Remember all the stuff you heard about democracy and freedom and so on when you were kid? And how the Russians were supposed to be so evil because their government spied on their own people and arrested and imprisoned them just for daring to criticize Communism? And how the United States and Canada were so great, because here we were free to vote for whoever we wanted and think whatever we wanted?
Well, let’s keep things in perspective. What follows is not meant to suggest that the West was as bad as Russia was then (and China is today). It’s just meant to balance out a fairly idiotic image of who and what we were during the cold war. The truth is, our own governments were spying on us, and arresting people who spoke out in dissent and attempting to control the free flow of information, just like the commies did.
Actually, none of this is news. We already know about McCarthyism and the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover. I merely want to add a little tidbit here to help put the extent of government control into perspective.
It seems that in 1965 Walt Disney wanted to make a movie based on a book by former FBI agent Gordon Gordon and his wife, Mildred, about a cat who belongs to a kidnap victim. When the cat turns up one night wearing the victim’s wrist watch, the FBI puts the cat under surveillance. Hayley Mills, Dean Jones, and Frank Gorshin starred. Hilarious concept!
Anyway, the FBI heard about this movie, and, when informed about it, J. Edgar Hoover immediately turned to his faithful sidekick, Pedro De Loach, and told him, “Hey, it’s a free country. People can make movies about whatever they please.”
No, he did not. As a matter of fact, Mr. De Loach dispatched an FBI agent to investigate this movie to ensure that the Bureau’s “interests” were protected. I’m not making this up.
Think about this. The FBI, using your hard-earned tax dollars, dispatches a highly-paid agent to Hollywood to investigate the possibility that a Disney movie about a cat might be dangerous to civil order and the justice system.
Did they have time? Well, Groucho Marx might have been retired by then, so I guess that freed up a few agents. Maybe Lucille Ball had let her communist party membership lapse. Perhaps Ring Lardner hadn’t ordered any explosives recently. Maybe Dalton Trumbo had started hanging out with Ronald Reagan. Who knows?
It is tempting to laugh at this bizarre episode and just shrug it off. When you were a kid and you recited the pledge of allegiance to the flag of America and the liberty for which it stands, did you think for a moment that your own government had it’s own little department of thought control?
Did you watch the television drama called “The FBI” on TV in the 1960’s? Did you know that the FBI virtually controlled the program? They could veto any line of dialogue, any shot, if they didn’t like it. And do you even have to think for a minute to realize that their first priority was not “accuracy”, as they claimed, but depicting the agency in a favourable light?
Ever see that episode where the FBI tapped Martin Luther King’s phones? Yeah, me neither. Or where they collected information about President Kennedy’s mistresses?
Even today, with all the so-called sophistication we now have, TV is still inundated with police-approved TV shows that labour mightily to convince you that the police never make mistakes. I watched one episode of “REAL TV”, which showed tapes from a police helicopter chasing a “suspect”. What was the man suspected of? We never find out, for the only thing he is ever charged with is resisting arrest– a chilling echo of Soviet Russia’s “enemy of the state”. All during the chase, the voice-over narration laboured to assure us that these reckless and insane pursuits were necessary because the felon might very well have done something unspeakably evil, if the police had not damaged five cruisers chasing him at speeds of 100 mph through populated suburbs and snarled highways.
Is there a single TV police show that does not show police officers assaulting suspects and violating their civil rights with approval. The program is careful to let you “know” the one thing that, in real life, the police almost never know with any degree of certainty: that the suspect is guilty.
Back to the FBI: I’m sure if you asked the FBI today, their official spokesman would chuckle and say something like, “Oh, well, yes, J. Edgar did get a little carried away back in the 1960’s, but I can assure you that the FBI today is too busy tracking down militant survivalists and murderers to waste time on Hollywood movies.”
Like the Branch Davidians, in Waco, Texas?
To see a copy of the FBI report on “That Darn Cat”:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/darncat1.html