Want to know what’s in your FBI file?
By: Kathleen Johnston Jarboe
June 30, 2008
Wonder what that background check said? Need to remember all the civil rights meetings you attended in the 1960s? The FBI might know.
Has anyone ever called you whose buddy once spoke on the phone with someone suspected of terrorism? Did you follow that? Even if you didn’t, the FBI might have.
And you can ask.
In fact, about 13,000 people do just that every year—they ask to see their FBI files.
Since 9/11, federal agencies have more power to watch and listen, and the vast repository of files the FBI keeps has grown. The bureau now has more than 560 million files — almost twice the number of U.S. citizens.
Much of the increase has come from the agency’s use of national security letter requests. These requests, approved by FBI officials themselves, allow the bureau to monitor e-mail, phone, bank and credit records of people sometimes two to three times removed from the target of an investigation. And FBI agents use them a lot.
In 2000, 8,500 national security letter requests were made. By 2003, that number grew to 39,000, according to a 2007 report by the Office of the Inspector General for the Justice Department.
“The FBI has used them as a mass-collection device that they can data-mine later,” said Mike German, policy counsel on national security, immigration and privacy for the American Civil Liberties Union. German was an FBI agent for 16 years.
Civil liberty supporters worry that investigations by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are increasingly targeting political and advocacy groups as well as suspected terrorists. They point to a court case against antiwar groups that protested outside the National Security Agency at Fort Meade in 2003 and 2004.
Some of the demonstrators were charged with criminal trespassing. One document in this case, an NSA memo, shows the protesters’ names, what cars they traveled in, license plates, and their path from the American Friends Service Committee’s Baltimore headquarters to a 2004 NSA protest. The group works for peace through nonviolent resistance.
“It is obvious from that document that they were being watched as they gathered at the AFSC headquarters,” said David Rocah, a staff attorney at the Maryland ACLU. “Why are they watching these groups?”
After requesting information from local and federal agencies in 2006, the ACLU received a letter from the FBI saying it had a paper that had shown there would be a rally. A letter from the State Police said it had a document about the incident but would not release it because it would reveal law enforcement methods and an informant. In June, the Maryland ACLU sued for release of that document.
Thomas M. Susman said he requested his FBI file in the early 1980s. Susman, who is head of government affairs for the American Bar Association in Washington, wanted to see how the FBI had done background checks on him. It took years to get the files and when they arrived, he was surprised at the level of detail.
After law school, Susman had joined World Peace Through Law because the group offered cheap charter flights to Europe. He and his wife traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, through the group and attended its opening reception to eat dinner, but didn’t see the group again until they flew home. The FBI had a record of him registering for the conference in 1967 and knew he hadn’t attended any conference work sessions.
“[The file] is full of silly little stuff,” Susman said.
Most people requesting their own FBI file are told there is none.
That’s the answer Ivan Greenberg of Bronx, N.Y., got when he requested his file in 1998. He’s sent about 85 information requests to the FBI during the last decade for research on books and papers he’s worked on, including a book he’s writing, “Trouble Times: The FBI and Civil Liberties Since the 1960s.” Greenberg isn’t sure he believes the FBI’s response.
“Because I’ve written about the FBI for years, I assume there may be something,” Greenberg wrote in an e-mail to Exhibit A. “The problem is, if an investigation is on-going, the FBI is allowed to exclude the records from their search so they don’t ‘tip off’ the requestor that they are under investigation.”
“When you make a request to the FBI, it is a process,” said Scott A. Hodes, who practices information and privacy law in Maryland and Washington. “And you have to keep at it.”
Kathleen Johnston Jarboe is a freelance writer based in Howard County.
Curious to see your own FBI file? Read our story, How to get your FBI file, for tips on how to cut through the red tape.
Notice there is no mention of the files kept on right-wingers.I guess the “civil rights” crusaders don’t care about those files.
My mother asked for her file back in late 70s, and recieved a manila envelope with note : ” Ms ****** we do not have a file on you, but would you please fill out this questionnaire and send it back to us”
Now, I still believe ppl should ask. Don’t think I wish to scare ppl from doing so, but be aware that democratic forces have evaporated, to be replaced with a corporate-run Oligarchy. I wish I could laugh at it, but that is just impossible. I’m still waiting for the moment when all questions become illegal.