Myths and Mysteries from J. Edgar Hoover's Personal Files

19. The FBI files on Ernest Hemingway contributed to the writer’s suicide, according to close friends

Ernest Hemingway was a living legend as a writer, and as what was in his day considered to be a man’s man. Besides his career as a writer of fiction, he was over the course of his life a war correspondent, big game hunter and fisherman, a noted outdoorsman and adventurer. He was at home with bullfighters and prizefighters as he was with literary critics and agents. By 1959 Hemingway was convinced that he was a constant target of FBI surveillance, and later examination of FBI files indicated that he had been correct. Hemingway, while living in Cuba in 1959, told friends that, “They’ve bugged everything…Can’t use the phone. Mail’s intercepted”. Hemingway insisted on using a friend’s car rather than his own during a pheasant hunting trip, certain that his own vehicle was bugged by the FBI. He often left dinners at public restaurants due to his belief that nearby “diners” were in fact FBI agents.

It was Hoover who directed the surveillance of Hemingway, suspicious that the writer held pro-Castro and communism beliefs. As with other of his surveillance targets, Hoover directed his agents to obtain potentially damaging information on the writer’s friends and sexual liaisons, rather than direct evidence of pro-communist leanings. Hemingway’s friends and family, convinced that the writer’s complaints (coupled with other actions on his part) were part of his increasingly evident mental illness had Hemingway subjected to electro-shock therapy in Minnesota. Just less than two years later he committed suicide with a shotgun. Just over a decade following his death, the revelation of the FBI’s files included a 124-page file on Ernest Hemingway. According to the evidence contained in the file, there was a strong indication that his medical records during his shock treatments – at St. Mary’s in Rochester, Minnesota – were monitored and the writer’s statements recorded by the FBI.

Where do we get this stuff? Here are our sources:

“The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition”. Athan G. Theoharis & John S. Cox. 1988

“Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover”. Anthony Summers. 1993

“The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside”. Mark W. Felt. 1979

“Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover”. Richard Hack. 2004

“Eleanor Roosevelt”. The Vault, FBI Records. FBI.gov. Online

“U. S. Investigating Missing FBI Data”. John Crewdson, The New York Times. June 7, 1975

“Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-off between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America”. Burton Hersh. 2007

“J. Edgar Hoover’s revenge: Information the FBI once hoped could destroy Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been declassified”. Trevor Griffey. The Conversation. May 31, 2019

“J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets”. Curt Gentry. 2001

“The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover”. Transcript of Frontline, PBS.org. 1993. Online

“The Truth About J. Edgar Hoover”. TIME Magazine, December 22, 1975