FBI files on Richard Feynman

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi-files-on-richard-feynman-1165/#366875-responsive-documents

by 001sky • 13 years ago

98 56 13 years ago

muckrock.com

WestCoastJustin• 13 years ago

Here is the direct PDF link for anyone interested @ http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/366921/responsive-docu...

breck2• 13 years ago

Interesting bit from page 64:

"An article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, a Los Angeles daily newspaper, dated 7/18/56, to the effect that the appointee's wife was granted a divorce from him because of appointee's constantly working calculus problems in his head as soon as awake, while driving car, sitting in living room, and so forth, and that his one hobby was playing his African drums. His ex-wife reportedly testified that on several occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his calculus or his drums he flew into a violent rage, during which time he choked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac about and smashed the furniture. This antic reflects that the court approved a $7500 cash settlement in favor of the appointee's ex-wife, giving her an automobile, furniture and objects of art, as well as $300 per month for two years and $250 a month for a third year"

lvryc• 13 years ago

To anybody else who first skimmed over this quote: the first half is funny, 'classic Feynman.' The last half is not.

CamperBob2• 13 years ago

I wonder which prominent physicist tried to throw him under the bus in the letter beginning on page 110? Teller, maybe?

gjm112• 13 years ago

Given the following passage

There are many able and eminent physicists [...] Some of these persons are practical physicists--with a very thorough knowledge of creative as well as theoretical physics and of the scientific world--not mere mathematicians as is the case of theoretical physicists.

(these people, if one reads on, being considered by the author as better candidates than Feynman) I'd have guessed someone with a less theoretical background than Teller. It could just be an attempt to appear impartial, I guess.

CatMtKing2• 13 years ago

There are a few more references to that letter, that refer to the writer as a female. See page 252+.

arca_vorago2• 13 years ago

Skimmed through it, seems fairly routine given the SOP of the time. What I did find interesting that I was previously unaware about was his association with Oppenheimer and what is blanked out but is likely some sort of communist organization. Followed that rabbit hole and learned that Oppenheimer had his security clearance revoked (which is why here his association is referenced as notable.)

moocowduckquack2• 13 years ago

An association with Oppenheimer is not that surprising. He worked with Oppenheimer, they were both on the Manhatten project. Also, Oppenheimer's security clearance being revoked seems to have also been a lot to do with Edward Teller creating FUD after being pissed off at Oppenheimer for not wanting to put resources into the H-bomb.

CatMtKing2• 13 years ago

Page 85 discussed the Independent Progressive Party that he had registered to (later cancelled). According to the "Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities" the party was being run by the same people who ran the Communist Party. It also noted that a few people who joined it (and it seems this is where they categorized Feynman) were liberals who were dissatisfied with the two party system and had no Communist leanings.

Amusingly enough, there's a letter (page 110) to the president from an acquaintance accusing Feynman of being a Communist and a master of deception. Page 252+ elaborates a little more and identifies the acquaintance as female.

maaku• 13 years ago

He and Oppenheimer worked together on the Manhattan project. Why would that be surprising?

rz2k• 13 years ago

I've seen interviews where Feynman talks about how everyone else was intimidated by Oppenheimer, while he was too excited about the physics and ideas to realize he should be intimidated. I also think the PBS documentary "The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer"[1] was really excellent.

However, I can just easily imagine not having come across either of these before.[2]

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/oppenheimer...

[2] https://xkcd.com/1053/

arca_vorago2• 13 years ago

Simply because it was something I was unaware of, not that is particularly surprising in general.

Crito• 13 years ago

One of the hazards of extreme paranoia is that occasionally your paranoia will create that which you fear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen

moocowduckquack2• 13 years ago

Was good they did as well given the situation with NASA and launch vehicles, at least it means that some folk are going back to the moon.

larrys2• 13 years ago

For a site (muckrock) dedicated to transparency I'm wondering why there is no easy way to find out (without apparently signing up) what they charge to make these requests on someone's behalf. [1]

[1] https://www.muckrock.com/accounts/login/?next=/accounts/buy_...

morisy2• 13 years ago

$20/one time to file 5 requests. $40/month for 20 requests plus additional features. Full info here:

https://www.muckrock.com/accounts/register/

Slowly working on our registration flow, which is admittedly somewhat confusing now.

larrys2• 13 years ago

Thanks.

