vault backup: 2026-10-14 15:45:14

70 - DISPATCHES/2026-10-14 Due to the Bulk.md

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+---
+title: "Due to the Bulk"
+date: 2026-10-14
+status: published
+summary: "The State Department's account of the Odyssey Foundation card files records two names matching department employees, no formal investigation, and the destruction of the unread cards in 1975."
+entities:
+  - "[[Odyssey Network]]"
+  - "[[John David Norman]]"
+  - "[[State Department]]"
+  - "[[Dallas Police Department]]"
+  - "[[Harold Hancock]]"
+  - "[[John C. Culver]]"
+  - "[[Henry A. Kissinger]]"
+  - "[[Michael Sneed]]"
+tags:
+  - OdysseyNetwork
+  - StateDepartment
+  - ChildExploitation
+  - DestroyedRecords
+---
+# Due to the Bulk
+
+On August 14, 1973 the [[Dallas Police Department]] raided an apartment used by the Odyssey Foundation. The police said the search produced catalogue files with the names and addresses of 50,000 to 100,000 people, and named the alleged leader as John Paul Norman, 45 ([[John David Norman]]).[^1] The Chicago Tribune later reported that the cards seized by Lieutenant [[Harold Hancock]] listed clients around the country, some of them prominent people and some federal employees in Washington. Hancock told the paper, "I felt that some federal agency should get the cards and I contacted the State Department through the FBI, I think it was."[^2]
+
+The [[State Department]] set out what happened next in a letter of June 27, 1977 to Senator [[John C. Culver]], signed by Douglas J. Bennett Jr., Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations. The Dallas resident agent sent the department material on the foundation in September 1973 "with the understanding that there be no dissemination made outside the Department." A Dallas police review of the card files "revealed that two individuals in these files appeared to have State Department affiliation." The department examined the security files of two employees with similar names; "however, no formal investigation was initiated because the information was considered insufficient to take action at that time. One such individual was in the Department and the other individual had been assigned to our Mexico City Embassy."[^3]
+
+On December 12, 1974 the Dallas police turned over "three cartons containing several thousand 3x5 cards" so that a more complete search could be made on questions of passport fraud. The cartons went on January 2, 1975 to the "Special Assignment Staff," Office of Security. "Due to the bulk, the cards were not thoroughly reviewed but placed in storage where they remained until September 1975." When the operative portions of the Privacy Act took effect on September 27, 1975, the department reviewed its name files, and the cards "were determined not to qualify as records relevant to the Department's statutory purpose and were destroyed."[^4] [[Henry A. Kissinger]] was Secretary of State from September 22, 1973 to January 20, 1977.
+
+At the subcommittee's Chicago hearing on May 27, 1977, the Tribune's George Bliss testified that the department told the paper "they shredded the 35,000 cards in 1974 because they couldn't find any use for them." [[Michael Sneed]] testified that when the paper asked why the cards had gone to State, "the first question they asked was, 'Why us? Why not the Justice Department?'"[^5] Matthew Nimetz, counselor of the department, told the Tribune the cards "were not relevant to any fraud case concerning a passport"; the paper reported that he could not explain why the department had not turned them over to the FBI or postal inspectors.[^6]
+
+[^1]: "Alleged Homosexual Ring Found in a Raid on Apartment in Dallas," *New York Times*, August 16, 1973, p. 16. https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/16/archives/alleged-homosexual-ring-found-in-a-raid-on-apartment-in-dallass.html
+[^2]: *Chicago Tribune*, May 16, 1977, reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime, *Sexual Exploitation of Children*, hearings, 95th Cong., 1st sess., Serial No. 12 (1977), p. 435. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041
+[^3]: Letter from Douglas J. Bennett Jr., Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations, Department of State, to Sen. John C. Culver, June 27, 1977, reprinted in U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, *Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation*, hearings, 95th Cong., 1st sess. (1977), pp. 119-120. https://archive.org/details/protectionofchil00unit
+[^4]: Bennett to Culver, June 27, 1977, *Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation*, p. 120.
+[^5]: Testimony of George Bliss and Michael Sneed, *Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation*, Chicago, May 27, 1977, p. 58. https://archive.org/details/protectionofchil00unit
+[^6]: *Chicago Tribune*, May 16, 1977, reprinted in *Sexual Exploitation of Children*, Serial No. 12 (1977), p. 435. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041

70 - DISPATCHES/2026-10-14 Read and Destroy.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 title: "Read and Destroy"
 date: 2026-10-14
 status: published
-summary: "Ten weeks after the bankruptcy judge who found that the Justice Department stole INSLAW's software ruled, an unsigned memorandum marked 'read and destroy' ranked him last among the finalists for his own seat, which went to a Justice Department tax lawyer who had supervised the INSLAW tax work."
+summary: "An unsigned memorandum marked 'read and destroy' disparaged the judge who found that the Justice Department stole INSLAW's software; his seat went to a Justice Department tax lawyer."
 entities:
   - "[[George Francis Bason, Jr.]]"
   - "[[INSLAW]]"