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FBI Releases Pete Seeger’s 1,800-Page FBI File

HeadlineDec 21, 2015

And the FBI has released its extensive file on the late legendary folk singer and activist Pete Seeger. The file, obtained by Mother Jones through a Freedom of Information Act request, shows the FBI began spying on Seeger when he was an Army private in 1943 because he wrote a letter protesting a proposal to deport all Japanese-American citizens at the end of World War II. The government continued to spy on Seeger through the early 1970s. Military intelligence agents visited his grade school and high school, investigated his father and his wife, Toshi, who was Japanese-American, and interviewed fellow folk singer Woody Guthrie. Seeger died last year at the age of 94. His FBI file runs to nearly 1,800 pages—with about 90 pages still withheld by the U.S. government.

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