FBI files on writers with dangerous ideas, including Hannah Arendt,
Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Susan Sontag, and James Baldwin.
Writers are dangerous. They have ideas. The proclivity of writers
for ideas drove the FBI to investigate many of them-to watch them,
follow them, start files on them. Writers under Surveillance
gathers some of these files, giving readers a surveillance-state
perspective on writers including Hannah Arendt, Allen Ginsberg,
Ernest Hemingway, Susan Sontag, and Hunter S. Thompson. Obtained
with Freedom of Information Act requests by MuckRock, a nonprofit
dedicated to freeing American history from the locked filing
cabinets of government agencies, the files on these authors are
surprisingly wide ranging; the investigations were as broad and
varied as the authors' own works. James Baldwin, for example, was
so openly antagonistic to the state's security apparatus that
investigators followed his every move. Ray Bradbury, on the other
hand, was likely unaware that the Bureau had any interest in his
work. (Bradbury was a target because an informant warned that
science fiction was a Soviet plot to weaken American resolve.)
Ernest Hemingway, true to form, drunkenly called the FBI Nazis and
sissies. The files have been edited for length and clarity, but
beyond that everything in the book is pulled directly from
investigatory files. Some investigations lasted for years, others
just a few days. Some are thrilling narratives. Others never really
go anywhere. Some are funny, others quite harrowing. Despite the
federal government's periodic admission of past wrongdoing,
investigations like these will probably continue to happen. Like
all that seems best forgotten, the Bureau's investigation of
writers should be remembered. We owe it to ourselves. Writers
Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, Tom
Clancy, W. E. B. Du Bois, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous
Huxley, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Susan Sontag, Terry
Southern, Hunter S. Thompson, Gore Vidal
General
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