1939–1991 IRA files (Smith 2015)
This collection is the 2015 public release of FBI Headquarters file 61-7606, scanned as seven PDFs. The Vault title on those PDFs is “Irish Republican Army.” That is a folder label. Inside, the Bureau mark is the file number and the section.
61 is the old classification (treason / internal security). 7606 is the case number. When the paper grew too thick it was bound into sections 1–32. A serial is one document inside a section. Joshua Smith’s split into “Part 1 of 7” and so on is a scanning convenience, not a Bureau mark.
It is not one case and not one decade. Headquarters used this number as a tray for Irish Republican Army / Clan na Gael organizational paper from September 1939, then later clipped or see-ref’d other serials into the same jacket. The bound paper is almost empty from about 1948 to 1962. The number stayed alive; this release did not get a decade of serials for those years.
What is in each PDF
| Smith PDF | Bureau sections | Years that dominate |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1 | 1–5 | Sep 1939 – Dec 1942 |
| Part 2 | 6–12 | 1943 (some 1942 leftovers) |
| Part 3 | 13–19 | 1943–44 reports; 1946–47 close-out |
| Part 4 | 20–22 | 1949 trickle, then 1963–64 FARA restart |
| Part 5 | 23–24 | 1964–65; 1969 civil-rights overlay; 1972–73 |
| Part 6 | 25–29 | 1973–76 (Fort Worth Five, INA, Official IRA paper) |
| Part 7 | 30–32 + extras | June–July 1976, then other files bound in |
How to read the stamps
CHANGED TO slips move a serial into another main file (often a 100- or 105- number). Pencil 97-, 185-, 174-, or 9- on a 61-page is a see-reference, not a new 61-7606 case. Field copies you will keep seeing include New York 100-7828, Philadelphia 65-370, Chicago 100-4633, San Francisco 65-99.
Do not merge this set with the FBI Vault “IRA” PDFs on this site, or with the 1982 New York arms case, or with the Lavey Noraid files. Those are different jackets that only appear here when someone copied a page across.
On this site
Search hits the OCR transcript and opens the 200 dpi page image. The transcript also sits under every image in the viewer, so there is no separate OCR mode. Some pages are withheld or are deleted-page sheets; the transcript there will be thin or empty.
Historical FBI file released via FOIA / Internet Archive. Not the IU Indianapolis Irish People collection.