Little known and scarcely mentioned outside the FBI, the Executives’ Conference materials span decades, from 1936 to the 1990s, and probably later. These papers provide a unique window into the history and culture of the FBI, and shed light on many interesting events.
According to historian Athan Theoharis, who made a career out of studying the FBI and its impact on society, the Executive Conference originally consisted of all the FBI assistant directors at the Washington DC Headquarters of the FBI[1]. The Conference met regularly to review and recommend changes in current programs and procedures.[2]
A description from the 1950s reported that the Conference met nearly every morning (or at minimum, every Monday and Wednesday[3]) at 10:30 with Associate Director Clyde Tolson as chairman, for sessions that often lasted 2 or 3 hours, discussing every major problem facing the FBI.[4] A typical meeting included issues of budget, strategy, administration and law.[5] It served as a sort of Board of Directors for the FBI in matters of policy and administration. Every executive present acts primarily as a member of the FBI strategy board, and only secondarily as a specialist from a particular division.[6]
The Conference minutes documented the discussions, the recommendations and the FBI director’s controlling decision. Theoharis writes: “The subjects ranged from the mundane – whether to invite certain local police officers to attend the FBI National Academy—to changes in FBI records policy, reassessment of important investigations and cases, and proposed changes in how “national security” investigations were to be conducted.”[7]
Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have been archived below. In addition, one researcher donated their past release, which may hold some repeated pages.
This case is ongoing with the FBI, and likely will have a price tag to get the remaining files. This page will be updated when that becomes available.
[1] Athan Theoharis, The FBI and the American Legion Contact Program, 1940-1966, Political Science Quarterly, Vol 100, No. 2 (Summer 1985), pp 271-286.
[2] Athan G. Theoharis, Chasing Spies: How the FBI failed in counterintelligence but promoted the Policies of McCarthyism in the Cold War years, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee (2002), pp 12-13
[3] Don Whitehead, The FBI Story, Pocket Books, 1966, p 142
[4] Louis Cassels, Meet the FBI Chief of Staff, Nation’s Business, December 1954, Vol 42, No. 12, pp. 28-29, 83-85
[5] Cassels
[6] Cassels
[7] Theoharis, Chasing Spies.
Document Archive
Here is a breakdown of the various sections released on this file, totaling 13,027 pages.
Note: Not all sections have been released, hence why the numbering skips certain sections. Each PDF file is searchable, within the limitations of the OCR process on older documents (meaning, it isn’t perfect), but offers a little help when searching through).
1511466-0 – Preprocessed Release.pdf 608K [FOIA Release Letter]
66-HQ-2554a.pdf 26M – This is an archived release sent to me from another FOIA requester. There are bookmarks stipulating some sections.
