
  • The informant likely knows Frank Roger Milano personally and does business with the Clark County Vending Company, whether as an employee or a customer.

My theory is that the scribbler left off the LV part of the informant number in order to be cryptic so that we wouldn’t catch on to its meaning. As for the “m hau” notation, it could be part of the informant’s name, also intentionally cryptic, which would be difficult to figure out. Nevertheless, I have a guess, but I don’t want to say what it is just yet.

As to whether FBI Headquarters thought the “366 m hau” notation was important, oh, they definitely did. Check out how they’ve underlined the “366 m hau” on Ron’s record with both a straight and squiggly line.

Note the straight and squiggly lines under Ron’s “366 m hau”

Now look at how they’ve drawn similarly straight and squiggly lines on page 2 of the 1/7/74 FBI teletype from Las Vegas in the descriptions of the bomb suspect and Resnick.

page 1 of the FBI teletype where they’ve used the same straight and squiggly lines to highlight key info
page 2 of the FBI teletype in which key descriptive info is highlighted with a straight and squiggly line; pertinent parts are circled in red

OK, that’s all for today. Interested in your thoughts.

CIA, FBI Records

I think I know what ‘Hac’ means on Ron’s FBI records, and holy moly, how insane would this be?

I’ve been thinking long and hard about how to write this blog post and, to be honest, I don’t think this is something that can be told in the usual way, not even through our beloved Q&A format. There are just too many people to introduce, each bogged down with their own backstories, and I don’t think I could do them justice—not without a corkboard and a lot of red string. Also, I don’t want to make this too detailed because, after all, this is a Saturday, and who needs to wade through so many details on a weekend? So here goes: a broad-brush re-telling of how I’ve arrived at my latest theory without inundating you with too many names, facts, and figures. Those can all come later in the book, right? Let’s go!

It all started a week or two ago when I was trying to figure out what Watergate had to do with Hank Greenspun. To me, Greenspun’s office seemed to be a weird little side trip for the Watergate burglars. As most of you know, Hank Greenspun was the outspoken publisher of the Las Vegas Sun and a household name in the City of Lights, Dreams, Opportunities, Second Chances, and, oh yeah, Sin. Something was being stored in Hank’s safe that made the White House Plumbers and the president whom they served very nervous, and I really wanted to find out what that was. 

The reason for my obsession is that Hank’s case seems pertinent to Ron Tammen’s case. After all, the acronym “Hac” is written in the top right corner of two of his records, just like Ron’s ten Hacs; an underlined “lf” is scribbled in the right margin of one of his records, just like Ron’s four lf’s; and the words “see index” are written in the left margin of one of Hank’s documents in handwriting that’s similar to the “see index” on page one of Ron’s records. For some reason, Ron Tammen and Hank Greenspun appear to have a connection. 

See Hank’s “Hac” in the right corner, next to the checkmark above “Las Vegas”; click on image for a closer view
See Hank’s “Hac” in the right corner, beneath “JFK” and see his “see index” in the left margin; click on image for a closer view

See Ron’s “Hac” in the right corner, to the left of the “all files” note and see his “see index” in the left margin; click on image for a closer view

See Ron’s “Hac” in the right corner; click on image for a closer view

There’d been a few possible reasons mentioned in government records for the 1972 break-in at Greenspun’s office. In his testimony before the Senate Watergate committee, James W. McCord, Jr., said it was to obtain blackmail material that was “racketeer-related” against one of the Democratic candidates and, if he were elected president, “the racketeers or national crime syndicate would have a control or influence over him.” According to an FBI report, another possible reason had to do with records that would make Edmund Muskie, the favored Democratic contender, look bad. Apparently, in the 1960s, Muskie had been on a group hunting trip in Maryland and was cited for scattering corn to attract game birds. Greenspun himself weighed in and, although he acknowledged that he had a document on the Muskie hunting incident on an office table, not in the safe, he waved it off as an unlikely reason for the attempted break-in, which, according to Greenspun, had occurred in August 1972. I will add here that this reason makes no sense if the break-in attempt indeed happened in August 1972, since Muskie had formally withdrawn from the presidential race on April 27, 1972. The most likely reason, Greenspun said, was the sizable stash of memos once owned by Howard Hughes that Greenspun was storing in the safe. In 1970, he’d agreed to store the memos for his friend Robert Maheu, who’d been in charge of Hughes’ Nevada operations until he was fired from that post shortly after Hughes moved from Nevada to the Bahamas in November 1970.

I found my answer in an illuminating article in the December 21, 2015, issue of the Las Vegas Sun, by Megan Messerlyand J.D. Morris. That article led me to a more in-depth 16-page article in the September 1976 issue of Playboy Magazine, titled “The Puppet and The Puppetmasters,” by Larry DuBois and Laurence Gonzales. 

