FBI Documents Re FOIPA Request for Cartoonist Al Capp

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FBI Documents Responsive to FOIPA Request for Cartoonist Al Capp

U.S. Department of Justice

Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D.C. 20535

March 12, 2010

MR. CHARLES CARREON
ATTORNEY AT LAW
ONLINE MEDIA LAW, PLLC
2165 SOUTH AVENIDA PLANETA
TUCSON, AZ 85710

FOIPA Request No.: 1140693- 000
Subject: CAPP, AL

Dear Mr. Carreon:

The records that you have requested were previously processed under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act for another requester.

Enclosed are 111 pages of documents pertaining to your request and a copy of the explanation of exemptions.

You may file an appeal by writing to the Director, Office of information Policy (OIP), U.S. Department of Justice, 1425 New York Ave., NW, Suite 11050, Washington, D.C. 20530-0001. Your appeal must be received by OIP within sixty (60) days from the date of this letter in order to be considered timely. The envelope and the letter should be clearly marked "Freedom of Information Appeal." Please cite the FOIPA Request Number assigned to your request so that it may be identified easily.

Very truly yours,

David M. Hardy
Section Chief,
Record/Information
Dissemination Section
Records Management Division

Enclosure(s)

__________________________________________________________________

EXPLANATION OF EXEMPTIONS

SUBSECTIONS OF TITLE 5, UNITED STATES CODE, SECTION 552

(b)(1) (A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified to such Executive order;

(b)(2) related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency;

(b)(3) specifically exempted from disclosure by statute (other than section 552b of this title), provided that such statute (A) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on issue, or (B) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld;

(b)(4) trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential;

(b)(5) inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency;

(b)(6) personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy;

(b)(7) records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information (A) could be reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings, (B) would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication, (C) could be reasonably expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (D) could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of confidential source, including a State, local, or foreign agency or authority or any private institution which furnished information on a confidential basis, and, in the case of record or information compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation, or by an agency conducting a lawful national security intelligence investigation, information furnished by a confidential source, (E) would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law, or (F) could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual;

(b)(8) contained in or related to examination, operating, or condition reports prepared by, on behalf of, or for the use of an agency responsible for the regulation or supervision of financial institutions; or

(b)(9) geological and geophysical information and data, including maps, concerning wells.

SUBSECTIONS OF TITLE 5, UNITED STATES CODE, SECTION 552a

(d)(5) information compiled in reasonable anticipation of a civil action proceeding;

(j)(2) material reporting investigative efforts pertaining to the enforcement of criminal law including efforts to prevent, control, or reduce crime or apprehend criminals;

(k)(1) information which is currently and properly classified pursuant to an Executive order in the interest of the national defense or foreign policy, for example, information involving intelligence sources or methods;

(k)(2) investigatory material compiled for law enforcement purposes, other than criminal, which did not result in loss of a right, benefit or privilege under Federal programs, or which would identify a source who furnished information pursuant to a promise that his/her identity would be held in confidence;

(k)(3) material maintained in connection with providing protective services to the President of the United States or any other individual pursuant to the authority of Title 18, United States Code, Section 3056;

(k)(4) required by statute to be maintained and used solely as statistical records;

(k)(5) investigatory material compiled solely for the purpose of determining suitability. eligibility, or qualifications for Federal civilian employment or for access to classified information, the disclosure of which would reveal the identity of the person who furnished information pursuant to a promise that his/her identity would be held in confidence;

(k)(6) testing or examination material used to determine individual qualifications for appointment or promotion in Federal Government service the release of which would compromise the testing or examination process;

(k)(7) material used to determine potential for promotion in the armed services, the disclosure of which would reveal the identity of the person who furnished the material pursuant to a promise that his/her identity would be held in confidence.

