Hoover's Official and Confidential Files to be Transferred To the National Archives from the FBI
Press Release · Monday, August 1, 2005

Washington, DC

Washington, DC. . . . Today, in a ceremony at the National Archives Building, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein signed an agreement with Assistant Director of the FBI William Hooton to transfer 210 cubic feet of historic FBI records to the National Archives. The highlight of this transfer is the entire collection of Director J. Edgar Hoover's Official and Confidential Files, covering the period 1924-1972.

All of the records being transferred today have been available to the public, in redacted form, in the FBI's FOIA reading room. These records will be made available to the public on August 1, 2005, in the research room at the National Archives in College Park, located at 8601 Adelphi Road. Any closed information will be re-reviewed by the National Archives, under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, in response to researcher requests.

The Official and Confidential Files were kept in Mr. Hoover's private office to prevent unauthorized access to them. Among the approximately 1,000 pages of material are internal memoranda informing Mr. Hoover of situations of interest to him or correspondence by Mr. Hoover with prominent journalists, politicians and businessmen. There are also a number of investigative case files on prominent individuals, containing information thought to be too sensitive to be maintained within the FBI's routine file holdings. In addition, there are several folders of assorted individual documents that had been removed from larger investigative case files. These documents contained sensitive information and were segregated from the regular files to control their accessibility. Following Mr. Hoover's death in 1972, these files were transferred to the office of Deputy Associate Director W. Mark Felt.

This new accession is the most recent in a series of transfers initiated by the FBI's Records Management Division, which has resulted, in just the last two years, in the transfer to the National Archives of historic FBI records totaling about eight million pages.

Among the other materials being transferred from the FBI to the National Archives are:

• Telephone logs from the Office of the Director, 1941-1972;
• Official personnel files of Directors J. Edgar Hoover and Clarence Kelly and of Clyde Tolson and Louis B. Nichols, Assistant to the Director of the FBI during Hoover's tenure;
• 7 boxes of material pertaining to Tokyo Rose;
• Approximately 500,000 pages of permanent files regarding civil unrest and bank robbery investigations.

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For more information, the press may contact the National Archives Public Affairs staff at 202-501-5526.

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