Category: FBI Records

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I tend to picture Ron Tammen as some kind of Forrest Gump–type character, living his mysterious life in the foreground of America’s most momentous events of the mid-to-late 20th century. I was never a fan of that movie, by the way, and not just because of the way Forrest said the name Jenny, which people have kiddingly been subjecting me to on occasion since the movie came out in 1994. I’m pretty sure that that movie is one of the reasons why anyone named Jennifer who was born after the year 1980 has opted to be called Jen. But yeah, agreed. I’ve managed to insert Ron Tammen into some iconic moments in American history. But I’m not doing this on purpose. It’s where the evidence has led me. And right now, for what it’s worth, Ron’s FBI records have led me to Watergate.

Do you think Ron Tammen might have had something to do with Watergate?

If he did, he seemed to escape detection during the investigation. To date, I’ve found no one who fits his description in books and government records I’ve read on the June 17, 1972, Watergate break-in. I’m not saying he wasn’t somehow involved. I just haven’t been able to locate him.

With that said, when Ron’s records were making the rounds at the FBI, their work was essentially done regarding the Watergate break-in. In January 1973, James McCord and G. Gordon Liddy were convicted for their crimes weeks after E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio Martinez, Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, and Frank Sturgis had pleaded guilty. But that doesn’t mean the FBI’s work pertaining to Watergate was completely over. 

On May 25, 1973, Harvard law professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as the special prosecutor charged with investigating the additional Watergate-related matters that were coming out daily in the news and during the televised Senate hearings. Watergate was now one very large, writhing can of worms, and man oh man…right away, dude was digging into the dirt, worm by squirmy worm, in search of rock bottom.

Meanwhile, over at the FBI, L. Patrick Gray (pictured below at left) had stepped down as acting director on April 27, 1973, after it was revealed that he’d willfully destroyed crucial evidence pertaining to the Watergate break-in. At the onset of Archibald Cox’s appointment, he and his staff were communicating frequently with the FBI’s acting director, William Ruckelshaus (pictured in the center). In July 1973, with the swearing in of FBI Director Clarence Kelley (pictured at right), the Special Prosecutor’s Office was requesting that FBI agents follow up on all sorts of questions pertaining to Cox’s multipronged investigation.

Were Richard Cox and Archibald Cox related to one another?

Wouldn’t that be crazy? Nah, I’m sure they weren’t. But because I’m lucky enough to be writing about two men with the same last name in one four-part blog series, I’ll be sure to make it very clear which one I’m talking about from here on out.  

What sorts of things was Archibald Cox investigating?

The special prosecutor immediately set his sights on prohibited contributions, illegal wiretaps, election law violations, and other criminal acts by the Committee to Reelect the President, commonly referred to as the ever-so-apropos acronym CREEP, as well as others in CREEP’s corrupt orbit. One obvious area for exploration was the other suspicious break-ins that had been reported at roughly the same time as the break-in at DNC Headquarters.

Tell us more about the additional break-ins

According to FBI records, Archibald Cox sought the FBI’s assistance in investigating roughly 20 break-ins that appeared to be related to Watergate. Although I’m unable to find the original memo with his instructions, I’ve found references that state that he made such a request on June 19, 1973. But look, he and his assistants sent the FBI scads of memos, many one case at a time. It’s possible that they sent several memos versus one omnibus memo. Let’s not sweat it, OK?

First and foremost, Archibald Cox wanted to know more about the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding, in September 1971. As we’ve discussed in the past, Daniel Ellsberg had leaked what became known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington Post, and Nixon was so incensed about it, his DOJ charged Ellsberg and his associate Anthony Russo with such crimes as theft of government documents and espionage. The Fielding break-in had initially flown under the radar because a career burglar named Elmer Davis had confessed to the crime and, shortly thereafter, the Beverly Hills PD had quietly closed the case. It was E. Howard Hunt’s testimony before the Watergate grand jury that brought the Fielding break-in into the light, placing Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, and “two of the men from Miami” at Fielding’s office. When prosecutors alerted Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr., who was presiding over Daniel Ellsberg’s and Anthony Russo’s trial in Los Angeles, about what Hunt had told the grand jury, Byrne ordered that he be given access to Hunt’s testimony, which was also released to the public on May 4, 1973. One week later, on May 11, 1973, all charges were dropped against Ellsberg and Russo because of government misconduct.

Archibald Cox considered the Fielding break-in significant. Stephen Trott, deputy district attorney for the City of Los Angeles, said this about what Archibald had told him: “…as far as constitutional matters were concerned, he thought our case was much more important than the Watergate case itself.” Here was the U.S. government breaking into a private citizen’s office without a warrant hoping to find evidence that they could use to discredit his patient because they felt he’d crossed the line. Said Trott, “Archibald Cox thought these claims raised a significant issue: Can the President authorize the break-in of a psychiatrist’s office to steal the file of someone on trial in order to give it to the Detroit News?”

Archibald also wanted more information about the purported break-in at Hank Greenspun’s Las Vegas Sun office in 1972. Although FBI records claim that it was merely planned and didn’t happen, John Ehrlichman, White House assistant for domestic affairs, had told Nixon that “I guess they actually got in.” Archibald also wanted to know more about a break-in at Dan Rather’s home on April 9, 1972, as well as about 17 others. 

Here are 10 additional noteworthy break-ins singled out by William Ruckelshaus for Clarence Kelley as he was passing the baton to him in July 1973. Because Ruckelshaus was giving Kelley a birds-eye view of the most pressing issues pertaining to the Watergate investigation, I have to presume that these were also on the special prosecutor’s A-list. (Note that the last one was later withdrawn.)

