Can we talk a little more about my trip to the National Archives (NARA) this past summer? As you may recall, I’d contacted NARA in June, telling them that I’d be visiting them on the 14th of August in hopes of reviewing the FBI missing person records from a FOIA request I’d submitted back in 2022. The records I’d be reviewing had been transferred from the FBI to NARA in 2017, and they covered missing person cases from 1947 through 1980. My original FOIA request had been to review the full list of records, which totaled 87, but, because I’d been informed that they were experiencing an eight-year backlog, I whittled that number down to 18. Put simply (and kind of morbidly), I wanted to see them before I died, so I scaled back my request.
In my June email, I said that, if they happened to process any more of the missing person records after they’d completed processing my 18, I’d like to see those too. They let me know that they had, and those records would also be set aside for me to review. I was a little taken aback by their response—Why would they keep processing the missing person records after they completed my request?, I wondered—but I took it as good news.
I arrived on August 14, and found that all the records except one—a total of 86—were ready for viewing, with the final 20 having been processed after our conversation in June. Interestingly, it had taken them two years to process my 18 records but only two months to process the last 20. What they handed me was far beyond the scope of my request and way ahead of schedule.
Don’t get me wrong—I was grateful, but I was growing a little suspicious.
“How often does a FOIA rep give a person more than what they’ve asked for?” I asked myself.
“This is NARA we’re talking about,” I answered. “NARA employs helpful people who believe in FOIA.”
I agreed and got to the task of reviewing the digitized records.
I noticed that two different FOIA numbers had been assigned to the missing person case files. Eighteen envelopes had my FOIA number on them, which was RD 67625. The rest of the envelopes were labeled RD 87542, a number that was a lot higher than my FOIA number—by nearly 20,000. I could be wrong about this, but if NARA assigns its FOIA numbers in consecutive order, which seems like a logical thing for them to do, RD 87542 had been submitted 19,917 submissions after mine.
This is my FOIA request numberI’m trying to figure out the origin of this mystery number
I felt intimidated. Who was this RD 87542? I pictured him or her as some erudite-looking NARA regular with interests similar to my own but with vastly superior FOIA skills. Other questions I had were: how did RD 87542 come to be interested in the missing person records too, which were listed in one lonely line item among hundreds of line items on a spreadsheet posted online by Government Attic? When did they submit their request and how did they manage to obtain all (minus one) of the missing person records so quickly in comparison to my measly 18 records? And was this person a local, able to visit NARA whenever they felt like it, or did they agree to spend the $760 to have copies made, which was the quote NARA had given me in 2022 if I requested all the records?
But mostly, I wondered why NARA was working so hard to complete RD 87542’s FOIA request by August 14 when it was just me, and not the erudite regular, who was coming to town to review them?
When I got back home, I sent a follow-up email asking about the record that hadn’t been processed and also if I could have a copy of FOIA request number RD 87542. I knew they’d probably redact the person’s identifying information, but I didn’t care. I wanted to learn whatever I could about that request and its requester.
My contact from NARA asked: “Could you elaborate on what you mean when you ask if you can ‘obtain a copy of FOIA request RD87542’?”
I elaborated and was subsequently told that it wasn’t a FOIA request. Here are her exact words:
“RD 87542 was the number assigned to a proactive review project for Entry UD-15D 33 Classification 79 (Missing Persons) Headquarters Case Files. There was no FOIA request for these records.”
On the missing person envelopes, RD 87542 is explicitly written as a FOIA number, but I didn’t quibble. I was too busy becoming more suspicious. By that point, I was beginning to wonder if the FBI had stepped in, making it possible for me to see all those records in record time. I felt as though they wanted to steer me in a direction other than the one in which I’d been headed with regard to the numbers in the upper righthand corners of Ron’s FBI records. (The 10’s…I’m talking about Ron’s 10’s.) As I’ve discussed in prior posts, I think the FBI has been cherry-picking its records to mislead the public about the meaning of those numbers and they wanted me to see the missing person records in their entirety (minus one) so that I would arrive at the intended erroneous conclusion. Whereas I think the numbers are indicative of a high-level person who received one or more copies of a designated record, I believe they want to make it appear as if the numbers are based on some yawn-worthy alphabetized clerical system that no one should care about. Their personal preference is that everyone should just move on.
I thanked my contact and then reached out to NARA’s operational FOIA office—the office that handles FOIA requests that pertain to how NARA conducts its own business versus the archival records it manages for other agencies. I asked for the internal operational records pertaining to NARA’s “proactive review project” for the FBI’s missing person records.
Specifically, I said, “I’m interested in one or more records that were created when the project was initially assigned by someone in a supervisory role plus any additional related instructions/guidance provided by a supervisor regarding that proactive review project.”
What I really wanted to know was if NARA had initiated this proactive review project because they wanted me to have as many records as possible even after I’d whittled down my request, or did someone else tell them to do it? And if someone told them to do it, who was that person and why were they so interested in my request for missing person records?
My new request regarding the proactive review project was simple and straightforward. Find the person who sent the email or emails instructing NARA staffers to finish processing all of the missing person files, make copies of those emails, and send them to me. If the instructions had come from in-house, then everyone involved is likely in the same building. Any questions that someone might have about my request could be resolved with a walk down the hall. Also, the timeframe wasn’t that long ago so the emails should still be on everyone’s servers. And I wasn’t asking for every email on the subject. I was asking only for the emails that came from one or more supervisors giving instructions or guidance about this particular proactive review project. How hard could that be?
Incidentally, this was a request that someone in charge should have relished. They were being proactive and it was a nice opportunity for them to brag a little.
On September 16, I received an email from NARA telling me that my request fell under one of their “unusual circumstances” categories, which means that they needed more than the requisite 20 business days to respond.
Their reason for the additional time was:
“…we need to search for and collect potentially responsive records from an office separate from our office [emphasis added] which is processing the request,” they wrote.
They also said that they would need “an additional 10 working days from the date of this letter.”
After 12 working days had passed and I received no word, I wrote to them seeking a status update.
Here’s the status update I received today:
“Our estimated time to completion is 58 months from today. This is a conservative estimate, and cases may move more quickly through the queue. If you do not receive a response within this estimated completion time, please contact us again for a status update.”
Hilarious, right? The first person guesstimated 10 additional working days, which ended several days ago, but the second person said, whoops, our bad! See you in 4.83 years, sucker!
Apparently, my simple, straightforward FOIA request has made its way to the complex FOIA queue and I’m number 579 in line.
Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but my guess is that it has to do with the office that’s “separate” from NARA’s FOIA office. Gosh, what office could that possibly be?
I have my suspicions.
***********
ADDENDUM: I’m seeking assistance from the Office of Government Information Services, which is also part of the National Archives, to mediate my FOIA request regarding NARA’s proactive review project. They get a lot of requests, but I figured it was worth a shot. Here’s the email that I sent them today:
In my August 27 post, I made a wild claim about the FBI. I had the gall to accuse them of cherry-picking the records they release to the public to try to mislead us. I knew I was putting myself out on a limb by saying it, but I felt confident, so I said it anyway.
Well…thanks to you, my insightful readers, I’ve had an epiphany on this topic, which provides us with more supporting evidence that the FBI has been misleading the public for a long time with regard to its record releases.
I know that many of you are busy watching football tonight, so I’ll try to keep this brief. Also, while we may be rooting for different teams, I like to think that there’s one individual who unites us all, win or lose, through thick or thin, whether we beat the spread or fall short.
And that is Kirk Herbstreit’s dog, Peter. 🐕 ❤️
OK, let’s get down to it. There’s no other way to do this than a Q&A.
When you say the FBI has been cherry-picking, are you talking about more than just Ron Tammen’s records?
I am. This is more than Ron’s records. I’m now talking about all, or at least most, of the records the FBI has released to the public—JFK, RFK, MLK, Watergate, etc., etc., etc., and so on, and so forth.
The reason that I think they’re cherry-picking their records is that they don’t want the public to figure out what the numbers in the upper righthand corners mean.
How are they cherry-picking their records?
They want us to think that the numbers in the upper righthand corner represent some sort of alphabetical grouping based on the subject of the document. According to their made-up system, names beginning with an A are given a 1; some names beginning with B get a 1, while others get a 2. Some Cs get a 2, while others, along with the Ds and Es, get a 3. At the opposite end, some of the S’s, all of the T’s, and all of the U’s get a 10. The V’s are a virtual free-for-all—I’ll be showing you why later. The W’s through Z’s get an 11. It would be an insane system with no discernible purpose, which is why I don’t believe they used it.
When I say they cherry-picked, I’m saying that they tried to make it appear as if it was an alphabetical system by only releasing the records of subjects from a certain part of the alphabet for each number while holding back the records for subjects representing the rest of the alphabet. They’re making it look like it’s an alphabetical system in order to hide the true meaning behind the numbers.
Why would they care if we found out about the true meaning of the numbers?
My hypothesis is that the numbers refer to important people who received one or more copies of that record. In previous posts, I’ve suggested that they’re the FBI liaisons to various federal agencies, but I’m not married to that idea. They could be other categories of people. The only qualifying factor is that they occupy an important office somewhere—be it inside or outside the FBI—and the FBI felt that they should be kept in the loop. But I don’t think the FBI wants us to know who was privy to their records. It might open up a can of worms or something.
So while I may not understand the specifics of why they’re doing it, I do have additional evidence that they’re doing it, thanks to my recent epiphany.
You said that your readers helped you arrive at your epiphany. Who exactly are you referring to?
I hope I don’t embarrass anyone, but I’m referring to comments made by two readers. The first comment was made by someone who goes by the username Whereaboutsstillunknown. Shortly after I uploaded my August 27 post—and I’m talking maybe within 15 minutes—this person made an observation that completely upended the way I saw things. Then, a second commenter whose username is a long string of numbers and letters told me about the existence of a document that discusses FBI indexing, which I was able to find online. When I considered Whereabouts’ observation alongside the information in number-guy’s document while reviewing the original FBI missing person records—namely, the ones that are in color—it finally dawned on me who was writing the numbers in the righthand corner. All of the sudden, everything made sense.
Who was writing the numbers in the righthand corner?
Don’t you want to know what Whereabouts said in his or her comment first?
OK. What was Whereabouts’ comment?
It had to do with a scribbled notation I’d found on several missing person records: “o’d on yellow.” I thought the “o” represented an o, as in the letter o, and I thought it might have stood for the word “office” or “official.” That’s just how my brain works—it sees an o, it thinks of the vowel that comes after a, e, and i and precedes u, and that’s pretty much all it thinks of. I knew that the word yellow referred to a Message Relay sheet, which was a routing cover sheet printed on yellow paper that included a list of federal agencies with neighboring boxes to check. The FBI used them when they wanted to send copies of certain records to one or more other federal agencies. In my theory, there was no reason to write anything on those sheets other than its recipients. Also in my theory, “o’d on yellow” meant that they’d written a number in the upper righthand corner of a Message Relay sheet to represent an office or official who’d been cc’d.
As a corroborating example, I’d pointed out a different notation that said “7 circled on yellow.” They were explicitly saying that they’d written the number 7 on a Message Relay sheet and circled it. In my theory, adding a number to the top right corner of a Message Relay sheet confirmed that a person represented by the number 7 received a copy.
In my closer, to get reader input, I asked for other suggestions of what the o might have stood for.
Shortly after I hit the “post” button, Whereabouts asked this amazing question:
“…since someone had written ‘circled on yellow,’ my initial guess is that those might be drawn circles and not o’s?”
That’s brilliant, thought I. Seriously, seriously brilliant.
“That’s a great guess!”, I stated in an understated way.
Still, I had questions. Notations on other Message Relay sheets, whenever I was lucky enough to find one, didn’t seem to fit the “number circled on yellow” scenario. Namely, I wasn’t seeing any circled numbers on Message Relay sheets. I’d found an “o’d 2” on Lady Bird Johnson’s Message Relay and a few “op2” on other people’s Message Relays. Then I read the detailed document about how the indexing system worked plus a few other helpful documents and the fog lifted.
What did you learn when you put everything together?
I learned how important the Files and Communications Division was in the grand scheme of FBI operations. The Files and Communications Division, which was later renamed the Records Management Division, took in all mail, no matter the source, and routed it to the most appropriate recipient(s) while saving copies in its enormous Central Records filing system. Files and Communications were the eyes, ears, noses, and tastebuds of the FBI—the ones who, after being presented with totally new information, determined who all needed to see it.
Seriously, try to imagine all of the mail that FBI Headquarters receives in a day covering a range of wildly different topics. A college student from Cleveland goes missing from his dorm; several men are caught in the wee hours at DNC headquarters, one of whom used to work for the FBI and CIA; a wiretap is found in Dan Rowan’s Las Vegas hotel room; a U.S. president has been assassinated in Dallas. Who should they forward it to? Who needs to know?
In addition, Files and Communications staff were the ones who typed the index cards that made up the General Index—the colossal indexing system (at one time totaling 65 million cards!) that was the starting point when an agent wanted to access a particular case file. They were also the people who assigned a classification number and case number to every single FBI case, which also numbered in the millions. Not only were they the eyes, ears, noses, and tastebuds of the FBI, I guess you could say they were the prefrontal cortex too.
Most significantly to you and me, they were the people who wrote on the FBI records in blue pencil.
Are you saying that they were the ones who wrote the numbers in the upper righthand corner?
Indeed, I am. I’m also saying that they likely wrote the other phrases that were typically found in blue on an original FBI record, including “see index,” “FD-217,” and “o’d on yellow.”
What was with those ridiculous little circles?
Please don’t disparage the little circles. Those little circles had purpose. They were what helped me figure everything out.
One of the first things a Files and Communications employee would do when they were handed a piece of mail was to locate the name or names that would require an index card. Sometimes the index card had already been made, such as for longstanding ruffians Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante. Other times they’d need to create a new one. It didn’t matter. On every incoming piece of mail, the Files and Communications folks would always, always, always draw a circle in front of the person’s last name (if we’re talking about a person) or another important reference word. And those circles were always, always, always written in blue.
You know what else was always written in blue? The classification and case numbers.
What about the notes written in blue? How and why would the Files and Communications Division write those notes?
Keep in mind that the Files and Communications Division was massive. One unit was doing the indexing, another unit doing the classifying, another assigning case numbers, another assigning the serial numbers at the end of case numbers, and so on. (I’m not saying that the jobs were exhilarating. I’m just saying that there was a lot to be done.) You also had a unit doing routing. Separate from all of that, another unit was conducting background checks for other federal agencies. Plus you had unit supervisors, section supervisors and, ultimately, a division head.
Here’s a nice flow chart to help you picture the operation. (As far as I can tell, it was called the Records Branch before it was Files and Communications.)
Click on image for a closer view
If, as I believe, the Files and Communications Division was writing the additional notes in blue, that would explain:
The numbers in the righthand corner – someone high up in routing might add one or more numbers from 1 through 11 to indicate the important people or office who should receive a copy of the record. Sometimes they’d follow the number with a hyphen and the number 1 or 2 to indicate how many copies they should receive.
See index – Someone high up would write this on some records to notify the agent assigned to the case that the subject was on the Security Index.
FD-217 – When a field office didn’t know the case number, they’d include this form with their report, which, I believe, also provided information about what number to put in the upper righthand corner. Someone high up in routing would sometimes reference the FD-217 form when they added the number in the upper right.
o’d on yellow – This one is a little trickier.
How is “o’d on yellow” trickier? And what about the unresolved issue you had with the phrase “o’d on yellow” when there weren’t any numbers circled on Message Relay sheets?
Wow. You really do love frolicking in the weeds, don’t you? OK, so my unresolved issue had to do with the Message Relay sheets that said “o’d 2” or “op2” but that didn’t have any numbers circled. As it turns out, those notations weren’t referring to the numbers in the upper righthand corner. They were in reference to the circle placed in front of a last name, which happened to be on page 2 of the record that was being relayed.
Remember Lady Bird Johnson’s o’d 2 from my blog post? On page 2 of that transmission, they’d placed a circle in front of the name Johnson, probably in blue, but, unfortunately, I don’t have the original so I can’t confirm that. Likewise, the op2 people also had circles in front of their last names on page 2, also probably in blue. (The p stands for page.)
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
Here’s the op2 for Sam Giancana:
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
As for the “o’d on yellow” folks, the Files and Communications Division would sometimes write the subject’s name on the Message Relay sheet and add the circle in front of the person’s last name. That’s what I believe they’d done in several designated missing person files. (Unfortunately, they neglected to include the Message Relay sheets in their files so I can’t confirm.) Nevertheless, here’s an example of our old friend James McCord’s Message Relay with the circle in front of his last name:
Click on image for a closer view
The take-home here is that “o’d on yellow” referred to the circles in front of last names corresponding to the alphabetized index cards in the General Index. Those were different from the “7 circled on yellow” example, which I believe was referring to a 7 that had been written in the righthand corner of a Message Relay sheet. In both examples, the notation for circle was the same, but the reason for the circles differed.