FBI/DOJ

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FAX COVER SHEET

TO: Record Information
COMPANY: FBI Dissemination Section
FAX NUMBER: 15408684995
FROM: Charles Carreon
DATE: 2009-11-30 00:28:44 GMT
RE: FOIA Request

COVER MESSAGE:

Dear Sir or Madam:

Please find attached a FOIA Request directed to your administrative agency, as set forth in Attachment A hereto, requesting documents pertaining to the famous cartoonist, Al Capp. Please note that we have requested a fee waiver, and in no event incurrance of expense in excess of $50.00. As noted in the fee waiver, these documents are requested in order to develop the limited historical record on Al Capp and his long-running relationship with various agencies of the U.S. government as a popularizer of U.S. causes and programs.

Please contact me at the telephone number below if clarification of the scope of my requests is needed.

Very truly yours,
Charles Carreon, Esq.
Online Media Law, PLLC
520-841-0835

ONE MORE LOOK AT OUR CURRENT TROUBLES

Address by John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, at the Commencement Convocation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 12, 1969

I have always, as I have said often before, had some difficulties with the baccalaureate address as an art form. It is an occasion for a kind of final moral instruction to the young. The problem is that I have never heard of anyone being influenced by that instruction -- anyone saying, "My entire life was altered by that speech of Everett Dirksen." Or Hubert Humphrey. Perhaps this is no longer true -- now that President Nixon has also spoken. The graduates of the Air Force, Academy and the General Beadle State College may have been permanently affected. But that would only be because the students in these two fine old educational institutions had special appreciation courses in the non-stop, non-sequitured, endurance-tested, self-regenerating cliche. The President has long been experimenting with this prose form. Henceforth he must be counted a master.

And this year there is a further and more serious problem. That is the generation gap. The old, one of which indisputably I am becoming, are no longer assumed to have anything to say to the young. Communication, I read every day in the papers, has broken down. Or as the better scholars say, the dialogue has been suspended. You will appreciate my sense of difficulty and hazard.

Also, I have been on a sabbatical leave this year. Besides giving me a bad sense of guilt (I did return for the recent troubles at Harvard) distance has induced a considerable feeling of mystification. This comes not so much as I survey the campus scene as I look at the reaction to it. As a substitute for noncommunication, let me share with you my sense of puzzlement.

Clearly there has been much tribulation in the universities during this past year. But as I survey the scene, I am struck less by the contention on the campuses than by the odd gallery of specialists which has constituted itself the authority on the situation. Whose voices do we hear on campus disorder and violence? Are they of people who have long been deeply and passionately concerned with education? Do we hear those who are known to be sensitive to the issues which are agitating students and faculties -- men with a record of long, and intimate concern with the war in Vietnam, the military-industrial complex, the draft, race, educational administration? Alas, no. The new sages in the university world, the sources of the advice on how to end disorder, are Strom Thurmond and John McClellan and their allies of the late feudal era in the United States Senate; and Joseph Alsop, whom we had hitherto celebrated as the Edward Gibbon of the Viet Cong; and Al Capp, whom many of us had supposed was the permanent Peter Pan but who is now the Fearless Fosdick of the youth-baiting right; and J. Edgar Hoover, poor old man, as he makes the unhappy transition from the good old-fashioned Communists he knows and cherishes to the incomprehensible S. D. S.; and Spiro Agnew and Walter Annenberg.

The intervention of Ambassador Annenberg is especially interesting. I suppose as a former ambassador, I react professionally here. He used the occasion of his maiden speech as our new plenipotentiary in London to denounce students -- American, not those at the London School of Economics. And, speaking out bravely, he demanded an end to permissiveness at Harvard, Swarthmore and, of course, Berkeley. One wondered why. Was it because the British were especially aroused about this issue? That is hard to believe. They are known to suffer our misfortunes with some fortitude. Was it because Mr. Annenberg, who has spent a lifetime cultivating the clientele of the Morning Telegraph and The Daily Racing Form, those Guttenberg Bibles of the gambling episcopate, not to mention the Philadelphia Inquirer, had suddenly at 60 developed a passion for people who could read? No, that seems too optimistic. I fear there was another reason. He was encouraged to the choice. Some old hand in the State Department took cognizance of the new man and decided that little as he knew about education, he was even less knowledgeable on all other subjects.