You should place a link at the top which clearly says "pricing". And putting that link in the faq and all the other obvious places.

Another thing I would suggest (and I can help with this actually) is a different name for the actual requests. I suspect that some people in government might take this more seriously (not that they aren't) if the requests came from a different (more serious) entity name. I can't back this up with anything other than being in business for a long time and knowing human nature and from my own experience.

When I saw the first think you did I though it was some kind of comedy or non serious organization trying to just stir up trouble. Even if only 10% of the recipients feel the same way as I do that's an issue.

plantain• 13 years ago

#178: "the applicant's wife was suing him for divorce charging him with 'playing the bongo drums too much and studying physics the rest of the time'"

#184: "a deeply ingrained belief that he had a superior intellect and that he could do no wrong. <redacted> self-centered, opinionated, dogmatic and extremely egotistical. <snip> She said that her personal feeling is that FEYNMAN is without character or acceptable moral fiber." Seems not everyone was a fan of Mr. Feynman.

Multiple references to The Communist Party and statements from anonymous informants within the party around #170. More about the Young People's Socialist League at #245

shadowfox• 13 years ago

Seems not everyone was a fan of Mr. Feynman

Oh. Many people didn't really like him (in spite of acknowledging his ability). For example, Murray Gell-Mann - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnMsgxIIQEE

__pThrow• 13 years ago

That's a terribly fun and interesting video for a couple of reasons, but what I note is that Gell-mann after explaining how eventually he felt Feynman spent too much effort creating anecdotes about Feynman then launched into several anecdotes about Feynman that were really wonderful.

lectrick• 13 years ago

Acquaintances state appointee and wife divorced over year ago and have no reason to question moral character of either. Pertinent news articles re appointee set forth including article reporting divorce result of appointee's interest in calculus and African drums and his choking wife and smashing furniture when interrupted by wife.

I kind of have to wonder if Feynman would have been diagnosed with ADD in this day and age. ADD folks tend to hyperfocus on stuff like that, and unfortunately it jars relationships (ADD people have a 50% higher divorce rate)

mieses• 13 years ago

In the present day war on boys and brains, our institutions would have had Feynman locked up and medicated at age 5.

mercer2• 13 years ago

Is it possible to hyperfocus the way Feynman did when you have ADD though? From my limited understanding, the 'hyperfocus' is really just a focus on smaller things, not sustained obsession with specific, difficult problems.

I recognize many symptoms of ADD in myself, but most of these have to do with boredom. I just cannot sit through a lecture if it doesn't capture my interest, and I get distracted. I find it difficult to converse sometimes, because an argument is one I've heard once too often, or it's with one of those people where I can finish most of their sentences.

But when I find the right topic, I can easily spend days obsessed with specific things. In fact, it seems that it's all or nothing for me. Is that a characteristic of ADD?

rosser3• 13 years ago

It seems like the divorce suit was less about his bongo playing than it was his choking her when she interrupted his bongo playing.

Playing the bongos is a quirk. Choking your spouse is assault.

EDIT: that said, Feynman's divorce happened before no-fault divorce existed. At the time, a married couple wanting to divorce would often fabricate a story of spousal abuse, in order to establish grounds for granting one. This could be an instance of that practice.

r2• 13 years ago

For those interested in a summary, here's MuckRock's article on these files: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2012/jun/06/feynman-f...

PhasmaFelis• 13 years ago

None of the controls on the document viewer are sufficient to see anything but the two-page cover letter. After several minutes of head-scratching, I figured out that you have to click on the tiny, illegible thumbnails under the viewer to see the actual FBI file.

