J.D. Salinger Didn't Have An FBI File?

Upon their deaths, dozens of famous American writers were revealed to have attracted the interest of the FBI. In their files, the bureau considered Ernest Hemingway an unreliable drunk, Thornton Wilder a Nazi spy, Carl Sandburg a communist sympathizer, Theodore Dreiser a promoter of illicit sex, and Allen Ginsberg a threat to the president.

But apparently, one of the biggest authors of the last half of the 20th century -- J.D. Salinger -- didn't pique the curiosity of the FBI or even its bibliophile agents. The Huffington Post recently received a disappointing reply to a FOIA request for any files or records on Salinger, who died at the end of January. According to the FBI, the bureau was unable to identify "responsive main file records" under the name Jerome David Salinger. (Salinger's name may still pop up in other files kept by the bureau and a request for cross-references is still pending.)

The apparent omission is curious, considering the scandalous nature of his best-known work, "Catcher in the Rye," which at times has been blamed for corrupting America's fragile adolescents, Salinger's reclusiveness, his counter-intelligence work during World War II as well as his Denazification duty in Germany after the war, his legal battles with various authors and his notorious relationship with Joyce Maynard.

Comments

[ipastor02]

01:37 AM on 04/11/2010

Most people are harmless. The FBI knows that.

JD, a former government agent, held nothing of interest to the FBI that they didn't knew already.

[c-tom]

07:05 PM on 04/05/2010

Off the point, but would there be so many Salinger articles here at Huff-n-stuff if he had kept publishing instead of stopping so many years ago? I'm asking as an Updike fan.

[AlexNYC]

04:11 PM on 04/05/2010

It's probably because he became a recluse. If he continued to publish work and stayed in the public eye, he would have been on the FBI's watch list for sure.

[Danny Sherwood]

03:49 PM on 04/05/2010

Apparently J.Edgar Hoover enjoyed catcher in the rye?

[JR Jake]

05:14 PM on 04/05/2010

ditto Danny. It will not be found in some general and generic filing cabinet. C'mon people since when does the FBI glosss over anything?