The Leonard Bernstein Letters (62 page)

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Written in French; English translation by the editor.

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This lengthy document, a kind of “loyalty oath,” is a chilling reminder of its time: McCarthyism was at its height, and thousands of Americans were investigated for alleged Communist sympathies. A number of Bernstein's friends had been ordered to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Jerome Robbins testified on 5 May 1953 and named several names (see Vaill 2007, pp. 215–20). Aaron Copland appeared as a witness on 25 May 1953. He wrote a darkly amusing account of his grilling by Senator McCarthy (printed in Copland and Perlis 1992, pp. 193–5): “My impression is that McCarthy had no idea who I was or what I did, other than the fact I was part of the State Department's exchange program at one time … It occurred to me … as McCarthy entered that it was similar to the entrance of Toscanini – half the battle won before it begins through the power of personality.” David Diamond was also summoned by HUAC, and according to Howard Pollack (Pollack 1999, p. 191), a nervous Diamond asked his mentor for advice: “What if I'm asked a question about Lenny?” Copland's sage reply was, “You say what you feel you have to say.”

Instead of being called to HUAC (which was well aware of his alleged associations with “subversive” groups), Bernstein endured a different kind of torture: “He was not subpoenaed to appear before HUAC or Senate committees but was instead drawn into living hell in July 1953 by the US State Department's refusal to renew his passport” (Seldes 2009, p. 69). The State Department was entitled to use its regulations to refuse or revoke passport applications if it believed that an applicant had Communist sympathies or associations (a practice halted in 1958, at least in theory, by the Supreme Court's landmark judgment on the right to travel in the case of Rockwell Kent et al. v. John Foster Dulles). Bernstein's sworn affidavit, printed here in its entirety, was a comprehensive document, “a humiliating confession of political sin” according to Seldes (2009, p. 70). It had the desired short-term effect, since he received his renewed passport a few days later, on 12 August 1953.

But this document was to haunt Bernstein for years to come. In 1954 it was presented to the American Legion for its approval, so that Bernstein could be allowed to work in Hollywood to compose the score for
On the Waterfront
(see Seldes 2009, p. 71) – a film directed by Elia Kazan, with a screenplay by Budd Schulberg and including Lee J. Cobb among its stars: all three had named names to HUAC. That all three should have been involved in the creation of a film about the shame and danger of informing is bitterly ironic.

The submission of this affidavit didn't end Bernstein's problems. His declassified FBI files make for absorbing reading (they are available online at vault.fbi.gov/leonard-bernstein) and show not only that he continued to come under suspicion, but that this affidavit was often used as a document that indicated the need for further investigation. In 1954–5 the FBI compiled a report for William F. Tompkins, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Internal Security Division in Eisenhower's administration. On 1 October 1954, Tompkins wrote to the Director of the FBI with the subject: “Leonard Bernstein. Security Matter – C[ommunist]. Fraud Against Government.” The alleged “fraud” was based on apparent contradictions between Bernstein's 1953 affidavit and the information gathered by the FBI about his political affiliations. A memorandum was sent to the New York office by the FBI Director on 12 October with instructions to start an investigation, adding that “this matter should be handled immediately.” The reports subsequently sent to Tompkins reveal that informants against Bernstein in the past were recontacted for this investigation. Almost a year later, on 11 August 1955, J. Edgar Hoover wrote to Tompkins that the Bureau had “forwarded additional information for your consideration with regard to a possible violation on the subject's part of the Fraud Against the Government Statutes. It is requested that you advise this Bureau of any decision reached by you relative to this matter.” After reviewing this “additional information,” Tompkins replied that “the only available evidence linking the subject with the Communist Party is based on hearsay rather than personal knowledge. As such it is insufficient to warrant prosecution of the subject under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001 [relating to making “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation”] and Section 1541 [relating to fraudulent issue of a passport], for his denial of Communist Party membership or having ever knowingly engaged in activities connected with the Communist Party movement.” That investigation was closed in September 1955.

