by thekiduknow » Sat Mar 04, 2023 1:59 pm
Ed's rat trap articles are a great resource, definitely read through those to get a good sense of how to sort through available files. I've been wanting to write something up about this for a while, so here it goes!
Mary Ferrell will be your rosetta stone if you will for figuring out informants. Start with a report that has lots of information, for example a report on LCN from October of 1967:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... elPageId=1
The informants are redacted in this file, but go to "RIF form" and you will see that it lists the Record Number and File Number. You can search using the either one(it looks like you can only click on the file number, but you can also copy and paste the record number and search it using the RIF search).
It takes to a page where it gives a description of the file, often showing multiple entries of the same one. If you click on it, different "Document IDs" show up. I like to download the largest one they have, and then download the others and combine them into one PDF. While the main report will have informant codes and other info redacted, the other documents will have pages without the redactions. One of them will have all the informants unredacted. Any informants with a * are wiretaps.
Then you can go through the report, and find information you find interesting. Since I'm very interested in the Bonanno Family, and the Bonanno war in particular, I would go to that section and start taking notes, inserting the informant code where the NY symbol was originally. For example, NY T-7 in that report is NY 4336-C-TE, and he appears to have a lot insight knowledge on the Bonanno war. So I'd insert his code where NY T-7 was originally, and from there I'd have a good understanding of who that informant was, what kind of information he gave.
After building that, you can search that informant code and keeping building a profile until you have all that's available. Through searching, I find a report that states he self identified as a Bonanno member. Snakes pointed out already that often at the end of reports, there will be descriptions of each informant. Some of these are vague, like "an individual with a criminals record who is in a position to furnish information concerning criminal activities in the New York are", which doesn't help at all. For this informant, I got lucky and he's described as "an individual who due to his employment and associates, has vast knowledge of labor and hoodlum activities in the New York City area".
Then comes the hard part, using FOIA releases that we get. The National Archives released all those files available on Mary Ferrell because of Congress passed a law mandating that all files related to the JFK assassination must be released in full, so informants are unredacted.
The FBI protects informants even decades later, with some rare exceptions like Valachi who testified publicly, so depending on the person processing your request, they might redact everything an informant says, part of it, or just the informant code. If you're lucky, you may be able to match some the information you know the informant gave with other reports. For example, if I know that NY 4336 gave X information on August 23rd 1965, and in a report I get in a FOIA release, and there's a report from that date that has some of the same information, and maybe if I'm lucky more than what was put into the report available on Mary Ferrell.
In those larger reports, where they'll use the NY T-1 codes, sometimes FOIA releases will redact the informant code, but not the T symbol. So I can again use the base information I have to try and match it to one of the T codes, like the X information on 8/23/65. If that info is attributed to NY T-4, then I know that other information given by NY T-4 must be from the same source, and the profile can grow. If you're lucky and the informant descriptions aren't redacted, you can try using the descriptions to see if the informant was given more than one T code. So if I see the description of the informant as having "vast knowledge of labor and hoodlum activities", for NY T-6, I can assume that it's likely the same informant.
All this is to help narrow down and organize information given during this time, its still hard to definitely say who informants were but if you're lucky you can discover some, or at least have some educated guesses.
You can check out my post on Joe Bonanno's brother in law Frank LaBruzzo, who I believe was an informant, to see what I just wrote in action:
https://theblackhand.club/forum/viewtop ... =29&t=8161
Hopefully this was coherent enough!
Ed's rat trap articles are a great resource, definitely read through those to get a good sense of how to sort through available files. I've been wanting to write something up about this for a while, so here it goes!
Mary Ferrell will be your rosetta stone if you will for figuring out informants. Start with a report that has lots of information, for example a report on LCN from October of 1967:https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=113324#relPageId=1
The informants are redacted in this file, but go to "RIF form" and you will see that it lists the Record Number and File Number. You can search using the either one(it looks like you can only click on the file number, but you can also copy and paste the record number and search it using the RIF search).
It takes to a page where it gives a description of the file, often showing multiple entries of the same one. If you click on it, different "Document IDs" show up. I like to download the largest one they have, and then download the others and combine them into one PDF. While the main report will have informant codes and other info redacted, the other documents will have pages without the redactions. One of them will have all the informants unredacted. Any informants with a * are wiretaps.
Then you can go through the report, and find information you find interesting. Since I'm very interested in the Bonanno Family, and the Bonanno war in particular, I would go to that section and start taking notes, inserting the informant code where the NY symbol was originally. For example, NY T-7 in that report is NY 4336-C-TE, and he appears to have a lot insight knowledge on the Bonanno war. So I'd insert his code where NY T-7 was originally, and from there I'd have a good understanding of who that informant was, what kind of information he gave.
After building that, you can search that informant code and keeping building a profile until you have all that's available. Through searching, I find a report that states he self identified as a Bonanno member. Snakes pointed out already that often at the end of reports, there will be descriptions of each informant. Some of these are vague, like "an individual with a criminals record who is in a position to furnish information concerning criminal activities in the New York are", which doesn't help at all. For this informant, I got lucky and he's described as "an individual who due to his employment and associates, has vast knowledge of labor and hoodlum activities in the New York City area".
Then comes the hard part, using FOIA releases that we get. The National Archives released all those files available on Mary Ferrell because of Congress passed a law mandating that all files related to the JFK assassination must be released in full, so informants are unredacted.
The FBI protects informants even decades later, with some rare exceptions like Valachi who testified publicly, so depending on the person processing your request, they might redact everything an informant says, part of it, or just the informant code. If you're lucky, you may be able to match some the information you know the informant gave with other reports. For example, if I know that NY 4336 gave X information on August 23rd 1965, and in a report I get in a FOIA release, and there's a report from that date that has some of the same information, and maybe if I'm lucky more than what was put into the report available on Mary Ferrell.
In those larger reports, where they'll use the NY T-1 codes, sometimes FOIA releases will redact the informant code, but not the T symbol. So I can again use the base information I have to try and match it to one of the T codes, like the X information on 8/23/65. If that info is attributed to NY T-4, then I know that other information given by NY T-4 must be from the same source, and the profile can grow. If you're lucky and the informant descriptions aren't redacted, you can try using the descriptions to see if the informant was given more than one T code. So if I see the description of the informant as having "vast knowledge of labor and hoodlum activities", for NY T-6, I can assume that it's likely the same informant.
All this is to help narrow down and organize information given during this time, its still hard to definitely say who informants were but if you're lucky you can discover some, or at least have some educated guesses.
You can check out my post on Joe Bonanno's brother in law Frank LaBruzzo, who I believe was an informant, to see what I just wrote in action:
https://theblackhand.club/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=8161
Hopefully this was coherent enough!