A Good Man Is Hard to Find -- My Search for Ronald H. Tammen, Jr.

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

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

Me neither

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

And so…into the weeds I hopped…

…and then I became Energized…

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

Project Rabbit.

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

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

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

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

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

18 December 1952

Commanding General

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Dayton, Ohio

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

Subject: CHRIST, David L.

HEYERT, Martin

DRISCOLL, Walter G.

Dear Sir:

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

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

CHRIST, David L. 24 November 1950

HEYERT, Martin 11 June 1952

DRISCOLL, Walter G. 25 May 1951

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

FOR THE ASSISTANT DEPUTY/INSPECTION & SECURITY

Ermal P. Geiss

Acting Chief, Security Division

I&SO/ACS:kad

CC: Files of subjects

Chrono

Security Officer, Armament Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB

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

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

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

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

Back to the three guys…

David L. Christ

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

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

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

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

Martin Heyert

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ ] (b)(1).

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

Walter G. Driscoll, Ph.D.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are there any clues regarding what Project Rabbit was about?

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

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

Do you plan to do anything more with this info?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That man’s name is Jean Rene Souetre.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They gave him 10’s.

Just like Ron’s.

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

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

I can’t think of anyone else.

Here are Souetre’s 10’s:

For comparison, here are Ron’s.

Interested to hear your thoughts.

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

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

Happy Fourth of July 🇺🇸

(You OK? Day 7)

July 4, 2025

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

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

1. Hey look! It’s L’Allier

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

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

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

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

Marina Oswald’s Ci

Carlos Marcello’s Ci’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Tammen

Wayne B. Williams

Patty Hearst

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

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

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

LOOKS LIKE!

(You OK? Day 6)

July 3, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On February 28, they wrote this:

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

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

DOJ response

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

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

Mmmkay.

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

1) The FD-217 form is important.

2) We are on the right track.

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

4) I’m going to take it.

Talk to you tomorrow.

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

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

DEMOCRACY!

(You OK? Day 5)

July 2, 2025

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

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

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

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

An editing pencil of yore

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

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

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

WHAT!

(You OK? Day 4)

July 1, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1962: Communications Section

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

1973: Identification Division

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

1975: Legal Counsel Division

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

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

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

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

IS!

(You OK? Day 3)

June 30, 2025

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

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

Marjorie Swann!

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

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

Here’s Marjorie’s Hac:

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

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

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

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

Here it is blown up:

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

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

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

THIS!

(You OK? Day 2)

June 29, 2025

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

Wayne Bertram Williams/The Atlanta Child Murders

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

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

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

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

Marjorie Swann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You OK? Same. Let’s just focus on Ron Tammen for a while

Hey everyone. I feel like I’ve been needing to post something lately, but I haven’t exactly been in the mood. First, I’ve never done very well in extreme heat. And second…well, for as long as I’ve known me, I’ve been a big believer in things like democracy and science and the Golden Rule. For some reason, those seemingly unifying bedrock principles are now being thought of as quaint vestiges of a past civilization by some people, a fraction of whom I used to know and even hang with on occasion.

So, I’m sad. No, like…really sad. Like, waking up in the morning and realizing that I’ve been crying in my sleep sad, which has happened to me twice in the past week. As you can imagine, it’s challenging for a blogger to write a post that’s all zippy and upbeat when they’ve been living under a dome of 90-degree gloom for day upon day, and, deep down, they don’t envision the dome lifting anytime soon—at least not for the next 3 ½ years.

Still, I’ve made a few interesting discoveries lately that apply to Ron Tammen’s FBI documents, and, although you’ve proven to be patient, dear reader, I realize that 3 ½ years would be too long for anyone to have to wait for an update. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m a practitioner of the Golden Rule, and I wouldn’t want to be treated that way.

Here’s what I’m planning to do: starting now, and for the next six days, I’ll be posting some of my most recent discoveries for you. Sometimes I may just post a document and provide two or three sentences for background, while other times, I may wax a little poetic about it. (It’ll be more of the former and less of the latter.) The final post of this series will be on the fourth of July, the birthday of America’s independence from a monarchy (249 years of age!), the birthday of the Freedom of Information Act (59 years of age!), and, OK, the birthday of yours truly (internally, I’m a 5-year-old “fearless” and “adventurous” “kid at heart,” according to a quiz on BuzzFeed!).

So grab an American flag and your trusty ol’ cowbell and let’s do this, people. Let’s shake off some of these doldrums we’ve been feeling and take a gander at some FBI docs. Because, the last time I checked, this is what democracy still looks like.

June 28, 2025

Here’s another 10 that I found

To pick up from the last time we discussed 10s in the upper righthand corner of FBI records, I currently believe they were written in that location to indicate that the FBI’s liaison to the Secret Service should receive a copy. Some 10s have hyphens followed by the numbers 1 or 2, while others don’t. I think a 10-1 and a 10 mean essentially the same thing: that the liaison should receive one copy of the memo. A 10-2 would indicate that the liaison should receive two copies.

For today’s release, here’s a document that has a 10-1 in the upper righthand corner, similar to the 10s that are in the upper righthand corner of Ron’s documents.