1. Chilean Embassy and Chilean officials residing in New York City
2. Law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver, and Kampelman (Ruckelshaus referred to it as Sargent Shriver’s law firm, though the offices of Patricia Harris and Max Kampelman were also broken into)
3. Robert Strauss, Democratic National Committee Chairman, NAACP
4. Richard Gerstein, Dade County prosecutor
5. Carol Scott, attorney for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)
6. Michael Lerner, defendant in the Seattle Seven case
7. Lee Holley, attorney for the Seattle Seven
8. Gerald Lefcourt, activist and attorney for the Detroit Weathermen and Chicago Seven (also wiretaps)
9. Washington Free Press
10. National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (this was later withdrawn by special prosecutor)

But the break-ins didn’t end there. According to “The Unsolved Break-Ins 1970-1974,” by Robert Fink, in the October 10, 1974, issue of Rolling Stone magazine, additional victims included those on the list below. Fink points out that “Since the break-ins continued after the Watergate arrests—indeed into this summer [of 1974]—it is a reasonable speculation that other teams of burglars were involved: either additional ‘plumbers’ or special FBI or CIA investigative units.” Fink also estimated that “at least 100 break-ins, apparently political in nature, occurred during the Nixon administration.” 

1. Charles Garry, San Francisco attorney who was general counsel to the Black Panthers, and represented Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton
2. Egbal Ahmad, Pakistani scholar at the University of Chicago’s Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs
3. United States Servicemen’s Fund
4. Federal Reserve Board’s Bank Operations Office, on the eighth floor of the Watergate building
5. NAACP Legal Defense Fund
6. Intertel (Howard Hughes was a client)
7. Tad Szulc – former New York Times investigative reporter specializing in intelligence
8. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., Republican member of Senate Watergate Committee
9. Finance office of the National Welfare Rights Organization, a lobbying group representing welfare recipients
10. Potomac Associates, research organization that had published a report critical of the Nixon administration
11. CBS correspondent Marvin Kalb’s office in the State Department
12. Washington Society of Friends Meeting House and adjoining Quaker House – the group was planning a prayer vigil for peace to take place in the White House
13. Institute for Policy Studies – led by former members of the Kennedy administration; one victim’s roommate, Carole Cullums, also had her antiwar office broken into at the same time
14. Offices of Common Cause, including John Gardner, director
15. Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee
16. Goddard College 
17. Louis Harris, pollster
18. Mortimer Caplin, who was commissioner of the IRS under Kennedy administration
19. Sol Linowitz, former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, and former adviser to Senator Muskie (alleged break-in)

Archibald Cox’s top-20 list of break-ins wasn’t all that he asked the FBI to investigate. He had other requests as well.

What else did Archie request?

Oh! So we’re now using his nickname that was generally reserved for friends and family? That’s fine—he was a good guy, and I think he’d be OK with it. 

Archie was also interested in the infamous “dirty tricks” that Nixon and his cadre of criminals were up to. The chief trickster was an L.A. attorney named Donald Segretti, who’d acquired a skillset in such areas as character assassination, subterfuge, and general assholery while he was a student at the University of Southern California. Segretti’s main purpose was to sabotage the campaigns of the Democratic primary candidates, including Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Henry Jackson, and Edmund Muskie—especially Muskie, since Nixon and CREEP considered him to be the most challenging to beat if he’d won the Democratic nomination. Segretti accomplished this through a variety of nefarious means, from spreading rumors about the candidates’ sex lives to hiring operatives to infiltrate opposition headquarters to distributing false propaganda about their campaigns. He and his minions managed to bring Muskie’s candidacy down with a fraudulent letter published in the Manchester (NH) Union Leader accusing him of laughing when someone on his staff made a disparaging remark about French-Canadians. Muskie’s emotional rebuttal speech to what’s now known as the “Canuck letter” finished Segretti’s job for him since people said Muskie looked like he was crying even though I honestly don’t see it and Muskie said it was just snow on his cheeks. Later on, at the Democratic convention in Miami Beach, Segretti hired people to cosplay as “hippie” protestors, employing antics such as rock throwing and urinating in public to make Democratic nominee George McGovern look bad. Among those who were assisting Segretti with his dirty tricks were several White House Plumbers, including, you guessed it, idea men E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.

Who at the FBI conducted the investigations?

The division that took the lead for investigating the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Watergate Hotel was Division 6, the General Investigative Division. The Washington Field Office, being the office of origin for Watergate, conducted much of the legwork as well. For the follow-up investigations, those two groups were joined by the Domestic Intelligence Division, Division 5, especially for the other break-ins. This makes sense since I’ve suspected that the scribbles on Ron’s FBI records, including his “see index” notation, appear to have originated in Division 5.

What do you make of all of this?

I see it this way: During the exact same time period in which the likes of James W. McCord, E. Howard Hunt, and Donald Segretti were being investigated by the FBI at the request of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, Ronald Tammen’s records were being scrutinized by agents in the same division and were receiving the exact same notations that the Watergate guys received.

The notation shared by all the major players as well as Ron is the underlined “lf” (a script lowercase l and f), which appears in the righthand margin about midway down the page. Here are a few examples of the lf in its natural habitat:

If only there were some kind of timeline we could look at…

You’re in luck! I’ve created a timeline that lists several key dates tied to Ron’s records (in blue), several key Watergate milestones (in black), and my tally of FBI records covering the additional Watergate-related break-ins or dirty tricks that were given an underlined lf mark during the interim time periods (in italics inside gray box). Note that the Watergate players received lf marks beyond this timeframe, mostly before May 9, but this is where they overlap with the dates on Ron’s documents. After July 11, 1973, the lf’s appear to have stopped. 

• 5/9/73 – Cincinnati Field Office submits Welco man’s fingerprints to FBI Headquarters and inquires if they match Ron’s.

