Welcome to the Vault
Today’s topic is Halloween-adjacent if you squint. Today is the season premier of FBI on CBS, so I thought we’d take a little tour of the FBI Vault. Criminals are scary, right?
The FBI Vault is the FOIA page of the Federal Bureau of Investigation website. As such, it contains documents released over the history of the Bureau. The vault can be browsed or searched by topic/category, by keyword, or A-Z.
Many of the documents are heavily redacted, and many of the copies are so low-quality as to be unreadable. Also, some of the subjects are only on there because someone requested their files, but the FBI never investigated them.
Here are some highlights…
Louie Louie
The Kingsmen’s song “Louie Louie” has a 119-page file. I knew there was some controversy about the song when it came out, but 119 pages is a lot. The investigation, which lasted just over 2 months, from 18 August to 26 October 1965, was for transport of obscene materials across state lines. The first 1/3rd of the file mostly consists of letters from angry fathers. The fathers provide what they think the dirty lyrics say (each one hearing them differently). Then the response from the FBI in the form of a memorandum saying they played the record at various speeds in a laboratory test and couldn’t understand the lyrics at any speed.
Transcription: Sometime after buying the record, [redacted] heard from various acquaintances the record had obscene lyrics if the “LOUIE LOUIE” side were played at a speed of 33 1/3 instead of the normal 45 rpm. About 1/29/64, a coworker gave [redacted] a typed sheet of lyrics which were allegedly transcribed from the record when played in this manner, and which appear obscene.
The Mafia
There is nothing quite like the mafia in the American zeitgeist. They fascinate and repel in equal measure. The FBI Vault contains files on two dozen gangsters and mafia families, including Al Capone, Bonnie & Clyde, the Barker family, Machine Gun Kelly, and Dillinger. Some of these files are huge, with hundreds of pages full of redactions and bad copies. But what is legible is fascinating.
For instance, the Bonnie & Clyde files contain photos, telegrams, typed letters, handwritten letters, and handwritten notes spanning across the country. Here is an excerpt from handwritten field notes, telling a story given by an informant.
“Early that night he dropped into a restaurant on E. Tyler street across from LaLage[?] Motor Co. (Chevrolet) and there saw Henry Methain whom he had known in the Texas Pen. They drank a cup of coffee and talked; then went out in front and Clyde & Bonnie drove up in a 1932 V8 Coupe - black with Texas license. They spoke to him and Bonnie asked Methain if he were ready. Methain got in. Grey told Clyde he would like to talk to him and Clyde said “I’m in a hurry now but I’ll be back in about ten days.”
It’s these little vignettes that make the files so fascinating. Does it matter that Bonnie & Clyde picked up an accomplice at a diner in April of 1934? Maybe, maybe not. But that passage conjures a vivid image of the car pulling into the parking space, engine idling while Clyde impatiently tells Methain’s friend he’s in a hurry. I can smell the diner grease, hear the roar of the engine, feel the nerves of our Mr. Grey as he talks to the man he knows he’s going to rat on.
UFOs
No discussion of the FBI Vault would be complete without a mention of UFOs. In 1947, the U.S. Air Force began Project Blue Book in response to an unusually large influx of reports of UFO sightings. Although the project lasted through 1969, only records through 1954 are available in the Vault. Additional records, from 1950 through 1969, are available online at the Library of Congress as part of the Citizen Archivist project. You can go help transcribe these for future historians.
Project Blue Book is just one of several files on UFOs in the vault. There are also files for Silas Newton, Guy Hottel, Majestic 12, Roswell, animal mutilation, extrasensory perception, and “New Project Blue Book.”
These are just a few of the treasures in the FBI Vault. Whatever time period or type of crime you are interested in, the primary source material on this site can provide details, perspectives, and insight that you can’t get anywhere else.
Come back next time to learn about more Halloween-adjacent primary source material!
