"The FBI remained on the Seeger beat"
December 26, 2015 3:13 PM   Subscribe

Folk musician Pete Seeger was under investigation by the FBI for decades from his time as a soldier during World War II until the 1970s. David Corn of Mother Jones magazine got over 1700 pages of surveillance reports, which have been released online. Seeger first came to the attention of the FBI because he wrote a letter protesting calls to strip all Japanese-Americans of citizenship and deport them. [via RÚV]
posted by Kattullus (35 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's amusing to reflect that the people who like to do this kind of stuff are the same people who object to Big Government. One wonders what the cost to the taxpayer was for decades of this kind of silliness, to protect us all from the harm that would otherwise have been done by Pete Seeger.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 3:31 PM on December 26, 2015 [40 favorites]


It's really outrageous how much effort used to go into building disloyalty dossiers. Fortunately for the taxpayer, one could probably do this with a couple of keystrokes today.
posted by indubitable at 3:40 PM on December 26, 2015 [8 favorites]


Admittedly it's pretty suspicious when you're seen carrying one of these.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:48 PM on December 26, 2015 [25 favorites]


It's really outrageous how much effort used to go into building disloyalty dossiers. Fortunately for the taxpayer, one could probably do this with a couple of keystrokes today.

Unfortunately for the taxpayer, those keystrokes are processed through enormous and expensive data centers, which each agency has to have because of course they can't share.

It was a waste of money and a violation of privacy then, and the new electronic version is still a waste of money and an invasion of privacy.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:49 PM on December 26, 2015 [36 favorites]


on the bright side maybe spending money and manpower keeping tabs on Pete Seeger took away a very small fraction of the resources the FBI would have preferred to devote to murdering Black Panther Party members.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:07 PM on December 26, 2015 [46 favorites]


Even though I grew up during the last decades of the Cold War, it's still kinda quaint to see how much of a tizzy the FBI got in over even the hint of communism. Like the fact that one audience member at one Seeger concert told the Feds a song of his was really similar to something a Russian once wrote was enough to be logged and recorded. You didn't even need to be a self-declared Marxist-Leninist. Even the tiniest smidge of communism in you was enough - a homeopathic communist, if you will.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:27 PM on December 26, 2015 [25 favorites]


There is no bigger threat to the US government than a geezer in a sweater. Sadly, four decades later, this performance is as relevant as ever.
posted by grounded at 4:31 PM on December 26, 2015 [6 favorites]


Rumor had it he was developing a machine that could surround hate and force it to surrender. The implications for our entire way of life would have been enormous. No expenditure of money, time, or materiel devoted to countering this threat could be considered excessive.
posted by uosuaq at 4:42 PM on December 26, 2015 [25 favorites]


Imagine if he'd been carrying a machine that killed fascists!
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:45 PM on December 26, 2015 [29 favorites]


This reminds me of the FBI surveillance of Phil Ochs. It wasn't all that competent, either - they spelt his name "Oakes" in the file and continued to report on his activity after he'd died.
posted by terretu at 4:46 PM on December 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


And that same ruthless efficiency is keeping us safe from terrorists even today!
posted by briank at 4:52 PM on December 26, 2015 [18 favorites]


I wonder what the 90 pages they withheld have to say about the FBI.
posted by ridgerunner at 5:01 PM on December 26, 2015 [16 favorites]


It's probably the field notes from the agents they assigned to stake out Seeger's apartment and monitor the listening devices...

"May 8: More banjo music. Clementine alone has fifteen more verses than our previous intelligence estimates. McDunnell is beginning to crack. He puts up a brave front but in his eyes I can see he no longer feels sure the banjo music will ever stop. God help me, I think he may be right."
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:14 PM on December 26, 2015 [70 favorites]


It's amusing to reflect that the people who like to do this kind of stuff are the same people who object to Big Government.

It isn't, and has never been, about the size of government, or the amount of taxes. It is, and has always been (at least since the inception of the national income tax), about priorities. The things we think it's important to fund (defense, law enforcement, national security) vs. the things we evidently think aren't so important (education, poverty relief, health care).