On 5/9/73 and 5/10/73, 6 memos and teletypes were written having to do with Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo, James McCord and illegal wiretapping, and materials that were in L. Patrick Gray’s office before he left the FBI. All received an underlined lf.

• 5/11/73 – All charges are dropped in Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo’s trial due to government misconduct.
  
• 5/18/73 – Senate Watergate Committee begins televised hearings.
  
• 5/22/73 – FBI HQ sends fingerprint results to Cincinnati Field Office.
  
• 5/22/73 – James McCord tells the Senate Watergate Committee that G. Gordon Liddy and other White House Plumbers had planned to burglarize Hank Greenspun’s office.
  

Between 5/22/73 and 5/24/73, 3 memos and teletypes were written about James McCord and illegal wiretapping as well as FBI testimony concerning the agency’s prior relationship with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. All received an underlined lf.

• 5/25/73 – Archibald Cox is sworn in as special prosecutor of the Watergate investigation.

Between 5/31/73 and 6/4/73, 11 memos and teletypes are written on several Watergate-related matters, including the investigation by the Special Prosecutor’s Office. All received an underlined lf.

• 6/5/73 – Ron’s missing person records are removed from the “Ident” [Identification] files.
  

Between 6/5/73 and 6/18/73, 22 memos and teletypes are written on Watergate-related matters, including the investigation into Donald Segretti. All received an underlined lf.

• 6/19/73 – Archibald Cox asks the FBI to investigate ~20 burglaries that could involve the White House Plumbers.

Between 6/19/73 and 6/27/73, 26 memos and teletypes are written on Watergate-related matters, including, a new request from the special prosecutor, James McCord and illegal wiretapping, and Donald Segretti. All received an underlined lf.

• 6/27/73 – This is the last date stamp on Ron’s FBI records. Note that that’s when they arrived on someone’s desk; we don’t know when they were done looking at his file.
  
• 7/9/73 – Clarence Kelley is sworn in as FBI director.
  

Between 7/9/73 and 7/11/73, 3 memos and teletypes are written on the FBI’s investigation into the burglary of Hank Greenspun’s office as well as James McCord and illegal wiretapping. All received an underlined lf. They are also the last records that I know of in which the lf’s appear.

• 7/13/73 – Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of the White House tapes during a closed-door session of the Senate Watergate Committee, and then, three days later, during televised hearings.
  
• 7/23/73 – Archibald Cox subpoenas President Nixon for the White House tapes.

For those readers who may not know how this saga ends, on Saturday, October 20, 1973, Richard Nixon instructed Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox for his relentless pursuit of the White House tapes. Richardson resigned in protest and William Ruckelshaus, who became Richardson’s deputy AG after his stint as acting FBI director, was fired for also refusing to sack Archibald Cox. Solicitor General Robert Bork followed through with Nixon’s order. The event is infamously known as the Saturday Night Massacre, and history will forever look kindly upon Archibald Cox, Elliot Richardson, and William Ruckelshaus for standing up to political corruption and government malfeasance. As for Richard Nixon, who resigned from the presidency on August 9, 1974, and Robert Bork, whose Supreme Court nomination went down in flames in 1987, not so much.

Back to the timeline. During the short window in which at least 71 Watergate-related records were given underlined lf’s, Ron Tammen’s FBI records received 4 of the same distinctive lf’s. With that said, I suppose I should let you know about one outlier document that received an underlined lf during this same period.

What document was that?

It’s an FBI laboratory report dated June 15, 1973, and it had to do with a bomb threat to a federal courthouse in Madison, Wisconsin. The way I see it, the person who was monitoring the FBI’s investigations into the Watergate-related burglaries and dirty tricks was also interested in bomb plots against federal buildings. What can I say? He was a multitasker. Although my opinion may change sometime down the road, I continue to believe the person making the underlined lf’s was Leon Francis (Frank) Schwartz, the FBI’s liaison to the CIA. 

Incidentally, the bomb plot was given lots of 10s on subsequent records, and one of the persons who was investigated for the bomb plot had the first name of Ronald. But I don’t think he was our Ronald. 

What makes you so sure?

Don’t get me wrong—I find him interesting. The bomb suspect’s full name was Ronald Dean Kessenich, and judging from the news articles I’ve read, he made some poor choices during his life. These include robbing a Las Vegas bank in 1967 and, in 1976, sending threatening letters to the judge who presided over the trial as well as the prosecutor and defense attorney. The threatening bomb plot letters were mailed while Kessenich was incarcerated in Leavenworth Prison.

Ronald Kessenich was born in September 1944 in Madison, Wisconsin, which would make him roughly 11 years younger than Ron Tammen. He died in January 2008, which falls within the same window of time in which I believe Tammen died.

Ronald Kessenich was a son, two-times husband (possibly three), and stepfather, so I think he was a real person, not a pseudonym provided to someone else courtesy of the CIA. The most compelling reason that I think Ron Tammen was associated with the Watergate crowd versus the bomb plot is because of the stamp combination that Ron shared with James McCord. As you longtime Good Man readers know, I’m talking about the stamp combo that first launched me down the FBI “stamp and scribble” rabbit hole: ST-102, REC-19. According to my records, James McCord received the ST-102, REC-19 stamps beginning on July 26, 1973, roughly a month after the last date stamp on Ron Tammen’s FBI records. From what I can tell, there are 21 records with the two stamps on McCord’s records and they end sometime on or before August 10, 1973. (The last date is partially concealed.) The topics aren’t consistent, but many involve requests made by the Special Prosecutor’s Office and the FBI’s reports on those requests. 