But Bernstein was the subject of other security (rather than fraud) investigations by the FBI between 1951 and 1958, catalogued in an Office Memorandum dated 31 August 1959 from G. H. Scatterday to Alan Belmont (then Assistant Director of the Domestic Intelligence Division). This memorandum also states that “During the security investigation of Bernstein, Washington Field Office reviewed HCUA [House Committee on Un-American Activities] files which were found to be replete with information concerning Bernstein's connection with C[ommunist] P[arty] front organizations.”

During the Kennedy years, Bernstein's past was raked over yet again. On 1 September 1961, Hoover wrote to Kenneth O'Donnell, Kennedy's Special Assistant, responding to a request for “name checks concerning eighty individuals in connection with the Advisory Committee on the Arts” and attaching a rehashed summary of the FBI's findings on Bernstein since the 1940s. In 1962 the New York Office of the FBI sent the Washington Field Office a photograph of Bernstein, with a bizarre memorandum headed “
Unsub
: American musician alleged to be a Soviet agent.” During the early 1960s, several concerned cranks wrote directly to Hoover, one of the oddest being a nun from the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brooklyn, NY (as with the names of all informants, her name has been redacted in the released Bernstein files). In a letter postmarked 9 March 1963, she wrote: “It has been brought to my attention that Leonard Bernstein, the noted conductor of the new Lincoln Center in New York City, has Communistic tendencies. For this reason I am writing to you with the hope that you will be able to enlighten my Community (two thousand Sisters of St Joseph) and me with the truth. His performances are listed among our very limited number of programs which may be seen. I do not know if the Bureau is permitted to disclose any findings of Mr. Bernstein's past life […] May God bless you for your wonderful work.” J. Edgar Hoover replied personally on 13 March, thanking his correspondent (“My dear Sister”) for “the kind sentiments you expressed concerning my efforts as Director of the FBI,” explaining that information in FBI files is “confidential and available for official use only pursuant to regulations of the Department of Justice,” and ending: “I trust you will not infer either that we do or do not have information regarding Mr. Leonard Bernstein.” A note attached to Hoover's reply states that “Leonard Bernstein was placed on the Security Index 5–2–51, and was canceled 3–18–52, when the Prominent Individuals Subdivision of the Security Index was discontinued.”

As late as April 1966, when Bernstein applied for his passport to be renewed so that he could go to Vienna to work with the Vienna Philharmonic, an FBI Memorandum recycled much of its earlier material. By 1967, an internal memorandum added Bernstein's support for civil rights organizations to an otherwise familiar summary: “Bernstein has been active in the civil rights movement and in 1965 Harry Bellafonte organized a group of musical and literary artists to take part in the Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, march. Bernstein was one of the artists who made up this delegation.” That additional information was communicated to Mrs. Mildred Stegall (aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson) at the White House on 5 March 1968 after she requested a routine security check.

In the available files, two further episodes attracted the FBI's attention. The first, unsurprisingly, was the event held in the Bernstein apartment on 14 January 1970 to raise funds for the legal defence of the Black Panthers. Through off-the-record press briefings and leaks to friendly journalists, the FBI sought to discredit Bernstein and his wife. Ten years later, after some of the FBI files relating to this event had been made available under the Freedom of Information Act, a furious Bernstein was quoted in
The New York Times
(22 October 1980): “I have substantial evidence now available to all that the F.B.I. conspired to foment hatred and violent dissension among blacks, among Jews and between blacks and Jews. My late wife and I were among many foils used for this purpose, in the context of a so-called ‘party’ for the Panthers in 1970 which was neither a party nor a ‘radical chic’ event for the Black Panther Party, but rather a civil liberties meeting for which my wife had generously offered our apartment. The ensuing FBI-inspired harassment ranged from floods of hate letters sent to me over what are now clearly fictitious signatures, thinly-veiled threats couched in anonymous letters to magazines and newspapers, editorial and reportorial diatribes in
The New York Times
, attempts to injure my long-standing relationship with the people of the state of Israel, plus innumerable other dirty tricks. None of these machinations has adversely affected my life or work, but they did cause a good deal of bitter unpleasantness.”

