Hoover Sucked.

Yes, I know, not very inventive. Oh well, I find it amusing.

It is now 6 in the morning. Have been up all night reading more than half Chaplin’s 2063 page FBI file so far … Some strange stuff passed over Hoover’s desk.

Such as some kind hearted soul that screams in a letter that Chaplin should just be deported based on the fact that he brought his mentally defective mother into their precious country, thereby endangering the populace.

Yes, because one sad and confused old lady could have brought down the whole union, I am sure.

And the interviews are awful! “Mr. Chaplin, where were you this night? That night? Twenty years ago?” and the ever popular, “Have you ever supported any organization that was a front for the Communist Party?”

To which a bleary Chaplin, who had been grilled by this point for pages and pages worth of interview, asked in confusion, “I don’t know – how do I know if something is a front if they don’t tell me? Am I just supposed to know what is a front or not?”

And I love how a whole bureau full of people who were trying to bring him down all slip up from time to time and write “Charlie” instead of “Chaplin”, as if thinking of better times when they were kids and loved him, before they became pencil-necks who hated him.

Oh, and it’s a bit much the way the interviewer kept inferring that a desire for world peace meant that Chaplin wanted a Soviet world domination! It is sad to see Chaplin trying to negotiate that one.

“Yes, I want world peace.” “Why?” “Well… Pardon?” “Why do you want world peace?” “I should think that would be obvious.” “At any cost?” “Ah…” “Would you take up arms if America were invaded by Russia?” “Certainly, I should think.” “To repel the Russians…?” “Of course to repel them!”

No! He’s gonna tell an FBI interviewer that he’d take up arms to help the Russians invade. He’s just that stupid.

Man. I can barely remember my own name right now, so the thought of getting questioned like that, with my life on the line, scares the hell out of me.

While there are some pretty lurid details of the poor guy’s sex life in here, much of the file is generally uninteresting for my research purposes (especially since a lot of it is the annoying repetition of the same one or two nobodies telling some fed, “Yup – Charley sure is a Commie. I seen him misself!” on every second page), but it’s still creepy.

Especially awful are all the drooling memos leading up to the day they could catch him stepping a foot out of US soil. They get pretty frantic and very eager.

My favourite amongst these are discussions between Justice, Hoover and INS over whether throwing Chaplin into detention aboard ship while they work out paperwork would attract negative attention from any press.

One would think that maybe Hoover had one or two other cases to handle. Funny that he seemed to spend so much time clipping notes about Chaplin out of The Daily Worker, Hedda Hopper columns, and Life like a strange cross-breed between a demented Inquisition devotee, John Nash, and a bobbysoxer fan-club president.

And now I spend all my time reading his memos about those clippings, so I don’t know what that makes me. Other than tired, that is.

And now, after so little sleep, I am starting to think I am being watched, and that right now someone is naming MY name… Perhaps I should get to bed…?

Good plan. (If only a couple hours of sleep before I have to get up and keep reading.)