Puerto Rico Releases FBI Files on Leader

Puerto Rico released long-secret FBI files on the U.S. territory’s first elected governor Wednesday, giving a glimpse of Washington’s uneasiness as it granted the island more autonomy.

The documents on Luis Munoz Marin were among more than 12,000 FBI files on Puerto Ricans, including independence activists, given to the island’s Senate this week. More will be released this month.

The FBI denied investigating Puerto Rican independence activists until this year, when Director Louis J. Freeh confirmed the files existed and released them to Congress at the request of Puerto Rico-born Rep. Jose E. Serrano, a New York Democrat. Serrano’s office began transferring the files to Puerto Rico last week.

The documents provide an intimate look at U.S. dealings with the territory it wrested from Spain in the 1898 Spanish-American War.

“This is a gold mine for historians,” said Puerto Rican Sen. Kenneth McClintock. “This could answer a lot of questions and reveal a lot of mysteries about our past.”

Those released Wednesday focus on Munoz, a onetime independence supporter revered here for his role in developing Puerto Rico’s economy and fashioning its semiautonomous status as a U.S. commonwealth in 1952.

Munoz was elected governor in 1948 and served until 1965. He died in 1980.

An informant erroneously warned in 1940 that Munoz, then a rising star in the island’s Senate, was “the ranking official of the Communist Party in the West Indies and the Caribbean Sea area.”

The warning touched off an investigation because Munoz was about to visit the White House at the invitation of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The FBI apparently concluded Munoz posed no threat, but it watched him closely for the next three decades.

Special reports examined his friendship with Rexford G. Tugwell, Puerto Rico’s last U.S. administrator and a supporter of self-government.

Later entries record dozens of alleged plots against Munoz by independence groups.