I don't recall where we discussed it previously, but for those interested in a copy of Welles' FBI file, it's very easy to obtain. Simply do as I did: Namely, go to the FBI's web site and go the Freedom of Information Act page. There you will find the address of the FBI office dealing with FOIA requests. Follow the instructions as given, which basically consist of sending them a letter asking for the file. In about 3-4 weeks, you will receive a photocopy of the entire 184 page file. All for the cost of a stamp. Offer good to US citizens only.
The only thing that made me curious was whether the 18 years since the file was made public might make some of the blacking out of names no longer an issue (from people dying and so on). Anyway, for those interested, have at it.
Welles's FBI file
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TheMcGuffin
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Jeff,
Please keep us posted on how this process goes and what hte file says. I quickly looked through the FBI and related sites in order to get a copy of OW's FBI file as well and found the sites to be full of a lot of legal jargon and kind of turned me off. Did you request certain parts of OW's file or simply ask for whatever you could get?
Please keep us posted on how this process goes and what hte file says. I quickly looked through the FBI and related sites in order to get a copy of OW's FBI file as well and found the sites to be full of a lot of legal jargon and kind of turned me off. Did you request certain parts of OW's file or simply ask for whatever you could get?
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Wilson
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I don't think there's anything new in the file that hasn't already been discussed in the articles that have covered it, by James Naremore and the web site that had previously posted it, but it's interesting to look at. I assume that the file I received is the same version that was released back in 1986, so it's possible that someone could request that file be re-evaluated and maybe some of the blacked out material could be revealed, such as who among Welles' circle was reporting to the FBI on him and so on.
It really is simple to get a copy, though; all you do is send a letter to the FBI at:
David M. Hardy, Chief
Record/Information Dissemination Section
Records Management Division
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Department of Justice
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20535-0001
All you do is state that you wish a copy of Orson Welles' FBI file, under the Freedom of Information Act. I mentioned that a copy was kept in the FBI reading room, but was not archived online, as many celebrities are. Include your name and address, and that's about it. They will send a copy of the 184 page file at no charge, and a cover letter stating that the request was previously made, and that what you are receiving is a copy of that. They include a guide to the denials of information in case one wishes to appeal anything. In case anyone wonders what that means, basically there are numerous pieces of information that are blacked out in the copies, due to various security concerns. These can be appealed. And that's it.
It really is simple to get a copy, though; all you do is send a letter to the FBI at:
David M. Hardy, Chief
Record/Information Dissemination Section
Records Management Division
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Department of Justice
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20535-0001
All you do is state that you wish a copy of Orson Welles' FBI file, under the Freedom of Information Act. I mentioned that a copy was kept in the FBI reading room, but was not archived online, as many celebrities are. Include your name and address, and that's about it. They will send a copy of the 184 page file at no charge, and a cover letter stating that the request was previously made, and that what you are receiving is a copy of that. They include a guide to the denials of information in case one wishes to appeal anything. In case anyone wonders what that means, basically there are numerous pieces of information that are blacked out in the copies, due to various security concerns. These can be appealed. And that's it.
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tony
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Here's an interesting little article on Welles's FBI file:
http://news.findlaw.com/apbnews/s/20001013/apborson.html
http://news.findlaw.com/apbnews/s/20001013/apborson.html
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Kevin Loy
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Yeah, but isn't it a bit of a stretch to say that Louella Parsons was a "close female associate" to Welles? 
Seriously, though, it is always troubling to read this sort of thing...especially when considering that things haven't really changed since that time (TIPS, anyone?). It does make you wonder just who the "secret informant" was, but given the way that things like this tend to get blown out of proportion, it could have been anybody.
Seriously, though, it is always troubling to read this sort of thing...especially when considering that things haven't really changed since that time (TIPS, anyone?). It does make you wonder just who the "secret informant" was, but given the way that things like this tend to get blown out of proportion, it could have been anybody.
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tony
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Hoover wanted to throw 12,000 disloyals in prison
This just appeared in the NYT today: Hoover's plan for disloyal citizens; wonder if Welles suspected this and left the country, for he was surely on the list:
Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950
By TIM WEINER
Published: December 23, 2007
The New York Times
A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.
Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.
Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.
The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. “The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,” he wrote.
“In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” it said.
The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.”
Hoover’s plan was declassified Friday as part of a collection of cold-war documents concerning intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955. The collection makes up a new volume of “The Foreign Relations of the United States,” a series that by law has been published continuously by the State Department since the Civil War.
Hoover’s plan called for “the permanent detention” of the roughly 12,000 suspects at military bases as well as in federal prisons. The F.B.I., he said, had found that the arrests it proposed in New York and California would cause the prisons there to overflow.
So the bureau had arranged for “detention in military facilities of the individuals apprehended” in those states, he wrote.
The prisoners eventually would have had a right to a hearing under the Hoover plan. The hearing board would have been a panel made up of one judge and two citizens. But the hearings “will not be bound by the rules of evidence,” his letter noted.
The only modern precedent for Hoover’s plan was the Palmer Raids of 1920, named after the attorney general at the time. The raids, executed in large part by Hoover’s intelligence division, swept up thousands of people suspected of being communists and radicals.