In contrast, eight of Ron Tammen’s records have the ST-102, REC-19 stamps on them, with the most recent record dated May 9, 1973. That was the Cincinnati Field Office’s request for a comparison between Ron’s and the Welco man’s fingerprints. To the best of my knowledge, only records pertaining to the FBI’s investigation into James McCord’s potential involvement in Watergate-related break-ins and Ron Tammen’s missing person records were ever given that stamp combination.

Have you learned anything new about the ST-102, REC-19 stamp combination?

Two of the documents with that stamp combination focus on a letter that had been sent to the Department of Justice on July 26, 1973, by a prisoner in San Quentin State Prison named Vladimir A. Zatko. In his letter, Zatko claims that he’d been given $25,000 by “two close associates of President R. Nixon” to kill Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy. Zatko also said that “I still have in my possession (at my residence in Beverly Hills) several letters written to me by E. Howard Hunt (who is also involved in the Watergate affair).” (Apparently Vladimir Zatko enjoyed using parentheses as much as I do.) Naturally, Archibald Cox found this allegation to be of interest, and, on August 6, 1973, he requested that the FBI interview Zatko. If the San Francisco Field Office followed Cox’s and FBI Director Clarence Kelley’s orders, and I have to presume they did, I’m unable to find their report online.

But have you guys ever heard of Mae Brussell? She was an independent investigative journalist and radio personality who began her investigative journey when she had serious doubts about the Warren Commission’s conclusions about JFK’s assassination. Don’t let the term “conspiracy theorist” on her Wikipedia page throw you. Mae herself would be fine with that label. She embraced it even. Her radio program was called “Dialogue: Conspiracy.”  But she was a tenacious researcher who managed to dig up some fascinating details about JFK, RFK, Watergate, mind control, Operation Paperclip, and other subjects that, as it turns out, we’ve discussed on this site as well. Her delivery of accusations can be dizzying and I couldn’t possibly buy into all of her claims, but I respect her tenacity for research.

According to the book “The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America,” written and compiled by Alex Constantine, Vladimir A. Zatco (Mae spelled it with a ‘c’) wasn’t the man’s real name. Rather, it was the name of a man who’d died in a car accident in Italy in 1968. According to Brussell, the man’s true name was Eugen (I’ve also seen it spelled Eugene) Wrangell, who Brussell claimed was “sent to San Quentin for the purpose of murdering Sirhan Sirhan.” Furthermore, she said that “$25,000 cash is in an account, deposited by one of the White House Plumber teams from the CIA,” which coincides with the information contained in Zatko’s letter.

I’ve done some looking into this matter as well. I’ve found one man named Eugene Wrangell who’d worked in pulp mills in Alaska for 25 years starting in the 1950s. But there were no vital records for him on Ancestry—no Census records, no birth or death records, nothing. I’ve found no one by the name Eugen Wrangell. Likewise, I found no Vladimir Zatco, but I found Vladimir A. Zatko. According to his Social Security Death Index listing, he was born in 1946 in what’s now the Czech Republic, or Czechia, and he died in California in 1999. I also found numerous news articles, other FBI records, and lawsuits concerning a prisoner named Vladimir A. Zatko. Apparently, he was well known among prison staff for his copious complaints about prison conditions as well as for making some oversized claims about himself, and not in a complimentary way. He once told a federal court in Memphis that he was responsible for MLK Jr.’s assassination. In 1988, he wrote a letter to Senator Robert C. Byrd, informing him of a KGB assassination plot against him and the Pope. He was also litigious, and he wasn’t afraid to aim high. In October 1973, a few months after he wrote to the DOJ about Sirhan Sirhan, he filed a lawsuit against the United States of America, including Congress and Richard Milhous Nixon. (The Congressional Record doesn’t tell us the basis of that suit.) I guess he also sued the Shah of Iran at one time. When Clarence Kelley was passing along Archibald Cox’s request to the San Francisco SAC, Kelley told him that Zatko was described as being “schizophrenic” and a “compulsive liar “ and that Archibald Cox was aware of his “unstable background.” (Those descriptions have all been redacted from the above version.) Still, the special prosecutor requested that he be interviewed. As for Eugen or Eugene Wrangell, I don’t know where Mae Brussell got her information. Because Brussell was known to correspond with inmates regarding how they were being treated in prison, Vladimir Zatko may have been her source. I don’t know.

Based on the additional information I’ve learned, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Vladimir A. Zatko’s allegations about a plot to kill Sirhan Sirhan were likely untrue. But I do have to ask: how wild is it that Ronald Tammen’s FBI records carry the same elusive stamp combination found on two records having to do with Archibald Cox’s investigation into an alleged plot by the White House Plumbers to kill Sirhan Sirhan? I still find that interesting.

Did any of the other break-in victims receive an lf?

Not that I can tell. I’ve looked up the cases listed in William Ruckelshaus’ memo to Clarence Kelley as well as the additional cases described in the Rolling Stone article, and, as of today’s date, the only lf marks that I could find were on the records that I’ve described here. By all appearances, these were also the most high-profile cases under investigation. That someone at the FBI would somehow tie Ron Tammen’s missing person records to the most notorious of the White House Plumbers and dirty tricksters remains inexplicable to me. I will say this—at least it could help us understand why Ron was given a 2-D on the first page of his FBI records.

What 2-D? 

In the left margin of the first page of Ron’s FBI records, beneath the words “see index,” is the notation 2-D. In a former post, I discussed my belief (in which I remain 100% confident) that the D refers to the Department, as in the Department of Justice. The 2 indicates that the DOJ received two copies of either that first document or the entire file. The DOJ wasn’t notified about every FBI investigation—only the more sensitive or extreme cases. Those D’s signify an elevation in importance, with a 2-D being even more elevated than a 1-D.