Howard Hughes during his younger years; public domain

Long story short: Hank Greenspun was right. It was the Howard Hughes memos that the Plumbers were after. Apparently, Howard Hughes was a political hot potato when it came to Richard Nixon. You could say that Hughes owned Nixon. Hughes had been paying large sums to Nixon and his brother Donald since 1956, seeking political favors in return. A $205,000 loan to Nixon’s brother in 1956, after being made public by investigative journalist Drew Pearson, likely contributed to Nixon’s election losses for president in 1960 and for governor of California in 1962. In 1969 and 1970, Hughes had donated $100,000 in two $50,000 installments to Nixon’s reelection campaign through Nixon’s longtime friend Bebe Rebozo, money that was also spent illegally. Nixon had been burned twice by Hughes’ loan to his brother and he didn’t want another hefty Hughes donation—a $100,000 bribe—to spoil his chances for reelection.

As for what Hughes wanted in return, one of his top priorities was for the Atomic Energy Commission to stop conducting underground nuclear testing near Las Vegas, since the explosions caused his penthouse at the Desert Inn to sway. He was passionate on this matter,  and he would have supported either party to get what he wanted. In 1968, when Lyndon Johnson was still president, a representative of Hughes approached Vice President Humphrey and, according to DuBois and Gonzales, promised that “we will give him full, unlimited support for his campaign to enter the White House if he will just take this one on for us?” Humphrey didn’t bite.

The Hughes memos were a key reason for the June 17, 1972, Watergate break-in as well. A target for that break-in was Larry O’Brien, chair of the Democratic National Committee. Before he was the DNC chair, Larry O’Brien had worked for Howard Hughes as a lobbyist and he knew many of the same people in that tight circle. The Nixon team likely worried about what he knew about the Hughes memos as well.

On February 3, 1972, the memos in Greenspun’s safe were made known to the world by the New York Times. The next day, according to DuBois and Gonzales, “Mitchell met with Liddy and the result was Liddy’s belief that he had the go-ahead for two missions: the burglary of Greenspun’s safe and a mission into O’Brien’s office at the Watergate.”

You could say that, without Hank Greenspun, there would be no Watergate. 

But let’s talk about those “Hacs” on Hank’s and Ron’s records. A subsidiary of the Howard Hughes empire was the Hughes Aircraft Company, commonly abbreviated as HAC. DuBois and Gonzales report that HAC was a cover for the CIA, having forged a relationship as early as 1949, two years after the CIA’s original charter. Hughes would give the CIA lots of money and the CIA would award Hughes with lots of lucrative contracts.

Could “Hac” refer to Hughes Aircraft Company? Maybe its presence on a person’s FBI record, rare as it was, meant that they worked undercover there as a CIA operative. Or maybe the FBI used it as shorthand for Hughes himself. Greenspun was a friend of Hughes beginning in 1966, when, upon his invitation, Hughes traveled to Las Vegas and decided to stay there and invest in a number of casinos over those four years. 

But here’s the coolest part: do you remember this past summer how I posted about another “Hac” sighting? That notation appeared at the top right of a document for the New England chapter of the Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA). At first, I thought the “Hac” notation pertained to a peace activist named Marjorie Swann since that document was in her file, but she’s not mentioned in it. I was having a tough time figuring out what the organization’s link might be to Howard Hughes until I learned something: not only did the CNVA protest against the Vietnam War, but, according to Wikipedia, they were formed in 1957 to protest against nuclear weapons testing. Their first protest was held in August 1957 at Camp Mercury, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.


See “Hac” in the right corner, near the circled sd; click on image for a closer view

This brings us to my new theory: Maybe the FBI used the “Hac” notation to indicate an association with Howard Hughes, whether financial or personal.

As for how Ron Tammen would have come into contact with Howard Hughes, I have some ideas about that too. His name was Robert Maheu, and, in addition to being employed by Howard Hughes, he was a CIA contractor who’d spent a lot of time in Miami as a liaison to the CIA and Mafia in their efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Let’s save him for another day.

###

CIA, FBI Records, Richard Cox, Ron's Friends and Family, Ron's Missing Person File

Epilogue: Ron Tammen 73rd Anniversary Quiz

NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE READING ON THEIR PHONES: IN ORDER FOR THE QUIZ TO APPEAR, YOU NEED TO CLICK THE LINK AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL MESSAGE THAT SAYS “READ ON BLOG” TO THE RIGHT OF THE BLOG’S NAME. (DON’T CLICK ON “READER.”) THANK YOU AND APOLOGIES TO ANYONE WHO HAS HAD DIFFICULTIES.