OK, enough shop talk. Let’s talk about the most important reason for this blog post.
What about the additional evidence you have that the numbers refer to actual people and that the FBI has been cherry-picking the records it releases to the public?
First and foremost, if the Files and Communications Division was responsible for the numbers in the upper righthand corner, there’s no way that those numbers had anything to do with some internal, arbitrarily subdivided alphabetical system that would benefit no one. Those staff members were working too hard at maintaining the General Index system, which was 100 percent alphabetical, as well as the case filing system, which was purely numerical. An FBI staffer would look up a name in the General Index, which supplied them with one or more case numbers in the Central Records System, prefaced by its classification group, which was also numerical. It was a perfectly logical system and the Files and Communications Division was married to it. There was no reason for them to add arbitrarily subdivided categories within a classification group to the betterment of no one.
OK, so hear me out. What if there was some internal operational reason for the numbers? For example, what if they were written to help the people who were responsible for filing the records in the Central Records System? You’ve said yourself that it was a huge filing system. What if those numbers referred to room numbers to help them know where to go?
That’s sweet. But there’s no way they would do that. Files and Communications staff would draw the circles, they’d write the classification and case numbers, and they’d write the special notes, all of which were helpful to the agents reading the records. And let’s focus solely on the Message Relay sheets. The recipients represented the White House, the CIA, the Attorney General’s office, and the like. There’s no way that someone from the Files and Communications staff would write helpful little notes to their colleagues who filed the records, and, what’s more, to do so only on occasion, if they were feeling big-hearted. It was the filers’ job to know where to go.
Do you have other evidence thatthe numbers refer to actual people and that the FBI has been cherry-picking the records it releases to the public?
Absolutely. Just for fun, I created an Excel sheet of all of the missing person records I recently obtained from the National Archives. Next to each person’s name, I placed the number or numbers that were in the upper righthand corners in their own box or cell. Then I added other well-known subjects to the list—such as Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante—with their respective numbered boxes to find out if anyone fell outside of the made-up, arbitrarily subdivided system.
Granted, there weren’t a ton of people who fell outside. I imagine someone’s job was (and maybe still is?) to pull only the records that match the arbitrarily subdivided system, and they’ve gotten good at it. Thankfully, nobody’s perfect and everyone can have an off day now and again. Listed below is a sampling of the more well-known people and organizations who have one or more records that fall outside of the FBI’s made-up system.
For your assistance, I included a circle in front of the names that had been indexed. Also, note that I believe the numbers after the hyphens are the numbers of copies that the designated official received. A 3-1 versus a 3-2 tells me that official 3 received 1 copy in the first example and two copies in the second. If only the number is listed or a number plus a hyphen, I believe they received 1 copy.
Bella oAbzug
Should have had a 1, but was assigned a 3-1 instead.
Click on image for a closer view
Spiro oAgnew
Should have had a 1, but received a 10 instead after a possible assassination attempt.
Click on image for a closer view
Princess oDiana and Prince oCharles
Although the 2-2 and 3-2 would fit the made-up system for Charles’ and Diana’s names, their Message Relay sheet, which preceded a report for a potential bomb plot, had an added 10-2 as well.
Click on image for a closer view
oCentral Intelligence Agency’s Intentions to Send Hoodlums to Cuba to Assassinate Castro
Should have had a 2 but was given an 8- instead.
Click on image for a closer view
Judith oCoplon, Soviet spy and DOJ employee
Should have had a 3, but got a 7-1 instead.
Click on image for a closer view
John oDenver
Was given a 10-2 and 11-2 in addition to his 3-2 for threats against his life
Click on image for a closer view
Meyer oLansky
Should have had 6’s, but received a 9 on two records and a 10-, and 11 on one.
Click on image for a closer view
Carlos oMarcello
Should have received 7’s but received 8’s on two records.
Click on image for a closer view; because this page is an original, you can see that the 8 is written in blue pencil
Santo oTrafficante
Should have received a 10 but got a 9 instead.
Click on image for a closer view
Werner oVon Braun
Should have received an 11, but received on several records: 2-1; 3-1; 4; 7 and 7-1; 8; 9, 9-, and 9-1’s; and, OK, a couple 11s and an 11-1. (This is what I mean when I say that the only V example I have is a free-for-all.)Here are a few examples:
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
Illinois Governor Dan oWalker
Should have received an 11, but got a 2 instead.
Click on image for a closer view
I also need to tell you about one interesting missing person document.
What’s that?
This was a tragic case involving a 13-year-old African-American girl named Dorothy Sampson. Dorothy had gone missing in Fayette, Mississippi, on December 8, 1970, after running an errand for her neighbor. She was subsequently found in an oil field on Christmas day of that same year, sexually assaulted and murdered. The story is too grim to include here, however the reason I bring it up is that civil rights leader Charles Evers, the mayor of Fayette and older brother to famed civil rights leader Medgar Evers (who was assassinated on June 12, 1963), had been implicated by informants as having been involved in the murder. Although Charles was no angel, I don’t believe it for one minute. He was never charged. The racism in this case was off the charts, and Dorothy’s file makes me sick to my stomach.
What I want to share with you is a record dated 9/13/72. You can see the circle in front of the name oSampson. You can also see a circle in front of a name that has been redacted, which I believe to be Evers. There are two blue numbers in the upper righthand corner—a 6 and a 9. Because Dorothy’s last name is at the front end of the S’s, her 9 is consistent with the FBI’s made-up system, even though later S’s received 10’s. (See what I mean about their arbitrary subdivisions?) But Charles Evers should have gotten a 3, not a 6. Now look more closely at those numbers in the righthand corner. Can you see where the numbers 3-1, 10-1, 11-1, and 5-1 were once there, but were subsequently erased? The 10, 11, and 5 don’t fit the FBI’s made-up system. Other writing was erased too.
Click on image for a closer view; note that, because these are originals, the numbers are written in blue pencil
Now look at the bottom of the page, under LEADS, written in regular pencil. It reads (to the best that I can tell): “No dissemination to White House as no pertinent info developed on Evers.”
Did someone overrule several of the numbers in the righthand corner and is that why some of them were erased? Does that notation confirm that the numbers are in reference to the FBI’s secret dissemination list? Could one of the erased numbers be in reference to the White House? I could be wrong due to the placement of the note on the record and the fact that a similar note had been written on several other records, but I thought I should let you know.
OK, I think I’ve said enough today. Have a great weekend, and, as always, if you spot anything I’ve missed, please feel free to weigh in!
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that, after I learned that the notation “366 m hau” wasn’t in reference to Robert Maheu that I’d probably given up on a Robert Maheu connection to Ron Tammen altogether. But that’s not the case.
I have absolutely, 100%, not given up on a Maheu connection. The reason is that I continue to believe that Ron’s “Hac” notations could be in reference to Howard Hughes. HAC was a commonly used acronym for the Hughes Aircraft Company, which, according to Larry DuBois and Laurence Gonzales in their explosive 1976 Playboy article, had a cozy relationship with the CIA. My theory is that Hac was FBI shorthand for Howard Hughes. Supporting evidence is that Hac is also found on at least two of Hank Greenspun’s FBI records as well as one record for the New England chapter of the Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA). Hank Greenspun was friends with Howard Hughes as well as Robert Maheu, Howard’s long-time public-facing representative after Hughes began living life as a recluse. The CNVA was opposed to underground nuclear testing, an issue that Hughes also felt passionate about, especially if the testing was conducted near Las Vegas. I think it’s entirely feasible that Hughes supported them financially.
If I’m correct that Hac stands for Howard Hughes, then Robert Maheu knew Ron Tammen.
And so…remember when I discussed the possibility that a man with phone-tampering skills who went by the alias J.W. Harrison and who worked for Robert Maheu just might have been our Ron? I haven’t given up on that possibility either. In that post, I showed a handwriting sample of Harrison’s and suggested that, at some point, we might want to hire a forensic document examiner to compare his writing to Ron’s signature. I then wondered if it would be possible to obtain at least two other writing samples of Ron’s that were lengthier than just his signature.
Well, guess what, Good Man readers. Our dear friend Grace, Ron Tammen’s date to his senior prom, has kindly provided those samples to us. Better yet, she provided, not two, but three samples.
Here they are:
From the 1950 Maple Leaf yearbook; Ron was a junior and Grace was a freshman.From the 1951 Maple Leaf yearbook. Ron was a senior and Grace was a sophomore.Also from the 1951 Maple Leaf, where Ron also signed his picture: “My best wishes always, Grace. Ronald Tammen”
Are those great, or what?
Now, for your comparison, here’s the hotel registration written by J.W. Harrison in October 1960, nine years after Ron Tammen signed Grace’s sophomore yearbook.
Click on image for a closer view
Look, I’m no expert, and I definitely see differences. But nine years is a long time, and our handwriting does change over the years. I used to be so careful with my own handwriting, and now I can’t read it.
For me, I can see two similarities: the balloon-like initial J compared to Ron’s R, and the curlicue in the front of the F in San Francisco.
Ron made curlicues too. You can see a big one at the front of “My” over Ron’s picture above. You can see other attempted curlicues in the front of the T in Tammen in the signatures below, which were written in other people’s 1950 and 1951 yearbooks.
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
In my post on J.W. Harrison, I said that it probably wasn’t Ron, but it’s still a question worth asking. Right now, I need to save my pennies, but when the time is right, I’ll definitely be hiring a specialist to give us the final word.
In the meantime, happy Labor Day and thank you to all of America’s workers.
***********
Addendum: Just for fun, I’ve made a comparison of some of the similarities between Ron Tammen’s and J.W. Harrison’s handwriting. Obviously, there are differences. For example, Harrison sometimes switched from conventional cursive letters to a printing style (see his r’s in Harrison and the S in St.). As I’ve mentioned, I will be hiring an expert to review everything at a later date.
I need to tell you about my recent visit to the National Archives (aka NARA), the one in College Park, Maryland. The reason for my visit was to review old missing person files that the FBI had transferred to them in 2014 and that I’d found out about thanks to the good folks at The Government Attic. I’d requested the records through a FOIA request I submitted in June 2022. In November 2022, someone from NARA wrote the following to me:
“The estimated total page count for your request is approximately 950 pages. Requests between 701 and 3,000 pages are assigned to our second-tier processing queue. To give you an indication of our existing second-tier backlog, we are currently processing requests received in February 2014.
Once we notify you that processing is complete, you may either visit our College Park, MD facility to view the file at no cost, or order a reproduction. Our current fee for reproductions is 80 cents per page, so we estimate the total cost will be $760.00.”
Waiting out an 8-year backlog for the pleasure of forking over $760 seemed a little much to me. Also, College Park is about 350 miles away, so it’s not exactly a day trip.
The other possibility they suggested was to narrow my request, which I did. I asked to see 18 of the files that I chose somewhat randomly from their list of 87 names I’d never heard of. Two years later, in August 2024, they informed me that my files were ready. Just about two years after that, in June 2026, I told them I was planning a visit to College Park in August. I asked them if I could see the 18 files I’d originally requested and then, on a whim, I said that if they happened to process any more of the 87 files on the list, I’d like to see those too.
I was in luck, they responded. They’d processed more of the files. Great, said I. See you in August.
And see them, I did. When I showed up to NARA’s Textual Records reading room, an archivist handed me a box that held two CDs. The CDs contained 86 of the 87 files of the FBI’s missing person cases from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. For the amazingly low price of $5.00, another NARA archivist handed me a thumb drive upon which I could transfer copies of all those cases, which I did.
I suppose for one fleeting moment I wondered why they’d made me drive all the way to College Park to view records that had been digitized and could have been mailed to me on CDs that would’ve cost far less than $760, but I didn’t really care. I was there now, and what I was looking at on the computer screen made everything worth it. I was now able to compare Ron’s missing person records with a larger sample of people who were also missing during roughly the same period. I could get a sense of which markings were typical, run-of-the-mill missing person markings and which were truly special. I could finally see if Ron’s 10’s and Hacs and underlined lf’s and 366 m hau’s and all the other scribbles I’ve written about over the years held any meaning whatsoever.
Today’s post will be in show-and-tell format. I’ll be sharing several things I learned about Ron’s case after my trip and offering examples from the missing person files that led me to those conclusions.
Also, as I mentioned in the headline, I’ll be providing evidence that the FBI is attempting to mislead us about the meaning of a certain set of marks in the upper righthand corners of people’s FBI records, including Ron’s. (Spoiler alert: I’m talking about the 10’s…they’re attempting to mislead us about the meaning of Ron’s 10’s.) They’re doing this through a common deceptive practice known as cherry-picking and, I kid you not, I believe that I have the FBI to thank for ensuring that I received almost the entire batch of available missing person records (sans one) so that I’d arrive at the conclusion they wanted me to arrive at. Happily, I’m onto them big time and I have hard evidence that shows everyone what they’ve been up to. So hang on to your Stetsons, cowboys and cowgirls, as we catch the FBI red-handed in some rip-snortin’ cherry-pickin’ trickery. You’ll see what I mean soon.
Let’s go!
Discovery #1: I don’t think that 366 m hau is in reference to Robert Maheu after all.
This discovery has taken me well over a week to come to terms with. I’d been so sure that we had this mini-mystery all figured out…that 366 m hau was the same person as LV 366-PC and that person was Robert Maheu, right-hand man to Howard Hughes. But there, staring at me from a September 13, 1972, missing person report was the phrase “366 m hau.” The report concerned a missing woman from Culpeper, VA. It had nothing to do with Las Vegas. I doubt that she knew Howard Hughes, Ash Resnick, or Ronald Tammen either. Therefore, I don’t believe it pertains to an informant broadly or to Robert Maheu specifically, which sucks bigly.
But it does provide some information. Below the 366 m hau, in the same handwriting, are the words “Crim & Dead.” Above it, also in the same handwriting is…I can’t tell. It looks like a 9 with a t and something else, probably someone’s initials. Also, it’s written in regular, graphite-colored pencil, which I believe indicates that it was written by someone in the Identification Division. (That’s versus the blue, red, and green pencil markings I’ve seen on other original FBI records.) As for what “Crim and Dead” stands for, it means “Criminal and Dead,” because I saw that exact phrase written on another person’s missing person record. As I was trying to figure out what that phrase could mean, I discovered that, from roughly 1971 to 1994, there was a Deceased Criminal Identification Files list, which was housed in the Identification Division. The people who were on the list were ostensibly known criminals who were now deceased. Maybe they were referring to that list. Or maybe 366 m hau had checked two lists: the criminals and the dead criminals. The missing woman was deemed a fugitive in three states, so that would warrant the “criminal” description. I don’t know when she died. Also, the Deceased Criminal Identification Files list is available on Ancestry.com, and she isn’t on it. I’m not printing her name because her two daughters appear to be living.
So, bummer-and-a-drag, 366 m hau wasn’t Robert Maheu. But as I mentioned in a recent Facebook post, it doesn’t mean that Robert Maheu didn’t know Ron Tammen. We still have the Hac scribbles on Ron’s pages, which match Robert Maheu’s good friend Hank Greenspun’s Hacs and which did not appear on the 86 missing person files I reviewed. It’s still my theory that Hac refers to the Hughes Aircraft Company, which was a front for the CIA, and might have served as a cover for Ron. The letters Hac could have been FBI shorthand for Howard Hughes, which absolutely would still involve his alter-ego Robert Maheu. We just don’t have a direct reference to Maheu on Ron’s records. It’s OK. It was a fun theory, but I’ve moved on.
Discovery #2: The FBI continued sending form letters with check boxes to families of missing persons after J. Edgar Hoover died. For some reason, they stopped sending them to the Tammens.
Every few years after Ron disappeared, the FBI would send a form letter to Mr. and Mrs. Tammen asking if Ron was still missing (check this box) or if he’d been located or his location was no longer desired (check this box instead). The Tammens would dutifully check that he was still missing and send the form back. Mr. Tammen continued doing so after Mrs. Tammen died in 1964. But you know what? The last form letter received by Mr. Tammen was in October 1970. In 1972, at roughly the time when the Tammens were due to receive another letter, J. Edgar Hoover died and the form letters stopped arriving.
I’d wondered if that was just a Hoover practice, and once Hoover had died, the practice was discontinued. But I now know that, even after Hoover died, Acting Director L. Patrick Gray continued sending the same families their form letters, and then Director Clarence Kelley picked up the baton after that. Nevertheless, Mr. Tammen had stopped receiving his form letters about Ron. If I could pinpoint the date that the FBI’s Identification Division stopped caring about Ron’s case, I’d guess it was June 5, 1973, when Ron’s missing person records were “removed from Ident files.” This was shortly after the Cincinnati Field Office had fingerprinted the guy from Welco Industries and sent those fingerprints to Headquarters to run a comparison to Ron’s prints. Something that the FBI had discovered about Ron’s case as they were tracking things down led them to remove Mr. Tammen from the rotation.
Hmmm…what could it be? I wonder.
