Radio Free Europe ran a special information bureau in Rome in order to keep up to date with political and diplomatic developments in the Vatican and in Italy. The bureau collected news agency reports and articles mainly from the Italian press,as well as reports by Western news agencies. Some of the official communiqués of the Vatican can also be found among the documents. The Information Items are microfilmed transcripts and summaries of interviews and reports. The reports, which were sent to the Munich headquarters from RFE’s ten Western European field bureaus, are based on interviews conducted with immigrants and defectors in Western refugee camps and immigration offices or with Western travelers returning from trips behind the Iron Curtain, and also on RFE correspondence with anonymous sources from the socialist countries.