But let me get back to my theme. Any matter on which Strom Thurmond, John McClellan, Joe Alsop, Al Capp, Spiro Agnew, J. Edgar Hoover and Walter Annenberg are in solemn agreement obviously has another side. That tells us something.

But I come to another problem. It is violence that is being deplored. And I am the least violent of men. But then we find those who deplore violence are those who urge violence. I was a delegate in Chicago last summer. I am an avowed and card-carrying member of the liberal establishment. I am not without other natural advantages. So I had an adequate view of the proceedings. The violence at Chicago was not the work of youngsters who came in protest against the war. The violence was all accomplished, some imaginative verbal aggression apart, by those who speak in the name of law and order. And Richard Daley, the ultimate author of that violence, was greatly applauded by the enemies of violence. I am not a defender of the tactic of taking over university buildings -- although I think it was a little invited by those who proclaimed them to be not buildings but holy tabernacles. But at my own university, as elsewhere, the greatest violence came not from those who did this foolish thing. It came from those who, interrupting for a moment a lifetime of speeches about reliance on reason, abruptly ordered in the police. Even a reasoned consultation with the faculty was not possible: it would have jeopardized the security of the operation.

In California the use of violence by the defenders of law and order has, of course, entered a new dimension. It shows us the danger against which we are guarding. No one has suggested that the street people, students, faculty members and citizens of Berkeley who were agitating for that park were much disposed to violence. And no one denies that Ronald Reagan, the most compulsive spokesman for law and order in all the country, mobilized the soldiers and was responsible for the buckshot, helicopters and spraying of a noxious gas in violation of the Geneva Convention. It has long been a point that those who were most indifferent to violence in Vietnam were most concerned about violence here at home. It is now a point that those who talk most unctuously about violence here at home are least reluctant to unleash it here at home.

Before anyone asks us to listen to the wickedness of violence let him, henceforth, establish his credentials as an opponent of violence -- both at home and abroad. Otherwise let us ignore him. Or rather if he is a politician let us be sure that we remember him.

Another thing. I hear the instant educational sages whom I mentioned at the outset proclaiming that university faculties are to blame because they are permissive. And I sense that some of my fellow educators wince a bit at that term. Let us wince no more. To be permissive is to inquire whether the other person has a grievance. And it is to try to understand that grievance. And even though we find his behavior inconvenient or objectionable we do not immediately react by banging him over the head. We recognize that he is another human being with another point of view. Possibly he has another and even hostile sense of values. But even then our instinct is to permit, not deny. That is the instinct of civilized men. Let us be proud of that instinct. And especially in the universities.

So much for those who are engaged in the newest political pastime, that of attacking the universities. Let us give them nothing. But what of the universities; surely there must be some instruction for them. What of balanced liberal view, now in some places so unfashionable? You must expect something on the other side. You are quite right.

For those who seek social change, including those who seek great change, I cannot, for the life of me, see that the university is the enemy. That our universities need reform I do not doubt. Rather before the students got around to worrying about Harvard, I had urged that we have a look at our obsolete administration and leadership -- one admirably related to the classical student aberrations of idleness, alcohol and sex but not much related to the modern world of deep political concern. I received a rather lofty brush-off; another difficulty with many of the more devout enemies of violence is that automatically they use its absence as an excuse for inaction. But larger issues than university reform are at stake. In the United States the universities are the instruments of change -- and they are, very nearly, the only instruments of change. And nothing could better affirm the fact than that the present ferment occurs in the universities. Not in the unions, not in the legislatures, not even to the same extent in the slums. The point is also affirmed by the enthusiasm with which the people who most dislike social change have joined in the attack on the universities. If the American university is a bulwark of the existing power structure, that news has not reached a lot of people who are members of the power structure.