Sir Edward Massengill
J. Edgar Hoover checks on the whereabouts of missing person Sir Edward Massengill.L. Patrick Gray checks on Massengill’s whereabouts after Hoover has died.
David M. Smart
David Smart went missing in August 1971, which preceded Hoover’s death. Although there isn’t a form letter from Hoover in Smart’s file, we see that L. Patrick Gray sent one to the FBI’s field office in Birmingham in 1973.Clarence Kelley continued checking in on Smart’s whereabouts in 1976.
Discovery #3: A bunch of missing people had ‘see index’ written on their FBI records; likewise, many files were stored in the Missing Person File Room.
I’ve been learning that the people who went missing weren’t perfect angels. They had stories. Some had committed crimes. Many of them probably had good reasons for running away. So I guess it wasn’t too surprising to find that a lot of them had their files stored in the Missing Person File Room, room #1126 of the Identification Building, just like Ron did. I mean, if the FBI sees fit to set aside a special room for the NSFW missing person files, which is my guess regarding its purpose, there are going to be occupants. Still, not all of the missing people had their files stored there. Something was keeping these files apart from the others.
As for the people with the phrase “see index” scribbled on one or more of their records, if I’m right that it refers to the Security Index, then the FBI did add missing people to the Security Index even if they didn’t know their whereabouts. So I was wrong about that. Also, you might think that if you’re going to have “see index” written on your records, your file is probably going to wind up in the Missing Person File Room, but that’s not the case. There were “see index” people who weren’t in the Missing Person File Room and there were people in the Missing Person File Room who didn’t have “see index” written anywhere. Ron had both. Whether they knew Ron’s whereabouts when they wrote down that phrase on page one of his records, I can’t say. But by June 5, 1973, I think they had a pretty good idea.
Discovery #4: The 10’s on Ron’s records continue to be significant. Maybe they’re even more significant than I realized.
I have a story to share. There I was, reading through the missing person files and organizing them on a spreadsheet of sorts by last name. Next to each person’s last name, I’d type in a few notes, such as whether the person’s file was in the Missing Person File Room, whether the phrase “see index” was written somewhere, plus a few others, including what the number was in the upper righthand corner of their record.
It wasn’t long before I noticed a pattern emerging regarding those numbers. The people who had last names beginning with an A or B had a 1 in their righthand corner; people who had a last name beginning with a C or D had a 2 in their corner; and so on all the way to the S’s and T’s, which had 10’s. The three people whose names started with a W had an 11. There were outliers, but the pattern was undeniable.
What…the bloody…hell, thought I, as my entire world began to implode. I think I became light-headed. Ron’s 10’s are central to my theory that he was living a life of danger for the CIA. The other cases in which I found 10’s described some remarkable circumstances as well.
But if Ron’s 10’s are there simply because his last name starts with a T, then I’m officially done here. Game over. I’ll take down my blog site, remove myself from society, and live my life in solemn quietude. Maybe I’ll get another cat…or 10. I can think of several people out there who’d be overjoyed with this development. In all seriousness, this may have been the closest I’ve come to a full-on existential crisis.
As many of you know, my theory has been that those numbers refer to an official within the FBI who received a copy of the record. Sometimes the numbers are followed by a dash followed by a 1 or 2 or sometimes an even higher number, indicating how many copies they received. I also posited that the official was the FBI’s liaison to a federal agency and that Ron’s 10’s were in reference to the FBI’s liaison to the Secret Service. To be honest, I wasn’t as sure about what agencies they represented—maybe they represented outside agencies or maybe they represented certain offices within the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI—but I was certain that the number in the righthand corner represented a person. And now this.
But…but…but…(thought I)…it didn’t make any sense for them to alphabetize names within a classification group. It doesn’t follow FBI protocol. FBI protocol at that time was simple and straightforward. First, they checked the general index, which consisted of thousands, and probably hundreds of thousands, of index cards organized alphabetically by people’s names and other identifiers, all meticulously cross-referenced. The index card would then provide the appropriate case number (or numbers) for that person, with the first part of the case number being the classification group, which for missing persons is the number 79. The FBI staffer would then stroll over to where the case files were housed, find the 79 classification group, and pull out the respective file. Ron’s number was 79-31966. Richard Cox’s number was 79-23729. Ronnie York’s was 79-32021. Anna Marie Altmeier’s was 79-31499. And so on. (Oh, I know, I know. What about the Missing Person File Room? I’m thinking that the index card likely mentioned if the file was in there instead, where they’d also be filed by their case numbers. No biggie.) Nowhere have I read that the FBI grouped files alphabetically within a classification group. And think about it: A case file is much easier to locate by its case number than by having to also know some sort of alphabetized section number assigned to it and written in the upper righthand corners of some, but not all, of that person’s records. And what if there were two or more numbers, which sometimes occurred? Does that mean that copies were made so that the files would be in multiple places within the classification group? That would be insane.
So what’s a girl do when she’s presented with this kind of life-altering, book-project-killing information? I’ll tell you what she does. She pours herself a glass of passion fruit kombucha and continues reading the missing person records while taking notes.
Here’s what she found.
The dashes, 1’s, and 2’s
Many of the numbers had dashes followed by 1’s and 2’s too. Why would they have those additional numbers if they were organized alphabetically within the classification group, which, again, would be insane?
Here are two examples of outliers in which multiple numbers are listed. In the Sampson example, according to my theory, FBI reps #3 and #9 received 1 copy of the record, and reps #1 and #9 received two copies of the enclosures.
KhalisSampson
The FD-217’s
Several of the missing person records have the notation “FD-217” scribbled near their number. As you may recall, many of the non-missing-person records also have the FD-217 notation near their number, as if that notation was the reason for that particular number being assigned.
To recap from a while ago, the FD-217 was an FBI form titled “Notification of Bureau File Number,” which, to the best of my knowledge, was generally submitted by field offices along with a report if they didn’t know the person’s case number. I think it provides more interesting information than that though, since I can’t get my hands on one, not even one that’s blank. The FBI claims that they can’t find it, even though I pointed them to a page number in the FBI Form Book’s Table of Contents.
Someone’s initials are usually written near the number and FD-217 notation, as if they’re saying “I checked the FD-217 and it provided this number.” If the numbers were merely some sort of alphabetical shorthand (e.g., 1= A-B, 2=C-D, etc.), they wouldn’t need to check the FD-217. They could just hang an alphabet chart on a wall somewhere.
The blue pencil
Unlike other missing person records I’ve seen over the years, including Ron’s, these missing person records are originals, which is especially helpful, because I can see what colors the notations are written in. Consistently, the number in the upper righthand corner is written in blue pencil, just like the phrase “see index,” FD-217 (usually, except for the one on pink above), and the accompanying initials. For some time, I’ve believed the blue pencil indicates that it was written by someone in Domestic Intelligence, Division 5, because of the notations, with “see index” being the biggest giveaway. I continue to feel that way.
The yellow sheet
If I were a practitioner of inverted-pyramid journalism versus my usual preference of romping through the weeds on my way to completing a full circle or, if the situation calls for it, a 3-D rhombus, I would’ve led with this next finding. It’s a big deal.
Sometimes, I noticed the phrase “o’d on yellow” or “o’ed on yellow,” also in blue pencil, in the top right of a page that had no number. It was as if the phrase was written in lieu of the number. I had no idea what the phrase meant, but I typed it into my quasi spreadsheet anyway.
Here are 6 examples. The writing is sometimes small and light, but it’s always in blue in the upper right.
Then I read the missing person records associated with Edward Theodore Myers, who, in 1954, at the age of 50, had been missing for about 10 years when his mother wrote to the FBI. At the top of the page on which her letter was affixed, on both sides, someone wrote “7 circled on yellow.”
“What’s with all the yellow?” I wondered.
I soon learned that the word yellow was referring to the preprinted “Message Relay” cover sheet, which is yellow in color. When the FBI passed along information about a missing person case to a senator, the attorney general, or another important person or agency all the way up to the White House, they’d use the Message Relay cover sheet. It had two purposes: to specify the officials on the distribution list and to hide from casual view the contents of the document being transferred. The fact that someone wrote the number 7 on a Message Relay cover sheet for Edward Theodore Myers tells us that whoever 7 is, they were on the distribution list and they should get a copy too.
As for what the “o” in “o’d” or “o’ed” stands for, I wish I could tell you. Maybe it stands for “office” or maybe “official.” As bizarre as it sounds, maybe it was FBI lingo to write that they’d “o’d on yellow” if they’d written the office’s or official’s designated number on the Message Relay sheet. As further confirmation that the numbers in the top right corner correspond to the numbers written on a Message Relay sheet, I found a Message Relay sheet for Lady Bird Johnson in which the phrase “o’d 2” is written in the top right.
It appears that an agency official with the 2 designation had been kept in the loop about Lady Bird Johnson, whose name, I feel the need to point out, doesn’t start with a C or a D. I also have located non-missing-person examples in which the number on a Message Relay sheet matches the numbers assigned to the regular FBI records. In short, the numbers in the upper righthand corner correspond with the numbers on Message Relay sheets, and none of them have anything to do with where a person’s name falls in the alphabet.
Incidentally, this is also evidence that the FBI didn’t save all of its missing person records. Even though they wrote “o’d on yellow” on someone’s records, they didn’t bother to save a copy of the Message Relay sheets for the missing person files. “TMI,” they likely thought.
The file envelopes
For additional corroboration, let’s talk again about FBI protocol. When an FBI staffer pulled someone’s file, the individual records were stored in a manila envelope. Stamped on the envelope on the righthand side was the case file number, because, as we’ve discussed, that’s how the files were organized. Nowhere on the outer envelope is a number ranging from 1 to 11 that corresponds to the numbers written in blue pencil in the top righthand corner of some of the pages of a person’s records—numbers that the FBI would have us believe represents some sort of secondary alphabetized system. Those numbers aren’t on the envelopes because, again, that would be insane.
To conclude this section, the above examples confirm that the numbers in the upper righthand corner hold meaning, Ron’s 10’s continue to be significant, and I don’t need to go dig a hole in which to live out my days.
I’d mentioned earlier that I found some 10’s in the missing person records as well. As with Ron’s 10’s, not all are clear as to why they earned them, but here are several that do seem a little more self-explanatory and far juicier than the other, lower-numbered records:
David Smart, aerospace engineer for NASA who disappeared on his way to work
Roger Alan Smith, a Marine who’d just completed training in counterintelligence and was being sought by Naval Intelligence
Andrew J. Tyler, a college student in the Air Force ROTC who had participated in marches against the Vietnam War
Discovery #5: I now believe that the FBI is actively attempting to mislead us
Here’s the question that’s on most of our minds: Why does it appear as if the numbers from 1 to 11 on the missing person records are based on the alphabet? Answer: the FBI cherry-picked the records. When the FBI released the missing person records to NARA in 2014, I strongly believe that they chose records to make it appear as if the numbers were alphabetically based. To represent the 1’s, they chose people with 1’s on their records whose last names started with A’s and B’s—and only those people. For the 2’s, they chose people with 2’s on their records whose last names started with C’s and D’s, and so on. As a result, I think there are a lot more missing person files out there from that era.
In an April 14, 1952, article in Life about Richard Cox’s disappearance, authors Herbert Brean and Luther Conant estimated that roughly a million Americans “excluding criminals” attempted to disappear each year. They also said that 95 percent of those cases were solved by missing person departments. Still, that leaves roughly 50,000 people per year who managed to stay hidden. In comparison, the FBI transferred 87 files representing the years 1947 to 1980. Eighty-seven.
I don’t think the FBI was cherry-picking their files because of me. Those files were transferred to NARA long before I started my blog and got all vocal about the numbers in the upper righthand corner. It could be that that’s how the FBI, as a rule, releases its records, in case anyone should question those numbers and as a time-saver to reduce the number of redactions they’d have to make.
I do, however, think that I was on the FBI’s and NARA’s minds in June 2026, when I let them know that I’d be coming to town. After they finished my request in August 2024, NARA continued working on the rest of those files for a year, processing 48 more. Then they took a 9-month break. Maybe they thought I didn’t care about the files anymore. Maybe they thought I’d moved onto other things so they felt they could expend their time and resources elsewhere. But then, when I told them in June that I’d be coming to College Park in August, they flew into high gear. They processed 20 more files, totaling 86.
Look, I’m extremely grateful to NARA for making all of those files available to me so quickly. They accomplished that feat in only four years when I’d been forewarned that they were still working under an 8-year backlog. But I don’t think that the FBI has ever forgiven me for asking for NARA’s assistance in determining why the FBI was able to expunge Ron’s fingerprints 30 years earlier than their normal record retention period would permit. I think it’s highly likely that someone at the FBI read NARA the riot act for giving me information that led to my conclusion that it was due to a conflict with the Privacy Act, and, if so, Ron was probably alive in 2002 and the FBI knew it. I’m thinking there’s probably a note in red somewhere on my NARA researcher profile telling them to contact the FBI whenever I ask for anything that pertains to the Bureau. I think they probably told the FBI that I was coming and I think the FBI told them to finish the files (sans one). If anyone from the FBI has been reading my blog, they knew that I’d be looking at those numbers. I think the FBI wanted me to see its handiwork, and I’m here to say that I did. It’s just that I’m not buying what they’re selling. Sorry, but I’m not.
And you? What do you think? Any ideas on what the “o” stands for in “o’d on yellow”? How about questions…surely, you have a question or two about all of this…
One of the most difficult parts of figuring out what happened to Ronald Tammen is the inconvenient truth that he had to have reinvented himself. He no longer went by the name Ron Tammen, at least not on paper. He never used his Social Security number, his Selective Service number, or any of the other numbers that had been assigned to him during his formative years ever again. His former life was wiped clean and the feds were keeping mum about whoever it was that he became. It’s likely that very few people were in-the-know then, and, as the years roll by, even fewer are in-the-know now. So what’s a researcher who wants answers to do?
She keeps her eyes peeled for anyone who mysteriously shows up in FBI reports who isn’t identified, like, ever. And she starts with the FBI reports concerning the most in-the-know person she can think of: Robert Maheu.
I now have a candidate for someone who could conceivably be Ronald Tammen. Oh, I know, I know. It’s likely that this guy was NOT Ron Tammen. However, what I’m about to share with you is evidence that there were people running around doing Robert Maheu’s dirty work and they were doing it anonymously, under assumed names. What’s more, I now know for a fact that Robert Maheu was what’s known in the literary world as an unreliable narrator. In his autobiography, the more important the topic, the more likely it was that he glossed over crucial details or flat-out lied. He kept the really big secrets—including the name of someone who performed a highly sensitive illegal wiretap for him—to himself until the day he died.
Our story begins in October 1960, when Robert Maheu was working on the Fidel Castro assassination plot with Mafia men John Roselli, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante, as well as his pals at the CIA. One day, Roselli approached Maheu and asked him if he could find out if Giancana’s girlfriend was having an affair with one of the guys from Laugh-In.
You want to do this as a Q&A? Good, that works for me too.
What’s Laugh-In?
It was a TV show that ran from 1967 to 1973. It had its funny moments but the writing relied heavily on catch phrases like “Sock it to me” and “You bet your sweet bippy,” which (imo) got old. Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were the comedic co-hosts, with Rowan being the easy-on-the-eyes straight man and Martin being the funny one.
Now, when Roselli approached Maheu, he didn’t mention Laugh-In per se because that show was still seven years in the future. In 1960, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were mostly playing nightclubs, especially the ones in Las Vegas.
Who was Sam Giancana’s girlfriend?
Sam Giancana was in love with Phyllis McGuire, one of the McGuire Sisters, and I’ve read in various accounts that the feeling was mutual. The McGuire Sisters were three sisters from Middletown, Ohio, all of whom wore bubble cuts and had matching everything, right down to their suntan-tinted pantyhose and orange patten-leather pumps. They sang familiar fare—sometimes in unison, other times in harmony, never very complicated. Phyllis was the cute, perky one with the wildly flailing arms.
Was Phyllis McGuire having an affair with Dan Rowan?
That’s what Sam Giancana suspected, and I guess so do I. What can I say? She was a glamorous, vivacious Las Vegas singer. He was a chain-smoking, wisecracking Vegas comedian. Even though she was crazy for Giancana, she may have given into temptation while he was away in Miami Beach plotting Castro’s murder. You have to hand it to Rowan though: if he indeed started things up with McGuire during that period, it was a gutsy, if not insanely stupid move. But then again, if Phyllis was into bad boys, what could be badder than a guy who wasn’t afraid to be seen around town with the girlfriend of Chicago’s Mob boss?
Why did Maheu get involved?
