File Shows FBI Watched Writer Terkel For Decades

DON BABWIN

CHICAGO (AP) — Long before the FBI identified him as a suspected communist and spent decades watching him and talking to confidential informants about him, late Chicago author Studs Terkel came to the agency for a job.

That's just one of the revelations — and maybe the most surprising one — contained in a thick FBI file that the NYCity News Service posted on its Web site over the weekend after obtaining it under a Freedom of Information Act request.

The release of the file marks the most extensive look into Terkel's work and activities as viewed by federal authorities, particularly by the FBI when it was headed by J. Edgar Hoover.

That the FBI kept such a file is hardly a surprise. Terkel was an avowed liberal who supported the civil rights movement and opposed the Vietman War. His books and radio interviews stand as a tribute to working people and the downtrodden. Terkel spoke and wrote openly about being blacklisted during the McCarthy era, when studios — fearful of being accused of sympathizing with communists — refused to hire actors, writers, directors and others suspected of having pro-communist sentiments.