FBI spied on Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez for 24 years, documents show.

[forest444]

The FBI spied on the late Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez for 24 years, according to recently unclassified documents obtained by the Washington Post.

According to the newspaper, the federal police agency began spying on García Márquez after he arrived in New York for a brief stay in 1961 and didn’t stop spying on him until 1985, well after the Colombian writer had been awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature for his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

According to the Post, the released 137 pages of an at least 270-page file left unclear why the FBI began spying on the author. However, in the year the FBI began its spying practices García Márquez helped found the still active press agency, Prensa Latina for Cuba, which had been overtaken by communist dictator Fidel Castro only two years before. Additionally, the writer had supported a Communist-backed coup attempt in Venezuela in 1958 when working in that country as a journalist.

According to one of the first entries in the García Márquez file, dated February 8, 1961, an order that appears to have come straight from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover directed that “in the event he enters the U.S. for any purpose, the Bureau should be promptly advised.”

The spying went so far that a team of FBI agents contacted at least nine of García Márquez’s friends, one of whom informed the federal police agency of the writer and his family’s departure to Mexico, where he lived for the rest of his life. The FBI reportedly continued spying on García Márquez in Mexico, even until after he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1982. Until his death in 2014, García Márquez maintained a close friendship with Castro and was a vociferous critic of US foreign policy in the Americas.

Colombia’s most famous author is not the only artist who has been spied on by the FBI: the agency also spied on authors such as Normal Mailer, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck.

At: http://colombiareports.com/fbi-spied-on-nobel-laureate-gabriel-garcia-marquez-for-24-years/
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Mary Hoover wasn't as much "anti-communist", as he was anti-talent - and García Márquez was as great as they come.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Deeply creepy. The article says he told his son the guys following him on the streets

communicated using a system of whistles.

I guess the modern FBI can thank cell phones for sparing them that kind of silliness in the present!

It would have been funny seeing them whistling to each other.

I guess it was because of the diligence of the FBI that Gabriel García Marquez didn't succeed in blowing things up when he was in the States.

So embarrassing, isn't it?

[forest444]

2. Creepy, like the man himself.

Hoover was paranoia on display - and he was not above using the FBI accordingly. The whistling g-man anecdote reminded me of Stan Dragoti's very underrated 1985 spy caper, The Man With One Red Shoe (actually a remake of a French movie made a decade earlier).

In the movie, the Director and Deputy Director of the CIA have become adversaries, and are leading entire factions of the agency in all-out attempt to ruin each other's career. The Deputy Director (Dabney Coleman) becomes so convinced that a hapless violinist (Tom Hanks) is actually an undercover informant working for his nemesis, he goes as far as to hijack the supercomputer that runs our entire missile defense system in order to "decipher" a supposed code hidden in a violin solo.

One of Coleman's subordinates objects; but he won't have it: "Are you kidding me? This is my career we're talking about! What are the chances the Russians are going to attack on a Thursday night, huh!?"

All for nothing, of course - but for one man's paranoia. Similarly, how many millions were royally wasted to keep tabs on and otherwise harass the great Gabriel García Márquez - a man who would have honored any country in the world with his presence.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Considering the evil things the man did to others, hiding behind his position,

it would be easy to see his paranoia could have been covering a very guilty conscience, and awareness his karma was probably gaining on him rapidly and would overtake him before he could hide from it, even with a disguise.

It's horrifying to think a twisted creature like that was running the F.B.I., isn't it?