disinfozone/The_Info_Web
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions
The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Federal Bureau of Investigation.md

24 KiB
Raw Blame History

created updated title aliases category tags summary start location relations
2025-07-22 2026-10-14 Federal Bureau of Investigation
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Bureau of Investigation
The Bureau
U.S. Government
Organization
Government
USA
LawEnforcement
FBI
UFO
Stargate
DarkAllianceInvestigation
IranContra
BCCI
Epstein
The principal federal investigative agency, whose files record the 1947 Maury Island inquiry, the 1950 Hottel memorandum, the 1986 Operation Front Door, the Meneses indictment and the 2006 Epstein case. 1908-07-26 Washington, D.C.
type with role fn
member_of Department of Justice investigative component 25
type with start role fn
investigated Fred Crisman 1947-08 Maury Island flying disc inquiry and 1947 Atomic Energy Act applicant investigation 1
type with start end role fn
investigated Ronald Lister 1983-09 1987 five FBI files, including a Neutrality Act inquiry into Pyramid International Security Consultants 6
type with start end role fn
investigated Norwin Meneses 1987-02 1991 San Francisco FBI case, sealed indictment obtained February 1989 9
type with start end role fn
investigated Jeffrey Epstein 2006 2007 West Palm Beach FBI squad, case agents and supervisor 25
type with start end role fn
investigated Wilhelm Reich 1941-05 1957 bufile 100-14601 14
type with reverse start role fn
informant_for Alvin Johnson true 1930 met regularly with FBI officials to report on the New School faculty, by his own acknowledgment in private letters 20
type with start role fn
participant_in Executive Order 14305 2025-09-24 operates the National Counter-UAS Training Center that its memorandum of September 24, 2025 describes as created under the order 28

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the principal federal criminal investigative agency of the United States and a component of the Department of Justice. Its files bear on several clusters of this vault: the 1947 flying disc inquiries, the army parapsychology program, the Contra drug cases, the Operation C-Chase prosecution of Bank of Credit and Commerce International and the Palm Beach investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.

Maury Island and the Crisman File

On August 6, 1947, the FBI field office in Seattle teletyped the Director that Army Air Forces intelligence officers at McChord Field attributed the August 1 crash of a B-25 at Kelso, Washington, to a burned-out exhaust stack and not to sabotage. The same teletype stated that the two officers killed, Captain Davidson and Lieutenant Brown of the Fourth Air Force, had flown to Tacoma to interview Harold Dahl and Fred Crisman about flying discs reported over Maury Island, and that they carried some of the disc fragments on the flight. Kenneth Arnold and the United Airlines pilot Emil Smith were interviewed with them at the Winthrop Hotel on July 31. The teletype also reported anonymous telephone calls on July 31 and August 1 to a Tacoma Times reporter and a United Press wireman asserting that the B-25 had been sabotaged or shot down, and that the story had possibly been begun by Dahl and Crisman to promote the sale of slag from a gravel pit.1

A later Hoover teletype in the same file noted from the interrogation of Smith that Dahl had admitted on the night of August 2 that the story was a hoax, and observed that Dahl and Crisman evidently had not told the Army officers, who otherwise would probably not have taken the fragments aboard. It stated that when the point was clarified "no further investigation" was necessary.1

The Bureau's file on Crisman continued for three decades. A House Select Committee on Assassinations outside-contact report of May 18, 1978, indexes the FBI's Crisman volumes: a 1947 applicant investigation under the Atomic Energy Act, Seattle reports of September 13, 1947, a 1966 informant report about Crisman and a business partner who operated an organization called the National Institute of Criminology and who described Crisman as carrying $100,000 in cash for the Democratic Central Committee to California, a CIA-to-FBI communication about Crisman dated April 20, 1970, and an anonymous letter about Crisman's background as an alleged CIA agent. The index also lists 1974 stock-certificate inquiries and "JFK References" serials.2

