Payne 1.26.23

To Whom It May Concern:

You are receiving this correspondence as a request under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. subsection 552. I am requesting the following:

Copies of all records, documents, and communications responsive to Mr. Crillon C. Payne, II, aka Crillon Payne, aka Cril Payne (May 28, 1943 – June 18, 2006). Mr. Payne worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation between the years of 1968 and 1976 as an undercover agent investigating domestic terrorist groups in the antiwar movement. He wrote a memoir about his experiences of his time at the Bureau which was published by Newsweek Books in 1979 as "Deep Cover: An FBI Agent Infiltrates the Radical Underground". In the book, Mr. Payne states that he was given informant designation "LA 7852-S (Extremist)" as part of a Domestic Intelligence Division operation known as the Special Informant Development Program (SPECTAR). According to Mr. Payne, this operation was created to target terrorist group the Weather Underground. As such, I am requesting all records related to Mr. Payne under all previously stated permutations of his name, LA 7852-S (Extremist), and LA 7852-S.

There is no expectation of a violation of Mr. Payne's privacy, as he passed away on June 18, 2006. Privacy rights are not extended to deceased persons. I have attached a reproduction of Mr. Payne's obituary in the Austin American-Statesman. For expediency's sake, I am including a link here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/statesman/name/crillon-payne-obituary?id=26854114

Additionally, Mr. Payne publicly revealed his work with the the Bureau in his memoir, removing any further concerns over privacy. The fact that he published a memoir about his undercover work would also make him a figure of public interest; "Deep Cover" received media attention in national newspapers and on radio stations at the time of its publication.

I am asking you waive any fees associated with this request. I am a member of the news media, with bylines including Covert Action Magazine, Janata Weekly, and Philly Voice. Please take note of the Office of Management and Budget guidelines published March 27, 1987 (52 FR 10012) that include electronic publications and other nontraditional publishers as representatives of the news media.

This request is not being made for commercial purposes. All documents will be provided to the general public without charge.

In the event that there are fees, I am willing to pay up to $100. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

I look forward to your response within 20 working days, as the statute requires. If access to the records I am requesting will take longer, please contact me with information about when I might expect copies or the ability to inspect the requested records.

If you deny any or all of this request, please cite each specific exemption you feel justifies the refusal to release the information and notify me of the appeal procedures available to me under the law.

Sincerely,

Robert Skvarla, Jr.

Director, Office of Information Policy
U.S. Department of Justice
441 G Street, NW, 6th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20530

March 8, 2023

Greetings:

BACKGROUND

On January 31, 2023, I submitted Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts (FOIPA) request number 158-1024-000 via Muckrock. In this request, I asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for records on Crillon C. Payne, II, aka Cril Payne, a former FBI agent and author.

On February 6, 2023, I received two response letters from the FBI; one acknowledging receipt of the request and stating records were being reviewed for processing, and another denying my request for a fee waiver due to insufficient cause for public interest. I am appealing the second decision and requesting a reconsideration on the denial of the fee waiver.

CONTEXT

As I noted in my original request, Mr. Payne is a former FBI agent who made extraordinary claims in a 1979 memoir, “Deep Cover: An FBI Agent Infiltrates the Radical Underground”. In his book, Mr. Payne states that he went undercover into radical antiwar groups in the early 1970s, in pursuit of a domestic terrorist group, the Weather Underground. This alone should qualify Mr. Payne and his work for the bureau as a subject of public interest, given the level of media attention the Weather Underground has generated both contemporaneously and in the present. At the time of its release, Mr. Payne’s book was covered by no less than the New York Times; and in the present, it is referenced in recent histories about the Weather Underground, such as Arthur Eckstein’s 2016 non-fiction book “Bad Moon Rising: How the Weather Underground Beat the FBI and Lost the Revolution” (please see: end note 36, for chapter 6, on page 315), and post-mortem histories on the Nixon administration’s domestic surveillance policies, as in Daniel Chard’s 2021 non-fiction book “Nixon’s War at Home: The FBI, Leftist Guerillas, and the Origins of Counterterrorism” (please see: end note 76, for chapter 8, on page 321).

The problem, however, is that these references can rely only on Mr. Payne’s testimony, not on any additional documentary evidence. For example, in Daniel Chard’s “Nixon’s War at Home”, in the end note immediately following his reference to Mr. Payne’s account of his time infiltrating a Weather Underground-adjacent group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), Chard states: “The VVAW FBI files are currently available electronically … Among other things, more information is needed on the relationship between the FBI’s investigation and operations carried out by local police, [the Committee to Re-elect the President], and other federal agencies.” Mr. Chard is a respected historian who teaches and writes about American social movements at Western Washington University.

This highlights a significant problem in the public’s understanding of radical groups: the VVAW FBI files, while useful, are incomplete, as they do not include any references to Mr. Payne. And in the absence of the bureau’s records on Mr. Payne, claims made in his book cannot be substantiated. As of 2023, the VVAW FBI files are scattered across the Internet, with many now only accessible using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, a web portal that archives old webpages, further complicating attempts authenticate claims made by the various parties involved; or they exist in bits and pieces, collected in different physical archives throughout the United States.

This is important because My. Payne, in his book, devotes a substantial amount of space to detailing one of his undercover operations, a fake antiwar group known as the November Committee, which he claims was made up of FBI agents posing as antiwar activists (please see: chapter 3 of “Deep Cover”). He describes using this front group to infiltrate the VVAW during its “Operation Last Patrol,” a cross-country caravan of VVAW members from Southern California to Miami in the summer of 1972 (please see: chapters 4 and 5).

Additionally, Mr. Payne claims in his book that the FBI created a special program within its Domestic Intelligence Division, called the Special Informant Development Program (SPECTAR), so that it could infiltrate the Weather Underground. The only known references to SPECTAR come from Mr. Payne. Corroborating or refuting the existence of SPECTAR would help greatly in understanding how the government conducted surveillance operations targeting Americans citizens during the 1970s.

Thus, any records the bureau might have on Mr. Payne would contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government, both with regard to its investigations of the Weather Underground—for which two bureau agents, W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller, were convicted of conspiracy, although both were later pardoned—and the VVAW. That the Weather Underground in particular continues to recur as a subject of academic and public interest, and Mr. Payne’s book routinely appears in some form or fashion in those projects, indicates that contrary to the bureau’s claim, there is a compelling public interest in the release of Mr. Payne’s records. The fee waiver would help to further this interest, as any records received pertaining to Mr. Payne would be made available to the public.

Thank you for your prompt response to this appeal. I appreciate the work that the FBI's Information Management Division does in processing FOIPA requests and disseminating eligible material. As provided in 5 U.S.C. subsection 552(a)(6)(A)(ii), I anticipate that you will produce responsive documents within twenty (20) working days of receipt of this appeal.

Sincerely,

Robert Skvarla, Jr.