THE
FBI READING ROOM
Pull up a chair and browse through historic FBI records
05/20/05
What do Ayn Rand,
Francis Gary Powers, Syngman Rhee, Anthony Quinn, and Dixie Lee Ray have
in common?
Give up?
They are all part
of historical FBI records...though for a variety of different reasons.
One was unexpectedly helped by our Legal Attaché Officer in Rome
in recovering his missing Lambretta motor scooter. One spurred a special
request from the State Department for us to open an investigation in
Washington, DC. One had his fingerprint confirmed after being shot down
over the Soviet Union. One was named in a complaint by two prisoners
who were wounded while trying to escape from a Washington State Penitentiary.
And one corresponded with Director Hoover after hearing he'd described
himself as an objectivist. And not necessarily in that order.
Interested in all
the details? Just go to the Electronic
Reading Room at the FBI's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) website.
These files include some of the 20 new additions to the site, posted
there for researchers interested in federal records on everything from
Alcoholics Anonymous to UFOs.
Why are we
releasing all these records? It's the law. Following passage
of the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, and some amendments
to them, the FBI (with every other federal agency) began disclosing
its records, upon written request, on a case by case basis...only blacking
out information cited in the laws' nine exemptions and three exclusions,
which are largely designed to protect national and economic security
and to protect the privacy of persons who appear in FBI records.
How many requests
are we talking about? Hundreds of thousands...and still counting.
How many pages
of records are we talking about? Don't be shocked: millions...and
still counting. After all, information is the business of law enforcement—writing
down all those interviews and recording all that crime scene evidence.
Why a Reading
Room? It turned out that so many people were interested in
the same files that it just made sense to put them in a physical library
at Headquarters for researchers to visit and use freely. But it was
tough on researchers, who had to travel all the way to Washington and
compete with others for the few chairs in what was generally regarded
as pretty cramped space. When the Web evolved, we couldn't wait to
begin digitizing documents to create the current Virtual Reading Room,
for all the world to access. Good thing too, as that also became law.
Now we continue to expand it as resources allow.
So pull up a chair...and
decide where you want to start: Spies? Celebrities? Gangsters? Violent
criminals? Historical figures,
issues, and events? "Unusual
phenomena"? Or just start at the alphabetical
index and get lucky.
Links: The
Freedom of Information Act Website | The
Department of Justice FOIA Reference | The
FBI Press Room
