FBI Index

The FBI Indexes were a series of personnel databases used by the FBI before the adoption by the Bureau of computerized databases. They were based on paper index cards. They were used to track US citizens and others believed by the Bureau to be dangerous to national security. The indexes generally had different 'classes' of danger the 'subject' was thought to represent.

Around the time of World War I and the First Red Scare, William J. Flynn of the Bureau of Investigation had J. Edgar Hoover set up a General Intelligence Division. Hoover used his experience working as a library clerk at the National Archives to set up the system using extensive cross-referencing.

The General Intelligence Division took files from the Bureau of Investigations (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation) and 'systematized' them via index cards; according to Walker and contrary to evidence, the cards covered 200,000 people. But by 1939, Hoover had more than 10 million people 'Indexed' in the FBI's domestic file system.

Although the GID was shut down in 1924 after objections from people such as William J. Donovan who called into question its constitutionality, Hoover and the FBI continued to expand the Index system for use by the agency, by Hoover, and by Hoover's political associates well into the 1970s. Today, the Index files covering untold numbers of Americans are still accessible by the FBI and its 29 field offices.

Titles to numerous Index catalogs include: The Reserve Index, for influential people to be "arrested and held" in case of a national emergency; The Custodial Index, which included 110,000 Japanese Americans that were held in internment prison camps during World War II; The Sexual Deviant Index; The Agitator Index; The Communist Index; and The Administrative Index, which compiled several other earlier indexes.

Even though a complete list of Index titles is currently unavailable, Hoover and the FBI used their Index system to catalog Native American and African American liberation movements during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as Vietnam War protesters and other college students. Whether or not this unconstitutional Index system was folded into the present day national security terrorist watchlist program is unclear.

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