Even a Mob boss can feel fragile at times, and Sam Giancana was feeling especially mopey and vulnerable. He loved Phyllis McGuire so much, he could barely concentrate on the task at hand, which was the assassination of Fidel Castro. Maheu needed to find out if Phyllis was fooling around with Dan Rowan so that Sam could think more clearly about the work he was conducting for the CIA. Dan and Phyllis’s allegedly illicit affair had thus become a matter of national security. If Maheu didn’t find out whatever was going on, Sam was going to go there himself, which, for the good of the country, Maheu needed to prevent. Maheu briefed Sheffield Edwards, the CIA’s director of the Office of Security, about the plan of action, which was to bug Rowan’s hotel room at the Las Vegas Riviera. Shef gave him $1000 for the job but warned Maheu to keep the CIA out of it.
Who did Maheu hire to do the bugging?
Robert Maheu hired a private investigator and former FBI special agent he knew from Miami named Edward DuBois to send two of his men to Las Vegas to conduct the bugging operation. The men who were scheduled to go were Arthur Balletti and a former FBI special agent named Fred T. Harris. According to Maheu’s autobiography, the plan was for them to book a room next to Rowan’s room and have them put a listening device on the shared wall so they could listen to whatever was going on in Rowan’s hotel room without having to break in.
At the last moment, however, Maheu contacted DuBois and told him to send only one man for the job and that Maheu would be sending the second. DuBois sent Balletti, while the other man, the man sent by Maheu, went by the alias J.W. Harrison. Balletti and Harrison met at the Miami International Airport and flew to Las Vegas together, with Harrison using Fred T. Harris’ airplane ticket. At least that was DuBois’ story.
In his book, Maheu only describes one man doing the job—the one who got caught. He never mentioned a second man.
Someone got caught?
Yeah. Arthur Balletti was caught and arrested on October 31, 1960, which happened to be the day after Maheu’s 43rd birthday. Maheu’s guy, the guy who went by the alias J.W. Harrison, got away.
What went wrong?
It’s hard to say what exactly happened because the stories differ depending on who’s talking. One minor difference was that Rowan’s room was below Balletti’s and Harrison’s room, not next door. A major difference was that, in addition to bugging Dan Rowan’s room, they wired his phone.
In his autobiography, written in 1992, Maheu expresses utter bewilderment as to why in the world DuBois’ PI—Balletti—would wire Rowan’s phone when the whole point of the job was to listen to bedroom banter, not to intercept phone calls. “Just why he thought tapping Rowan’s phone would help determine details about his love life, I’ll never understand,” Maheu mused for the people who’d spent good money on his book of occasional facts in a sea of fiction.
But in an FBI interview in 1962, Maheu readily admitted that he authorized the wiring of Rowan’s telephone too. The reason for the change in plans was the CIA had reason to believe the Castro plot was being leaked, beginning with our three swingin’ singles. Giancana could have told McGuire, McGuire could have told Rowan, and heaven knows where it might have traveled after that. What if Dan Rowan told Dick Martin? What if Dick Martin mentioned it to his caddy? What if Dick Martin’s caddy told his bartender? And let’s not forget about everyone’s hairdressers. It could have gotten out of hand fast.
J.W. Harrison, the man who DuBois said was sent by Maheu but who Maheu denied ever knowing, installed the wiretap, while Balletti conducted the bugging part of the operation. The bugging was considered lawful since they didn’t break into Rowan’s hotel room. The wiretap part, which did involve breaking and entering, was 100 percent in violation of the federal Wiretapping Statute. First the sheriff’s department got involved, then the FBI, then the Department of Justice. And since Harrison had managed to hightail it out of town beforehand, Balletti was on his own.
How did he get caught?
Again, the stories differ. I’m going to go with the summary that was written for the Church committee, compiled from FBI reports, because it makes the most sense:
The hotel manager advised that “…according to hotel records, Arthur J. Balletti checked into the hotel on October 26, 1960 and was assigned Room 331 and that the registration card bears the notation, ‘in room with Harrison.’ Since Balletti’s hotel bill was in excess of $100 and he was not known, the manager and the chief of security for the hotel went to Room 331 and no one was in the room when they entered. At this time, they observed a yellow pad with the notation of time and a date which referred to Dan Rowan and the hotel manager observed in the top desk drawer what appeared to be a recording device. After discussing the bill with Balletti and receiving a somewhat uncertain identification, the hotel manager subsequently notified the Clark County Sheriff’s Office that he had observed what appeared to be a recording device in Balletti’s room and suspected that a listening device might be installed in Rowan’s room.
“The hotel manager and Deputy Sheriff Eversole and another Deputy, name unrecalled, entered Rowan’s room and the hotel manager observed what appeared to be some type of microphone taped to the rear headboard on the bed in Rowan’s room with wires running to the telephone wall box. The hotel manager observed the Deputy Sheriff remove the article from the headboard.”
If you’re wondering why the manager and security chief felt that a $100 hotel bill was worth paying a visit to Balletti’s room, that amount would be equivalent to over $1100 today. Still, it seems like a weird reason for them to go rifling through Balletti’s desk drawers while he was out, but I’m glad they did.
Then what happened?
You know how the CIA relies on “plausible deniability” to get out of every potential scrape they find themselves in? That didn’t happen this time. With all of his meticulous planning and troubleshooting, Robert Maheu forgot to instruct the men what to do if they got caught.
When Balletti was asked who he was working for, he immediately pointed to DuBois who, in turn, directed law enforcement straight to Maheu. Eventually, after lying to the FBI about why he hired DuBois, Maheu vaguely stated that he was using the surveillance to help the CIA obtain intelligence about Cuba through the “hoodlum element.” The DOJ was considering prosecuting Maheu for the wiretap until Sheffield Edwards stepped in and told the DOJ to back off because the prosecution of Maheu would expose sensitive information about “the abortive Cuban invasion in April 1961” (i.e., the Bay of Pigs), which occurred months after Balletti’s arrest and wasn’t exactly pertinent to the issue at hand. In April 1962, the head of the DOJ’s Criminal Division advised Attorney General Robert Kennedy that “it is clear that the national interest will preclude any prosecution resulting from the Nevada wiring case,” and that “prosecutive action will be declined.” In May 1962, Robert Kennedy was fully apprised of the CIA-Mafia plot to assassinate Castro.
Thanks to the hard-loving Sam Giancana, the fast-living Dan Rowan, and the arm-waving Phyllis McGuire, the FBI and DOJ learned about the Mafia-CIA Castro assassination plots early in the game and we got to learn about a mystery man who went by the alias J.W. Harrison.
To this day, the mystery of J.W. Harrison has never been solved. In 1979, a staff report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations stated, “Clearly someone arranged for Harrison’s presence and knows his true identity.” My money is on Maheu, despite his staunch denial of ever knowing J.W. Harrison. You’d think that Maheu would’ve at least mentioned in his book that a guy who went by the alias J.W. Harrison had wired Rowan’s room, though he didn’t have a clue who he was. Perhaps he understood that no one would believe him.
Did they learn anything else about J.W. Harrison?
A little. We have a writing sample, we have an address, and we have a physical description.
— J.W. Harrison’s handwriting
Here’s J.W. Harrison’s handwriting sample when he signed in at the Las Vegas Riviera on October 26, 1960. The FBI Laboratory attempted to compare his handwriting to another guy’s—someone named J.A. Rolliins—but they came up empty.
I tried to compare J.W. Harrison’s handwriting to Ron Tammen’s. Unfortunately, I don’t have a large enough sample of Ron’s handwriting to make an adequate comparison—just a couple yearbook signatures plus his hand-printed application for college. The big, loopy J in J.W. reminds me of the similarly balloon-like R at the front of Ronald. Other aspects are conceivably similar. But there are notable differences too. J.W. Harrison’s capital “F” in San Francisco and Ron’s capital “T” in Tammen look nothing alike, even though, in cursive writing, people tend to make their capital T’s and F’s the same way except the F gets a crossbar. But handwriting is tricky and it can change. Sometimes it changes gradually over time, and sometimes it happens abruptly, when a person writes a certain way on purpose.
As I was lamenting my lack of Ron’s handwriting samples, it occurred to me that I may be able to obtain two additional samples of Ron’s handwriting—lengthier ones. I’ve written to someone who hopefully still has them and I’ll be back in touch if she does. If so, and if some of the letters do look similar, this may be one of those times when it’s worthwhile to hire a professional.
–– His address
The address that J.W. Harrison wrote on the hotel registration was 214 W. Water St., San Francisco. Although there is a Water Street in San Francisco, it’s an alley the length of one block with no West or East designations. Also, the house numbers are in the double, not triple, digits. Lastly, if the FBI was attempting to find him, and they were, surely they would have sent someone from the San Francisco Field Office to Water Street to knock on doors. The fact that they weren’t able to locate him tells me the address isn’t real.
— His physical description
On December 14, 1960, the Miami Field Office sent a report to the FBI Director with the subject head “Arthur James Balletti.” In it, they provided updated information from DuBois and Balletti, including Balletti’s description of J.W. Harrison. The description Balletti gave of J.W. Harrison was as follows: “white, male, age 50, 5’10”, 200 pounds, brown hair, balding.”
If these descriptors are true, then J.W. Harrison is without a doubt not Ron Tammen. In October 1960, Ron was 27 years old, so his age is way off. I don’t think Ron would have been balding either. His father and brothers had full heads of hair in their later years. His height is consistent with the description as well as his hair color. I suppose it’s possible that he put on 25 pounds since his sophomore year in college, but I doubt it.
Here’s my issue with that description: For a guy who had little to say about his mysterious counterpart, Balletti seemed to be able to reel off his exact age and dimensions with no room for error. All of the numerical measurements he gave were precise. There’s not even an “s” after 50 to indicate a general age range. Arthur James Balletti was 28 years old when he bugged Dan Rowan’s hotel room. He barely knew his accomplice. To someone in his 20s, 50 is considered way up there. Besides, 50 is old for someone doing undercover intelligence work, particularly someone who’s working on assignment with a low-level investigator like Balletti. Between 1978 and 1987, the average age for CIA operatives was from the upper 20s or low 30s to the mid-to-upper 40s. When James McCord was bugging the Watergate Hotel in June 1972, he was 48. E. Howard Hunt was 53 during Watergate, but he was one of the planners, along with G. Gordon Liddy, who was 41. So while it’s feasible that J.W. Harrison was 50, he would have been at the high end of the spectrum and not typical for his line of work.
I’m wondering if, by the time his interview had been conducted, Balletti had been coached. Balletti worked for DuBois, and DuBois was a friend of Maheu’s. It’s possible that Maheu told DuBois that they needed to keep Harrison’s identity secret and to make up some of the identifying characteristics to throw officials off. We already know that Maheu was capable of lying to the FBI when he wanted to protect the CIA. He lied to them when he first told them why he hired DuBois. Maybe he convinced DuBois and Balletti that, in the interest of national security, they should lie too.
Is it possible that J.W. Harrison was Ron Tammen?
I think it’s improbable that J.W. Harrison is Ron Tammen. However, I also see it this way: we have evidence that Ron Tammen had ties to the CIA’s Office of Security, and it appears he also was known to Robert Maheu. Those two things both apply to J.W. Harrison. It also appears from Ron’s FBI records that Ron was involved in dangerous, perhaps deadly acts—maybe even assassination. But that couldn’t have been all that he did for the CIA. Assassinations didn’t happen that frequently. A hypnotic assassin (if that’s what Ron was) had to have some down days, right? What could Ron Tammen be doing on one of his quieter days?
In the photo, Ron is sitting at a table between his brothers John and Richard. Ron’s attention is focused on what looks like two tall cans, or maybe they’re batteries, that he’s lined up and wired together. The wires lead to the body of an old telephone, which another student at the end of the table is sitting next to while talking into the receiver. By all appearances, Ron’s wiring is making it possible for that guy to talk to whomever he’s talking to. If Ron Tammen was comfortable wiring up a phone in 1950 when he was still in high school, it’s possible that he could become proficient at wiretapping a phone ten years later.
But if it wasn’t Ron? Well, who’s to say that old, overweight, balding J.W. Harrison wasn’t a colleague or mentor of Ron Tammen’s? At least we now know that, if Robert Maheu did know Ron Tammen, he would have done everything in his power to protect his identity.
********************
Note: I’ve been spelling John Roselli’s last name with one ‘s,’ which is consistent with many FBI records, Congressional reports, and newspaper articles that spelled it that way. I’ve now come to learn that the official spelling was Rosselli, with two s’s. In today’s post, I’m spelling it with one ‘s’ to keep things consistent. From here on out, I’ll be spelling it with two s’s. John Roselli’s/Rosselli’s birth name was Filippo Sacco.
Can we talk a little more about FD-209 forms, the official forms that FBI agents submit every time they interact with a confidential informant? I love FD-209 forms. I’m probably the number one fangirl of FD-209 forms these days…but not just any FD-209 forms. I’m unquenchably thirsty for the FD-209 forms concerning a confidential informant known as LV 366-PC.
On May 27, 2026, I submitted a FOIA request for LV 366-PCs FD-209 forms. Just six days later, two of which fell on a weekend, the FBI refused my request. I’m not gonna lie—their words were intimidating.
In their reason for their denial, they cited subsections D and E of exemption 7, which applies to records compiled for law enforcement purposes. The acting section chief then spelled out the harm that I’d be inflicting if those FD-209s ever got into my impertinent little thirsty fangirl hands.
“Release of records responsive to your request would reveal confidential informant identities and information,” which applies to exemption 7D, “expose law enforcement techniques,” which applies to exemption 7E, “and endanger the life or physical safety of individuals.” That last one was the kicker, since it went above and beyond what exemptions 7D and 7E say. Seriously, if that last part were true, then they could have, and probably should have, cited exemption 7F, which deals with that very issue.
Someone. Could. DIE.
Credit: Clipart.com
You know what? I think they’re bending the truth. You know what else? I think they’re flouting the law.
First, a little background:
On March 15, 2022, in celebration of Sunshine Week, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland provided guidelines to all federal agencies with regard to the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016. In it, he addressed the excessive use of exemptions by staff members when responding to FOIA requests. The goal, both in 2016 and 2022, was to improve openness in government.
“Information that might technically fall within an exemption should not be withheld from a FOIA requester unless the agency can identify a foreseeable harm or legal bar to disclosure,” he wrote. “In case of doubt, openness should prevail,” he added.
After the release of his guidelines, the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) issued additional guidance, especially pertaining to the foreseeable harm standard, a term that was left open to interpretation. They advised: “The foreseeable harm analysis should be made on a case-by-case basis and agencies should individually consider the applicable harms for each record or similar category of records.”
They then cited the 2021 decision of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which had ruled that federal agencies need to “‘articulate both the nature of the harm [from release] and the link between the specified harm and specific information contained in the material withheld.’” Also: agencies can’t just say in general terms that something bad “could” happen if the information were released. They need to provide information supporting the conclusion that it “would” happen, which is ostensibly why the acting section chief told me that the lives or physical safety of individuals would be in danger if they released the FD-209s for LV 366-PC after all these years.
I think the FBI is bending the truth.
Reason 1: How can people’s lives be at stake if everyone is dead?
The subject of LV 366-PC’s conversations with the FBI in 1970—mobster Marty Fenster—is long dead, and two other mobsters who were mentioned along with Fenster—Frank Roger Milano and Pete Licavoli—are dead as well. Milano, the youngest, died in 2004; Fenster died in 1996; and Licavoli, the highest ranking and most well-known of the three, died in 1984. And the informant? Although it’s impossible to know if he’s alive or dead since we don’t know who it is, my money is on the latter. If my theory holds that LV 366-PC is Robert Maheu, then we know for sure that he’s dead, since Maheu died in 2008. But even if it’s not Maheu, chances are good that LV 366-PC is also dead since he was hanging out with men who were in their 60s 56 years ago.
But honestly? Whether the informant is alive or dead doesn’t much matter because the most likely people to be mad at the informant for talking to the FBI about Marty Fenster’s whereabouts are no longer a threat. In fact, I’d argue that the FBI should feel confident that if they were to give me LV 366-PC’s FD-209 forms concerning Marty Fenster’s whereabouts, literally no one would be in danger because the people whom the FBI considered dangerous are permanently out of the picture. You feel me?
Reason 2: Some confidential informants are treated more confidentially than others.
As I mentioned in my last post, the FBI has released dozens if not hundreds of FD-209s in the past. Some have only the identifying information redacted, while others are almost redaction-free. Many of the FD-209 forms that I’ve found online, available on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website, are from the FBI’s investigation into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
So I just have to ask: how is it that the FBI feels that the person who told them 56 years ago about the whereabouts of deceased mobster Marty Fenster and two of his also-deceased associates is deserving of a far greater degree of protection than what informants who spoke with them about the assassination of MLK received? Can someone from the FBI please explain?
Here are several of the many FD-209s that I found among the MLK records that are available on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. The bottom one even concerns Carlos Marcello, who, it could be said, was most definitely a person who would “endanger the life or personal safety of individuals” if he ever got wind that they were talking to the FBI.
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
Reason 3 (my favorite): The FBI has released FD-209s on other informants who’d provided information about Pete Licavoli. Why won’t they do it for me?