In addition, the FBI is adamant that it doesn’t investigate missing persons cases, so it wouldn’t make sense for the DOJ to receive two copies of someone’s missing person records unless it was something major. It’s rare for any missing person case to warrant even a 1-D on their FBI records, though it sometimes happened. One of Richard Cox’s records had a 1-D. So did one of Charles McCullar’s. But if Ron was somehow lumped in with the Special Prosecutor’s Office investigations, then his 2-D would make sense. After all, Archibald Cox had been appointed by the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, head of the DOJ. If Ron Tammen’s name and alias had bubbled up in the FBI’s investigations called upon by the special prosecutor, they would have likely needed to alert the DOJ to this discovery. Maybe one of those two copies went to Elliot Richardson and the other went to Archie himself. It’s just a hypothesis, but it’s a fun one.

OK. Time for a breather. Maybe we should get a snack or something before moving to Part 4. You’ve earned it.

In Part 1, I cheekily claimed that I thought Ron Tammen was living in Miami, Florida, in the early 1970s, and possibly much earlier, and I based my claim on two scribbles on his records that, in my view, looked as though they either originated from the FBI’s Miami Field Office or were somehow related to the city of Miami, Florida. One unresolved issue you might have with that theory is that one of those symbols, a face-down z, was also found on several of Richard Cox’s FBI records. As I recall, at the end of Part 1, you asked a question…can you ask it again?

Did Richard Cox live in Miami too?

I think Richard Cox lived in Florida for at least part of his life after he disappeared, and, more specifically, he’s been identified as having been in the lower-eastern side of the state. Whether he was living in Miami proper or somewhere near there, I don’t know. 

But I definitely think he was living in Florida. On May 27, 1960, an FBI report was submitted describing a potential sighting of Richard Cox in a popular dive bar in Orlando. The report was written by the Miami Field Office’s special agent in charge (SAC), who at the time was Lee O. Teague, and his source was a trusted PCI—FBI-speak for a potential criminal informant. A potential criminal informant was an informant who was described as “under development” by the FBI. I know that this potential criminal informant was trusted because a reliable source that I’ve spoken with had access to a separate FBI record that referred to the person as “an informant of known reliability.” So, in a nutshell, my reliable source was in possession of a document quoting the FBI’s reliable source, which is double the reliability in my view.

Which is just…so…interesting. Because, even though, in 2013, I requested all of the FBI’s Richard Cox records that had been released in the past, my reliable source’s record wasn’t released to me personally. Or if it was, most of the words were covered up on my version. 

And that brings us back to the May 27, 1960, report, which is quite the wild read, but you wouldn’t know it from the record the FBI had sent me in 2013. What they sent me, three decades after they’d sent an unredacted version to my reliable source, contains big blocks of redactions and page 2 is missing entirely. Here’s what they sent me:

I get it. Not helpful. What version did they send your reliable source?

Here’s the version that they sent to my reliable source and should have sent to me, with the name and personally identifiable information of the informant and several others redacted. 

The only thing I can surmise from their decision to redact all of those details after they’d already released them to a member of the public is that either the FBI thinks it might have been Richard Cox sitting in that bar or that they absolutely, without a doubt know that it was Cox. If they didn’t think it was him or if they still didn’t know whether it was or wasn’t, why would they care if I saw that report? It would just be one of many red herrings in the case. But to declassify information and then turn around and reclassify it? That tells me that they felt the need to rescind their earlier decision because the information contained within it was too hot for you and me to handle. It also tells me that the FBI doesn’t have its heart in the Freedom of Information Act. To them, FOIA is a nuisance, the American public doesn’t have a right to know the truth, and redacting pertinent information for reasons other than what’s permitted by law is how they maintain control over our national narrative. (Note: As always, if you happen to be with the FBI and you feel that I’ve depicted you and your colleagues unfairly, please don’t hesitate to contact me. If all remains quiet, I’ll presume you agree.)

I encourage you to read the report, because it really is fascinating. For now, here are the most pertinent details: The informant was at the Sho-Bar Tavern in Orlando, Florida, sometime “shortly before 5/16/60,” when he met a woman named Allie, from Key West. Allie was there to meet up with her date, a guy who, upon his arrival, introduced himself as R.C. Mansfield, though Allie called him Richard. Mansfield had arrived with a white male by the name of Welch, who appeared to be about 40 years old. The report doesn’t state Richard’s age or race, but you get the impression that he was younger than 40 and was probably also white. Welch soon left the bar and didn’t return until much later that night. The informant had no idea where he went.

This left Richard, Allie, and the informant with hours to kill talking and drinking, which I imagine is an ideal scenario for any informant. The conversation wound its way to the topic of military service, and, as two manly men who’ve been drinking are inclined to do, Richard and the informant got into a (ahem) pissing contest over whose was better—Richard’s service in the Army or the informant’s service in the Marines. (Answer: all branches are equally valuable, and we are grateful to all who have served.) Richard then bragged about his unit in Germany being the finest, and when the informant said, “Oh, yeah? Well, if it was so great, why don’t you go back to the Army?” (or something to that effect), Richard said that he couldn’t. He said that, as far as his family and the Army were concerned, he’s been dead for roughly eight years. He then admitted that his last name wasn’t Mansfield. It was Cox.

This all tracks for several reasons. First, Richard Colvin (aka R.C.) Cox was from Mansfield, Ohio, so it would make sense for him to choose his hometown as an alias. Second, Richard Cox had served in the Army from September 1946 through late 1947, right before he received his congressional appointment to attend West Point. In February 1947, he was stationed in Germany, first in the Sixth Constabulary Squadron in Marburg, and later transferred to the 27th Constabulary Squadron at Schweinfurth, which, according to one document, was renamed the 28th Constabulary. (This could explain why I’ve noticed discrepancies in this detail in some Richard Cox write-ups, a fact-checker’s nightmare.) While he was in Schweinfurth, he worked in intelligence. And third, although he was declared dead by the state of Ohio in 1957, seven years after his disappearance, Cox likely was unaware of that development. In his mind, he probably figured that everyone had presumed him dead a couple years after he went missing. So his “eight years” estimate fits too.