In the years ahead, the universities will need to defend themselves. They are not helpless. On the contrary, their power is great. Numerous senators, congressmen, governors and legislators, including some whose instinct might be to attack the universities, are remaining commendably silent this year. They are aware, as other politicians of lesser wisdom are not, that next year university activism may well manifest itself in politics. And they have not forgotten who engineered the improbable ascent of Eugene McCarthy in the improbable state of New Hampshire. And they remember the collapse of Lyndon Johnson and what happened to Hubert Humphrey when they alienated the university community. I hope in 1970 that we can have a general and salutary assault on the political careers of all who are assuming that universities are an easy and harmless object of political diatribe. But we will be able to defend ourselves and launch this kind of counterattack only if we are not busy tearing ourselves apart. That must not happen.

If universities are to be internally at peace, they must be governed. That means all must respect the necessary rules by which universities are run. That, of course, does not mean that they will be politically tranquil places; universities enrolling millions of politically motivated men and women will never again be passive. Some issues that currently divide the university community are simply not worth a fight. With others, I have doubts about course offerings in Afro-American studies now coming into fashion on many campuses. Much of the instruction, despite the best efforts to the contrary, will be poor; the content, I suspect, will often be superficial. A sudden expansion of Irish studies would involve difficulties. But we can afford to try. If these fields of study don't work out, the students will be the first to desert them for something better. As with the Afro studies, so with experiments in radical social studies and student instruction -- matters which are currently agitating some of my more sensitive colleagues at Harvard. But on some things there can be no compromise. Some things, odd as it may seem, man has learned.

There must, in the university, be a tolerance of every reasonable and competently argued position -- and there can be no physical or other disruptive barrier to that argument. That holds for Herbert Marcuse; it holds for Walt Rostow. It holds for Marx and Herbert Spencer and Vilfredo Pareto if their return can be arranged and most definitely for Mao Tse-tung if a leave of absence can be managed. Only those may be excluded who insist by physical means on reserving the right of speech to themselves, and even that rule must be applied with restraint. There are few enough rules in life that have been truly learned -- and to which there are no exceptions. This is one. I wonder, incidentally, why the most obdurate member of S.D.S., the man most bent -- as the modern saying goes -- on radicalizing other students, would disagree. On the basis of the most acute personal experience I can testify that nothing so inculcated doubts about the foreign policy that my radical friends so deplore as its uninterrupted defense by Dean Rusk.

Some equally firm rules must apply to university government. I enthusiastically concede to students the management of student life. Doubtless that government will be imperfect; so is most government. But few occupations for an adult male are less graceful than the supervision of the sex life of an unconsenting undergraduate. So with other behavior. But the setting of academic standards and the selection of academic faculty must equally be a matter of faculty government. I am not here protecting my prerogatives as a faculty member. Few things do so little for my vanity as meetings to pass on the promotions of my younger colleagues. In point of fact, to my considerable discredit, I rarely attend them. But the treatment of heart disease or delirium tremens requires professional judgment. So does the selection of physicians. There is no doubt that the present process is biased in favor of orthodoxy. But it is the best there is. And students seem admirably able to resist the resulting conservatism these days. And the student interest is at stake. If professional competence is absent, students are the first to suffer -- and on recent form, the first to complain. No question of democracy is here involved. I am excluded from the process by which Harvard selects its chemistry faculty for promotion. And even its psychiatrists. That may be undemocratic of the chemists and psychiatrists. But surely it is a wise abridgement of democracy. Students must share my exclusion and are wise to wish it. The case of firm academic standards of achievement is similar. They are imperfect, but no substitute for inducing effort has ever been found. It is unlikely that this will suddenly happen, with all the economy of intellectual effort that might be involved, in the year 1969.

If rules allowing all tolerant men to speak and excluding obstruction to such speech exist, they must be enforced. The most important instrument of enforcement must be the belief of the community that these rules are right. But this is not enough; a little itching powder is an effective weapon against a naked multitude armed only with a just cause. Those who do not accept the accepted rules of the community cannot reasonably protest their exclusion. With others, I was unhappy about some of the preliminary rules promulgated by the faculty student body -- the Committee of Fifteen -- at Harvard this week. I would have liked, as you will gather, a more even-handed view of violence. There must be a procedure against students who resort to violence. There should also be a procedure against administrators who, without reckoning the consequences, unwisely invite the violence of the police. (I am assured that in further deliberations this will come up.) But the Committee was fairly elected by faculty and students. It fairly reflected the views of the community. (I do not believe, as has been suggested, that it involved any concessions to the Board of Overseers. I cannot imagine anyone taking that honorific body so seriously.) One must support judicial process in a university as elsewhere. That, unequivocally, I urged and did. Nothing is more profoundly in the interest of all the community.

