tangent4ronpaul
03-30-2010, 03:29 AM
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/03/29/fbi_cracks_open_door_to_special_file_room/
FBI gives a glimpse of its most secret layer
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
March 29, 2010
WASHINGTON ‹ It is where the government has hidden the most secret
information: plans to relocate Congress if Washington were attacked,
dossiers on double agents, case files about high-profile mob figures and
their politician friends, and a disturbing number of reports about the
possible smuggling of atomic bombs into the United States.
It is also where the bureau stowed documents considered more embarrassing
than classified, including its history of illegal spying on domestic
political organizations and surveillance of nascent gay rights groups.
It is the FBI¹s ³special file room,¹¹ where for decades sensitive material
has been stored separately from the bureau¹s central filing system to
restrict access severely and, in more sinister instances, some experts
assert, prevent the Congress and the public from getting their hands on it.
Established in 1948 under the reign of notoriously secretive FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover, it remains in use today at FBI headquarters in Washington to
safeguard what the bureau considers its most highly sensitive information.
But now, for the first time, the FBI has opened its doors ‹ at least a crack
‹ by releasing hundreds of pages of memos outlining why bureau officials
have deemed certain information too hot to handle even for most top-level
officials.
The memos, spanning the 1950s to the 1980s, were approved for release under
the Freedom of Information Act and provided exclusively to the Globe by a
researcher outside the FBI who wished to remain anonymous.
Many of the files that were kept there over the years, some designated with
cryptic titles such as ³raindrop¹¹ and ³snitch-jacketing,¹¹ remain secret ‹
if they haven¹t been destroyed, as one former FBI official speculated.
Yet the internal memos discussing the file room and its contents provide a
unique window into what the FBI considered some of the most serious domestic
security threats, both real and imagined.
On several occasions, the room, which only designated officials could
access, became so overcrowded that the contents had to be moved to a larger
space out of fear that the Justice Department building where it was first
housed could not withstand the weight.
³These 26 cabinets are presently in one room and because of this weight
factor must be moved immediately,¹¹ one Sept. 13, 1961, memo warned. Several
years later, another memo reveals, it grew to 79 file cabinets.
Indeed, in the opinion of FBI officials, the room was quickly abused. ³Some
of these files contain no indication as to why, when, or by whom they were
placed in this restricted status,¹¹ one memo, dated May 15, 1952, stated.
³This was a collection of things that the bureau didn¹t want to be part of
the regular filing system because it was considered highly sensitive,¹¹ John
Fox, the FBI¹s official historian, said in an interview.
Others who have studied the FBI say the special filing location, at times
also referred to as the ³confidential file room,¹¹ has also served as a way
to protect information about bureau activities that may have been unlawful,
such as spying on Americans without probable cause.
³This was a system that allowed FBI officials to say we have searched our
central records system and there is no record of illegal conduct¹¹ by the
bureau, said Athan G. Theoharis, a former professor at Marquette University
and a specialist on the reign of Hoover, who served as the agency¹s first
director, from 1924 to 1972, and who is known to have maintained his own
files that he ordered destroyed after his death.
³It was a pretty efficient system Hoover devised,¹¹ Theoharis said. ³If you
can minimize who knew what the bureau is doing, you can minimize any legal
action¹¹ against the bureau if it operated outside of the law.
A majority of the files appear to be related to highly classified
activities. Many are excluded from guidelines that require the government to
declassify documents after a certain period of time.
Some subjects are considered so secret that even the bureaucratic
machinations for putting them into the secret file room were blacked out ‹
such as memos discussing the files about potential spies for China operating
in the United States.
In the early years of the Cold War, the FBI began placing thousands of other
documents relating to security matters into the special file room, according
to Fox and other specialists.
Stashed away were plans to conceal US radars designed to spy on the Soviet
military, details of American war plans, and evacuation plans should
Washington be attacked. There were several files on the possible threat of
smuggled nuclear weapons, including one labeled ³Atomic Bomb in Unknown
Consul.¹¹
The room was filled with files on Americans believed to be spying for
Russia, including Julius Rosenberg, who was executed for selling atomic bomb
secrets, and Morton Sobell, an American engineer who spent nearly 18 years
in prison for spying for the Soviet Union.