Harry J. Maihafer, author of the book “Oblivion” about Marshall Jacobs’ research into Richard Cox’s disappearance, pointed out that Richard’s story is believable because all of the details he’d shared came completely out of the blue. There hadn’t been newspaper articles concerning Cox’s disappearance for years, so it’s not as if the guy had just read something about the case and was intentionally misleading the informant. Maihafer and Jacobs were right, by the way. I checked Newspapers.com, and the only newspaper that had written anything on Cox’s disappearance during 1959 or 1960 was the Mansfield News Journal. What’s more, it was a short item that appeared on December 8, 1960, about a book that had recently been published about people who’d disappeared. That book, titled “They Never Came Back,” by Allen Churchill, was published on October 7, 1960, according to the New York Times. There’s no way Richard Cox, or Richard Mansfield, or R.C. Mansfield for that matter could have read the book five months earlier, in May. (Strangely enough, Churchill didn’t discuss Ron Tammen’s case in his book. Go figure.)

The juiciest part of the May 27, 1960, report was when Richard Cox had a few things to say about Fidel Castro. He told the informant that Castro’s time in office was “limited, and that the Cubans would be getting rid of him in a matter of weeks. Keep in mind that Cox was ostensibly saying these things in May 1960, 11 months before the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. It makes me wonder where he was getting his info. Marshall Jacobs had wondered the same thing. My reliable source once told me that he suspected that Richard Cox had taken part in the Bay of Pigs.

The report goes on to say that, at Cox’s request, the two men met again days later, in Melbourne, Florida, so that the informant could introduce Cox to several people the informant knew. Later, the informant asked one of those persons about Richard Cox’s whereabouts and was told that he might be “on the lower east coast of Florida,” though they didn’t specify where. Although the informant attempted to find him again due to the FBI’s piqued interest, he ostensibly never saw Richard Cox after that day in Melbourne.

Are you sure you haven’t found any more face-down z’s?

Actually, I might have found one more. I think a record concerning Antonio Veciana may have a face-down z, though you have to look hard and a portion of the z’s loop at the end is cut off. The memo originates with the FBI’s field office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and it has to do with a double agent operation called Ocelot involving the CIA, Veciana, and Cuban Intelligence. Antonio Veciana was an anti-Castro Cuban exile who took part in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He and several others started a group known as Alpha-66, a counter-revolutionary group dedicated to the overthrow of the Castro regime. According to his autobiography, he was recruited by the CIA  in 1959 to assassinate Castro. Veciana also lived in Miami. 

So what are you saying…that Ron Tammen was friends with Meyer Lansky, Antonio Veciana, and Richard Cox?

At this point in our series, let’s just say that Ron’s face-down z’s and 1-gamma are indicators that he may have been a known commodity in the FBI’s Miami Field Office. Maybe he was an operative working out of the CIA’s highly clandestine Miami field office known as JM WAVE; maybe he helped plan the Bay of Pigs invasion with Cuban exiles and the CIA; maybe he was assisting the Mafia and CIA in plotting Castro’s assassination—heck, maybe he was doing all of the above. Or, alternatively, maybe he was doing none of the above.

Whatever Ron was doing, the possibility that he was living in Miami could help explain why his FBI records closely resemble those of the White House Plumbers, a nickname used for the men who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972. With the exception of G. Gordon Liddy, every other man who’d been linked to the Watergate “burglary” had Miami ties, including E. Howard Hunt and James McCord. When it came to Watergate, Miami was the epicenter of where it all began.

Watergate?

Yeah. This seems like a good stopping point. See you for Part 3.

Back in Ron Tammen’s day, long before social media forced us to remain in continuous contact with everyone we’ve ever met, even the bullies and mean girls, I think friendships came and went organically. If someone you liked was in your immediate proximity—if they lived on your block, or worked at the same place, or bowled in the same league—you would likely call that person your friend. Once they moved away, unless you both were extraordinarily gifted at staying in touch, that friendship would probably fizzle out. It was what it was, and people were fine with it. Before I specify who I think Ron’s friends were, I need to establish when and where I believe those friendships took place.

The time

The time period I’m referring to is roughly five years before I was moving into Brandon Hall as Kenny and Stevie belted out their “forever and evers” in the background. 

The year was 1973, 20 years after Ron disappeared. Serendipitously (and I’ll be forever and ever grateful to him for this), Joe Cella, a reporter for the Hamilton Journal News, had written an anniversary article about Ron’s disappearance, and he included the photo of Ron that he’d been carrying around in his wallet since 1953. 

The very same day that the article ran, on Monday, April 23, 1973, someone placed an anonymous phone call to the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office to report that a worker at Welco Industries was indeed Ron Tammen, and, a few days later, a special agent drove to Blue Ash to fingerprint the guy. A couple weeks later, on May 9, 1973, Cincinnati’s special agent in charge (SAC) sent the Welco man’s prints to FBI Headquarters to run a comparison, and a couple more weeks later, on May 22, 1973, they were told that Ron and the Welco man weren’t the same person. 

