There’s A Shocker

The Associated Press has obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI files for playwright Arthur Miller.

Miller’s first Broadway play, “The Man Who Had All the Luck,” came out in 1944, around the same time that the earliest FBI files are dated. His professional and personal life were closely watched, usually through newspaper clippings, but also from informants (whose names have been blacked out in the records) and public documents.

The FBI not only kept records of Miller’s political statements, from his opposition to nuclear weapons to his attacks against the anti-communist blacklist, but of his affiliation with such organizations as the American Labor Party (“a communist front”) and the “communist infiltrated”
American Civil Liberties Union.

The agency apparently spied on Arthur Miller until 1956. At least they stopped. In the case of Edward Said, they may have been watching him for 30 years, until his death.