In March 2000, during a subcommittee hearing of the House Appropriations Committee, U.S. Representative José E. Serrano (D-NY) asked the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Louis J. Freeh, about the existence of FBI secret files on Puerto Rican organizations and individuals. During the previous decade or so, there had been much debate in Puerto Rican political and academic circles about the possible existence of those files, which were presumed to be massive. Surprising many observers, the FBI director not only admitted to the existence of such files but also offered to appoint a task force to identify the relevant documentation and make it available to Congressman Serrano.
The day after the hearing, Congressman Serrano followed up with a letter to FBI director Freeh requesting “a complete and detailed answer to the questions that I posed to you during the hearing before the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary Appropriation Subcommittee on March 16, 2000”. The letter asked about any involvement by the FBI in operations conducted by the Police of Puerto Rico to discredit and persecute the independence movement and posed the following questions:
- Did the FBI commit, aid or abet, or was the FBI in any way involved in any violence or violent acts committed with the intention to have them pass as acts committed by supporters of independence for Puerto Rico, when in fact those acts were being committed by the government of Puerto Rico, the FBI, or by any other agency of the United States government, to discredit the independence movement in Puerto Rico?
- With what agencies within the government of Puerto Rico the FBI collaborated in any way, with what purpose and to achieve what?
- Did the FBI engage in violent acts against supporters of the independence movement?
- Was the FBI in any way involved in, or aid or abet violent acts committed against Mr. Santiago Mari-Pesquera, Mr. Muñiz Varela, or any others?
- Did the FBI, itself or with any other government agency, including federal prison officials, torture or otherwise do any mental or physical violence to Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos at any time during Dr. Campos’ imprisonment, because of his beliefs or to get information from him?
That same day, the FBI director replied that, “After the hearing yesterday and in response to your concerns, I instructed that a task force be formed within the FBI to locate, process and release any relevant records we may have about the issue you raised. The process of doing that began today”. At the time, the FBI estimated that between 1.6 and 1.8 million pages existed and would be evaluated for possible release.
The first few thousand documents reached Congressman Serrano’s office on May 17, 2000. That summer, the office of Congressman Serrano and the Center for Puerto Rican Studies reached an agreement by which a full set of the documents would be forwarded to the Center (Hunter College, CUNY) where they would be catalogued and prepared for public dissemination. All the documents received up to the moment by the office of Congressman Serrano were transferred to the Centro on September 25, 2000. At the Centro a working space was set up and since then, a team of researchers, interns, and volunteers has worked on the documents producing indexes and preparing them for electronic publishing on the Internet.
By the end of August 2004, the release process had produced close to 134,000 pages of formerly secret FBI documents. At that moment, the collection contained files on two individuals (Pedro Albizu Campos and Luis Muñoz Marín), one program (COINTELPRO-GSIPR), and seventeen Puerto Rican organizations.
Text by: Ramón Bosque-Pérez
Center for Puerto Rican Studies
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At the moment there are no recent releases on this area.
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