CONDESCENDING SUPERFILLIOUSAND CONNIVING
March 25, 2013 | Ranald | Comments (0)
FBI Records: the Vault is one of the free reference websites on the 2012 list "Best free reference websites" compiled by a RUSA committee and published in the fall 2012 issue of Reference & User Services Quarterly .
The site serves, according to the notes on its entry in the list, "as an online 'vault' to thousands of declassified FBI documents and spans many decades. Visitors can search or browse the collection to find digital copies of scanned FBI files including memos, reports and other materials."
There are categories for browsing, e.g. "gangster era," "unexplained phenomenon [sic]," "violent crime"; and, for browsers with quieter tastes, "administrative policy procedures" and "bureau personnel."
Focused researchers can use the site search window and unearth not only reports on e.g. Brecht ("the author of an 'educational play'", a lengthy summary of which follows, interesting to those bored with the apolitical summaries offered by the Coles Notes of the academic world) but also reports on others in which his name figures (Joseph Losey was "anxious" to direct a play by Brecht).
But no matter how serious a visitor one is it is impossible to steer completely clear of "titillating tidbits" such as the Washington Post had been saying, an FBI report drily states, were contained in the files on Rock Hudson's divorced wife's whereabouts.
"Mr. Hudson made a telephone call in the presence of the SAs [?], FBI, and confirmed that his divorced wife is reported to be in Europe".
Having steered into the middle of such tidbits, one can find oneself unwilling to steer clear of them too quickly.
The FBI became briefly involved when the law firm representing Robin Gibb's wife in a divorce received the alarming telegram below. But the "investigation did not go beyond the initial stages as the law firm did not wish to pursue the matter." (FBI Records) The titillation is brief and, one's willpower not too enervated by it, one is able to return to soberer research.