The agents in the Cincinnati Field Office might have been disappointed by the outcome, but I, for one, am not. We’ve all benefited from that seemingly pointless effort made by the Cincinnati Field Office, because, thankfully, the FBI wasn’t finished looking into Ron Tammen. For more than a month after FBI Headquarters had sent its response to Cincinnati, Tammen’s FBI records had made the rounds to various divisions and people within the Bureau, as witnessed by the scribbles and stamps that were placed in key locations on his documents. Those markings tell a story that runs from May 9, 1973, when Cincinnati sent in the Welco man’s prints, through at least June 27, 1973, the last date-stamp on Headquarters’ response to Cincinnati, a snippet in time that also happens to be historically significant. Of course, his story began long before that and extended long after, but this is our starting point.

The place

Until today, I haven’t offered up a guess regarding where I think Ronald Tammen was living in the early 1970s. Recently, I posted about how Ron’s FBI records had things in common with not one, but two larger-than-life personalities from Las Vegas—Ash Resnick and Hank Greenspun—which tells me that he may have spent some time there. 

But I’ve also had suspicions that Ron was living somewhere else. And that place was……………….

……………Miami.

No, not the Ohio Miami, as in Miami University. I can’t imagine him ever showing his face there again, though the thought of that happening decades after his disappearance is rather tantalizing.

No, I think he may have been spending most of his time in Miami, Florida. And guess what? I think I may have discovered new evidence to support that theory.

What new evidence?

As you well know, I’ve been writing about the scribbles on Ron’s FBI records for a while now, but what you don’t know is that I’ve been holding back. I haven’t mentioned two of the scribbles to you yet because I’ve found them to be particularly baffling. Oddly enough, they appear on the same page, dated June 5, 1953. It’s the FBI Headquarters’ response to the Cleveland Field Office after they submitted a write-up on Mrs. Tammen’s phone call reporting her son missing. In their response, Headquarters informed Cleveland that Ron already had an FBI number–#358 406 B—from the time he’d been fingerprinted in 1941 as a second grader, which, incidentally, is another serendipitous occurrence in this case for which I will be forever (and ever) grateful.

Down near the bottom of the page on the righthand side are three marks—two that are similar to each other and one that looks different. The two similar marks look like script z’s that have been tipped over so that they’re facing downward, which tells me that their off-kilter position was on purpose and not a fluke. The third mark looks like the number 1 with a loopy gamma symbol next to it. I suppose it could also look like a stylized letter H, but, to my eyes, it’s more the former and less the latter. Let’s examine these pieces of evidence more closely.

Evidence #1: The 1-gamma also appears on documents originating from the Miami Field Office

To date, I’ve found only three other documents that have the 1-gamma symbol on them, and all three of them originate from the FBI’s Miami Field Office. Also, they’re all from 1972. The symbol appears next to the KW made by the SAC of the Miami Field Office during the early 1970s, Kenneth W. Whittaker. Maybe Kenneth made the 1-gamma or perhaps it was another agent or an administrative assistant of his, also out of Miami. 

In the first two documents, it appears in the “From” line, next to “SAC, Miami.” In the third document, it’s written at the bottom of the page, on the line that says “Approved.”

That symbol seems intentionally cryptic to me. I wonder if Kenneth or his assistant chose to use it on its own at times when they wanted other people in the FBI to know that the folks in Miami had reviewed a certain record but they didn’t want outsiders to know. Could that be what happened on page 3 of Ron Tammen’s missing person records? I realize it’s a gamble to suggest here that Miami is its likely origin. I don’t recall ever seeing the initials of a special agent from one of the field offices on a report that hadn’t originated with them. Nevertheless, I’m putting myself out there this time because…

Evidence #2: The face-down z also appears on at least one Miami-related document

The face-down z’s are even more perplexing. As I’ve said, Ron has two of them. Do you know who else has a bunch of face-down z’s on his records? Richard Cox, the sophomore cadet from Mansfield, Ohio, who disappeared from West Point Military Academy on January 14, 1950.

Here’s a sampling:

See what I mean? They’re all written the same way, and they’re all in the bottom righthand corner of the document, or at least in its general vicinity. For a while I thought it might have been made by someone in the Identification Division since both Ron Tammen and Richard Cox had gone missing. Also, Richard Cox’s z’s appear next to a stamp for the FBI Reading Room, which sounded like an innocuous library-type room where someone could go, you know, read, though I had no idea what it was. For those reasons, I didn’t dwell on the z’s too much. 

Recently, however, I stumbled upon a face-down z on a record concerning someone with very strong Florida ties. His name was Meyer Lansky, and, in case you didn’t notice, he was the subject of two of the earlier 1-gamma documents above. The record in question is from J. Edgar Hoover, long-time director of the FBI, to the assistant attorney general in charge of the DOJ’s Tax Division. Meyer Lansky’s face-down z also looks like a near match to Ron’s. We haven’t spoken of Meyer Lansky yet on this blog site. 

Who was Meyer Lansky?

Meyer Lansky was a Jewish-American mobster who’d immigrated to the United States at a young age from Belarus, which at that time was part of the Russian empire. Despite his small size—he was 5’4” tall as a grown man—he was huge in the Mafia world. If the Mob had a CFO, he would have been it, and he’s credited with making the Mafia a national and even global financial phenomenon. In his earlier days, he was friends and business partners with Bugsy Siegel and, together, they started the Bugs and Meyer Mob, precursor to the less-adorable-sounding Murder, Inc., which was responsible for committing hundreds of murders in the 1930s and early 1940s. Lansky invested in casinos in Las Vegas and Havana, Cuba, and he oversaw illegal gambling houses in south Florida as well. When Fidel Castro came to power on January 1, 1959, Lansky lost a boatload of money. He was linked to the Mafia-CIA plots to assassinate Castro, along with his longtime associates Santo Trafficante, John Roselli, and others.