Even though I grew up during the last decades of the Cold War, it's still kinda quaint to see how much of a tizzy the FBI got in over even the hint of communism.

I wish I could see it as quaint, but it isn't any different today.
posted by JHarris at 5:19 PM on December 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


"The man you trusted wasn't 'Wavy Gravy' at all! And all this time, I've been smoking harmless tobacco!"
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:32 PM on December 26, 2015 [12 favorites]


Career plan:
1. Develop a list of your favorite artists, musical genres
2. Come up with a schema that vague links them all together
3. Pick the top three nefarious activities that your artists are likely interested in


Don't even have to come up with a scheme/schema. Do you really think the agency that kept files on Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs isn't already following around Janelle Monáe?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:32 PM on December 26, 2015 [14 favorites]


Now, Tom Lehrer was being arch when he wrote these words, but let's take a second and sing, hum or mumble - "We are the folk song army. Guitars are the weapons we bring to the fight against poverty, war and injustice. Ready! Aim! Sing!" (Nothing more formidable than a fierce folksinger, eh FBI?)
posted by puddledork at 6:09 PM on December 26, 2015 [8 favorites]


The Sunday after Pete Seeger died, the church I was serving at the time all sang "If I Had A Hammer" at the end of worship. I loved that guy.
posted by 4ster at 6:53 PM on December 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


Rumor has it Pete was handing out free unabridged copies of 'The Phenomenology of Mind' at his concerts and street corner juke joints.
posted by clavdivs at 6:56 PM on December 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


A couple of thoughts:

Whether or not the original letter should have been forwarded, some investigation, during wartime, was not that terrible; the problem is that it never stopped. No matter how many “nothing to see here” reports came back, the occasional report with vague suspicions could keep the whole thing going essentially forever.

We were fighting the Nazis and the Japanese, but the FBI and their informants were obsessed with communists; the rationale for the investigation had nothing to do with its aims.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 7:42 PM on December 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


No. Hoover, the head of the FBI, opposed the mass internment of Japanese citizens. I can't imagine that he considered deportations reasonable. I'm not saying that the FBI official policies were in line with Hoover's personal opinions but opposing an unjust and useless policy is not grounds for investigation if the FBI's job was protecting national security. If say, the FBI is an a political police force, then an investigation would be in line with it's mission.
posted by rdr at 8:03 PM on December 26, 2015


makes me wonder if some of the activists who came out of Occupy might still be on watchlists even if so many of the politicians running in the primaries have adopted that movement's rhetoric pretty much verbatim

it's almost like we live in some kind of weird SF dystopia or something
posted by runt at 9:26 PM on December 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


I was surprised, watching the Smothers Brothers' videotape that 1) the Big Muddy song was given so much historical context by those song-snatches and that 2) it was (ostensibly) about a WWII incident. A training incident. But--key point--involving the Greatest Generation. No wonder the performance sunk the show. One did not trash the performance of the Armed Forces twenty years or so after the War ended. The sin of trashing the Vietnam War on network television was the reason I remembered as being the Violation of Network Policy, but I guess it was more complicated.

Pete Seeger was not an especially complicated guy. Smart, yes. Good, yes, really good. And a hell of a performer, too. No one else brought the entire audience into his live act like he did.
posted by kozad at 9:30 PM on December 26, 2015 [1 favorite]




...so many of the politicians running in the primaries have adopted that movement's rhetoric pretty much verbatim

Wait, who is that?

I can see Bernie voicing some policies that might address some of their demands, but certainly I have no idea what you're talking about when you say that primarie politicians are adoping their rhetoric pretty much verbatim.

But that would be awesome!
posted by el io at 1:19 AM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


"May 8: More banjo music. Clementine alone has fifteen more verses than our previous intelligence estimates. McDunnell is beginning to crack. He puts up a brave front but in his eyes I can see he no longer feels sure the banjo music will ever stop. God help me, I think he may be right."