And yet…and YET…the FBI had no problem releasing the FD-209 forms for two, and possibly three, other confidential informants who’d squealed on Licavoli, not to mention a slew of other mobsters. Here are links to the full records, which I obtained from the Mary Ferrell Foundation website:
LV 25-C(Las Vegas Field Office)
Click on image to view the entire record
DE 868-C-TE(Detroit Field Office)
Click on image to view the entire record
DE [redacted]-C-TE(Detroit Field Office—it’s possible that this is the same informant as DE 868-C-TE)
Click on image to view the entire record
So I have to ask a similar question to the one I asked before: how is it that the FBI feels that the person who told them 56 years ago about the whereabouts of deceased mobster Marty Fenster and his friends Frank Milano and Pete Licavoli is deserving of a far greater degree of protection than the informants who’d told them about Pete Licavoli and all those other mobsters?
I think the FBI is flouting the law.
According to Attorney General Garland, the whole point of implementing the foreseeable harm standard is to ensure that exemptions are used less, not more. You heard the man: when in doubt, “openness should prevail.”
Isn’t it just like the FBI to take that well-meaning guidance and turn it around so that, not only can they use the same exemptions they always have, but they can now defend their stance even more intimidatingly than before? They *appear* as if they’re following the letter of the law, when evidence suggests they aren’t.
Reason 1: After the Garland memo, exemption use increased.
One might predict that Merrick Garland’s guidelines would immediately result in fewer exemptions claimed by the FBI, but, for at least two-plus years, that’s not what happened.
Included below is a bar chart for exemptions 7D (re: confidential informants) and 7E (re: law enforcement techniques) that the FBI claimed for fiscal years 2020 through 2025. After Garland’s guidance in 2022, 7D and 7E exemptions actually went up, not down, with 2024 reaching peak levels.
With that said, there was a sizable drop in 2025, where the FBI claimed roughly 1000 fewer 7D exemptions than 2024’s levels and 7E exemptions dropped to slightly below 2022’s levels. This decrease could be partially due to the 43-day government shutdown in 2025, since the FBI processed roughly 2000 fewer requests that year than in 2024.
Click on image for a closer view; data provided by FOIA.gov
Still, when we look at the percentage of processed FOIA requests that received exemptions, 2025 seems to be an outlier. According to data compiled by the website FOIA.gov, 7D exemptions accounted for roughly 10% of all FOIA requests processed by the FBI for the years 2020-2023. Fiscal year 2024 experienced a higher percentage of 7D exemptions, at roughly 12%, but then 2025 demonstrated a significantly lower percentage, at 7.5%. Likewise, 7E exemptions were more in the 23-24% range for all FOIA requests for the years 2020-2023. This means that nearly one-quarter of all FOIA requests received by the FBI were slapped with a 7E exemption. In 2024, the percentage shot up to 27%, but in 2025, it fell back down to 23.8%.
Maybe we’re witnessing a downward trend in 7D and 7E exemptions—let’s hope so. I, for one, can’t wait to see the 2026 numbers when they’re in. Still, it does make me wonder: if the FBI is finally making an effort to limit the number of 7Ds and 7Es that they dole out to FOIA requesters, how is it that they’ve determined LV 366-PC and his friends Marty Fenster, Frank Milano, and Pete Licavoli to be the line that shouldn’t be crossed? And why was it OK for them to cross that line the other three times for Pete Licavoli?
Reason 2: There’s a fool-proof way to release FD-209 forms while protecting information that’s exempt from disclosure. The FBI isn’t using it.
Merrick Garland said something else in his guidance that I think is applicable to my case. In essence, he told federal agencies not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. OK, he didn’t use that phrase per se, probably because A) it’s bizarre and disturbing, and B) has anyone ever done that?? Merrick chose these words instead, quoting from the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016:
“When an agency determines that it cannot make full disclosure of a requested record, FOIA requires that it ‘consider whether partial disclosure of information is possible’ and ‘take reasonable steps necessary to segregate and release nonexempt information.’”
This is exactly what I’d suggested that the FBI do when I disputed their response, asking them to redact the portions that are exempt from disclosure and to release the rest. They didn’t care for my suggestion. Instead, they insisted that they’d followed the FBI’s standard operating procedures and stuck with their original response, Soup Nazi style—no FD-209s for you.
But the FBI has elected to use the partial-disclosure method in the past. Here are two examples in which the FBI redacted the identifying information on FD-209 forms and released the rest to the public. You can see other places where information has been blacked out under the MLK and Licovoli FD-209s above.
Click on image for a closer viewClick on image for a closer view
Which leads me to this question: how can the FBI say that they’re following standard operating procedures when their operating procedures vary so drastically, day to day and FOIA requester to FOIA requester?
Reason 3: When in doubt, the FBI appears to choose obstruction over openness.
As I mentioned earlier, the foreseeable harm standard leaves much open to interpretation, and OIP has given agencies a choice in how they should conduct their analysis. They can consider each record individually or they can analyze similar records as a group. They get to choose which.
In addressing my request, it appears as if the FBI chose to lump all of LV 366-PC’s FD-209 records together, which resulted in a broad and vague and intimidating explanation. Remember how they’re supposed to “‘articulate both the nature of the harm [from release] and the link between the specified harm and specific information contained in the material withheld.’”? The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia wants specifics, please. But I didn’t get any of those. I received no explanation as to how people would be endangered by the “information contained in the material withheld,” whether we’re talking about the Marty Fenster/Frank Roger Milano/Pete Licavoli case or any other case the informant helped them out with.
Also, if FOIA staffers were truly following Merrick Garland’s rule of thumb, “In case of doubt, openness should prevail,” wouldn’t they want to review each FD-209 record individually in hopes that they might be able to give me something—anything—that would be responsive while not putting anyone in harm’s way?
Instead, they gave me a stern no and an implied “how dare you?”
I don’t think Merrick Garland would approve.
I’ll let you know how the OIP rules on my appeal.
SINCERE THANKS TO THE MARY FERRELL FOUNDATION FOR MAKING ALL OF THE ABOVE RECORDS AVAILABLE.
Do you remember in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfuss was passionately sculpting his mashed potato rendition of Devil’s Tower at the dinner table as his family looked on in horror? That’s the moment he delivered his classic line, more to himself than to anyone else: “This means something. This is important.” I can so relate. The only difference is that my Devil’s Tower is the phrase “366 m hau” and my mashed potatoes are two FBI records that the phrase is scribbled on—one Ron Tammen’s and one involving a car bomb that was placed under Ash Resnick’s Lincoln in the parking lot of Caesars Palace.
Devil’s Tower; this work has been released into the public domain by its author; available at Wikimedia Commons
In my most recent post, I introduced a new theory that the notation may be in reference to an informant in Las Vegas whom the FBI gave the official designation LV 366-PC, where LV stands for Las Vegas and PC stands for potential criminal informant. I also suggested that the letters “m hau” could refer to the informant’s actual name, cryptically scribbled in so that nosy onlookers like us wouldn’t be able to figure out his or her identity. Granted, every bit of my theory is a wild guess, but, if it’s OK with you, this is a question worth obsessing about for a while. I think it could be important. Although there’s always a chance that I may be wrong about who “m hau” is, I don’t think it would offend anyone if I told you where my head is at this moment, would it?
You want to try to do this as a Q&A this time?
Who do you think ‘m hau’ is?
I think “m hau” may have been Robert Maheu.
Who’s that?
Robert Aime Maheu was Howard Hughes’ right-hand man—his go-to. He’d been working for Hughes on an on-call basis since the 1950s, but by 1966, at the start of Hughes’ Las Vegas years, Maheu’s full-time job was to be the face of Hughes to the rest of the world. His official title was manager of Hughes Nevada Operations, and he oversaw the purchase and management of Hughes’ casinos and other Las Vegas properties. But the relationship went deeper than that. Hughes considered Maheu to be his alter-ego. While Hughes was busy being a recluse, doing reclusey things in his penthouse in the Desert Inn, Maheu was carrying out Hughes’ wishes and conducting business in Hughes’ name, generally cosplaying Howard Hughes. Look, I don’t mean to make fun of Howard Hughes. It’s widely believed that he had obsessive-compulsive disorder and was living a hell that gradually manifested in a number of ways, including those for which he’s most well-known: the hair, the nails, and the urine jars. Weirdly, it’s been reported that Maheu had never met Hughes face to face, although they communicated all the time, primarily by telephone and memos.
Wasn’t Howard Hughes married to Jean Peters at that time?
Good! Another old movie buff. Yes, Howard Hughes was married to Jean Peters while he was holed up in the penthouse at the Desert Inn. She wasn’t living there with him though. She was still in Los Angeles in the Bel Air home they’d lived in after they’d gotten married. I’m not sure how well their marriage was going when he moved to Las Vegas, but I can’t imagine that things were great. I’m sure she was having doubts by then, what with Howard’s aversion to leaving the apartment and basic self-care like taking showers and brushing his teeth.
Something you may not know is that Jean Peters grew up in East Canton, Ohio. In fact, she was my husband’s babysitter when he was young. My husband’s grandparents, who lived next door to the Peters family, received Christmas cards each year from the famous couple when they were still living in LA. The cards were signed “Love, Jean and Howard.” Here’s what her family’s former home looks like today:
The childhood home of actress Jean Peters; credit: J. Wenger
Robert Maheu was the guy who made that marriage happen. According to Spooksauthor James Hougan, Hughes was enamored with Peters, who was beautiful, smart, talented, and soon-to-be married. With Maheu as his accomplice, Hughes hired someone to spy on the couple during their honeymoon, and he arranged for additional surveillance on the husband afterward. When her husband was conveniently away on business in Washington, DC, Robert Maheu arranged a meet-up between Hughes and Peters so Hughes could make his move. She divorced the guy in December 1956 and married Hughes that spring.
What’s your favorite Jean Peters film?
Niagara, hands down. If it’s ever playing on one of the classic movie channels, I encourage you to record it. Not only is it a great film noir but it’s fun to see the town of Niagara Falls (the Canadian one) while it was small and undeveloped—more outdoorsy and less glitzy.
How did Robert Maheu meet Howard Hughes?
According to Hougan, Robert Maheu had been recommended to Howard Hughes by a mutual friend soon after Maheu had begun making a name for himself in the private investigative field. He’d been a special agent with the FBI beginning in 1940 and, during WWII, he served in the FBI’s counterespionage program known as COCASE out of the New York City Field Office. Although he was doing well in the Bureau, in 1947, Maheu’s wife’s health prevented him from moving his young family to his new field office assignment, so he resigned. Over the next several years, he tried his hand at a few other jobs in business and government.
One red flag concerning Maheu’s character popped up when he was seeking investors in a dairy company he’d started. A lawyer in Maine wrote an impassioned letter to J. Edgar Hoover in January 1953 telling him of Maheu’s dishonesty and unethical behavior and warning him that the good name of the FBI was being sullied because Maheu liked to brag about his former employer. In 1954, Maheu opened his private investigative firm, Robert A. Maheu Associates, in Washington, DC. Almost immediately, he began approaching current and former special agents with job offers, which didn’t exactly win him any points with the big boss. Although Maheu attempted to keep the lines of communication open with the FBI, he was known to veer out of his lane at times. For the above reasons, J. Edgar Hoover had issued this warning to all special agents regarding Maheu and his new business venture:
“I want all Special Agents advised of the existence of this organization and instructed that they must be most circumspect in all dealings with Maheu or any of his representatives. In the event any investigative personnel should receive any information regarding the activities of this organization, or if any investigative personnel are contacted by representatives of this organization the Bureau should be immediately advised.”
Because he ran a private business, Maheu could take on jobs that were unconstrained by governmental rules, regs, ethics, and principles. His specialty was jobs that were tricky and/or dangerous and maybe even a little unsavory. According to Hougan, the TV show Mission: Impossible was based on Maheu’s agency. When I think about that show, I think of actor Greg Morris always crouching in some tight space as he installed a listening device into someone’s telephone or air vent. Bugging devices and illegal wiretaps were the sorts of things that Maheu’s firm excelled at.
The CIA was one of Maheu’s first long-term contracts, which should also tell you something about the kinds of jobs he would accept.
Your theory that ‘m hau’ is Maheu is interesting…but that’s not how he spelled his name.
I know. One reason could be that FBI agents struggled with the spelling of Maheu’s name, which was French in origin. (Because his parents were both French-Canadian, he was fluent in that language.) I’ve seen his name spelled Mayhew, Mahew, Mayheu, and even Mahieu. There may have been other iterations as well. It could have been that the agent who’d written the note had no idea how to spell his name plus, like I said before, he wanted to be cryptic. Both things could be true.
Also, is it me, or does the “a” in “m hau” on Ron’s record look like a cross between an “a” and an “e,” as if the person was having trouble deciding what to put?
Incidentally, I think the person who made the notation on Ron’s record was the same person who made the notation on Ash’s record. That’s wild to think about too.
The “366 m hau” on Ron’s FBI document; click on image for a closer viewThe “366 m hau” on Ash Resnick’s FBI document; click on image for a closer view
What else can you tell us about Robert Maheu?
He had a commanding presence. He compensated his average-sized frame with a big personality, he had a voice that people paid attention to, he was generally likeable in most people’s estimation, and he was a snazzy dresser. I’m going to say it: I think he was pretty dang hot when he was in his 20s and just starting out with the FBI. But by the 1970s, when he was in his 50s, most of the hair in the middle of his head had vanished and he was unapologetically embracing his male pattern baldness like a trooper.
Robert Maheu as a young man
Robert Maheu led an outwardly respectable life that included all the things that people are frequently measured by: a wife, kids, money, and prestige. (I’m sorry to report that people are rarely measured by what’s in their heart, which would be so much better for this world.) He was living the dream in the most amped-up way possible. His friendships occupied a broad spectrum ranging from those at the highest places in society to those populating the seamy underworld. One day he might be having drinks and hors d’oeuvres with the governor of Nevada and the next day he might be bailing famed mobster Johnny Roselli out of jail. In short, Robert Maheu knew a LOT of people.
What makes you think Robert Maheu was FBI informant LV 366-PC?
I have six main reasons:
1) He’d be perfect.
Robert Maheu would have been the perfect informant because of all the people he knew and all the information he was undoubtedly privy to. He was close friends with mobster John Roselli, aka “Handsome Johnny,” who also knew a lot of people, and he was the confidant of one of the richest men in the world. He also had contacts at the FBI and CIA. The FBI’s Las Vegas Field Office would have been crazy not to approach him.
2) He’d been an unofficial informant in the past.
In 1952, Maheu was working in Washington, DC, as the director for the Office of Compliance and Security in the Small Defense Plants Administration (SDPA), a precursor to the Small Business Administration during the Korean War. Maheu had taken it upon himself to write a 2 ½ page, single-spaced letter to Hoover discussing an incident in which an SDPA employee had struck up a conversation in a park with a Russian man who worked at the Soviet Embassy. The conversation was benign, focusing on hard-hitting questions such as “how does America compare to Russia?”, and nothing else happened. Maheu filled Hoover in on as many details as he had access to in the event they might be useful to the FBI. Indeed, the Washington Field Office followed up on the lead to determine who the Russian might be and whether the SDPA employee might one day be pursued as a double agent. In the write-up, the word “Informant” was written next to Maheu’s name. So I have to ask: if he played that role in the past, would he ever consider playing it again?
3) LV 366-PC knew Ash Resnick and so did Robert Maheu.
If Robert Maheu was LV 366-PC, then he would’ve had to know Ash Resnick well enough to hear something worth sharing about that car bomb plot. Well, how does next-door neighbor sound? That’s right. From the latter part of the 1960s to 1976, Ash Resnick and Robert Maheu were next-door neighbors in one of the newest, swankiest neighborhoods Las Vegas had to offer at that time: Paradise Palms. Ash lived at 3515 Cochise Lane until 1976 and Robert lived at 3525 Cochise Lane until he died in 2008. You just know that they used to shoot the breeze together when they bumped into one another picking up their newspapers or collecting their mail. You just do.
I’m still trying to learn more about that car bomb plot. One interesting thing I’ve learned is that Ash was in on the sting. In July 1974, UPI reported that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department had “set up the incident on an informant’s tip in an effort to produce a lead in the unsolved bombing death of Las Vegas attorney William Coulthard,” a case that is still unsolved. In a 1978 article, an LVMPD detective said that Ash Resnick had “agreed to be a ‘pigeon,’ putting his life in danger so that police could gather additional information” about the Coulthard bombing. But here’s what I find most confusing: in another 1974 article, the officers said that they’d found “dummy dynamite with some detonator caps” at the scene. So the alleged bomb wasn’t even allegedly real, and yet a guy named Donald Lee Wayton was allegedly sent to prison for six years for it. As I said, I’m still trying to learn more. And, what the hey, I’m attempting to learn more about the Coulthard bombing too.
Can’t you just picture Ash Resnick standing at his mailbox telling Robert about his role in the sting? It sounds like quite a story. If so, then I can also see Robert feeling the need to let the FBI know what the LVMPD had cooked up with Ash. Incidentally, I don’t think that Robert was the informant who tipped off the LVMPD about the car bomb in the first place. I think that informant likely belonged to the LVMPD.