The Hottel Memorandum

An FBI memorandum dated March 22, 1950, from the Washington Field Office, begins: "An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico." It describes the objects as circular with raised centers, about 50 feet in diameter, each occupied by three bodies of human shape three feet tall in metallic cloth. The memorandum attributes the location to a high-powered radar installation in the area that was believed to interfere with the saucers' control mechanism. The name of the informant is blacked out. The copy circulates under the cover sheet "Guy Hottel (3-22-1950)," after the special agent in charge of the field office.3

Grill Flame and the Army Human Use Panel

A Department of the Army memorandum of record dated April 30, 1979, titled "FBI Support of GRILL FLAME," records that on April 17 the Army General Counsel directed that one member of the Surgeon General's Human Use Test Committee be unaffiliated with the Department of Defense. An accompanying memorandum, signed by E. R. Thompson of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence and addressed through the Director of the FBI to the Assistant Director of the Training Division at the FBI Academy, asked for the nomination of an FBI member for an ad hoc panel of behavioral scientists and medical doctors to meet at the Pentagon two or three times a year. The action officer, Major Bill Stoner, had been told by the Training Division, which the memorandum says "owns" the Bureau's behavioral scientists, that a particular candidate (name withheld) had the background. The addendum states: "So far no one in FBI has been briefed on GF and the project nickname is not even mentioned in basic correspondence," and that Dr. LaBerge was "particularly sensitive about widening the group of people having access to GF."4

Jim Schnabel wrote in 1997 that the FBI knew of the Grill Flame program and occasionally sought help from its remote viewers in counterintelligence matters. Schnabel's account is that an FBI official asked Norm Everheart for help with a Soviet embassy official seen using a fishing pole, and that a session by Joe McMoneagle indicated the pole was retrieving a dead-drop package, which Schnabel says helped the FBI break a case. The vault has found no FBI-side record of the episode; this account rests on Schnabel alone.5

Lister, Front Door and the Los Angeles Cases

The Justice Department Inspector General's 1997 review found five FBI files on Ronald Lister. In September 1983 his company, Pyramid International Security Consultants, was the subject of a neutrality investigation involving arms sales to El Salvador and a Saudi loan to the Salvadoran government, and "no further information was ever developed." In 1984 the FBI investigated an offer by Lister of services to a foreign government and closed the case after concluding he was "an ordinary con man" who could not supply what he offered.6

On December 12, 1986, the Los Angeles FBI office teletyped headquarters that it saw no connection between Lister and "Front Door," the Bureau's investigation of alleged neutrality violations in the covert arms sales to Iran, which the Independent Counsel later took over. Headquarters asked that Lister be questioned about Richard Secord, Albert Hakim and Stanford Technology, and on December 22, 1986, Lister denied knowing them. On December 23 the Bureau suspended Front Door inquiries pending the appointment of Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh. On February 3, 1987, an informant reported that Lister had told a neighbor over drinks that he worked for Oliver North and Secord and had sent arms shipments to the Contras. Assistant U.S. Attorney Crossan Andersen reported this to Public Integrity Section attorney William Hendricks III, who advised that the drug investigation could continue so long as it did not conflict with Front Door, and Andersen asked that Lister and the neighbor not be interviewed, citing the effect on the drug case.6

Gary Webb wrote that FBI agent Douglas Aukland was assigned to Operation Front Door in November 1986 and investigated connections between Lister and North's arms ring, and that the Los Angeles office declared "no connection."7

Meneses, Blandon and the San Francisco Case

Webb wrote that in 1982 the FBI identified Fernando Sanchez and Horacio Pereira as cocaine suppliers to a Contra-linked operation in San Francisco, and that in 1987 the Contra supporter Dennis Ainsworth told the FBI that Norwin Meneses "ran one of the major distributions in the U.S. He was national. And he was totally protected." Webb states the FBI took no apparent action.8

The Inspector General found that the San Francisco FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office were surprised in early 1987 to learn that the DEA's Costa Rica office had taken Meneses and a DEA informant to Los Angeles in December 1986 to meet Danilo Blandon; Aukland, the lead FBI agent on the Los Angeles Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force case, was upset not to have interviewed Meneses first. In February 1987 the agencies agreed Meneses could be used as a source if he pleaded guilty to a cocaine charge in San Francisco; the San Francisco FBI opened a case and held it inactive. The Los Angeles case closed in July 1987. In February 1989, shortly before the statute of limitations expired, the San Francisco FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office obtained a sealed indictment of Meneses; the Inspector General found the warrant was entered in the FBI database, contrary to the Mercury News account, and that Meneses was not arrested while working for the DEA. An FBI informant had told Special Agent Donald Hale in October 1987 that Meneses was telling associates he was a CIA informant, which was why he had not been arrested. The Inspector General found no evidence of a CIA connection and attributed the outcome to poor coordination and shifting views on whether Meneses was a target or an informant.9