Hey, great job! You made it to the end of today’s post, and now it’s time to tackle the quiz. About one-half of the questions deal with what I posted today, while the other half pertain to the rest of the site. I’ve tried to make the questions relatively easy for a typical AGMIHTF follower, but be sure to read them closely, because there are a couple tricky ones.

Also, I don’t want to tell you how to live your lives, but I’m using the free version of the quiz plug-in, so I have no way of knowing how many times you take the quiz. If you happen to learn something while taking it the first time and then decide to take the quiz again to get a perfect score, I’m 100% OK with that.

If you get a 10 out of 10, please email your results page pronto to rontammenproject@gmail.com. You can do that by taking a screenshot of the results page and attaching it to an email or sharing your results page via the share button on your screen.

The first 10 people who email me their score of 10 out of 10 will receive this ⬇️⬇️⬇️ string bracelet. Also, only one bracelet per person/mailing address. Good luck!

Ron Tammen 73rd Anniversary Quiz

How much do you know about Ron Tammen's disappearance? The first 10 people who answer all 10 questions correctly and who email me their results will receive a black and silver string bracelet, made in Turkey, with the words Ron Tammen spelled out in Morse code. C'mon! You can't win if you don't try!

CIA, FBI Records, Richard Cox, Ron's Friends and Family, Ron's Missing Person File

Part 4: The finale

Whew! This has been one enormous post, especially Part 3. Hopefully you’ve found some of this information to be useful. But we still haven’t answered the question that I led with in Part 1. Let’s address it first.

Who did Ronald Tammen call ‘friend’?

Of course, these are just guesses, but I’d put James McCord at the top of the list. Based on their shared ST-102, REC-19 stamps as well as their lf’s, it seems as though their paths had indeed crossed. Maybe they’d met in Miami, when McCord was sitting in on meetings at JM WAVE.  Renowned JFK researcher and author James DiEugenio shared a fascinating anecdote about McCord in an article posted on the Kennedys and King website: 

“But beyond that, when Lisa Pease and I were publishing Probe magazine in the nineties, we met up with former CIA pilot Carl McNabb. He said that prior to the Bay of Pigs, he had been briefed at the Miami CIA station, since he was part of the aerial facet. He noticed that McCord was in the room and he was struck by how taciturn he was. Afterward, he asked the briefer who he was. He told him his name. He then added that he was [then-CIA Chief of Operations/Plans Richard] Helms’ Zap Man. McNabb later showed me the very old notes with this information recorded on it. I asked him what the term meant. He replied McCord was his liquidator.”

Is it just me, or do the names “Zap Man” and “liquidator” sound like supervillains?

Speaking of supervillains, perhaps Morse Allen, who did much of the day-to-day work on Project Artichoke, and James McCord, who was right there with him as part of the CIA’s Security Research Staff, had known Ron as one of Project Artichoke’s star research subjects. 

If they weren’t friends, maybe Ron considered McCord to be more of a boss figure. If so, perhaps Ron had signed on to work for McCord Associates, James McCord’s security firm at the time McCord was involved with Watergate.

Ron also may have been friends with some of the Cuban exiles as well as their American associate Frank Sturgis. As you may recall, Sturgis had 10s in the upper right corner of several of his FBI records, just like Ron did. Sturgis’s 10s on records from the 1950s and ‘60s mainly had to do with his counter-revolutionary activities in Cuba and Guatemala. A 10 from October 1973 deals with his conviction in a case in Florida involving an auto theft ring and whether his Watergate testimony had influenced that conviction. One 1977 document with a 10 in the right corner described how Sturgis, Bernard Barker, and Eugenio Martinez were seeking pardons from their Watergate convictions.  My ongoing theory is that the 10’s signify a heads-up to the FBI’s liaison to the Secret Service. Ron Tammen, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, and the others might have all been work friends whose antics were keeping the Secret Service on alert.

My third choice is that he may have been friends with Richard Cox. Do you remember how a former professor at Miami University had written to the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division in 1952 letting them know that he and his wife, also a professor, were familiar with someone who looked very much like Richard Cox during their time in Oxford? Both felt certain that it was he. In his letter to the CID, the man said that the individual was an employee “of a shop or restaurant or even, perhaps, of the university” in Oxford, Ohio, for the period of January through September 1950, before he and his wife moved to the Chicago area. In an FBI report, his wife told agents that she and her husband believed the young man worked in a “public or semi-public place such as a restaurant or filling station.” Maybe Richard Cox had been recruiting young college men in that town for the CIA for a few years, bonus points if they were gay, and he and Ron struck up a friendship. Or maybe they met in Florida working for the CIA and somehow stumbled upon the uncanny coincidence that they were both two young men from the Buckeye state who’d disappeared from their college dorms within three years of each other. Small world!

