I took the day off from work Wednesday, and while exploring the internet looking for entertaining sites, I stumbled upon the FBI's Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room. My fading memory tells me another blogger wrote about this site at some point in the past, but I just can't remember who to credit with the idea. My original plan was to blog about all of the interesting announcements I saw on Randy Seaver's Gena-Musings blog that was coming out of the big genealogy conference in Kansas City, but then I found the FBI's site. Four hours later, the day was gone and didn't even have enough time to write this post before all of the evening family activities started.
I think because of my line of work I'm just an information freak, so when I started reading the FBI case files I just couldn't stop. I was really surprised at the amount of information in this electronic reading room. Browsing the site is great fun and these 6 categories are the best place to start:
Espionage, Famous Persons, Ganster Era, Historical Interest, Unusual Phenomena, Violent Crime
Some of the files have been redacted (blacked out), and it does get a little annoying, but overall doesn't change the focus of the documents. Probably the most fascinating file I read was on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. This was a controversial case, but the most interesting aspect to me is to read the language of the cold war, and the fear the USSR inspired during the 1950s. It sounds ridicules today, but at the time this fear was very real. Out of the bunch I looked at on Wednesday, this one was my favorite.
Unlike genealogy sites, you can't do an indexed search of these documents. While there's probably not much of genealogical value here, it sure is interesting historical reading from primary sources.
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