Webb gave a different account of the same February 1987 events: San Francisco FBI agents presented U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello a memo charging Meneses with running a continuing criminal enterprise, and Russoniello's office rejected it within a week, citing a "cooperation agreement" that Justice Department investigators later determined never existed.10

Contra Drug Information in FBI Hands

Senate subcommittee staff recorded that the FBI and Customs possessed information on Luis Rodriguez's narcotics and money-laundering involvement when the State Department used his firm Frigorificos de Puntarenas to deliver humanitarian funds to the Contras in late 1985 and 1986.11 The Inspector General reproduced a November 9, 1984, FBI headquarters cable to the Miami field office relaying CIA information, given at a meeting with DEA and FBI personnel, that the trafficker Jorge Morales had agreed to supply the Southern Front group of Eden Pastora with aircraft in exchange for use of its airstrips; the cable directed Miami to check bank accounts and coordinate with the DEA.12 A later DEA cable said the source "had not furnished actionable information sufficient to predicate initiation of a criminal investigation."12

The Tampa Customs Case

The Kerry-Brown report on BCCI concluded that Operation C-Chase "arose as a Treasury Department investigation brought by Customs and IRS agents only, without the involvement of the FBI," and that "the failure to bring the FBI into the case may have contributed to the lack of follow through" on what Customs agent Robert Mazur called "literally hundreds of important leads." The report added that "there does not appear to have been anything sinister" in the Justice Department's pause on the Tampa grand jury.13

Wilhelm Reich

On May 7, 1941 Assistant Director Edward A. Tamm wrote that "it appears that this man is a potentially dangerous threat to the internal security" of Wilhelm Reich, sponsor of an applicant for a visa; R. P. Kramer replied on May 8 that a custodial detention card had been prepared but not approved.14 J. Edgar Hoover's letter of January 31, 1942 to the New York office lists Reich tentatively in Group B, "Individuals believed to be somewhat less dangerous but whose activities should be restricted," with the evidence marked "Not satisfactory to substantiate the charges"; on July 16, 1943 the Attorney General wrote that the danger classifications "serve no useful purpose."14 On October 7, 1955 Louis B. Nichols recorded that on February 23, 1954 he had told Reich's attorney that "we had no current interest in Dr. Reich."15 The Bureau's memorandum of February 14, 1957 states that Reich and his staff had in 1956 and January 1957 contacted the Boston, Augusta and Washington offices, in its word "ostensibly" to offer information on espionage.16 On February 25, 1957 Washington Field Office agents interviewed Reich at the Alban Towers Apartments, where he was living under the alias "Roner"; the report records that when "flying saucers" were mentioned and he was asked whether his knowledge of them prompted his contacting the Bureau, he "replied in the affirmative but once again could not be specific," and that he retained a sealed envelope he had asked the agents to deliver to Hoover.17 After Reich's death on November 3, 1957 the chief medical officer of Lewisburg penitentiary sent the Bureau his stomach contents, writing that "his family fears that he may have been poisoned"; the Bureau laboratory reported on January 2, 1958 that formaldehyde was detected and that no other commonly poisonous materials were detected in the tests made.18 The Boston airtel of March 12, 1957 is captioned "William Steig, William Moise, Assaulting of Federal Officer, Conspiracy"; records found do not establish whether this Steig is the cartoonist.19