In all seriousness, can you imagine Ron Tammen hanging out with James McCord, Frank Sturgis, and Richard Cox in a secret Miami meeting spot? If that ever happened, I would’ve loved to have been a fly on that pink stucco wall.

Or maybe they met on the beach. Can you picture it?

left to right: James McCord, Ron Tammen, Richard Cox, and Frank Sturgis mingling in my imagination

Look, I’m sorry to have to change the subject, but I need to tell you guys something, and there’s no easy way for me to do it. 

What’s up?

I recently realized that I was mistaken about something, and I’ve promised that I’d let you all know whenever that happens. It has to do with my post “Ron, Dan, Jim, and Hank: four all-American ‘bad boys’ in the summer of ’73.”Don’t get me wrong—I still stand behind most of that write-up, which also discusses Watergate, James McCord, Daniel Ellsberg, and Hank Greenspun, only less in-depth than we’ve done today. What I got wrong was the part about Richard G. Hunsinger, the FBI administrator who’d grown up in Oxford, Ohio. As it turns out, he didn’t sign the FBI report dated June 15, 1973.

I really did think that the initials RGH looked like how Richard G. Hunsinger wrote them. What’s more, I thought that the signature next to his initials looked like it came from Willistine Goode, Hunsinger’s capable assistant. It, too, resembled her signature. But I was oh so wrong, and the actual signer makes more sense.

The signer of that FBI report was the special agent in charge of the Chicago Field Office in 1973, Richard G. Held. In 1976, Held would be promoted to associate director of the FBI by Clarence Kelley after Nicholas P. Callahan had been fired for financial wrongdoing. Of course, it makes total sense that the SAC of the Chicago office would sign the form that they themselves had submitted to Headquarters. I’m embarrassed that I immediately jumped to Hunsinger. Please forgive. I will try to do better.

Wow. Who knew that you’d have to study so much handwriting in this project?

Do you know what would have been helpful before I got started with this project? It would have been helpful if I’d received training in handwriting analysis. I’m not talking about the kind of handwriting analysis in which you can tell someone’s personality by their handwriting. I don’t really care about that. I’m talking about forensic document examination in which you can identify whether two or more handwriting samples were written by the same person. Think about all of those scribbles and scrawls on Ron’s FBI records. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could identify the people who’d written them?

Why don’t you just hire someone?

Forensic document examiners aren’t cheap. It’s a lot like hiring an attorney. The science of examining handwritten letters on documents takes hours and hours, with every one of those hours costing several hundred dollars. Because I’m not rolling in dough, I need to be judicious, and to consider hiring one only when the outcome of that examination would be most worthwhile. But that’s just me.

Pro tip: If you’re someone who’s just starting out career-wise, and you’re also considering doing some FOIA research of your own, I’d highly recommend getting certified in forensic document examination. Imagine having that skill at your fingertips as you were poring over old FBI or CIA records. It could set you way ahead of the pack.

Have you ever hired a forensic document examiner?

I have.

And?

Totally worth it. But that’s a story that’ll have to wait until another day.

In honor of Ron Tammen’s anniversary, comments are being opened up free-for-all style. Ask me anything you want to about Ron Tammen. No question is too stupid. No comment is too weird. Just nothing mean, please. I don’t respond to mean. Also, I won’t be revealing any people’s names that I’m protecting, so please don’t try. Also, I can’t say anything about the lawsuit either.

Lastly, don’t forget to fill out your quiz and hopefully win one of those bracelets. I’m loving mine!

Let’s go!

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

ADDENDUM

Oh. Em. GEE, Kenneth W. Whittaker and E. Howard Hunt were neighbors??

As you can imagine, I’ve been learning as much as I can about the White House Plumbers, since, oh, I dunno, I think Ron Tammen may have known one or more of them. Well guess what? Remember Kenneth W. Whittaker, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami Field Office whose 1-gamma scribble looks a lot like a notation on one of Ron’s FBI records? (See part 1.) Well, today I learned that Kenneth W. Whittaker was neighbors with E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame (see part 3) beginning in 1977, after Hunt was released from prison for his Watergate escapades.

Neighbors.

Look, I understand that it’s a small world and all. I even make a point of saying that to people when the situation calls for it. But neighbors?

Here’s Kenneth Whittaker’s affidavit that he wrote on behalf of E. Howard Hunt when Hunt was seeking a pardon for his Watergate escapades. (He didn’t get it.) I don’t know about you, but there are coincidences, and then there are coincidences, and I’m not so sure I believe that having Howard Hunt move in next door to the former SAC of the FBI’s Miami Field Office would qualify as a bona fide coincidence. Would you?

Image from the FBI Vault; click on image for a closer view
Image from the FBI Vault; click on image for a closer view