The last event covered in the available FBI files is one that shows the organization at its most paranoid. Bernstein's
Mass
was written for the inaugural event of the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on 8 September 1971. On 9 July and on 16 August 1971 memoranda were sent to Charles D. Brennan, then Assistant Director of the Domestic Intelligence Division, with the subject “Proposed plans of antiwar elements to embarrass the United States Government.” The second described a “plot by Leonard Bernstein, conductor and composer, to embarrass the President [Nixon] and other Government officials through an antiwar and anti-Government musical composition to be played at the dedication of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts [several lines redacted]. The purpose of this action was to embarrass high Government officials, possibly even the President who might be present.” It also cited Bernstein's visits to discuss the
Mass
with the priest and peace activist Daniel Berrigan while he was in Danbury Jail (he was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for his anti-Vietnam campaigning). The FBI memorandum of 16 August also describes an attempted visit that was thwarted: “On 7-14-71, Bernstein attempted to visit Berrigan at Danbury but was denied admission by prison officials after consulting Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C.” On the day of the first performance, 8 September, Brennan received another memorandum (for information only) summarizing the situation and citing a report in
Human Events
that “Bernstein intended to embarrass the President with an antiadministration bombshell,” but reminding Brennan that Nixon had already announced he would not be present out of courtesy to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, stating that the formal opening “should really be her night.” Nixon's views on Bernstein were robustly antagonistic. While he will certainly have known of Bernstein's alleged Communist associations in the past, Nixon also regarded him as a dangerous musical modernist. In a White House memorandum to Bob Haldeman dated 26 January 1970, Nixon offered these thoughts: “As you, of course, know those who are on the modern art and music kick are 95 percent against us anyway. I refer to the recent addicts of Leonard Bernstein and the whole New York crowd. When I compare the horrible monstrosity of Lincoln Center with the Academy of Music in Philadelphia I realize how decadent the modern art and architecture have become. This is what the Kennedy–-Shriver crowd believed in and they had every right to encourage this kind of stuff when they were in. But I have no intention whatever of continuing to encourage it now.”

One final request for a security “name check” for Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Bernstein was made during the Ford administration, with the FBI submitting the following on 18 November 1974: “Mr. Bernstein, who you advised is a conductor […] has been the subject of various security-type investigations conducted by the FBI since the early 1950s based on information that he had affiliated with or supported in some manner 15 organizations cited as communistic or subversive. Leonard Bernstein […] has been active in the civil rights movement. […]. On May 12, 1971, Leonard Bernstein and his wife hosted a fund-raising party in support of Philip F. Berrigan and five co-defendants charged with conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and blow up heating systems in Federal buildings in Washington, D.C.” While this document describes an alleged “conspiracy,” it makes no mention of the humiliating defeat suffered by the government when its case failed to secure any convictions on major charges at the trial of the so-called “Harrisburg Seven.” Perhaps this isn't such a surprise in the context of Bernstein's FBI file, which for more than twenty years reveals that officials repeated hearsay allegations of his “Communist” associations without ever, it seems, making any serious attempt to discover whether there was a shred of truth in them. The “Red Scare” is generally thought of as a phenomenon of America in the 1950s. Bernstein's FBI files reveal that for the security services, at least, it was still an active issue in the 1970s, with campaigning for civil rights, and against the Vietnam War, being added to lists of “subversive” activities.

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Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television
was published by the right-wing magazine
Counterattack
on 22 June 1950, and named 151 actors, writers, musicians, journalists, and others as Communist sympathizers, giving what purported to be details of their affiliations with suspect organizations. Bernstein was included, along with a number of his friends and colleagues such as Marc Blitzstein, Aaron Copland, Olin Downes, Lillian Hellman, Judy Holliday, Lena Horne, John LaTouche, and Arthur Laurents. Eric Barnouw prints a complete list of those named, and describes them as “151 of the most talented and admired people in the industry – mostly writers, directors and performers. They were people who had helped make radio an honored medium, and who were becoming active in television. Many had played a prominent role in wartime radio, and had been articulators of American war aims. In short, it was a roll of honor” (Barnouw 1990, pp. 122 and 124).