THE LAST WORD
Montague, Joel B. Jr.
THE LAST WORD Joel B. Montague Jr. Security Risk Today, my "security file" must be gathering dust in a forgotten State Department drawer. Or perhaps it has been fed into a computer under the...
...That first became evident to me more than thirty years ago, when I applied for a Fulbright lectureship in Japan...
...I don't know what prompted the FBI to issue this all-points bulletin, but it came at about the time when I obtained a leave from Washington State University to spend a year, partially supported by the GI Bill, in postdoctoral study at the London School of Economics...
...In addition to the lost Fulbright appointment, my status as a security risk seems to have kept me from obtaining a position with the Near East Foundation and probably deprived me of other academic assignments...
...The record is extensive, but neither complete nor accurate...
...Recently, I obtained my file under the Freedom of Information Act and learned about my shadowy history as a security risk...
...The FBI has me attending two colleges in which I was never enrolled, one of them in a state in which I have never resided...
...The State Department official said he had no knowledge of these activities...
...In all, my Freedom of Information Act request brought me twenty-six pages of documents, some of which were extensively censored by deletion of names, places, sometimes entire paragraphs...
...is professor emeritus of sociology at Washington State University, Pullman...
...I'm listed as having a doctorate in psychology rather than sociology...
...He did make it clear, however, that my having attended lectures at the Abraham Lincoln School was at the root of my difficulties...
...One Navy document states, "This investigation was initiated following Joel B. Montague Jr...
...I suppose I was lucky, compared to others who were called security risks...
...I found lists of schools I had attended, jobs I had held, cities and countries I had visited around the world...
...I have no inkling who instigated this surveillance, or what purpose it was supposed to serve...
...I was accepted by the Japanese university and approved by the U.S...
...I had, indeed, attended a few lectures at the school...
...the U.S...
...The FBI identified me as "a sign carrier...
...instead, I asked the president of my university for assistance in clearing my name...
...The first of these was a Star Chamber proceeding in which accusations made by a nameless informer were recited to me...
...The other, "who worked with the subject for approximately fifteen months...
...On two occasions—in 1955 and 1960— Senator Jackson arranged interviews for me at the Department of State...
...But our ship never came in...
...He said the matter was between me and the Federal Government, and of no concern to the university...
...Fourteen sheets from the FBI dealt with a silent vigil held by Pullman Citizens for Peace to protest the sale of war toys during the 1968 Christmas season...
...Government apparently thought I was a threat...
...The second interview was on June 1, 1960, and I reported the surveillance to which I had been subjected on the previous evening and that very morning...
...Unlike some colleagues who lived in constant fear of exposure, I made no effort to conceal my situation...
...after the war, the FBI placed an operative posing as a student in at least one of my university classes...
...Here are other episodes from my fascinating career as a security risk: Naval Intelligence put a mail cover on me, but it "yielded only negative results...
...Or perhaps it has been fed into a computer under the heading, "Old Professors Who Were Security Risks in the 1950s...
...Government...
...the Fulbright appointment was canceled...
...After much correspondence and the intercession of Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, I learned that my loyalty was in doubt—a curse that would haunt me for the next quarter of a century...
...My family and I were even assigned a stateroom on the Japanese liner Hikawa Maru...
...According to the Naval Intelligence report, one source (whose name has been blacked out) "was of the opinion that the subject was 'definitely communist.' " Two other persons, whose identity has also been shielded, were interviewed...
...the discovery that subject attended the Abraham Lincoln School, reportedly pro-communist, in Chicago...
...One, "who had worked with the subject for seventeen months...
...in the spring of 1960, while in Washington, D.C., at the invitation of the U.S...
...Office of Education, I was covertly interviewed in the dining room of the Harrington Hotel on the evening of May 31, and was followed as I left the hotel the following morning...
...Committee on International Exchange of Persons and by the Fulbright Commission in Japan...
...By then, however, Naval Intelligence had already compiled a dossier on me, and it seems clear that this record later served as the basis for designating me a security risk...
...He didn't help, but neither did he hurt...
...His response wasn't particularly magnanimous, but it did provide me with some security...
...considered him a 'liberal' in favor of the New Deal administration, but not an 'extremist.' He had never discussed communism with subject, whom he considered a theorist, but a loyal American...
...The FBI seems to have started monitoring my activities in 1949, when it asked offices in New Orleans, Memphis, Denver, Detroit, Chicago, and Kansas City to search their files for "any information concerning this subject...
...I was asked what magazines I read and who my friends were...
...during the 1950s, I was covertly photographed and subjected to surveillance at home and abroad...
...considered him a basically loyal American who was a New Dealer and highly interested in the labor movement...
...But I still can't help feeling I've never been quite free since...
...I was investigated during World War II, while serving as a classification interviewer at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois...
...To my profound relief, I learned that "no evidence was found of communist infiltration" in the vigil...
...My passport was never withdrawn, and I had opportunities to teach and study abroad in institutions that were not associated with the U.S...
...Back then, it was no joking matter...
Vol. 51 • September 1987 • No. 9