4) Robert Maheu had two possible sources for a tip LV 366-PC made in February 1970.
In February 1970, the informant identified as LV 366-PC had provided info to the FBI concerning a mobster named Marty Fenster. The information he shared was:
MARTY FENSTER is now working for FRANK ROGER MILANO at the Clark County Vending Company, Las Vegas, Nevada. This target stated that at one time, FENSTER operated the Grace Ranch near Tucson, Arizona for PETE LICAVOLI. The target stated that FENSTER left the Grace Ranch about a year ago, moved to Los Angeles, California and about a month ago came to Las Vegas at the invitation of MILANO.
In my earlier post, I said that the informant likely picked up this information because he had business ties with the Clark County Vending Company and/or Frank Roger Milano, its owner. As it so happens Frank Milano had an interest in obtaining the vending contract for the Frontier Hotel as well as another hotel called The Plainsman. In May 1967, he and other related players went through the necessary Mob channels to do so. According to an FBI report, “A source said that these efforts were successful.” Interestingly, Howard Hughes purchased the Frontier Hotel in December 1967, with Robert Maheu now directly overseeing that property. So it’s possible that Maheu learned about Marty Fenster’s whereabouts through his business ties with the Clark County Vending Company.
But there’s another possible link, Pete Licavoli. As I mentioned briefly in another post, Robert Maheu had been the CIA’s liaison to organized crime for the Castro assassination plots. It was Maheu who’d recruited John Roselli, who, in turn, rounded up other mafia members, most famously Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante. However, according to a man with Mob and CIA ties named Chauncey Holt and the website Spartacus Educational, Pete Licavoli was a mobster who was purportedly friends with Sam Giancana and John Roselli. Licavoli owned the Grace Ranch in Arizona, that, according to Holt, had been used as a training ground for Operation Mongoose, one of the CIA’s Castro assassination projects. While Roselli, Giancana, and Trafficante were the big-ticket names who have always been associated with those plots, Holt asserts that Licavoli was involved too.
If Chauncey Holt is to be believed, then Robert Maheu had a direct connection to Pete Licavoli through their days preparing for Project Mongoose (which obviously never came to pass). It’s possible that it was either through that direct connection or through his friend Johnny Roselli that Robert Maheu could have learned of the whereabouts of Marty Fenster.
5) Robert Maheu had strong connections with the CIA’s Office of Security, the same office that ran Project Artichoke.
If Robert Maheu, LV 366-PC, and “m hau” were the same person, then Robert Maheu must have had knowledge about Ron Tammen’s whereabouts at some point after he disappeared. But how? As it turns out, Robert Maheu had strong ties to the same people who were involved with Project Artichoke: the CIA’s Office of Security. As we’ve discussed often on this site, it’s my theory that Ron Tammen was a victim of Project Artichoke’s hypnosis experiments, having first been exposed to them through his psychology professor, St. Clair Switzer.
Robert Maheu had been helping the Security guys out since he opened his business in 1954, when Project Artichoke was at the top of their list of priorities. Do you know who else was employed by the CIA’s Office of Security during that time? James W. McCord, Jr., the only other person who shares the same ST-102/REC-19 stamp combination as Ron Tammen on his FBI records.
In 1960, Sheffield Edwards, director of the Office of Security, approached Maheu seeking access to his criminal connections to assassinate Fidel Castro, and Maheu immediately went straight to Roselli’s doorstep. As for the question of whether Robert Maheu has ever been directly linked to the Office of Security’s mind-control tactics used in Project Artichoke and MKULTRA, including hypnosis, the answer is yes. In her book A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassinationof Robert F. Kennedy,acclaimed author Lisa Pease provides compelling evidence that Sirhan Sirhan couldn’t possibly have killed RFK, since, among other reasons, the bullets that had struck victims in the pantry where Kennedy was shot didn’t match Sirhan’s gun. What’s more, Sirhan was found to be highly hypnotizable and has no memory of the event. According to Pease, Sirhan was hypnotized to serve as the patsy in the crime by hypnosis experts affiliated with the CIA’s MKULTRA program. She also asserts that Robert Maheu is “the most credible high-level suspect for the planner of Robert Kennedy’s assassination,” drawing bold arrows to, among other things: his background in assassination planning; his ties to investigators in the LAPD, DA’s office, and sheriff’s office; and his connections to the men who were at ground zero of the CIA’s hypnosis experiments, the Office of Security.
6) It would have been the perfect time for him to become an FBI informant.
You might ask why Robert Maheu would have wanted to become an FBI informant. Wouldn’t he be giving up the goods on his friends or even himself? Also, guys in intelligence are known for their secrecy. They’re as close-lipped as they come.
But Maheu had been experiencing a rough patch at precisely the time that Ron Tammen’s, Ash Resnick’s, and Marty Fenster’s names had been brought up to the FBI. In December 1970, he was abruptly fired from his position with Hughes Nevada Operations for reasons that seemed flimsy and unsubstantiated. The month prior, on Thanksgiving eve, Hughes had been whisked out of the Desert Inn on a gurney—Maheu preferred to use the word “kidnapped”—and flown to the Bahamas to live, even though Hughes had ruled out the Bahamas as a possible home after reading a negative report. An internal power struggle within the Hughes empire was the reason for the upheaval. A team of executives had staged the takeover with a newly created private intelligence service, known as Intertel, stealing Hughes and ousting Maheu and several others.
Later, in a phoned-in press conference, Hughes or perhaps someone imitating Hughes said that he fired Maheu “Because he’s a no good, dishonest son of a bitch, and he stole me blind.” Maheu filed a defamation lawsuit against Hughes’ corporation, which he won. In 1972, Maheu found himself under the microscope over the Hughes memos that likely implicated Richard Nixon in accepting illegal campaign funds, memos that were being stored in Bob Maheu’s friend Hank Greenspun’s safe. Those memos were a key reason behind the Watergate scandal. In December 1973, he was indicted with Hughes and a few others over the charges that they’d manipulated Air West’s stock prices so that Hughes could acquire the airline in 1970. In 1975, he was testifying before the Church Committee about the Castro assassination plots. He had a lot going on during those years, most of it bad. Karma was closing in and jail was probably even a possibility.
Perhaps most notably, there’d been a falling out between Maheu and the CIA. According to author Jim Hougan, the CIA may have played a role in Maheu’s ouster. Intertel was run by former intelligence officials, including those in the National Security Agency and the CIA. It seems to me that, by that point, the one relatively solid relationship Maheu still had was with the FBI. If there was a good time to be a paid informant, maybe the years 1970 through 1974 would have been it.
How can we find out if you’re right?
I’m still trying to find evidence concerning informant LV 366-PC to see if that person continues to fit my theory.
On May 27, 2026, I filed a FOIA request for the forms (called FD-209s) that field agents filled out every time they interacted with a confidential informant. I was requesting all of LV 366-PC’s FD-209 forms for 1970 through 1974. They responded quickly, on June 2. Here’s what they said:
The material you requested is exempt from disclosure pursuant to FOIA exemptions (b)(7)(D) and (b)(7)(E) [5 U.S.C. §552 (b)(7)(D) and (b)(7)(E)]. Release of records responsive to your request would reveal confidential informant identities and information, expose law enforcement techniques, and endanger the life or physical safety of individuals.
Additionally, the release of these records could reasonably be expected to disclose procedures or guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions and risk circumvention of the law. Therefore, your request is being closed.
They provided an email address that I could write to if I wished to dispute their response, and I did so. I included 12 pages of FD-209 forms that had already been released to the public as examples of FBI precedent that they appeared to be ignoring. Some had redactions over the exempt portions. Others were almost fully unredacted. In an attempt at being empathetic to their concerns, I asked them to redact the portions that were exempt from disclosure and to release the rest of the info.
I received my answer yesterday and that answer was no.
Will I appeal? Oh, sure. I’ll continue going through the motions. But I have a strong feeling that I’m not going to be seeing those FD-209s anytime ever.
Do I believe that the release of LV 366-PC’s FD-209s would endanger the life or physical safety of individuals? That seems unlikely, since I’m pretty sure LV 366-PC is no longer with us, especially if it turns out to be Robert Maheu. Neither are the people that LV 366-PC was informing the FBI about.
Just fyi, here’s a link to an example of a fully unredacted FD-209 that’s been released on an informant known as CG 6606-C.The CG stands for Chicago. I’m guessing no lives were lost when that FD-209 was released.
I don’t know, maybe we’re getting close to finding out something new about Ron Tammen—maybe something meaningful. Maybe something important.
I’d like to begin this post by saying that I would never think of lying to someone from the FBI. Not only would it be obvious to them that I was lying because I happen to be a terrible liar, but I’d be committing a felony. The FBI can do bad things to you if they catch you in a lie.
But what if they lie to us, the American public? Well, that’s different. Based on the number of times I’ve caught them lying, both to me personally as well as to the public by way of a deceptively worded report, I’d hypothesize that they do it anytime it suits their purpose. NOTE: If you happen to be with the FBI and you feel I’m depicting you and your colleagues unfairly, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Otherwise, if all remains quiet, I’ll presume that you agree with me.
The subject we’ll be addressing today is a lie that was told under oath by someone from the FBI as part of the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ investigation into JFK’s murder. Because the lie was told under oath, people automatically believed him, and for good reason. Most people wouldn’t dream of lying under oath. Most of us have been taught that the penalties for perjury are no fun.
However, as a government agency that may have a lot to cover up, particularly regarding the assassination of the country’s 35th president, the FBI might view things differently. They might consider lying under oath as the quickest, most efficient way to alter the narrative. Even now, almost 48 years after he delivered his testimony, the lie has become solidified into the country’s consciousness regarding JFK’s assassination.
However, I’d argue that the FBI records underlying his testimony tell a different, more nuanced story. I don’t know about you, but if given a choice between what an FBI guy said to some lawmakers during a Congressional hearing and what the raw, unfiltered data say, I’m going with the unfiltered data 100% of the time.
We’ll be doing this as a Q&A, and, dear Good Man readers, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
What lie are you referring to?
I’m referring to the lie of omission that was made by James H. Gale during his testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in September 1978. In 1963, Gale was an FBI inspector who was assigned to review how FBI agents had handled Lee Harvey Oswald’s case prior to JFK’s assassination and to report on any deficiencies in their actions. In his testimony in which he read from a report he’d written on December 10, 1963, he claimed that Oswald hadn’t been placed on the Security Index because agents at the time didn’t feel he’d met the criteria, though he himself disagreed with their assessment. That’s what he’d written in his report and that’s the story he told the committee members in September 1978.
But Gale didn’t tell the whole truth, which is one-third of the truths he’d sworn he’d be upholding that day. If Gale had been telling the whole truth, he’d have said that, even if he was no longer on the Security Index at the time of JFK’s assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald had indeed been on the Security Index at around the time of his attempted defection to the Soviet Union. He would have added that, somewhere along the line, Oswald had been removed.
How do you know Oswald was on the Security Index?
Since July 2024, I’ve been building my theory that the words “see index” written sideways in the left margin of someone’s FBI records indicate they were on the FBI’s Security Index. In addition to Ronald Tammen’s “see index,” I’ve discovered dozens of people, many with rather seamy reputations, who had those two words written on their FBI records. In my September 1, 2024, post, I revealed that the words “see index” were also written in the left margin of one of Lee Harvey Oswald’s FBI records dated November 9, 1959, shortly after he attempted to defect to the Soviet Union.
Credit: Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making this document available; click on image for a closer view
More recently, I presented a more detailed argument that the words “see index” written sideways in the left margin were indeed FBI code for the Security Index. I provided multiple examples that enable us to say with confidence that (to the best of my knowledge) the theory is true.
(You may want to skim through that post to refresh your memory on some of the terms, especially the difference between the Security Index and the Reserve Index. If you don’t have the time, in a nutshell, the Security Index consisted of individuals thought to be especially dangerous or a threat to national security who were to be rounded up and incarcerated during a national emergency. The Reserve Index consisted mostly of alleged communists and were second in priority to the Security Index in a national emergency, with those in section A being of higher priority than section B.)
But that’s not all. I have additional evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald had been on the Security Index.
What additional evidence?
It has to do with something called a Security Flash Notice, which had been put out on Lee Harvey Oswald by way of a memo dated November 4, 1959, five days after he officially attempted to renounce his American citizenship and defect to the Soviet Union.
Credit: Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making this document available; click on image for a closer view; note the word “flash” written in handwriting, to the right
It’s well known among JFK researchers that Oswald’s Security Flash Notice had been canceled several weeks before JFK’s assassination, on October 9, 1963. The timing of that action is suspicious, to be sure. According to James Gale’s December 1963 report, the agent who was censured and put on probation for canceling Oswald’s Security Flash Notice was Marvin Gheesling, who oversaw Oswald’s case in the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, also known as Division 5.
But, to my knowledge, what hasn’t been brought out until today, on this website… (cue trumpets)
Sound Effect by Benjamin Adams from Pixabay
…is that the FBI didn’t put out Security Flash Notices on just anyone undergoing a security investigation. The person had to already be on either the Security Index or the Reserve Index.
We’ll get to the question of how we know Oswald was on the Security Index and not the Reserve Index momentarily. For now, let’s just say that Oswald’s Security Flash Notice is another indicator that he’d been on the Security Index but was for some reason removed. Canceling Oswald’s Security Flash Notice was a big deal, no question. I’d contend that his removal from the Security Index would have been far bigger.
What’s a Security Flash Notice?
A Security Flash Notice was a notice distributed by the FBI’s Identification Division at the request of an agent or field office who wanted to be alerted about any updates concerning a person on the Security Index or Reserve Index.
We’ve talked about the Identification Division a lot in the past. They’re the division that maintained all of the FBI’s fingerprints—both criminal and civilian, including anyone in the military. They were one of the first divisions if not the first division to be alerted about any arrests that were made concerning someone on the FBI’s radar on any given day across the country.
The Identification Division would disseminate the Security Flash Notice to all field offices asking to be alerted about any arrests or other information regarding the Security Indexer of interest. They would then forward responses to whomever submitted the request.
In Oswald’s day, it was required that the Identification Division already have a set of the person’s fingerprints in order for a Security Flash Notice to be placed. Later, in 1971, officials sent out a memo saying that if someone on the Security Index didn’t have a set of fingerprints already at the FBI, agents should submit a Security Flash Notice anyway. If one of the field offices discovered that the Security Indexer had been recently arrested, they could obtain a set of prints that way.
What form was used for the Security Flash Notice?
God bless you and your obsession with minutia. The Security Flash Notice form was number FD-165. This form was essential because the Identification Division was generally out of the loop when it came to security cases. They occupied a separate building from the agents in Division 5 and they had a different filing system than the rest of the Bureau. People in Identification probably never had the opportunity to stumble across a “see index” notation on an FBI record or to hold a Security Index card in their fingerprint-inked hands. They needed to be alerted separately about someone on the Security Index, and the Security Flash Notice form was how that was accomplished.
Weirdly, so far, I’ve found only two filled-out FD-165s online for actual cases. More often, I’ll find mentions of either the Security Flash Notice or the FD-165 in an FBI report, saying that it was either submitted, canceled, or something else. I’ve also found mentions of a Security Flash Notice on someone’s rap sheet, which is how we learned that Oswald’s Security Flash Notice had been canceled on October 9, 1963.
Credit: Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making this document available; click on image for a closer view
And here’s where the cancelation of Oswald’s Security Flash Notice is mentioned on his rap sheet.
Credit: Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making this document available; click on image for a closer view
How do you know that they only used Security Flash Notices for the Security Index or Reserve Index?
If you’ve ever wondered why I sometimes spend large chunks of my day reading rules and regs manuals, this is why. We know that Security Flash Notices were only used for individuals on the Security Index or in section A of the Reserve Index because Section 87 of the FBI’s Manual of Rules and Regulations in November 1960 says so. I expressly chose the November 1960 version because it was updated three years before President Kennedy was assassinated, and therefore it was the version that was ostensibly followed to the letter by agents in Division 5 during Lee Harvey Oswald’s time.
Allow me to reproduce the relevant passage here, paying particular attention to item C:
Security flash notice (form FD-165)
(A) Flash notices shall be placed with the Identification Division on security index subjects (and reserve index A subjects) who have identification records. Form FD-165 is used to place and cancel these notices and to obtain a transcript of subject’s record.
(B) Do not maintain a security flash notice for security index (or reserve index A) subject when no identification record for subject exists in the Identification Division.