One final point. I am struck by the gloom that pervades the modern university community. It is a widely held view that Harvard is tottering on the brink; one slight further nudge and it will tumble into the Charles and the splash will be noted even here at MIT. Or to change the metaphor, everywhere we look we see a great wave of repression rolling up. Soon it will engulf us.

I do not wish to seem an optimist. I am not above protecting my reputation for scholarship and insight by spreading a little gloom. But let us not be too depressed. Universities are going to survive. For one thing, as a matter of simple economics, the modern industrial community cannot survive without them. It was not some new access of enlightenment that brought the recent vast expansion in university numbers and budgets. It was because any state, any city, any community will promptly become economically and industrially obsolete in the absence of a good university system.Universities will be here when those that are now making a career of harassing them have been called to what we may all hope will be a properly ambiguous reward. (As I have said, perhaps we can speed the earthly aspects of that reward.) Just because life has been tranquil in the past does not mean we cannot survive a little strife. Engineers, we know, are not all that sensitive. Neither are economists. Perhaps not even modern poets. So let us be of reasonably good cheer. All is not over yet. On the contrary, I counsel you, as members of the graduating class, to remember that your great test lies ahead. You have sought, not without success, as undergraduates to be a source of radical pressure on your university. Now you must do something really difficult and promote a similar pressure from the alumni.

________________________________________________________________________

CMS/Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Document/Records Request Form

Use this form to request records that are not already available within the public domain.

• You may print this form, complete it, sign it and either mail or fax it to CMS' Freedom of Information Group to the address or facsimile number listed at the end of this form. This form cannot be electronically transmitted to this agency via the Internet.
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Requester Identification Data:

Your Name: Charles Carreon

Your Title: Attorney at Law

Your Organization's Name: Online Media Law, PLLC

Your Address: 2165 S. Avenida Planeta

City: Tucson; State: Arizona Zip: 85710

Telephone: 520-841-0835 Alternate telephone #: ________ (Note: FOIA requests are not accepted via telephone. We may, however, need to contact you to discuss your request.

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List your requested items below:

Item #: 1

Description of records requested:

1 SEE ATTACHMENT A

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Fee Waivers or a reduction of fees may be granted under certain circumstances as
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* If your request appears to meet both tests as listed below, CMS staff will contact you for further information to determine a final conclusion. Please explain how your request compiles with the following:

1. Disclosure of the information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to the public understanding of the operations or activities of government.

If so, please explain:

SEE ATTACHMENT B

II. Disclosure of the information is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.

If so, please explain:

SEE ATTACHMENT B

November 29. 2009
Date of Signature

[CH Carreon]
Signature of Requester

Attachment A: Documents Requested

The documents requested are from the time period from January 1, 1940 until December 31,1979

The following documents are requested:

All documents referring to Al Capp, (born Sep 23, 1909, died Nov 5, 1979) found in the files of any U.S. Government agency, including but not limited to:

• The State Department
• The Department of Justice (DOJ)
• The Department of Defense (DOD)
• The Office of Special Services (OSS)
• The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
• The National Security Administration (NSA)
• The Agency for International Development (AID)
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

All documents in the files of the above agencies, referring to Al Capp's work with:

• The "People to People" Cartoonist Committee during the Eisenhower Administration era
• John Lennon and Yoke Ono and the "John and Yoko's Year of Peace' television program\
• Al Capp's America
• The Al Capp Show
• Al Capp's work on the NBC Radio series, "Monitor"
• The Red Cross
• The Ford Foundation
• The Fund for the Republic
• The Fellowship of Reconciliation
• The Martin Luther King Story
• The United Service Organization

All documents pertaining to Al Capp's efforts to obtain a telecommunications license to operate a television station

