FBI Report on Elijah Muhammad

Audience

The audience for an FBI report would, of course, have been primarily the FBI itself. The purpose of such a report was to assemble investigative information about people and organizations that the FBI deemed suspicious. Such a report would be available to anyone within the organization or the government who needed information about its subject and had authorization to view the file. After the Freedom of Information Act was signed into law on September 6, 1966, and went into effect the next year, numerous citizens and organizations began filing requests for government documents never previously released to the public. Many such documents have remained classified because they have a bearing on national security. And many of the documents that are released are “redacted,” meaning that portions of the document are blacked out, usually to avoid revealing information that has national security implications or to protect the identities of FBI agents and informants, who might be subject to reprisals. Nevertheless, the Freedom of Information Act has opened a window into governmental activities and helped to create greater transparency in government operations. While the FBI report on Elijah Muhammad does not contain any startling revelations—virtually all of the information contained in it could have been found in other sources, including NOI publications—the mere fact of its existence sheds as much light on the FBI’s concerns as it does on the NOI.