Ernest Hemingway was Right: The FBI was Tapping His Phone

[steven johnson]

EARLY one morning, 50 years ago today, while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life.

In November I went out West for our annual pheasant shoot and realized how wrong I was. When Ernest and our friend Duke MacMullen met my train at Shoshone, Idaho, for the drive to Ketchum, we did not stop at the bar opposite the station as we usually did because Ernest was anxious to get on the road. I asked why the hurry.

“The feds.”

Decades later, in response to a Freedom of Information petition, the F.B.I. released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his room was tapped after all.

In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide.




Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds

[MADem]

1. It probably was a combination of causes that ended his life

He plainly had psychiatric issues, that were likely hereditary in nature (his granddaughter, Margaux, committed suicide the day before the anniversary of her grandfather's death).

The FBI involvement in his life was an added stressor, certainly, but likely not the sole cause of his death. He had issues, poor man.

[jul61252]

4. +1

[correaman13]

2. thats so sad

No body believed him and everybody thought he was losing it.
I wonder when the government was more shady then or now?

[Historic NY]

3. I hope he found his ........... Clean, Well-Lighted Place.

[Cereal Kyller]

5. Who WASN'T Hoover spying on???

I mean, other than the women's clothing stores where he shopped.