Some of the documents, meanwhile, indicate that the United States was spying
on friends during the height of the Cold War. A number of files contained
the diplomatic codes of Greece, Panama, Guatemala, Dominican Republic,
Nicaragua, Sweden, and even neutral Switzerland, allowing the United States
to read secret communications between their diplomats.
Others were more questionable in nature, such as numerous files from the
1950s and 1960s detailing the FBI¹s spying on early gay rights groups such
as The Mattachine Society, which in one 1958 memo was categorized under
³internal security.¹¹
Homosexuality, in fact, was for a lengthy period an obsession of the bureau
and the focus of multiple domestic intelligence operations, the memos show.
Another file was spirited out of the regular bureau filing system because it
involved ³allegations of homosexuality of some very prominent individuals.¹¹
It added: ³In view of the obscene nature of the allegations and the
prominence of some individuals mentioned, therein, it is felt that this file
should be retained in the Special File Room.¹¹
Other files on domestic spying that were routed to the special file room
involved ³black nationalist extremists.¹¹ There were also files about an
³extremely sensitive counterintelligence technique¹¹ called
snitch-jacketing, which apparently involved the FBI spreading false
information that members of a targeted group were government informants in
order to sow conflict within their membership.
³Secrecy was the key,¹¹ Theoharis said. ³Knowledge is power.¹¹
The special filing location was even used to protect information about
politicians believed to be involved with criminals.
³The information is of a very sensitive nature in that it contains frequent
reference to highly placed persons in Chicago law enforcement as well as
city, county, and state political figures and their relations with the
hoodlum element,¹¹ one 1960 memo stated, requesting a file be routed to the
special room. ³References are also made to prominent businessmen and
occasionally newspaper reporters.¹¹
Longtime observers of the FBI say the memos are not just historically
valuable, but also provide a roadmap for researchers who can now request
some of the files cited in them, at least those with titles or file numbers
that appear in the newly released documents. The memos will be posted at
governmentattic.org, a website run by volunteers that publishes hundreds of
government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.
But according to Susan Rosenfeld, former FBI historian, many of them have
been destroyed as part of regular housekeeping or are no longer stored at
the FBI but at other government records centers.
Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.
FBI gives a glimpse of its most secret layer
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
March 29, 2010
WASHINGTON ‹ It is where the government has hidden the most secret
information: plans to relocate Congress if Washington were attacked,
dossiers on double agents, case files about high-profile mob figures and
their politician friends, and a disturbing number of reports about the
possible smuggling of atomic bombs into the United States.
It is also where the bureau stowed documents considered more embarrassing
than classified, including its history of illegal spying on domestic
political organizations and surveillance of nascent gay rights groups.
It is the FBI¹s ³special file room,¹¹ where for decades sensitive material
has been stored separately from the bureau¹s central filing system to
restrict access severely and, in more sinister instances, some experts
assert, prevent the Congress and the public from getting their hands on it.
Established in 1948 under the reign of notoriously secretive FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover, it remains in use today at FBI headquarters in Washington to
safeguard what the bureau considers its most highly sensitive information.
But now, for the first time, the FBI has opened its doors ‹ at least a crack
‹ by releasing hundreds of pages of memos outlining why bureau officials
have deemed certain information too hot to handle even for most top-level
officials.
The memos, spanning the 1950s to the 1980s, were approved for release under
the Freedom of Information Act and provided exclusively to the Globe by a
researcher outside the FBI who wished to remain anonymous.
Many of the files that were kept there over the years, some designated with
cryptic titles such as ³raindrop¹¹ and ³snitch-jacketing,¹¹ remain secret ‹
if they haven¹t been destroyed, as one former FBI official speculated.
Yet the internal memos discussing the file room and its contents provide a
unique window into what the FBI considered some of the most serious domestic
security threats, both real and imagined.
On several occasions, the room, which only designated officials could
access, became so overcrowded that the contents had to be moved to a larger
space out of fear that the Justice Department building where it was first
housed could not withstand the weight.
³These 26 cabinets are presently in one room and because of this weight
factor must be moved immediately,¹¹ one Sept. 13, 1961, memo warned. Several
years later, another memo reveals, it grew to 79 file cabinets.