Faculty reporting at the New School, 1930s to 1950s

Peter M. Rutkoff and William B. Scott write that after 1947 Alvin Johnson, president of the New School for Social Research, acknowledged in his private letters "that he had been meeting regularly with FBI officials since the 1930s to report on the faculty."20 The same history quotes Sidney Hook that Johnson "wanted to get rid of a Communist Party member" but "delegated it to Clara Mayer."20 It states that a Rockefeller Foundation memorandum "indicated that Johnson had also monitored files of 'enemy aliens' in the early 1940s for the federal district attorney," and its endnote cites a memorandum of January 27, 1942, in the Rockefeller Foundation Archives' "Hans Eisler File."21 In early 1942, at a meeting Johnson requested, he and Hans Staudinger testified before a State Department panel of representatives from the FBI, the Visa Division, Naval Intelligence and the Army, and Johnson had to defend himself against charges of heading a "Communist outfit."22 The same history reports that in the early 1950s the school's administration received "inquiries from congressional and Senate committees, the FBI, and numerous individuals."23

Johnson's memoir records that after the United States entered the war he was appointed to an enemy alien hearing board, writing: "Case after case came before us, well prepared in advance by the FBI. After we had studied the record and had heard the FBI investigators, we would hear the accused."24

Epstein, 2006 to 2008

The Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility reported that in early 2006 a West Palm Beach FBI special agent told Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Marie Villafana that the Palm Beach Police had approached the FBI because the state attorney's office was considering not charging the case or allowing a misdemeanor plea. Villafana and two FBI case agents developed a federal case. The FBI planned to arrest Epstein after a May 15, 2007, indictment date and to hold a press conference, and wanted to arrest him in the U.S. Virgin Islands while he judged a beauty pageant. After the U.S. Attorney's Office managers in Miami declined to approve the indictment, the squad supervisor was "not happy," and the case agent recalled the supervisor as "extremely upset." At a meeting with Villafana and her managers the FBI insisted that Epstein register for life as a sex offender. After Epstein rejected the proposal, the squad supervisor "yelled at" First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman. The report found no misconduct by Department attorneys and concluded that U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta exercised poor judgment in resolving the case through a non-prosecution agreement.25

National Counter-UAS Training Center

The Bureau operates the National Counter-UAS Training Center (NCUTC). The interim final rule of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, published July 6, 2026 (91 FR 41466) and effective July 1, 2026, defines the NCUTC as "the national schoolhouse operated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation" and as "the sole certifying authority for SLTT C-UAS mitigation operators" under 6 U.S.C. 124n. The rule reports that the center "has certified 61 officers across approximately 46 SLTT agencies to date."26

Section 9(b) of Executive Order 14305 of June 6, 2025 directs the Attorney General, in coordination with other cabinet officers, to implement the recommendations of the March 2022 Feasibility Report to Congress on the "National Training Center for Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems."27 A memorandum from the NCUTC dated September 24, 2025 states that the order "directed the creation of the FBI's National Counter-UAS Training Center, modeled after the FBI's Hazardous Devices School."28 The same memorandum announced a three-week course in late October 2025 in Huntsville, Alabama, with an inaugural class of 12 officers from agencies in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and California. It stated that "certification does not confer authority to conduct counter-UAS operations unless and until Congress expands statutory authorities under 6 U.S.C. § 124n to include SLTT agencies."28

The SAFER SKIES Act, signed on December 18, 2025 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, authorizes state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement and correctional agencies to conduct counter-UAS operations after NCUTC training, according to the July 2026 rule.26

Footnotes

  1. FBI Seattle teletype to Director, August 6, 1947, and Hoover teletype to Seattle (undated, August 1947), FBI file 62-HQ-83894 ("Unidentified Flying Objects"), Section 2, FBI Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts release, archive.org item "expediente-ovni-65-hs1-834228961-62-hq-83894-section-2-1ecd79," https://archive.org/details/expediente-ovni-65-hs1-834228961-62-hq-83894-section-2-1ecd79 ↩︎

  2. HSCA Outside Contact Report 008624, FBI notes of January 26, 1978, request on "Fred Lee Crisman Vol. 1 of 3," NARA record 180-10085-10264, dated May 18, 1978, https://archive.org/details/crisman_fbifile ; same record at https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=149142 ↩︎

  3. FBI Office Memorandum, March 22, 1950, FBI FOIA cover sheet "Guy Hottel (3-22-1950)," https://archive.org/details/GuyHottel ↩︎