Fantastic UI here.

ressmox• 13 years ago

Even after reading your comment it took me a minute to figure it out. Probably because I noticed the the first document was 2 pages and saw 2 thumbnails, so immediately assumed it was just the second page.

tlow• 13 years ago

And here I was thinking of congratulating the author on having filed a FOIA request.

allochthon• 13 years ago

Sometimes I wonder whether the difficult-to-read PDF-like interfaces are intentionally made hard to use.

seivan• 13 years ago

Funny thing is that they probably have some UI-expert on site.

danso• 13 years ago

Probably not, but that document viewer is the product of the DocumentCloud project, which was at one point headed by Jeremy Ashkenas, and from which Underscore and Backbone.js are derived: http://www.documentcloud.org/opensource

However, like most viewers, the DC viewer is best in its standard view, not its embedded view: http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/338833-cover-letter.h...

edit: Ttough yes, the thumbnail nav to go between different documents is not great, though that's more an issue of the site implementation...probably this is a landing page for the docs that would presumably be direct-linked to elsewhere

spacemanmatt• 13 years ago

If this were the movie Brazil, I'd have a fresnel lens over my screen to help read that liliputian typeface.

morisy2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. Would love to hear about better embedded options. As far as we can tell, they almost all have drawbacks.

gumby2• 13 years ago

Would love to hear about better embedded options

How about just posting an image of the first page with an href to the raw pdf? I could then simply read the pdf in my browser. The embedding adds nothing.

RK• 13 years ago

From page 151:

is so unpredictable that "you cannot determine what his reaction would be in any particular set of circumstances." ____ stated that FEYNMAN was known at Los Alamos as a reactionary, because he was so conservative in his ideas and would not go along with the ideas of many of the people there of the same profession who were much less conservative in thetr thinking than he was. ________ stated he considers FEYNMAN to be a person of good character and completely loyal to the United States.

...

____ stated that FEYNMAN is not the type to be influenced by people such _______ as he makes up his own mind concerning every problem and a inclined to make a decision although this decision will not be popular with the group with which he is in contact.

mojoe• 13 years ago

So how does (did) a special inquiry like the one that was performed on Feynman work? It looks like publications were searched and people were interviewed, but does anyone know how those searches were prioritized? I've googled a bit and haven't been able to determine if there's any established procedure that doesn't rely heavily on the discretion of the officials performing the investigation.

breck2• 13 years ago

Interesting story on pages 207 and 208. Feynman is giving a lecture entitled, "What one scientist thinks of religion", and gets into a debate with the head of the School of Religion at Caltech.

A few interesting quotes including this one:

"No one can be sure of anything. We must frankly admit we don't know. It keeps our minds open...We must think about what the universe means without man. If we can't, it makes us 'the center of the universe...hard to believe.'"

sanoli2• 13 years ago

This makes me thankful for digital culture/internet in general. If it were today, that lecture would be available, very likely free for everyone on youtube. Instead, it's lost forever.

Simp3• 13 years ago

All these references to his atheism. As a European, it's hard to believe that that was/is so important.

sanoli2• 13 years ago

As a South American (Brazilian, biggest catholic nation by numbers), it's the easiest thing for me to believe. Outside intellectual/academic/art circles, stating you are an atheist = stating you are a satanist, almost.

VLM• 13 years ago

No not satanist, communist. The communists had a bit of a "thing" for atheism and the general public is pretty stupid about the use and care of Venn diagrams, so for them its close enough that a commie is an atheist so an atheist must be a commie, right? And even worse, the communists did have operatives in the Manhattan project, it wasn't just paranoia.

The other part that really pisses off law enforcement is church members are expected to provide great references for each other. And every clearance "disaster" involved an agent or whatever clearing a bad guy, which is kinda bad for that agent. So when its review time for the security officer who Fed up, he really, really wants to be able to say something like "Well, yes, he did turn out to be an axe murderer. And yes, there were bloodstains in the carpet of his pleasure dungeon and the neighbors did report occasional screams. But his religious leader is just one step away from God himself, and he said he was a great fellow who tithed generously and who are we to declare ourselves more holy than gods representative on earth so clearly I shouldn't be disciplined because either a direct representative of St Peter was also fooled OR disciplining me would be an insult against religion itself" Just a big exercise in CYA.

acqq• 13 years ago

Read how much paper was spent on trivial and basic details, then imagine how much more and how much easier they'd be able to dig up using the electronic surveilance of today.

Simp3• 13 years ago

"I do not know--but I believe that Richard Feynman is either a Communist or very strongly pro-Communist--and as such is a very definite security risk. This man is, in my opinion, an extremely complex and dangerous person, and a very dangerous person to have in a position of public trust,"

Page 110

darkhorn• 13 years ago

So some Christian FBI agents hated him because he was not Christian but atheist?

FBI files on Richard Feynman

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