(C) Do not place a security flash notice on a subject of a security investigation who is not included in the security index or reserve index A. (bold added)
Credit: Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making this document available; this is the full page from the 11-14-60 Manual of Rules and Regulations; the pertinent section is item IV, at the bottom; click on image for a closer view
So…yeah. James H. Gale, as the FBI inspector charged with reviewing the Oswald case, would have seen the November 9, 1959, memo with the “see index” written sideways in the left margin. But even if I’m wrong about the meaning of “see index,” and I don’t believe I am, he would have seen the November 4, 1959, memo with the recommendation and handwritten notation to put out a Security Flash Notice on Oswald. He would have seen the October 9, 1963, notation on Oswald’s rap sheet stating that the Security Flash Notice had been canceled. And, in his position as inspector, he would have been fully apprised of the rule (or was it a regulation?) that Security Flash Notices should not be placed on someone who wasn’t already on the Security Index or in section A of the Reserve Index. Why was none of this mentioned in his December 1963 report? Why didn’t he bring it up during his testimony in September 1978? Why did we have to wait until today to learn it? (My guess? See paragraphs 2 and 4 of this post.)
How do you know that Oswald wasn’t on the Reserve Index instead of the Security Index?
Let’s refer once again to the FBI Manual of Rules and Regulations. I should probably state here that this manual isn’t for the feint of heart, not just because of the boredom involved, although there’s certainly plenty of that to be had. It’s because all of the pages in the online document have been mixed up by both page number as well as version. It is, for want of a better term, a sh*tshow. So…you know…you’re welcome.
The reason we know that Oswald was on the Security Index and not the Reserve Index was because someone filled out an FD-128 form on him as well as Marina in September 1963. (Marina’s case was also interesting, but we’re only focusing on Lee today.) As you’ll recall from our earlier discussion, the form FD-128 was used when the Office of Origin for someone on the Security Index was transferred to another field office. On September 10, 1963, an FD-128 was completed by the Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Field Office transferring the Office of Origin for Oswald’s case to New Orleans. You’ll note that none of the lines are checked—not the one for being on the Security Index and not the one for the Security Flash Notice, which is…interesting. But to answer your question, if he were on the Reserve Index, the SAC would have submitted an FD-128a, not an FD-128.
Credit: Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making this document available; click on image for a closer view
But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s some pertinent language from the 11-14-60 manual:
“When the office of origin for a security index (or reserve index A) subject against whose identification record a notice has been placed is changed, form FD-128 (or FD-128a), submitted to change office of origin, should show that a security flash notice has been posted with the Identification Division. An extra copy of the form FD-128 (or FD-128a) should be specifically sent to the identification Division in order that its records will show the new office of origin to which future records will be submitted.”
Hold on. Oswald’s FD-128 is dated September 10, 1963, but there’s no checkmark saying that a Security Flash Notice had been placed. Shouldn’t there be a checkmark, since it hadn’t been canceled at that point?
Good catch. Based on the above paragraph from the 11-14-60 manual, it appears that there should be a checkmark if the Security Flash Notice hadn’t been canceled. What’s more, just a few minutes ago, I discovered a rap sheet dated five days earlier, September 5, 1963, and that Security Flash was still open. So yeah, I think there should definitely be a checkmark there.
Credit: Thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for making this document available; click on image for a closer view
So what do you think? Is it just me, or do we have some breaking news here? And if so, who do I need to tell?
Do you know what we’ve been needing on this website? We’ve been needing someone to present a well-reasoned argument about why the words “see index” on someone’s FBI documents tell us that they were on the Security Index. Oh sure, sure, I’ve been making the claim for a while now, but my evidence has been mostly anecdotal. I haven’t provided a debate-worthy case to back up that claim, and let’s just say that my theory, which I revealed back in July 2024, hasn’t exactly caught on with the public at large. In fact, I think you and I are the only non-FBI-types who currently buy into it, and I’d really love to drive those numbers up.
And so…that’s what we’re going to do today, with your help. Through your always insightful questions and my attempts at providing cogent answers, backed by documentary evidence, we’re going to demonstrate why the words “see index” were, without a doubt, FBI code for the Security Index, and why it continues to be a very big deal that Ronald Tammen has those words on page one of his FBI missing person documents.
Ron Tammen’s “see index,” written in the left margin of page one of his missing person records; click on image for a closer view
Ready? Set? Let’s go!
Why so vague? If they’re talking about the Security Index, why didn’t they just say so, removing any doubt?
The Security Index was so secret that agents weren’t supposed to mention it on their reports at all. In fact, Section 87 of the Manual of Rules and Regulations expressly states that “Matters pertaining to the security index are strictly confidential and are not to be mentioned or alluded to in investigative reports.”
The FBI had dozens of indexes. But there was one top dog among them, the granddaddy of all granddaddies, and FBI special agents were well aware which one occupied that role. My contention is that the words “see index,” written sideways in the left margin of someone’s FBI record, was a workaround for agents wishing to point their colleagues to the fact that this wasn’t just any old interstate gambler, kidnapper, fraudster or, in Ron Tammen’s case—especially in Ron’s case—missing person. They’re on the Security Index! It’s kind of brilliant, really. From their sheer innocuousness, those two words could convey to agents that a person was considered a threat to public safety or national security while, at the same time, escaping the attention of people who weren’t supposed to know about the Security Index and who might be on it.
The thing that’s most maddening to me about the FBI’s “see index” cryptic coding scheme is that sometimes those words are difficult to make out. They’re often written incredibly light or they’re smudged, as if someone purposely tried to erase them. For example, Ron Tammen’s “see index” is smudged. Could that mean that an FBI rep was trying to hide the fact that he was on the index or is it just the normal wear and tear of FBI records originating from the 1950s? I will say this: from what I can tell, I don’t believe the FBI erased “see index” if someone was removed from the Security Index. Some people were added to the Security Index and then removed and then added again throughout their closely surveilled adult lives. It would be a pain to keep up with the writing and the erasing and the rewriting of the words “see index” on certain documents in their file. I think once those two words were added to a document in their file, they stayed.
What’s the surest piece of evidence that someone was on the Security Index?
The surest piece of evidence would be their Security Index card, which was a 5” X 8” index card containing some bare-bones info like the person’s name and aliases, current address and place of employment, along with one or more abbreviations summing up why they made it to the Security Index—ESP for spy, COM for communist, etc. More detailed information and a photo would be attached to the back of the card. The Security Index cards were stored in a tightly monitored location at the FBI, away from the rest of the FBI records, including the FBI General Index, which was everyone’s first stop when looking someone up. This is likely why agents felt the need to provide a clue pointing other agents to the Security Index. I’ve only seen a few actual Security Index cards, and, from what I can tell, they’re not included with someone’s records in a typical FOIA request. That would be too helpful.
The next surest piece of evidence is their FD-122 form. That form had to be filled out by the nominating field office (aka the Office of Origin), and then sent to FBI Headquarters as well as the Department of Justice for approval. If you find someone’s FD-122 form online or through a FOIA request, that person was very likely on the Security Index. If you find a note on the FD-122 saying something like “approved” or “SI card added,” then you have confirmation that they were indeed on it. If you find several FD-122s making changes to the information on the original form, a new name or address perhaps, then you’ve hit pay dirt. They were longtime Security Indexers. Nice going, you!
Unfortunately, sometimes someone’s FD-122 isn’t available online or the FBI and DOJ have declined to release it through FOIA. That’s where the “see index” notation could come in handy. My theory is that, if I can show as many examples as possible in which a person with an FD-122 also has a “see index” written on one of their FBI records, then I believe we’re showing causality. We’re showing that the FD-122 was submitted and approved, and consequently, someone wrote “see index” on one or more of their records. And if I can show that, then I believe it’s reasonable to conclude that, even if the FD-122 isn’t available, as in Ron Tammen’s case, the words “see index” is our indicator that he was indeed on the Security Index.
Here are some people who had one or more FD-122s as well as a “see index” notation in their FBI records. Some are difficult to see, but look for the ‘s’ in see and/or the ‘x’ in index, and then zoom in.
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein’s FD-122; click on image for a closer viewOne page of Leonard Bernstein’s rap sheet; note the very lightly written “see index page” in left margin; click on image for a closer view
Judith Coplon
Judith Coplon’s FD-122; click on image for a closer viewJudith Coplon’s “see index,” which is written very lightly in the left margin; click on image for a closer view
Harry Hay
Harry Hay’s FD-122; click on image for a closer viewHarry Hay’s “see index” in left margin; click on image for a closer view
Meir D. Kahane
Meir D. Kahane’s FD-122; click on image for a closer viewMeir D. Kahane’s “see index” in left margin; click on image for a closer view
John Howard Lawson
John Howard Lawson’s FD-122 (note that the FBI form number has been cut off, but trust me on this–it’s an FD-122); click on image for a closer view John Howard Lawson’s “see index” in left margin; click on image for a closer view
Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson’s FD-122; click on image for a closer viewPaul Robeson’s “see index” in left margin; click on image for a closer view
Mario Savio
Mario Savio’s FD-122; click on image for a closer viewMario Savio’s “see index” in left margin; click on image for a closer view
Morton Sobell
This is NOT Morton Sobell’s FD-122, but it’s the best I could do. This form mentions his FD-122 near the bottom where it instructs them to submit an FD-122 to change his summer residence; click on image for a closer viewMorton Sobell’s “see index” in left margin; click on image for a closer view
Haskell (Pete) Wexler
Haskell (Pete) Wexler’s FD-122. Note that this FD-122 is for the ADEX (Administrative Index), which replaced the Security Index in 1971; click on image for a closer viewHaskell Wexler’s “see index,” which is very lightly written in all caps in the left margin (near bottom); click on image for a closer view
Malcom X
Malcolm X’s FD-122; click on image for a closer viewMalcolm X’s “see index” in the left margin; click on image for a closer view
Better yet, here are people who have “see index” written directly on their FD-122s, which are the grandest FD-122s of all:
Bella Abzug
Bella Abzug’s “see index” written in the left margin of her FD-122; click on image for a closer view
Eldridge Cleaver
Eldridge Cleaver’s “see index” written in the left margin of his FD-122; click on image for a closer view
Abbie Hoffman
Abbie Hoffman’s “see index” written in the left margin of his FD-122; click on image for a closer view
Stanley David Levison
Stanley Levison’s “see index” written in the left margin of his FD-122; click on image for a closer view
Elijah Poole/Elijah Mohammed
Elijah Mohammed’s “see index” written in the left margin of his FD-122; click on image for a closer view
Jessica Lucy Treuhaft
Jessica Lucy Treuhaft’s “see index” written in the left margin of her FD-122; click on image for a closer view
David Ritz Van Ronk
David Van Ronk’s “see index” written in the left margin of his FD-122; click on image for a closer view
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that, as impressive as that list may be, it’s not very many people. The Security Index was said to contain as many as 10,000-25,000 names at various times of its existence. I blame the small number that I’ve been able to come up with on the fact that the FBI hasn’t uploaded all those people’s records online. In fact, they’re only letting us see a smattering of them. Also, I’m not convinced they’re releasing all of the records for the people whom they have released. Have you seen what they’ve released on Charles Manson, for example? His case file is laughably small. And thirdly, the words “see index” usually turn up on only one or two pages of a person’s entire file….if they appear at all. The presence of a “see index” is incredibly random. So I guess what I’m saying is that this is a grueling needle-in-a-haystack type of ordeal. Every “see index” that pops up on my screen makes me a happy girl. If I can find that person’s corresponding FD-122, I go wild.
If, however, you feel you need more evidence, don’t despair. There are other ways to find out if “see index” applies only to people who were on the Security Index. Luckily, I’ve found several more forms, a few of which have been useful.
What other forms?
To save a little time, I’ll be using the abbreviation “SI” when I refer to the Security Index as an adjective (e.g., SI subject, SI card, etc.).
FD-128
The FD-128 was a form that was used when an SI subject moved, and the Office of Origin needed to be transferred to the new location. Although this form was most definitely used for all SI subjects who moved, I’m not 100% sure if it was also used for people who were merely the subject of a security investigation, even those not on the Security Index. For this reason, I’m not claiming that the subject of the FD-128 was definitely on the Security Index. At least not for now. I may change my mind by the end of this post though. You’ll see why.
Malcolm X’s FD-128; click on image for a closer view
FD-154
This form seems to have been used mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, but I think it was replaced at some point. Its title was “Verification of Information on Security Index Cards,” and it provided the most up-to-date information about the SI subject. Although they’re relatively rare, I found several FD-154s for two people with “see index” notations. In addition, Morton Sobell’s FD-154, highlighted above, provides proof that he had an FD-122.
Judith Coplon’s FD-154; click on image for a closer view
FD-305
Next to the FD-122, this is my favorite indicator that a person was on the Security Index. It was an overview of the person’s SI status, reflecting any changes that needed to be made regarding their case that weren’t already covered in the FD-122. Come to think of it, maybe it was the form that replaced the FD-154? Not sure. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
According to the book “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been In the FBI Files,” the FD-305 “reflects ‘current data concerning subject’s continued status as a Security Index subject.’” In short, it wouldn’t make sense for an agent to use the FD-305 form unless the person he’s reporting on was on the Security Index. That’s especially important to know in the case of science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, whom we’ll be discussing a little later.
Mario Savio’s FD-305; click on image for a closer view
FD-400
One of the, um, perks of being on the Security Index was having the FBI check on your whereabouts regularly—every six months if you were a Priority I case—and sending in a report on what you’ve been up to. But what if you’d turned over a new leaf or just mellowed out as you got older and the FBI’s designated informants didn’t have a lot to say about you? In those situations, the special agent opted for the FD-400, which was a form used when there wasn’t much to report. That’s literally what the form said: “This letter is submitted in lieu of a report inasmuch as no pertinent data has been developed since date of referenced communication.” The FD-400 was always accompanied by the FD-305, again, confirming that you indeed were on the Security Index. However, if they continued submitting yawners like the FD-400s, you probably would be a candidate for removal from the Security Index.
Jessica Lucy Treuhaft’s FD-400; click on image for a closer view
FD-376
In my previous post, we talked about the FD-376, which served as an FBI cover letter of sorts when transferring a report to the Secret Service. As we discussed, all activities of SI subjects were reported to the Secret Service, so the FD-376 was used frequently for those folks. But, as with the FD-128, I’m not 100% sure that it was used exclusively for SI subjects. In the book “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been In the FBI Files,” it was described as an “FBI form for recording information concerning a person allegedly potentially dangerous to the President.” I mean, there’s no question that it was a bad thing to have your name at the top of an FD-376. But at this point, I don’t believe that it’s a sure sign that you were on the Security Index, so probably not the best indicator.
Orlando Bosch’s FD-376; click on image for a closer view
FD-366
Likewise, the FD-366 was used to provide a change of address to the Secret Service for people on the Security Index, though it may have been used for others being investigated as well. So, again, it’s not a sure bet that someone was on the Security Index.
Eldridge Cleaver’s FD-366; click on image for a closer view
For the above reasons, my current go-to indicators that a person was on the Security Index are the FD-122, FD-154, FD-305, and FD-400.
Unfortunately, the additional forms don’t add many new people to our list—only Ray Bradbury to date—but they provide further confirmation that the rest of the group with the notation “see index” was without a doubt on the Security Index.
Here’s the tally so far. Note that I’m not saying that these are all that exist. They’re just all that I’ve found so far. I’ll continue to keep my eyes open for more. Feel free to keep your eyes open too, and if you find any, please let me know.
Name
See index
FD-122
FD-154
FD-305
FD-400
Bella Abzug
X
X
X
Leonard Bernstein
X
X
Ray Bradbury
X
X
Eldridge Cleaver
X
X
X
Judith Coplon
X
X
X
X
Harry Hay
X
X
X
Abbie Hoffman
X
X
X
Meir D. Kahane
X
X
X
John Howard Lawson
X
X
X
X
Stanley David Levison
X
X
X
Elijah Mohammed
X
X
X
Paul Robeson
X
X
X
Mario Savio
X
X
X
Morton Sobell
X
X
X
Jessica Lucy Treuhaft
X
X
X
X
David Ritz Van Ronk
X
X
X
Haskell (Pete) Wexler
X
X
X
Malcom X
X
X
X
Is that everything? You’re not holding anything back, are you?
Well…there’s one more form that, per the FBI’s Manual of Rules and Regulations, was to be submitted only if a person was on the Security Index or the Reserve Index. We won’t be talking about that form today, but we will very soon. Stay tuned, because I’ll be presenting evidence that I believe could upend the current thinking concerning the actions taken by the FBI with regard to Lee Harvey Oswald’s case file—before, that is, he became a patsy for JFK’s assassination.
What’s the Reserve Index?
If the Security Index was the FBI’s General Index on steroids, then I think you could say that the Reserve Index was the Security Index on melatonin. It was composed of presumed communists mostly, or people who were communist adjacent, or maybe people who once knew someone who toyed with being a communist but life got in the way and they drifted apart. It was a lot iffier than the Security Index.
The Reserve Index comprised two sections: Section A and Section B. Section A consisted mostly of people who were smart. According to “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been In the FBI Files,” the list included “teachers, journalists, lawyers, physicians, and others whom the FBI considered well placed to work against the national interest.” You know…the pillars of society. Section B consisted of whomever was left. In the event of a national emergency, the plan was to round up all of the Security Index folks, and then, time- and weather-permitting, I suppose, to go after the people on Section A of the Reserve Index.
