How to get the records
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is one of the nation’s top law enforcement agencies — and one of the most perplexing for genealogists when it comes to getting records.
Its history begins in 1908 after a Civil Service statute put an end to the prior practice of the Justice Department borrowing investigators from other agencies. At that point, the Attorney General — Charles J. Bonaparte — set up his own team of investigators that his successor called the Bureau of Investigation.1
The responsibilities of the fledgling agency grew over time: more interstate crime cases including interstate prostitution, motor vehicle theft, interstate kidnapping, even espionage during World War I came under its investigative eye. In 1935, it was officially renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.2
And with 110 years worth of work under its belt, it’s pretty clear to researchers — The Legal Genealogist among them — that there must be some real gems in the FBI records… if we can just figure out how to get them.
And there are essentially three places to look.
For archival records, we need to look in Record Group 65 of the National Archives, the Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). There’s a description of the record group and its contents online as part of the web version of the Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States. That particular record group’s description can be found here.
Now looking at that, it suggests that records from 1896-1996 can be found at the National Archives. And that’s both technically true — and terribly misleading. The fact is that the vast majority of records held by the National Archives only go up to the 1920s or so.
General Investigative Records held by the National Archives go from 1908-1922. The Index to Investigative Case Files, also 1908-1922. Investigative Records Relating to German Aliens and Political Radicals, 1915-1920. Investigative Records Transferred from the Department of Justice, 1917-1922.
There are a few types of records that are more recent, for example cases classified as civil rights cases; cases classified as domestic security cases; and cases classified as Hatch Act cases (cases involving investigations of federal employees for engaging in prohibited political activities).
But the fact that these more recent files are at the National Archives doesn’t mean they’re open to anyone. Many of the records series and sub-series carry access restrictions, and most are labeled as “Fully Restricted,” meaning these records must be screened for issues relating to personal privacy, law enforcement, and national security information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. §552(b), before any information can be released. Some also have to be screened under other statutes like the federal Wiretap Statute, 18 U.S.C. §2510 et seq.
These records are also hard to get into, because many of them haven’t been accessioned (added to the catalog) so you’re generally going to need a file number and you often can only get that from the FBI itself. So before you go to the Archives, review the page on Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (RG 65) under the Law Enforcement and Investigations section of the Research Our Records menu.
Still, it’s the place to start for records that have been turned over to the National Archives, and there’s a good explanation of what’s at the National Archives and what isn’t in a publication by the FBI itself called A Guide to Conducting Research in FBI Records.3
For non-archival records, meaning anything still held by the FBI itself, a request has to be made directly to the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And the FBI itself has a whole page with information about Requesting FBI Records. It’s a complicated process, there are a lot of things the FOIA law allows the FBI to refuse to provide, and it takes time. Still, it’s often the only way to get the file on, say, an ancestor you think might have been investigated by the FBI during World War I or World War II.
As noted above, you’re probably going to have to use this system even to get the file number for a file that’s been turned over to the National Archives, so read the FBI FOIA page fully and carefully.
But before you send off your request to the FBI, do one thing more: look at the very top of that FOIA page. It has a link to something else, something called the FBI Vault — and that’s where you just might get lucky.
Over the years, when the FBI has gotten a FOIA request for records and has agreed to release the information, it has made a decision whether the records have some public interest that might lead someone else to request them again. Those records — now up to some 7,000 files — it has digitized and put online at the FBI Vault.
These files cover topics ranging from gangs and gangsters to civil rights to fugitives to World War II cases. They can be searched by topic or, at least in some cases, by key words or phrases. The search mechanism is clunky, and often just identifies a lengthy file where a word or phrase or name appears without drilling down to where in the file it appears — but it’s sure better than not getting the records online at all.
So… start at the National Archives and check Record Group 65. If the record or record type you want isn’t there or hasn’t been fully accessioned (meaning you need a file number to get the file from the Archives), go on to the FBI website — and start at the FBI Vault. If there’s nothing there, then make a FOIA request to the FBI itself.
And be prepared to wait. Records requests can take a lot of time.
SOURCES
- “History: Timeline,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI.gov (https://www.fbi.gov/ : accessed 24 Feb 2018). ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, “A Guide to Conducting Research in FBI Records,” PDF online (2013). ↩
If a newspaper article from 1921 reported on a church social, with the added attraction of a little illegal hooch, attracting law enforcement, there may be a file.
What a fun research project if a not-so-long-ago ancestor was involved in that as a distiller or a bootlegger.
Entirely possible but make sure it wasn’t handled in the local courts first (both the states and the feds did bootlegging cases).
I was curious if you have used FBI sources yourself for genealogical sources? I’m rereading The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald about price fixing at ADM in the 1980s. It is chock full of references apparently from FBI sources. So, if your subject/person is of public interest someone in the media may have done some of the work for you.
So you got me thinking do I have an FBI file?
I took Russian in high school and college in the 1970s, which was odd at the time (it was supposed to be an easy A class). I also ordered information from the Russian Embassy or a cultural office for a class project on life in Russia. In college, I took one year and went to a professor’s house for a Russian-themed party once. I don’t remember politics being discussed. Is that enough to trigger an FBI file? Probably not, but it might curious to check on an FBI file for myself.
You can certainly make a FOIA request for your own file, and they’ll usually tell you whether there is one or not (unless they’re still withholding it for national security reasons).
Very interesting – I may have to look into this. From a newspaper article, I learned that one of my distant relatives was prosecuted in the 1920s for violations of the Harrison Act [regulating narcotics]. I was able to get the U.S. district court file from the National Archives in Atlanta, but I’m wondering if there’s more in the files of the FBI or another agency. (The other agency may be the Treasury Department, as the arresting officer was listed as a Prohibition agent)
Thanks for this information. My research into Bureau of Investigation Files from 1908-1922 began over 10 years ago with a visit to a regional archives branch in Philadelphia, Pa. At that time the branch had an interesting exhibit on “enemy aliens” of WWI. I was the library director a public library in Vermont and I had known of a prior director who had been dismissed in 1917 due a conflict between her and the library trustees. She have been accused of being disloyal to the United States as she had a German surname and immigrant ancestors, and had refused to mount a display of pro-war materials in the library.
In 2008 a database vendor by the name of “Footnote” was digitizing records for NARA and they had digitized a searcheable database of these BOI files. I sat down at workstation and searched for the librarian’s surname thinking, perhaps, due to the Espionage Act of 1917, she may have been reported to the authorities. There were no records. Then I searched under the keyword=”Brattleboro library,” and one record appeared. The document was a letter written by a Brattleboro citizen to her son who was living in Dallas, Texas. This letter, which was part of her son’s file, discussed the anti-German hysteria of the times, and mentioned that the library director had been dismissed. I went on to find many documents relating to this individual’s son who was being followed by various FBI agents. The database now is Fold3, and it has a collection of records called “FBI Case Files.” This record set is fully indexed and contains NARA, RG 65, M1085, Other FBI Records in the National Archives,https://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/fbi/other-records.html.
Now that I am retired from the library, I hope to write an account of this man, the librarian who was dismissed, and the German family whose private letters to her son were read were investigated. I believe, due to the anti-German hysteria of the time, the librarian was unjustly dismissed. She never worked in another library again, and person who was being investigated by FBI agents, and was thought to be an “enemy alien,” never was arrested, and in fact, went to work at a government post for the Federal Power Commission.
Your post on FBI files has picqued my interest again, in this 100 year anniversary of the “War to end all wars.”
Thank you
Good for you!! Write that story — sounds like no-one else will if you don’t.