Indeed, in the opinion of FBI officials, the room was quickly abused. ³Some
of these files contain no indication as to why, when, or by whom they were
placed in this restricted status,¹¹ one memo, dated May 15, 1952, stated.
³This was a collection of things that the bureau didn¹t want to be part of
the regular filing system because it was considered highly sensitive,¹¹ John
Fox, the FBI¹s official historian, said in an interview.
Others who have studied the FBI say the special filing location, at times
also referred to as the ³confidential file room,¹¹ has also served as a way
to protect information about bureau activities that may have been unlawful,
such as spying on Americans without probable cause.
³This was a system that allowed FBI officials to say we have searched our
central records system and there is no record of illegal conduct¹¹ by the
bureau, said Athan G. Theoharis, a former professor at Marquette University
and a specialist on the reign of Hoover, who served as the agency¹s first
director, from 1924 to 1972, and who is known to have maintained his own
files that he ordered destroyed after his death.
³It was a pretty efficient system Hoover devised,¹¹ Theoharis said. ³If you
can minimize who knew what the bureau is doing, you can minimize any legal
action¹¹ against the bureau if it operated outside of the law.
A majority of the files appear to be related to highly classified
activities. Many are excluded from guidelines that require the government to
declassify documents after a certain period of time.
Some subjects are considered so secret that even the bureaucratic
machinations for putting them into the secret file room were blacked out ‹
such as memos discussing the files about potential spies for China operating
in the United States.
In the early years of the Cold War, the FBI began placing thousands of other
documents relating to security matters into the special file room, according
to Fox and other specialists.
Stashed away were plans to conceal US radars designed to spy on the Soviet
military, details of American war plans, and evacuation plans should
Washington be attacked. There were several files on the possible threat of
smuggled nuclear weapons, including one labeled ³Atomic Bomb in Unknown
Consul.¹¹
The room was filled with files on Americans believed to be spying for
Russia, including Julius Rosenberg, who was executed for selling atomic bomb
secrets, and Morton Sobell, an American engineer who spent nearly 18 years
in prison for spying for the Soviet Union.
Some of the documents, meanwhile, indicate that the United States was spying
on friends during the height of the Cold War. A number of files contained
the diplomatic codes of Greece, Panama, Guatemala, Dominican Republic,
Nicaragua, Sweden, and even neutral Switzerland, allowing the United States
to read secret communications between their diplomats.
Others were more questionable in nature, such as numerous files from the
1950s and 1960s detailing the FBI¹s spying on early gay rights groups such
as The Mattachine Society, which in one 1958 memo was categorized under
³internal security.¹¹
Homosexuality, in fact, was for a lengthy period an obsession of the bureau
and the focus of multiple domestic intelligence operations, the memos show.
Another file was spirited out of the regular bureau filing system because it
involved ³allegations of homosexuality of some very prominent individuals.¹¹
It added: ³In view of the obscene nature of the allegations and the
prominence of some individuals mentioned, therein, it is felt that this file
should be retained in the Special File Room.¹¹
Other files on domestic spying that were routed to the special file room
involved ³black nationalist extremists.¹¹ There were also files about an
³extremely sensitive counterintelligence technique¹¹ called
snitch-jacketing, which apparently involved the FBI spreading false
information that members of a targeted group were government informants in
order to sow conflict within their membership.
³Secrecy was the key,¹¹ Theoharis said. ³Knowledge is power.¹¹
The special filing location was even used to protect information about
politicians believed to be involved with criminals.
³The information is of a very sensitive nature in that it contains frequent
reference to highly placed persons in Chicago law enforcement as well as
city, county, and state political figures and their relations with the
hoodlum element,¹¹ one 1960 memo stated, requesting a file be routed to the
special room. ³References are also made to prominent businessmen and
occasionally newspaper reporters.¹¹
Longtime observers of the FBI say the memos are not just historically
valuable, but also provide a roadmap for researchers who can now request
some of the files cited in them, at least those with titles or file numbers
that appear in the newly released documents. The memos will be posted at
governmentattic.org, a website run by volunteers that publishes hundreds of
government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.
But according to Susan Rosenfeld, former FBI historian, many of them have
been destroyed as part of regular housekeeping or are no longer stored at
the FBI but at other government records centers.
Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.