John Meroney: Was Ronald Reagan a Secret Snitch?
[John Meroney is completing a book about Reagan's life in Hollywood. He provides audio commentary on the Ronald Reagan Centennial Collection, a DVD set of Reagan's films, out next month.]
Did Ronald Reagan secretly give the FBI names of people he suspected were communists when he was a movie star and Hollywood labor chief in the 1940s?
This allegation resurfaced in the media just before Thanksgiving when the San Jose Mercury News, which published excerpts from Reagan's FBI file to great international acclaim in 1985, ran a column revisiting its original story about Reagan the snitch. It implies that Reagan was a shadowy operator in cahoots with the notorious FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, orchestrating their next Hollywood Red scare.
The answer? Maybe. But Reagan was hardly betraying friends and confidants. He told the bureau what he told others publicly about communist influences in the Hollywood he knew. He didn't seek out the FBI originally; agents came to him. Moreover, he had little to tell them that the bureau didn't already know. It's hardly the picture of a Red-baiting Judas....
Read entire article at LA Times
Did Ronald Reagan secretly give the FBI names of people he suspected were communists when he was a movie star and Hollywood labor chief in the 1940s?
This allegation resurfaced in the media just before Thanksgiving when the San Jose Mercury News, which published excerpts from Reagan's FBI file to great international acclaim in 1985, ran a column revisiting its original story about Reagan the snitch. It implies that Reagan was a shadowy operator in cahoots with the notorious FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, orchestrating their next Hollywood Red scare.
The answer? Maybe. But Reagan was hardly betraying friends and confidants. He told the bureau what he told others publicly about communist influences in the Hollywood he knew. He didn't seek out the FBI originally; agents came to him. Moreover, he had little to tell them that the bureau didn't already know. It's hardly the picture of a Red-baiting Judas....