  4. Department of the Army, ACSI (DAMI-ISH) action memorandum "FBI Support of GRILL FLAME," April 30, 1979, and memorandum thru Director FBI for Assistant Director, Training Division, "Nomination of FBI Member to Assist on Army Project," signed E. R. Thompson, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100440022-9, -0023-8 and -0024-7, https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100440022-9 ↩︎

  5. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997. ↩︎

  6. U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions (December 1997), Chapter V (Ronald Lister), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch05p1.htm ↩︎

  7. Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter." ↩︎

  8. Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Prologue: "It was like they didn't want to know." ↩︎

  9. U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy (December 1997), Executive Summary section III, and Chapter III (Norwin Meneses), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/exsump1.htm and https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch03p2.htm ↩︎

  10. Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter." ↩︎

  11. U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, S. Prt. 100-165 (December 1988), https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras ↩︎

  12. U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy (December 1997), Chapter XI, section D, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch11p1.htm ↩︎

  13. U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, The BCCI Affair, report by Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown (December 1992), section on Operation C-Chase, https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003 ↩︎

  14. Tamm memorandum of May 7, 1941 and Kramer memorandum of May 8, 1941 (Part 1, PDF pages 16 and 17); Hoover to SAC New York, January 31, 1942 (Part 1, PDF pages 54 and 55); Attorney General memorandum of July 16, 1943, same file, Part 1. ↩︎

  15. Nichols to Tolson, October 7, 1955, same file, Part 2 (PDF page 109). ↩︎

  16. M. A. Jones to L. B. Nichols, February 14, 1957, same file, Part 2 (PDF pages 123 and 124). ↩︎

  17. SAC, Washington Field Office, memorandum to the Director, file 100-1849, Wilhelm Reich FBI file, Part 2 (PDF pages 129 and 130), https://archive.org/details/WilhelmReichFBI. ↩︎

  18. Witkin to the Director, December 9, 1957, with autopsy report of November 26, 1957 and FBI Laboratory report of January 2, 1958, same file, Part 6 (PDF pages 21 to 24). ↩︎

  19. Boston airtel of March 12, 1957, Wilhelm Reich FBI file, Part 6, https://archive.org/details/WilhelmReichFBI. ↩︎

  20. Peter Rutkoff and William Scott, New School: A History of the New School for Social Research (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 226. ↩︎

  21. Rutkoff and Scott, New School, p. 226 and note 22, p. 296: "Johnson to Urban (December 9, 1948), JPYU; memorandum (January 27, 1942), Hans Eisler File, Rockefeller Foundation Archives." The note names no author for the memorandum. ↩︎

  22. Rutkoff and Scott, New School, p. 135. ↩︎

  23. Rutkoff and Scott, New School, p. 228. ↩︎

  24. Alvin Johnson, Pioneer's Progress (Viking Press, 1952; University of Nebraska Press, 1960), p. 370. ↩︎

  25. U.S. Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility, Investigation into the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida's Resolution of Its 2006-2008 Federal Criminal Investigation of Jeffrey Epstein (November 2020), Parts III and IV, copy at https://archive.org/details/epsteindocs ; executive summary at https://www.justice.gov/opr/page/file/1336471/dl ↩︎

  26. Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice, "Counter-UAS Authority for State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Law Enforcement and Correctional Agencies," interim final rule, Docket FBI-2026-0001, 91 FR 41466 (July 6, 2026), effective July 1, 2026, Federal Register Doc. 2026-13609. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/06/2026-13609/counter-uas-authority-for-state-local-tribal-and-territorial-law-enforcement-and-correctional ↩︎

  27. Executive Order 14305 of June 6, 2025, "Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty," 90 FR 24719 (June 11, 2025), Federal Register Doc. 2025-10803, section 9(b). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/06/11/2025-10803/restoring-american-airspace-sovereignty ↩︎

  28. Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Counter-UAS Training Center, memorandum "Announcement of the NCUTC and Initial Training" to all U.S. law enforcement agencies, September 24, 2025. Hosted copy: https://iaclea.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/NCUTC-Announcement-Memo.pdf ↩︎