In 1970, Meyer Lansky was indicted for tax evasion, a crime that had brought down many of his fellow mobsters. He fled to Israel, hoping to be welcomed there at a time when that country was encouraging people of Jewish ancestry to make their home there. But his criminal record made him ineligible for citizenship and, in 1972, Israel sent him back to the U.S. Kenneth Whittaker was the man who arrested Lansky upon his arrival at the Miami International Airport. He was acquitted for some tax evasion charges, while others were dropped. Lansky spent his retirement quietly in Miami Beach until his death in 1983.

What’s interesting about Lansky’s face-down z is that it’s written on a document dated December 21, 1953, which could mean that Ron Tammen’s z’s were written during that same time period versus the 1970s. If so, it could introduce a datapoint regarding Ron’s whereabouts shortly after he disappeared. It’s something worth pondering.

Could it be that everyone’s face-down z’s originated from the FBI Reading Room and not the Miami Field Office?

I’m really happy you’re asking this question, because I’ve done a little digging. Now that we have the Freedom of Information Act, the term Reading Room has a different connotation. Today, it’s frequently used to describe a location, real or virtual, where the public can access FBI records. The FBI Vault, which stores electronic versions of their records online, is considered the FBI’s electronic reading room.

But before FOIA became law in 1966 and people were permitted access to FBI records, the FBI used the term Reading Room differently. Individuals in the FBI Reading Room were tasked with reviewing special agents’ outgoing reports and other communication pieces and scrutinizing them for typographical and grammatical errors. This was J. Edgar Hoover’s team of crackerjack copyeditors, and an agent could, and would, be reprimanded with letters of censure if they made an error. 

From what I can tell, I don’t think the Reading Room was used for just any outgoing FBI mail though. Otherwise, I’d be seeing a lot more “Reading Room” stamps from that era. I do know that it was used for correspondence from the director and it was also used by special agents who were conducting special investigative work and reporting on that work, some of which was classified, to high-level recipients, such as the U.S. president, assistant attorneys general, officials in the State Department and CIA, and foreign dignitaries. The Reading Room was a last stop for a report after it had gone “up the chain of command,” in one special agent’s description. 

So yes, it could be that the face-down z’s came from someone in the Reading Room. But even if that were the case, and we still don’t know if it is, the fact that these three individuals have the same mark on their documents, a mark that I haven’t come across anywhere else, seems to link them together somehow. And because we know that one of the three men was based out of Miami, my current theory is that the city of Miami may be what ties them together. Granted, it’s just a theory, but I think it’s worth looking into. As it turns out, there are other reasons to suspect a Miami connection as well, which we’ll be discussing soon.

What about Richard Cox? Do we know if he lived in Miami?

Great question. Let’s save it for Part 2.

It’s April 19, 2026, which makes it 73 years since Ronald Tammen disappeared from Miami University at the age of 19. That would make him 92 if he’s still living, but I really don’t think the term “living” applies to him at this point. As I’ve stated before, I think Ron died sometime between June 2002, when the FBI purged his fingerprints 30 years ahead of schedule, ostensibly because he asked them to, and December 2010, when the FBI sent me his missing person records without bothering to ask me for third-party authorization. Rest in peace, Ron. You were quite the enigma, that’s for sure.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dig deep into what we think happened to him. From what I can tell, Ron Tammen lived an exciting, eventful life—maybe a historically significant one. It’s a story that needs to be told. We just need to pin down the pesky details. Thankfully, I think I have a couple of those aforementioned details to share with you today.

Before we get started, I have a memory to share about Miami from the time I went there. It was the end of August 1978, and I’d returned to campus to start my junior year. I was moving into Brandon Hall, in the North Quad, and the area was swarming with students. Everyone was busy carting their dorm stuff to their new rooms or hanging around outside talking to friends they hadn’t seen since spring. I remember it being nice out—hot, but nice.

Somewhere down the street, on Tallawanda, several guys were playing Frisbee on the front lawn of their fraternity house, shorts on and shirts off, blasting the tunes. By far, the most memorable part of that moment was the song that was being blasted. Those guys, who were probably attempting to look cool for the women moving in, were playing “Whenever I Call You Friend,” sung duet-style by Kenny Loggins and Stevie Nicks, on their speakers full blast. Even back then, I remember thinking “huh” 🤔. I admit that it’s a catchy song with a distinctive intro and killer vocals, but if looking cool was the objective, there were way cooler songs from that summer, all of which (to my amazement as I fact-checked this post) appeared on albums that were released during the first nine days of June that year. They could have been playing “Miss You” by The Rolling Stones, “Just What I Needed,” by The Cars, or, good Lord, “Prove It All Night” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Instead, they were cranking Kenny Loggins (released in July) all the way up and, to this day, the memory stands out for me as rather sweet. And now that we all have that catchy little earworm playing on a continuous loop in our brains, let’s move on to the topic for today, which is the people who Ron Tammen had called “friend” after he disappeared from Miami University.

Of course we’ll be doing this as a Q&A. Also, as always, I’ll be using the word “who” instead of “whom” indiscriminately throughout this blog post because I don’t have time to think about which one is right and, moreover, that’s how people talk. Sorry, but it just is.

Also, because we’ll be discussing a number of interrelated topics and I have a lot to say about each one, this is going to be a four-part series. The last part—the epilogue, so to speak—will be a quiz in which you can win a very cool black and silver unisex string bracelet, made by an artist in Turkey, with the words “Ron Tammen” spelled out in Morse code. There’s also a bonus red string bracelet for luck and a pop of color. The first 10 entrants who email me after getting all of the answers correct will be our winners. It’s by far the best prize I’ve ever given away on this blog site, so please give it a try.

As I’ve done in the past, I’m releasing all four parts plus the quiz today so you can read them whenever you have the time. As for the quiz, some of the answers to the questions will be contained within the four parts, so I encourage you to read all the way through before taking it. OK, I’ve said enough. On to Part 1!