The Text Message » The Challenge of Federal Bureau of Investigation Records: Abbreviations and Euphemisms On the surface the contents of the FBI files appear straightforward.
Actually they are not so simple to understand. A Department of Justice
senior attorney in the mid-1970s investigating illegal break-ins
reported that his staff had been on the case for more than a year and
“they still didn’t know how to read an FBI file.” Part of the problem
is the language used in the files. Like any agency, the FBI has its own
terminology and euphemisms that researchers will have to learn in order
to understand what they are reading.