All documents pertaining to the use of Al Capp's cartoons by U.S. Government agencies, including but no limited to:

• All "Lil' Abner" characters
• Lena the Hyena
• The Shmoo

Attachment "B": Statement in Support of Fee Waiver Request

1. Disclosure of the information is in the public interest because Al Capp's career as an American cartoonist, radio show host, and television personality for over fifty years paralleled the emergence of the nation from the Depression, its economic expansion during the New Deal, its rise to pre-eminent international influence during and after WW II, its deadlock with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and its loss of clear self-identity during and after the Vietnam war. Capp's ideological transition from a New Deal supporter who was highly critical of wealthy industrialists to a staunch supporter of a hardline anti-communist policy has been explored in the popular media, but without any substantial research into his relations with the agencies of the U.S. Government. Given Capp's influence on American social life, and the trajectory of his career, there is very likely to be a substantial volume of material subject to disclosure.

2. Disclosure of the information is not in the commercial interest of the requester. The requester is Tara Carreon, the librarian for the American Buddha Online Library, an Internet archive that is often searched by scholars, teachers, students, and government servants seeking information on a wide variety of political, artistic, literary, philosophical and architectural topics. The American Buddha Online Library is a project of American Buddha, an Oregon nonprofit corporation.

U.S. Department of Justice

____________________________________________________________________

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

PLEASE FORWARD FILE TO PICKETT STREET MAIL SERVICES SUBUNIT ROOM 1B327

THIS FILE IS PERMANENTLY MAINTAINED AT THE PICKETT STREET OFFSITE LOCATION

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____________________________________________________________________

[admin]

AUTOMATICALLY DECLASSIFIED ON 12-31-2006

cc: Mr. Tolson
Mr. Nichols

January 15, 1948

MEMORANDUM FOR D.M. JUDD

RE: AL CAPP
Creator of Comic Strip "Li'l Abner"
SECURITY MATTER - C

[Delete]

The Bureau is conducting an employee investigation under the Atomic Energy Act of [Delete], a [delete] for the Atomic Energy Commission at Oak Ridge, that [delete]. He is reported by close associates as highly pro-Communist and pro-Soviet in his views. Several indicate that he is a member of the Communist Party. (116-10135)

During this investigation it was determined that [delete], with whom he resided in late 1946, is the mother of Al Capp, creator of the comic strip Li'l Abner. Capp recently visited Oak Ridge, Tennessee to secure background data for the present sequence in the Li'l Abner strip which is concerned with Oak Ridge.

A check of the Bureau files concerning Capp reflects that [delete] [delete], and his [delete] [delete].

In July and August, 1943, Capp was a Judge in a ski writing contest by the Russian War Relief in his home city of Boston. (61-777-5-23). On February 11, 1946, Capp appeared before the Massachusetts Legislative Committee on State Administration in behalf of State Fair Employment Practices legislation which was under consideration. He gave a description of wounded servicement he had visited in hospital wards and pointed out that "all races and creeds were given an equal opportunity to stop a mortar shell" and should, therefore, be given an equal opportunity in the post-war world. (100-7660-3766) On January 9, 1947, [delete], Communist Party Secretary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was asked by the Massachusetts Citizens Political Action Committee, reportedly a Communist infiltrated organization, if she knew Capp well enough to ask him for a subscription to the Progressive Citizens of Massachusetts. (100-347501-3)

ACTION: None. This is for your information.

Respectfully,

[Delete]
[Delete]
[Delete]

VHB:AM

THIS MEMORANDUM IS FOR ADMINISTRATIVE PURPOSES TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ACTION IS TAKEN AND NOT SENT TO FILES

_______________________________________________________________________

(9-22-55)

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

TO: Mr. Tolson
Mr. Nichols
Mrs. Boardman
[illegible]
Mr. Rosen

Subtle propaganda. Very definitely.

17 JAN 24 1956

_______________________________________________________________________

LI'L ABNER
By Al Capp



[MAN] GET ALL THE FACTS ABOUT THE YOUNG YOKUMS. I THINK THEY'RE THE ONES!!