Previously declassified documents show that the F.B.I.’s “security index” of suspect Americans predated the cold war. In March 1946, Hoover sought the authority to detain Americans “who might be dangerous” if the United States went to war. In August 1948, Attorney General Tom Clark gave the F.B.I. the power to make a master list of such people.
Hoover’s July 1950 letter was addressed to Sidney W. Souers, who had served as the first director of central intelligence and was then a special national-security assistant to Truman. The plan also was sent to the executive secretary of the National Security Council, whose members were the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the military chiefs.
In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of “dangerous radicals” if the president declared a national emergency. Truman did declare such an emergency in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War. But no known evidence suggests he or any other president approved any part of Hoover’s proposal.
Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950
By TIM WEINER
Published: December 23, 2007
The New York Times
A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.
Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.
Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.
The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. “The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,” he wrote.
“In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” it said.
The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.”
Hoover’s plan was declassified Friday as part of a collection of cold-war documents concerning intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955. The collection makes up a new volume of “The Foreign Relations of the United States,” a series that by law has been published continuously by the State Department since the Civil War.
Hoover’s plan called for “the permanent detention” of the roughly 12,000 suspects at military bases as well as in federal prisons. The F.B.I., he said, had found that the arrests it proposed in New York and California would cause the prisons there to overflow.
So the bureau had arranged for “detention in military facilities of the individuals apprehended” in those states, he wrote.
The prisoners eventually would have had a right to a hearing under the Hoover plan. The hearing board would have been a panel made up of one judge and two citizens. But the hearings “will not be bound by the rules of evidence,” his letter noted.
The only modern precedent for Hoover’s plan was the Palmer Raids of 1920, named after the attorney general at the time. The raids, executed in large part by Hoover’s intelligence division, swept up thousands of people suspected of being communists and radicals.
Previously declassified documents show that the F.B.I.’s “security index” of suspect Americans predated the cold war. In March 1946, Hoover sought the authority to detain Americans “who might be dangerous” if the United States went to war. In August 1948, Attorney General Tom Clark gave the F.B.I. the power to make a master list of such people.
Hoover’s July 1950 letter was addressed to Sidney W. Souers, who had served as the first director of central intelligence and was then a special national-security assistant to Truman. The plan also was sent to the executive secretary of the National Security Council, whose members were the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the military chiefs.
In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of “dangerous radicals” if the president declared a national emergency. Truman did declare such an emergency in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War. But no known evidence suggests he or any other president approved any part of Hoover’s proposal.
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Glenn Anders
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Good work, tony. Welles would certainly have been on that list.
I might add an extra note:
Early in World War II, a curiously botched attempt by Hitler's intelligence forces to land German- American, Nazi-trained saboteurs on the East Coast prompted Hoover to persuade FDR to set up, by Executive Order, a special court to try the men. It was on this basis, I expect, that Hoover was also able to draw up his Korean War list of "subversive Americans." And if you look into the various recent "war on terror" cases you will see that the same Executive Order is used to partially underpin the arrest and detention of American citizens, without evidence or due process, upon accusation of aiding "the Islamofascist Conspiracy."
All we need is another 9/11 type panic for the same mentality now in power within the United States to prepare a new list, and start rounding Americans up to be sent on permanent non-vacations to the Slovak Republic or Pakistan.
Keep us informed on this, tony. I expect that there are a good many reports on that traitor, Orson Welles, still in the files.
Glenn
I might add an extra note:
Early in World War II, a curiously botched attempt by Hitler's intelligence forces to land German- American, Nazi-trained saboteurs on the East Coast prompted Hoover to persuade FDR to set up, by Executive Order, a special court to try the men. It was on this basis, I expect, that Hoover was also able to draw up his Korean War list of "subversive Americans." And if you look into the various recent "war on terror" cases you will see that the same Executive Order is used to partially underpin the arrest and detention of American citizens, without evidence or due process, upon accusation of aiding "the Islamofascist Conspiracy."
All we need is another 9/11 type panic for the same mentality now in power within the United States to prepare a new list, and start rounding Americans up to be sent on permanent non-vacations to the Slovak Republic or Pakistan.
Keep us informed on this, tony. I expect that there are a good many reports on that traitor, Orson Welles, still in the files.
Glenn
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LamontCranston
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Glenn Anders
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But . . . OF COURSE!
Professor Schmidt looked forward to Director Hoover, Attorney General Gonzales, not to mention Leo Strauss and our Unitary Executive, G.W. Bush, when he said: "If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.”
All of them subscribed to that idea with approval, and look what wonderful results they have brought the Republic! Orson Welles would have been sickened, but not surprised, by these developments, I'm sure.
Glenn
Professor Schmidt looked forward to Director Hoover, Attorney General Gonzales, not to mention Leo Strauss and our Unitary Executive, G.W. Bush, when he said: "If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.”
All of them subscribed to that idea with approval, and look what wonderful results they have brought the Republic! Orson Welles would have been sickened, but not surprised, by these developments, I'm sure.
Glenn
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akio
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