Included on the memo are the names of three people you probably recognize by now: Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis, three of the five Watergate burglars. On April 15, 1977, this memo was written to inform the recipient that the pardon attorney had requested an Application for Pardon for the three men. As it turns out, only Eugenio Martinez would be pardoned. All three men were denied pardons by President Carter, but Martinez was later pardoned by President Reagan.

As you may recall, so far, I’ve found three other documents for Frank Sturgis (aka Frank Fiorini) with 10s on them. Here’s number four. In some circles, Sturgis is also suspected of playing a possible role in the assassination of JFK.

l-r: Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martinez, and Bernard Barker

OK! See how this is going to work? Short and sweet, but hopefully intriguing and/or enlightening.

See you tomorrow. Note that there’s no definite time when I’ll be posting. It’ll be a surprise. Also, if you should notice anything on the documents that I’ve missed or neglected to mention, please don’t hesitate to speak up.

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

FBI Records, Ron's Missing Person File

Mini-post: I think I know what Ron’s 10s signify on his FBI docs

The last time we talked, I posted (among other things) a bunch of FBI documents that have the number 10 written in the top righthand corner, just like Ron’s. There were potential assassination attempts against Vice President Spiro Agnew as well as Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau; bomb threats against Prince Charles and Princess Diana as well as a federal building in Madison, Wisconsin; the alleged use of brainwashing and kidnapping by religious cults; the unlawful flight of mass murderer Richard Speck; the latest intel on soldier-of-fortune Frank Sturgis and mobster Santo Trafficante, both of whom were involved in efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro; and the use of extortion against high-profile victims, including congressmen, senators, heads of federal agencies, and Frank Sinatra. Granted, it’s a hodge podge, but you have to admit that there’s an elevated level of danger associated with them. On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the most serious crimes you could ever be charged with, I’d say these were definitely up there.

But then there was also Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. His Southern Christian Leadership Conference was granted its fair share of 10s too, even though their principal activities were hosting meetings and planning sit-ins and marches, which, the last time I checked, are one hundred percent legal.

You may recall from my last post that I’d also hypothesized that the numbers in the righthand corners referred to FBI agents whose job responsibilities involved communicating with certain federal agencies. These agents were called FBI liaisons, and they were housed in the Division of Domestic Intelligence during the 1950s to early 70s. I’m still holding onto that hypothesis.

This brings us to today’s announcement. Today, I’m going to reveal the federal agency whose FBI liaison, I believe, was alerted to Ron’s documents along with all of the other documents that were given 10s in their righthand corners. But before I do, I’m going to share several more 10s with you.

Assassination of Senator and Presidential Candidate Robert Kennedy

Bomb threat against the U.S. Supreme Court

Bomb threat against Frank Sinatra and the Fontainebleau Hotel

Extortion/death threat against Secretary of State Dean Rusk

Memo from Secret Service Director James Rowley to the FBI seeking info about Frank Sturgis

That last one was a clue, because, you guys? I think the 10s signify the United States Secret Service, aka USSS. In other words, I think whoever put the 10s on Ron’s missing person docs felt it was necessary that the FBI’s liaison to the Secret Service have a look at them.

Why do I think this? I believe this based on the other documents we’ve found with 10s on them. Clearly, the Secret Service needs to be in the loop regarding potential threats to a U.S. President, Vice President, President-elect, Vice President-elect, and immediate family members. They also protect major presidential candidates, former Presidents and Vice Presidents, visiting foreign heads of state, and so on. According to Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 3056, protecting these people are the primary responsibility of the Secret Service.

But did you know that, over the years, the FBI has provided the Secret Service with additional information too? In the July 1973 Agreement Between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Secret Service Concerning Protective Responsibilities, which was updated at roughly the same time that FBI agents were passing around Ron’s missing person documents, this information might have included:

Information concerning attempts, threats, or conspiracies to injure, kill, or kidnap persons protected by the USSS or other U.S. or foreign officials in the U.S. or abroad.
Information concerning attempts or threats to redress a grievance against any public official by other than legal means, or attempts personally to contact such officials for that purpose.
Information concerning threatening, irrational, or abusive written or oral statements about U.S. Government or foreign officials.
Information concerning civil disturbances, anti-U.S. demonstrations or incidents or demonstrations against foreign diplomatic establishments.
Information concerning illegal bombings or bomb-making; concealment of caches of firearms, explosives, or other implements of war; or other terrorist activity.
Information concerning persons who defect or indicate a desire to defect from the United States and who demonstrate one or more of the following characteristics:
- Irrational or suicidal behavior or other emotional instability.
- Strong or violent anti-U.S. sentiment.
- A propensity toward violence.
Information concerning individuals who may be considered potentially dangerous to individuals protected by the USSS because of their background or activities, including evidence of emotional instability or participation in groups engaging in activities inimical to the United States.

Obviously, they made some judgment calls.

The one that convinced me that we were dealing with the Secret Service was #5, illegal bombings or bomb-making, since so many bomb-related FBI docs of this time period carry 10s on them.

So there you have it. In addition to the FBI, DOJ, and CIA, I think the Secret Service had an interest in Ron Tammen. If we’re right about this, what do you think it was about Ron that they could have found so interesting?

Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation and The Black Vault for access to these records.