Guides: U.S. Government Documents: Justice Department / FBI

Department of Justice

FBI Files (Online)

FBI Records : The Vault (Federal Bureau of Investigation)

The Vault is FBI's FOIA Library, presenting ~7,000 documents scanned from paper for online viewing and PDF downloading. Many of the files listed below from commercial vendors are available here, at no charge.

American Politics and Society from Kennedy to Watergate (1960-1975). (ProQuest History Vault.)

Includes:

FBI Files on the American Indian Movement and Wounded Knee
Date range: 1967-1983. 139 folders (~26,000 pages).
Similar to the Archives Unbound collection. Includes published documents collected by the FBI concerning the Wounded Knee siege.
FBI Files on the Weather Underground Organization
Date range: 1967-1976. 2 folders.
Includes profiles of WUO members and WUO publications, speeches, written statements, press releases, radio broadcast transcripts, interviews, and conference notes, with some SDS materials.
FBI Files on White Extremist Organizations
Date range: 1934-1980. 93 folders.
Covers the KKK, American Nazi Party, and other white supremacy and anti-semitic groups. Include speeches, pamphlets, manuals, letters, memoranda, photographs, posters, interviews, circulars, newsletters, radio and television transcripts, and court documents.

Indigenous Peoples : North America (Gale Cengage)

Includes:

FBI File on Osage Indian murders
Date range: 1923-1976. 21 folders.
Documents the FBI investigation of Osage killings memorialized in Killers of the Flower Moon : the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI / David Grann (Doubleday, 2017).

Archives Unbound (Gale Cengage)

Includes:

American Indian Movement and Native American radicalism
Date range: 1968-1979. 14,195 images.
Covers the evolution of AIM, including the 1972 "Trail of Broken Treaties" and the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
The Black Liberation Army and the program of armed struggle
Date range: 1970-1983. 44 folders (8,452 images).
FBI surveillance of James Forman and SNCC
Date range: 1961-1976. 43 folders (6,115 images).
Source: Special Collections and Archives, Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library, Queens College, City University of New York.
Federal response to radicalism in the 1960s
Date range: 1956-1971. 602 folders (87,391 images).
Compiles independent subcollections:
• COINTELPRO: The counterintelligence program of the FBI. Covers CPUSA, New Left, Socialist Workers Party, White Hate Groups, Black Nationalist Hate Groups, Cuban Matters, Mexican Border Coverage, Puerto Rican Independence Groups, Yugoslav Emigres, Espionage, Hoodwink, Special Operations.
• FBI file on Abbie Hoffman.
• FBI file on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.
• FBI file on the Brown Berets (Los Boinas Cafes).
• FBI file on the fire bombing and shooting at Kent State University.
• FBI File on the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman Underground Organization.
Federal surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984
Date range: 1920-1984. 1,293 folders (88,021 images).
Compiles independent subcollections:
• FBI file : MIBURN (Mississippi Burning).
• FBI file on A. Philip Randolph.
• FBI file on Adam Clayton Powell.
• FBI file on the Atlanta Child Murders (ATKID).
• FBI file on the Black Panther Party, North Carolina.
• FBI file on the Committee for Public Justice.
• FBI file on Elijah Muhammed.
• FBI file on the Highlander Folk School.
• FBI file on the Ku Klux Klan murder of Viola Liuzzo.
• FBI file on Malcolm X. NB. This supersedes other versions of this file.
• FBI file on the Moorish Science Temple of America.
• FBI file on the murder of Lemuel Penn.
• FBI file on Muslim Mosque, Inc..
• FBI file on the NAACP [1923-1957].
• FBI file on the National Negro Congress.
• FBI file on the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).
• FBI file on Paul Robeson.
• FBI file on the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
• FBI file on Roy Wilkins.
• FBI file on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
• FBI file on Thurgood Marshall.
• FBI file on W. E. B. Du Bois.
• FBI investigation file on Communist infiltration of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
• FBI investigation file on Marcus Garvey.
Federal surveillance of the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño
Date range: 1941-1982. 46 folders (10.083 images).
Covers the Puerto Rican independence movement, including the PIP (founded in 1946). Includes files from US military intelligence agencies.
Grassroots civil rights & social activism : FBI files on Benjamin J. Davis, Jr.
Date range: 1941-1990. 276 folders (71,934 images).
Source: Personal collection of Gerald Horne.
A broad range of topics are covered in this file on the African American member of the Communist Party USA, Harlem activist, and two-term New York City Councilman.
The Greensboro Massacre, 1979 : shootout between the American Nazis and the Communist Workers Party
Date range: 1979-1981. 77 folders (13,239 images).
The Hindu conspiracy cases : activities of the Indian Independence Movement in the U.S., 1908-1933
Date range: 1908-1933. 36 folders (2,796 images).
Covers Indian nationalists abetted by Germany in World War I. Mostly Immigration and Naturalization Service files and Justice Department files, including scattered Bureau of Investigation documents.
James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover, and the integration of the University of Mississippi
Date range: 1961-1962. 69 folders (8,792 images).
Liberation movement in Africa and African America
Date range: 1970-1985. 65 folders (11,513 images).
Covers the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC) and All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), two African American groups supporting the liberation struggles in Africa and Pan-Africanism. Includes State Department surveillance files on African Americans traveling to Africa.
The Minutemen, 1963-1969 : evolution of the militia movement in America. Part I
Date range: 1960-1969 (-1981). 376 folders (47,854 images).
National security and the FBI surveillance of enemy aliens
Date range: 1940-1978. 188 folders (29,061 images).
Includes the World War II-era Custodial Detention Index and postwar Security List/Adminstrative List, naming espionage or subversive suspects. Includes World War II Japanese American files. Folders may contain coversheets for many pages that have been withheld.
The Republic of New Afrika
Date range: 1968-1980. 82 folders (14,163 images).
"We were prepared for the possibility of death" : Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
Date range: 1961. 22 folders (4,285 images).