May 10 : "We've been captured. Seeger is forcing us to sing along."
posted by crazylegs at 5:57 AM on December 27, 2015 [8 favorites]


J. Edgar Hoover certainly has a lot to answer for. On a more positive note, the current FBI Director James Comey apparently keeps a copy of the Martin Luther King wiretap request on his desk (last paragraph).
posted by iffthen at 7:09 AM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


...so many of the politicians running in the primaries have adopted that movement's rhetoric pretty much verbatim

Occupy shined a cultural spotlight on income inequality and the effects of globalization on jobs, financial greed and malpractice, and the student loan issue

Dems address most of those at face value during the debates. Glass Steagall invoked like a million times. Trump & Cruz are channeling anger about job security and greed into white identity politics. they start by talking about taxing (their fellow) billionaires and coming down hard on establishment types in the pocket of big business even if their policies don't reflect these lines whatsoever. then they channel that into white identity politics. moderate Republicans are losing out because social issues are taking a back burner to economic issues for their party (ie immigration, tax breaks, being angry at the minority in your office because of affirmative action instead of realizing that the competition is fierce because the system is structured to favor executives and shareholders in the short term, etc)

sorry for the derail, carry on, carry on
posted by runt at 9:37 AM on December 27, 2015


May 8: More banjo music. Clementine alone has fifteen more verses than our previous intelligence estimates. McDunnell is beginning to crack. He puts up a brave front but in his eyes I can see he no longer feels sure the banjo music will ever stop. God help me, I think he may be right."

May 10 : "We've been captured. Seeger is forcing us to sing along


May 13 : After three consecutive days of nonstop singalongs, we were relieved to discover that this hammer he kept talking about was in fact metaphorical. We have been released on the condition we will look into this "Dylan" and his plans to "go electric."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:41 AM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


>May 10 : "We've been captured. Seeger is forcing us to sing along

Biting down on poison tooth. Tell my wife I love her.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:12 AM on December 27, 2015


"And all this time, I've been smoking harmless tobacco!"
posted by entropicamericana at 11:12 AM on December 27, 2015


Thanks for that link, Man of Twists and Turns. I know there's an FBI file of some kind on me because my grandparents worked closely with the FBI to monitor my mom's entry to the US to make sure she wouldn't try to sneak me back to Germany. If they don't ever close those files, I'm sure they've got lots of crap on me by now...
posted by saulgoodman at 12:00 PM on December 27, 2015


Okay, wait. Unless you have been surrounded by a banjo you should keep your voice low and wait for the refrain. Now, let's quit whining and get down there and clean up that river.
posted by mule98J at 2:25 PM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am your plumber- no, I never went away
I still bug your bedroom and pick up everything you say
It can be a boring job to monitor all day your excess talk

I hear when you're drinking, and cheating on your lonely wife
I play tape recordings of you to my friends at night

We've got our girl in bed with you
You're on candid camera, we just un-elected you!

I am the owl
I seek out the foul
Wipe 'em away
Keep America free
For clean living folks like me!
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:48 PM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Squares. That's much of what drove the FBI's nuttiness for years on end. Squares freaked out by subcultures, by newness, by new voices. Literally just uptight dorks unable to parse sarcasm, irony or empathy.

There's a weird thing that happened though; in the early seventies, after Ramparts was publishing lists of CIA sponsored lit mags, after the FBI was outed for spying on everyone on the left, nobody wanted to work for the feds anymore. They were having a crisis of morale and recruiting in the FBI. My parents went to college with a couple of who joined the FBI in the early seventies with newly minted THEATER BAs.

Imagine that, JE Hoover was such a stickler about who he'd hire that for much of his tenure, he'd meet every newly graduated G-Man and shake their hand. But anybody with sweaty palms or a pear-shaped head was immediately booted on Hoover's say-so. Not making that up. How the mighty had fallen though--THEATER MAJORS.

But it turns out the culture was stronger than the people it absorbed. They became feds, and the feds didn't become like them.
posted by turntraitor at 7:30 AM on December 28, 2015 [6 favorites]


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