For nearly a quarter century, from Einstein's arrival in the United States in 1933 until his death in 1955, Hoover's FBI, with help from several other federal agencies, collected more than 1800 pages of "derogatory information" in an effort to undermine Einstein's influence and destroy his prestige. The government's most intensive effort came in the early 1950's at the height of McCarthyism and America's Red-scare. The Einstein File is the story of that anti-Einstein campaign, but also the story behind it -- the why of the campaign -- providing the first detailed picture of Einstein's little-known political beliefs and activities. A passionate pacifist, socialist, internationalist and outspoken critic of racism, Einstein used his worldwide prestige to denounce McCarthy's congressional hearings, publicly urging witnesses to refuse to testify.
The book braids historical events and excerpts from the FBI's Einstein dossier with a story of international intrigue and espionage. For besides abhorring Einstein's politics - and because he abhorred them -- Hoover attempted, for five years, to link Einstein to a Soviet spy ring, which necessarily becomes a profile of Einstein's quite extraordinary, and unusually over-looked, career as a political activist. (Fifty years later, at least a few of Hoover's supporters continue to pursue the spy charges.)
Although the FBI had released parts of its Einstein dossier in 1983, Fred Jerome was able to obtain hundreds of pages previously withheld or blacked out by the Bureau's censors "for security reasons," pages which reveal, among other things, the extent to which Hoover and his agents went in collecting information on Einstein and his friends and colleagues -- monitoring their phone calls, opening their mail, rummaging through their garbage and even surreptitiously breaking into and searching residences.