Digital National Security Archive (ProQuest)

Many DNSA FOIA request-driven collections have some FBI content. The largest number of FBI-produced documents appear in these DNSA collections:

Terrorism and U.S. policy, 1968-2002
Date range: 1963-2002 (FBI content: 1976-2002). ~1,500 documents (FBI content: 41 documents).
Includes field reporting and analyses from the FBI and other US intelligence agencies. Also includes documents indicating the FBI knew of 9/11-like terror actions prior to 2001.
El Salvador : the making of U.S. policy, 1977-1984
Date range: 1977-1984 (FBI content: 1980-1984). ~5,600 documents (FBI content: 301 documents).
Previously unpublished congressional and executive-branch documents. FBI content mostly focuses on the Churchwomen murder investigation and other human rights crimes. Includes documents from FBI legal attachés in overseas embassies.
Chile and the United States [electronic resource] : U.S. policy toward democracy, dictatorship, and human rights, 1970-1990
Date range: 1969-2005 (FBI content: 1972-1987). 2,842 documents (FBI content: 69 documents).
FBI content focuses mostly on the Orlando Letelier assassination by Chilean agents aided by anti-Castro Cuban exiles and the Cubana Flight 455 bombing by anti-Castro Cuban exiles in 1976.
Targeting Iraq. part 1 [electronic resource] : planning, invasion, and occupation, 1997-2004
Date range: 1997-2004 (FBI content: 2003-2004). 2,141 documents (FBI content: 51 documents).
Includes FBI Counter-terrorism Division interviews with Saddam Hussein.
The Iran-Contra affair : the making of a scandal, 1983-1988
Date range: 1947-1990. (FBI content: 1982-1987). 4,635 documents (FBI content: 42 documents).
FBI content is mostly interview notes with bad actors.

FOIA Virtual Reading Room (US Department of State)

Starting with President Clinton's directive to declassify documents from many federal agencies on Chile's human rights record under Pinochet, the freely-available US Department of State FOIA Virtual Reading Room has included FBI documents in these collections:

Chile Declassification Project
Date range: 1968-1991. 23,000+ documents.
Argentina Declassification Project
Date range: 1975-1984. 4,677 documents.
El Salvador Declassification Project
Date range: 1979-1991. 7,800+ documents.
Guatemala Declassification Project
Date range: 1984-1995. 4,800+ documents.

FBI Files (Microform)

FBI manuals, 1927-1978
LIBRA : Microfilm 66
2 microfilm reels.
Scholarly Resources, 1983.
Reproduces four manuals of instruction, investigative procedures, and guidelines issued to FBI agents in 1927, 1936, 1941, and 1978.
FBI filing and records procedures
LIBRA : Microfilm 65
Date range: 1940s-1983. 1 microfilm reel.
Scholarly Resources, 1983.
Communist activity in the entertainment industry : FBI surveillance files on Hollywood, 1942-1958
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 3947
14 microfilm reels.
University Publications of America, 1991.
FBI file : MIBURN (Mississippi Burning) : the investigation of the murders of Michael Henry Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Earl Chaney, June 21, 1964
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4353
1 microfilm reel. Scholarly Resources, [1990?]
Duplicated online.
FBI file on A. Philip Randolph
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4340.
1 microfilm reel. Scholarly Resources, [1990?]
Duplicated online.
Covers A Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
FBI file on Elijah Muhammad
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4349
3 microfilm reels. Scholarly Resources, [1995?]
Duplicated online.
FBI File on Malcolm X
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4354
10 microfilm reels. Scholarly Resources, [1995?].
Duplicated online.
FBI file on Moorish Science Temple of America (Noble Drew Ali).
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4355
3 microfilm reels. Scholarly Resources, [1995?].
Duplicated online.
FBI file on Rev. Jesse Jackson
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4424
1 microfilm reel. Scholarly Resources, 1988.
Duplicated online.
FBI file on Roy Wilkins
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4344
1 microfilm reel. Scholarly Resources, [1990?]
Duplicated online.
FBI file on the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)
Van Pelt Microtext Center : Microflm 3941.
9 microfilm reels. Scholarly Resources, 1985.
FBI file on the Muslim Mosque, Inc.
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4345
3 microfilm reels. Scholarly Resources, [1995?].
Duplicated online.
FBI file on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 3945
4 microfilm reels. Scholarly Resources, [1990?].
Duplicated online.
FBI file on the Organization of African-American Unity (OAAU)
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4343
1 microfilm reel. Scholarly Resrouces, [1995?].
Duplicated online, as Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).
FBI file on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4352
2 microfilm reels. Scholarly Resources, 1990-1991.
Duplicated online.
FBI file on Thurgood Marshall
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4442
1 microfilm reel. Scholarly Resources, [1997-2000].
Duplicated online.
FBI file on W.E.B. Du Bois
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 4342
1 microfilm reel. Scholarly Resources, [1996?].
Duplicated online.
Federal surveillance of Afro-Americans, 1917-1925 : the First World War, the Red Scare, and the Garvey Movement
Van Pelt Microtext : Microfilm 3697
25 reels. University Publications of America, 1985.
Duplicated online.