DOGPATCH

[MAN] WE'SSECH DEAR FRIENDS, WE KNOWS THINGS 'BOUT 'EM THEY'D DIE O' EMBARRASSMENT, EF THEY KNOWED WE KNEW!! --

BUT -- WE'LL TELL YO' STRANGER!!



HOURS LATER

[WOMAN] SPLENDID!! BUT DON'T REVEAL THEY'RE BEING INVESTIGATED!!

[MAN] ?? -- THEY IS? -- GULP! -- W-WE BETTER N-NOT HAVE NOTHIN' MORE T'DO WIF THEM RATS!!

Date: JAN 10, 1956

Wash. Post and times Herald 4-3

_______________________________________________________________________

LI'L ABNER
By Al Capp



[MAN] ALL WE KNOWS 'BOUT TH' YOUNG YOKUMS IS, THEY'S A FINE CLEAN-LIVIN' YOUNG COUPLE.

[WOMAN] I'M GLAD YOU THINK SO -- UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES REVEAL THIS INVESTIGATION HAS TAKEN PLACE!!

[MAN] ?? YO' IS INVESTIGATIN' 'EM? -- !! -- THEN THEY MUSTA DONE SOMETHIN' AWFUL, HUH?



[WOMAN] OUR JOB IS SIMPLY TO COLLECT FACTS

[MAN] THEM ROTTEN, SNEAKY, YOUNG YOKUMS!! WHO'D EVER OF THUNK!!

[GIRL [TO BABY]] YO' KEEP AWAY FUM HONEST ABE -- UNDERSTAND?

Date: JAN 11, 1956

Wash. Post and times Herald 4-9

_______________________________________________________________________

Benton, Arkansas
August 2, 1960

Mr. Al Capp
The United Feature Syndicate
220 East 42nd Street
New York 17, New York

Dear Mr. Capp:

I noted your Lil Abner comic strip of July 31 in the Arkansas Gazette which indirectly ridiculed the investigation of un-American activities by implying that senators so engaged merely enjoy themselves licentiously in vacation spots the world over.

That surreptitious attack is a dis-service to your country, since the F.B.I., American Legion, American Bar Association and other American groups who have seriously and objectively studied communist infiltration, warn that the House Committee on Un-American activities and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee constitute the very heart of our defense against communist take-over from within by revealing their inroads specifically.

There are the only governmental agencies authorized to perform this vital service.

For your consideration, I have enclosed some pertinent documents. Since these committees are under constant attack by vocal commie fronts, perhaps you might find it advantageous to publish soon a strip or statement plainly stating that your parody in no matter seriously implies that these committees actually perform as you depicted -- i.e., the members have no even traveled abroad.

Even the most searching examinations have found NO laxity or incompetence in these committees, so it is only fair play not to influence the public insidiously against them by such perhaps unintentional innuendo on your part.

I hope to receive a reply from you denoting affirmative action as a patriotic and fair-minded citizen.

Yours very truly,

[Delete]

I realize that this satire was probably unintentional on your part; but its danger still exists.

_______________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

WASHINGTON 25, D.C.

COMMUNIST "NEW LOOK" -- A STUDY IN DUPLICITY

BY JOHN EDGAR HOOVER
DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

The sole purpose of the new Party line is to hoodwink you.

(Reprinted by permission from "The Elks Magazine," August, 1956)

HOW CAN COMMUNISM AFFECT YOU?

As a decent American citizen you mind your own business, work hard at your job, discharge your civic duties, and when you come home after a busy day you desire nothing so much as to stretch out in your favorite chair with the evening paper. The sense of well-being you experience is enhanced if the news happens to reflect even the most nebulous indication that the nightmare world of communism may be willing -- sometimes -- somewhere -- to make some slight concession toward civilized standards of behavior. So, you relax, and communism seems a threat that is sinister but distant, and one which, given time, might eventually recede and leave you and your loved ones untouched.

Would it surprise you to know that you are experiencing the very feeling of relaxation which the proponents of the most monstrous tyranny ever conceived desire to evoke in you?