How do you know “see index” doesn’t refer to the Reserve Index?
The word “reserve” says it all. The people on the Reserve Index weren’t of primary concern to the FBI. They were people who, in a sense, were on the FBI’s back burner. In fact, they didn’t even keep the Reserve Index cards at FBI Headquarters—only field offices, and, more particularly, the Offices of Origin. It’d be weird to write “see index” on an FBI report kept at Headquarters if the index they were referring to was being maintained in Kansas City or Cleveland or Phoenix or…you get my drift.
It’s also important to point out that form FD-122 did not apply to Reserve Index candidates. They had their own dedicated form—the FD-122a. That’s why we can say with 100% assurance that an FD-122 signifies the Security Index and only the Security Index. In that same vein, while form FD-128 (the form where they transferred the Office of Origin) was used for Security Index subjects, form FD-128a was for Reserve Index subjects.
And that right there is why I’m still on the fence over whether FD-128 could have been used for people who weren’t on the Security Index. According to “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been In the FBI Files,” the FD-128 form was an “FBI form authorizing a change in ‘Office of Origin’ for a case.” That sounds like it could be used in any case, but why would you need the FD-128a form if FD-128 could be used for everyone? Perhaps this is evidence that the FD-128 was used only for people on the Security Index. If so, this, too, has implications in Lee Harvey Oswald’s case. I’ll tell you why in my next post.
So what was up with Ray Bradbury?
For those of you who don’t know, Ray Bradbury was a hugely successful author and screen writer. His most famous work was the classic novel Fahrenheit 451. Fahrenheit 451 is frequently on banned book lists, which is so rich because it’s a work of science fiction about censorship and the importance of books in encouraging freedom of thought. I’ve never read it, but I’ll be hunkering down with it as soon as I’m done writing this post. I encourage you to do the same. (I mean, c’mon! It’s freezing outside…perfect hunkering-down weather!) George Orwell and Margaret Atwood have been quoted profusely on social media for their prescience in, well, how things have been going of late. I’d like to see a little more Ray Bradbury added to the mix.
OK, so where was I? Oh, right. So Ray Bradbury is a bit of an enigma when it comes to his FBI file. It consists of exactly one “part” in the FBI Vault, which is 40 pages. The FBI would like us all to believe that that’s the sum total of Bradbury’s file, but I would differ with them on that point.
On two of Bradbury’s 40 pages are the words “see index” written sideways in the left margin.
This time, dated 6/8/59:
Ray Bradbury’s “see index” in the margin of this FBI report; click on image for a closer view
And this time, dated : 3/7/68
Ray Bradbury’s “see index,” lightly written in the margin of this FBI report; click on image for a closer view
If you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention to this post, you know that I think that this is a telltale sign that Ray Bradbury was on the Security Index. My problem is that I can’t find Bradbury’s FD-122. Also, on the page dated 6/8/59, the second paragraph under the “Administrative” heading says this: “No evidences [sic] have been developed which indicate he was ever a member of the CP [Communist Party]. He is not on the Security Index or the RCI, Los Angeles Division and no recommendation is being made to so include his name in the absence of information reflecting CP membership.”
Well! First, RCI stands for Reserve-Communist Index, which was a forerunner to the Reserve Index. But, more importantly, they came right out and said that he wasn’t on the Security Index. Even if that were a true statement (and my evidence tells me that it is not) that doesn’t mean that he didn’t make his way there sometime later.
Here’s my evidence.
Ray Bradbury’s FD-305; click on image for a closer view
Ray Bradbury had an FD-305. Unfortunately, the FBI didn’t date their FD-305s—they just accompanied various other reports, including the FD-400. We don’t know for sure if it was from 1959, 1968, or any other year, though I’m pretty sure that it accompanied the June 1959 report, since it immediately followed that report in his file and the print date on the form was 10-14-58.
But as I’ve said above, the whole purpose of an FD-305 was to provide up-to-date info concerning someone’s ongoing status on the Security Index. Granted, in the top box, the agent is asked if the person is on the Security Index, but that’s a formality in my view—a way for an agent to make sure he’s using the correct form. Every other question that follows the top box has to do with their being on the Security Index, including:
[ ] The data appearing on the Security Index card are current.
[ ] Changes on the Security Index card are necessary and Form FD-122 has been submitted to the Bureau.
[ ] A suitable photograph is [ ] is not [ ] available.
Also, farther down there’s:
[ ] This case no longer meets the Security Index criteria and a letter has been directed to the Bureau recommending cancellation of the Security Index card.
[ ] This case has been re-evaluated in the light of the Security Index criteria and it continues to fall within such criteria because (state reason).
Did you notice in the latter grouping how they didn’t have a third option that the case doesn’t meet Security Index criteria? It’s either that it “no longer meets” the criteria or that it “continues to fall within such criteria”?
What’s more, the only boxes checked by the FBI’s LA field office were the ones saying that a suitable photograph was available. Guess where I believe that photograph was going? I believe it was going to be attached to the back of Ray Bradbury’s Security Index card.
Another indication that Ray Bradbury was on the Security Index is an in-depth biographical write-up that was forwarded to a separate agency on both June 8, 1959, and August 25, 1968, when the FBI was investigating if he might be contemplating a trip to Cuba. You can tell these records were destined for another agency by this disclaimer:
“This document contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of any kind. It is a loan to your agency, as it is the property of the FBI, and it and/or its contents are not to be distributed outside your agency.”
Although the August 1968 write-up is fully redacted, both write-ups resemble the write-ups that were accompanied by the same FD-376s used for notifying the Secret Service, especially in Security Index cases. But because the FBI doesn’t include the cover letters in Bradbury’s file, we don’t get to know who their intended audience was.
Here’s the issue about Ray Bradbury and other people who had a voice that commanded public attention and respect: I think the FBI was especially secretive about their being on the Security Index. The FBI usually wanted to interview Security Index subjects in person to assess where their allegiances lay, but they seemed more cautious with writers, directors, producers, and the like. Here’s a note on the 8/15/68 report from the LA field office to FBI Headquarters which preceded the biographical write-up that was transferred to an unidentified agency:
“Information and sources, who are familiar with Cuban activities, were unable to furnish any information which would indicate travel to Cuba or any affiliation between Bradbury and REDACTED.
There is no current information that would reflect foreign travel by Bradbury.
To ascertain the affiliation between Bradbury and REDACTED, it is felt that it would require an interview of Bradbury.
It is felt, however, that due to Bradbury’s background as a known liberal writer, vocal in anti-United States war policies, an interview with Bradbury would be deemed unadvisable, UACB [Unless Advised to the Contrary by the Bureau].
Are you actually saying they lied on their June 1959 report?
I’m saying that someone wrote “see index” in the margin of a report that stated that Bradbury wasn’t on the Security Index. As for who did the writing or when, I can’t be sure. Maybe it was written by someone from FBI Headquarters upon receipt of the report. Maybe it was a little ruse the LA field office had cooked up with their colleagues at FBI Headquarters where they’d type in that Bradbury is definitely NOT on the Security Index (*wink wink*), but then they wrote “see index” by hand to let them know that he actually is. After all, they weren’t even supposed to mention the Security Index by name in their investigative reports. They were breaking protocol left and right.
And make no mistake: there was no reason for the special agent in LA to have reached for the FD-305 form if Ray Bradbury wasn’t on the Security Index. The FBI had a plethora of forms. If all the agent wanted to do was communicate that they had a suitable photo of Bradbury or that the names of the informants needed to be kept confidential, the FD-305 was not the form to use. He could have added that info to the bottom of his report. Nope, the photos that are referred to on FD-305 forms are destined for one location and one location only: the backs of Security Index cards.
Is there someone knowledgeable you can ask?
I’ve run my FBI records by a lot of knowledgeable people. I’m sure they noticed Ron’s “see index” long before I did, not to mention all of his other special markings. No one volunteered the info. Recently, I reached out to someone who I felt knew something and had less to lose than someone who was drawing an FBI pension. Unfortunately, that person didn’t respond to me.
It’s possible that I may be able to track someone down who’d be willing to tell me if FD-128 and FD-376 were only for Security Index subjects and those sorts of details. I’ll look into that. But, I’ll be honest—in my experience, retired FBI agents don’t give up much intel.
That said, if you happen to be a current or former FBI agent and would like to weigh in anonymously, please reach out through the “contact” webform at the top of the page or email me at rontammenproject[at]gmail[dot]com. I promise to protect your identity into perpetuity.
Also, as always, I try to be as accurate as possible with my reporting. If you’re an expert on FBI forms and I got anything wrong, please let me know.
As for the rest of my readers…what do you think? Are you convinced?
The last time you and I discussed the July 12, 1973, National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) fire in St. Louis, we learned something curious. We learned that, nearly two years after the firetrucks had driven away and the firefighters had gone back to their homes, after all the soggy and charred debris had been cleaned up and disposed of, after surviving files had been reshelved for safekeeping and calm and normalcy had been restored, the NPRC director felt the need to burn up some more files.
The files in question had been described in a February 1975 memo as 2,470 cubic feet of Top Secret “Air Force Research and Development case files.” They’d been housed in the now-destroyed vault on the building’s sixth floor and moved to a third-floor vault soon after the fire. The reason NPRC Director Warren B. Griffin provided for their necessary destruction now, two years later, was as follows:
“It has since been determined that the integrity of individual series and cases has been completely destroyed and that the intellectual control over the records is completely lost.”
His dire assessment confused me. I had no idea what he was talking about with regard to the “integrity of individual series and cases,” but how was intellectual control completely lost over files that had been safely secured in a third-floor vault since July 1973?
I thought and I thought, and I came up with a slightly different, albeit more cynical, explanation: I suggested that Air Force officials were afraid of what was about to be revealed by the Church Committee as it was beginning its investigation into abuses by the CIA, FBI, and U.S. military in their intelligence activities. I reasoned that the Air Force decided to burn the evidence beforehand and Griffin was the foot soldier who was assigned the unscrupulous task.
But that was just a hypothesis.
In March 2024, I submitted two FOIA requests to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which now oversees the NPRC. (The General Services Administration had employed the National Archives staff at the time of the fire, but that ended in 1985.) One FOIA request was for the descriptive listings of the records that were to be incinerated, and one was for the Standard Form (SF)-115, which would authorize their destruction, both of which were alluded to in Griffin’s memo. I attached a copy of Griffin’s memo to help them in their search. I then went for a run.
On August 20, 2025, NARA sent me 21 pages. I just read them yesterday. (Don’t judge. I was slammed that week, and truth be told, when I saw their email come in, I pretty much assumed I was in for a letdown. I figured that I’d have to determine what my next move would be, so I let their email sit in my inbox. Imagine my surprise when I finally opened the email and found actual responsive records. Good on them!)
I’m only going to share the SF-115 with you today. I’ll need to spend some time with the other documents, and I also happen to think the SF-115 is a big deal.
First here’s what the records to be destroyed consisted of, per the form signed by Herbert G. Geiger, who headed up the Information Management and Resources Division for the National Archives at that time:
“Fire and water damaged research and development records consisting of contractual and procurement documents, drawings, technical progress summaries, technical reports, testing documents, scientist notebooks, correspondence, and various other materials which were accumulated and maintained primarily at the Air Force Systems Command (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). ca. 1951-63.”
So that’s new information, right? Those 2,470 cubic feet of R&D records that Warren Griffin wanted destroyed ASAP originated from Wright-Patterson AFB, a base that’s 50-some miles from Miami University, and was a home away from home to St. Clair Switzer, Ron Tammen’s psychology professor. But get a load of the years: 1951 to 1963!
Of all the Air Force bases in all the world whose records had to be purposely incinerated for questionable reasons, did they have to choose ourAir Force base for the years that we happen to be most concerned about?
Before we move on to the SF-115’s next paragraph, let’s talk quantity. What does 2470 cubic feet of R&D records even look like? According to the National Archives one cubic foot of records equals approximately 2500 sheets of paper. Granted, it’s just an estimate, but by my calculations, Griffin had felt he’d lost intellectual control over roughly 6 million pages of Top Secret Air Force records. No wonder he was feeling a little panicky.
According to the SF-115, the reason that the Wright-Patterson AFB records needed to be immediately destroyed was stated similarly to Griffin’s memo, though Geiger didn’t want to stop there. He didn’t want people to forget about the fire and the water that the documents had withstood. Also, we learned of another vault that was housing a portion of the surviving records:
“Approximately 1530 cubic feet of the above records are presently located in the third floor vault in the Military Personnel Records Center, St. Louis. The remaining 940 cubic feet are in the vault in the Civilian Personnel Records Center, St. Louis. At the time of the fire at the St. Louis Center on July 12, 1973, these records were in the 6th floor vault. The 6th floor was completely destroyed. The records are damaged by fire and water. The integrity of individual series and cases is completely destroyed. Intellectual control over these records is completely lost. In their present arrangement, they are not serviceable. Their value for archival research is limited, and does not justify the time and labor required to reconstruct cases and series.”
“Disposition: Destroy Immediately.”
There’s also a handwritten note at the bottom: “These records are scorched, burned, and water-damaged. Because of their brittle condition, they disinte-grate if handled,” followed by the initials pL 1//7/75. The word “easily” is added below the “disinte” part of disintegrate, as if to underscore the point and ward off any potentially diehard archivists who would argue against their destruction.
Click on image for a closer view
Which sounds believable, right? There was a big fire. LOADS of documents were destroyed by the heat and flames and water. Why not these documents too?
I guess I could see what Geiger and pL were saying, except for one minor detail: it’s not true.
Two years earlier, when staff of the NPRC were in clean-up versus cover-up mode, they were keeping meticulous records of how they were handling the classified records that had been in the sixth-floor vault. We learned in one July 1973 memo, for example, that the Top Secret Air Force records were stored in 17, five-drawer file cabinets. The word damp is used to indicate that those records were being handled along with the damp-but-salvageable records, though they’d put that word in quotation marks when it came to the Air Force records. It’s as if they were saying they’re in the damp-but-salvageable group, but they’re not really “damp” per se. In an earlier memo, we learned that those Top Secret file cabinets were described as “safes.” They also shared some great news: “Material in safes are in wrapped packages or wrapped boxes—all numbered. Our present impression (based on previous visit to vault area) is that this material is in fair to good shape.”
So let’s see. We now know that the Top Secret Air Force files had been protected by wrapping of some sort not to mention the surrounding metal of the file cabinet safe, which sounds even sturdier than a typical file cabinet. Also, the contents were assessed to be in “fair to good shape.” Yet, two years later, Geiger and pL had decided that the materials were in terrible condition—scorched, burned, and water-damaged, and, if given the chance, they’d disintegrate easily in their hands.
What’s more, in addition to Griffin’s worry about losing intellectual control over the files, both he and Geiger had claimed that “integrity of individual series and cases has been completely destroyed.” But how could that have been possible if all of those wrapped packages and boxes were numbered in their respective file cabinet drawers? It sounds to me as if the integrity of the individual series and cases was still very much intact.
But Warren and Herb bring up an interesting point worth delving into a little. What exactly did they mean by the word “cases”? In his memo, Warren had described the Air Force files as “Research and Development case files.” I’m no expert, and correct me if I’m wrong, but the word case has a human ring to it, doesn’t it? When I think of aeronautical research, I don’t think of the study of turbines and jet propulsion engines and who knows what else as “cases.” Those investigations are usually called studies or projects. But cases? Cases tend to involve human beings…people who are research subjects. We already know that Wright-Patt researchers conducted studies on pilots, such as for instrument design, oxygen thresholds, etc. I’m guessing any of those records from 1951 through 1963 would have been intentionally burned in 1975, unfortunately. But who knows, maybe there were other human studies that would’ve been burned at the same time—perhaps they were the reason behind the burning. I’m thinking of Projects ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA, for example?
I have one last piece of news to share. Remember the study I told you about called Project Rabbit on which I could find no information? One astute reader then straightened me out and said that it’s not Project Rabbit, it’s Project “Rabbit”—with the all-important quotation marks. Project “Rabbit” was a CIA and U.S. Air Force collaboration in which human intelligence or HUMINT agents known as “Rabbits” would parachute behind enemy lines during the Korean War for intelligence gathering and other clandestine purposes.
I’d written a FOIA request to find out more about a Project “Rabbit” conference that was held at Wright-Patterson AFB on December 23, 1952.
I heard back from their representative last Monday. He told me that “A thorough search reasonably calculated for any segregable, releasable information in existence and relevant to this Freedom of Information Act request was conducted. During that analysis, no responsive records were discovered.”
Gosh, let’s see…a conference at Wright-Patterson AFB involving a Top Secret project in which human agents were trained to carry out intelligence activities in enemy territory in 1952? I can’t imagine what happened to those records.
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Comments? Questions? If so, I’d love to hear them.
