When the FBI Spied on My Father

I wrote a column yesterday recounting the experience of going up to the National Archives last week to pore over my father's OSS file. (My father being the historian and JFK aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr.) As an example of how weirdly coincidental the universe is, Newsmax published a piece this week looking at another file pertaining to Dad—his FBI file, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

It recounts the various times the FBI investigated him (mostly for absurd allegations of Communist sympathies), and details some of the antipathy between my father and the reprehensible J. Edgar Hoover. As a friend of mine who E-mailed me the piece last night noted: I wish I was old enough to be called a "jackass" by Hoover.