Want to know what’s in your FBI file?

By Kathleen Johnston Jarboe

Wonder what that background check said? 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.

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 two to three times removed from the target of an investigation.

In 2000, 8,500 national security letter requests were made. By 2003, that number grew to 39,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Civil-liberty supporters worry that investigations by the FBI and other 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 Maryland’s 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.

After requesting information from local and federal agencies in 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union 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 successfully sued for release of that document.

Thomas M. Susman, head of government affairs for the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C., says he requested his FBI file in the early 1980s. 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 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 that he hadn’t attended any conference work sessions.

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 says. “The problem is, if an investigation is ongoing, the FBI is allowed to exclude the records from their search so they don’t ‘tip off’ the requestor that they are under investigation.” {EXA}

Kathleen Johnston Jarboe is a freelance writer based in Maryland.