It’s really a shame that in our current Patriot Act Era, it’s getting harder and harder to get copies of one’s FBI surveillance files. When we still had an effective Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), one could apply for one’s files and after a few months of letters and phone calls, get a version heavily censored with what looked like black magic marker. Still, they could make for amusing reading even with those annoying cross-outs.

I requested mine in 1981.

After the usual bureaucratic hassles (Congressional Representative Harold Washington was helpful in pressuring the FBI),I finally received my copy. Much of it was missing and the rest heavily blacked out, but they did manage to make themselves look like Keystone Kops anyway. They actually had me married to Betsy Bell and listed Barbara Myers as my sister.

When we first rented the Lincoln Ave house for a commune, Betsy, Barbara and I told the landlady that tale so we would look “respectable”. I don’t think she believed us, but we sure fooled the Feds.

Later they noted that I had received a divorce from my real first marriage. No one commented on the fact that Betsy was not the name on the divorce papers. Doh!

When I moved to Chicago in 1975, the FBI totally lost track of my Chicago address even though I must have given it out to dozens of people. They wasted an incredible amount of effort trying to figure out where I was. Finally they staked out the Northside apartment where we were living and interviewed the terrified landlord. After establishing the fact that I actually lived there, they lost interest and appeared to close the investigation. Your tax dollars at work......