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

_______________________________________________________________________

The following list of MAJOR Communist Party, USA, objectives has been compiled by The American Bar Association:

THESE ARE THE THINGS COMMUNISTS DEEM NECESSARY TO ACCOMPLISH IN ORDER TO CONQUER YOU:

1. Repeal or weaken the Anti-Communist legislation on the books, especially the Smith act, the Internal Security Act, and the Subversive Activities Control Act.

2. Discredit and hamper the Senate Internal Security Sub-Committee, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and State officials investigating Communism.

3. Weaken the effectiveness of the FBI and reveal its sources of information.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

_______________________________________________________________________



The National Education Program
Announces
A dramatic, new
sound-color filmstrip
Communism on the Map
*DESIGNED TO AWAKEN AN APATHETIC AMERICA

... tracing the conquest of the world by international Communism -- with full, shocking documentation on how the Reds have won each victory!

_______________________________________________________________________

From all over America have come requests from individuals and groups seeking "something dramatic" with which to "shock our friends and neighbors" into an awareness of international Communism's continuing takeover of the world. Many have written: "People just won't become concerned about our world situation. We need to develop something that will frighten them out of their apathy -- permanently!"

The facts of recent history are enough to frighten any freedom-loving person --

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

_______________________________________________________________________

October 29, 1960

[Delete]

Dear [Delete]

My studies of the Communist system have convinced me that its greatest evil lies in its rigid policing of the mind, its frenzy and fear of the slightest deviation from approved thinking.

I am sure your typically Communist reaction to the mildly critical tone used in my strip of July 21 was an unfortunate and unintentional resemblance to Communist response to the slightest criticism of Communist orthodoxy. I am also sure that investigation of your political affiliations would reveal no tie-up with subversive elements. Nonetheless, I consider it my duty to turn your communication over to the FBI. In the unforgettable words of the late Senator McCarthy, "No man who is clean has anything to fear from investigation."

Sincerely,

Al Capp

cc: Mr. J. Edgar Hoover
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D.C.

_______________________________________________________________________

November 3, 1960

Mr. Al Capp
33 Beaver Place
Boston 8, Massachusetts

Dear Mr. Capp:

Your letter of October 29, 1960, with enclosures, was received in Mr. Hoover's absence from the city, and I am acknowledging it for him. You may be sure that he will appreciate your thoughtfulness in sending this material to him.

Sincerely yours,

[Delete]

[Delete]
[Delete]
[Delete]
NOTE: Capp was criticized by [delete] for a satire in his comic strip regarding investigation of un-American activities. He also furnished a copy of his reply to [delete] Bufiles reflect very limited correspondence with Capp. [Delete] [Delete] [Delete] In view of controversial nature of Capp's comic strip portraying un-American activities investigators, in-absence felt desirable. Bufiles contain no information regarding [delete] to preclude sending this letter.

JMM:ncr (3)

_______________________________________________________________________

AL CAPP

October 29, 1960

Mr. J. Edgar Hoover
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Hoover:

I feel that it is my duty to bring the enclosed correspondence to your attention.

Sincerely yours,

Al Capp

AGC:cda

Enc.

_______________________________________________________________________

February 9, 1961

REC-19 100-354397-5

Dear [delete]

Your letter, with enclosure, was received on February 3, 1961, and the interest which prompted you to write is indeed appreciated.

I was glad to have the benefit of your observations and comments. The jurisdiction and responsibilities of the FBI do not, however, extend to furnishing evaluations or comments relative to the character or integrity of any individual, publication or organization. I hope you will not infer in this connection either that we do or do not have information in our files regarding the individual about whom you wrote.

Sincerely yours,

John Edgar Hoover
Director

[Delete]
[Delete]

NOTE: Correspondent is not identifiable in Bufiles. (The Bureau has not conducted an investigation of Al Capp whose full name is Alfred Gerald Caplin. [Delete] testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1958 and admitted he had served as State Secretary of the Communist Party, USA, in Louisiana, and as having served as Party organizer in West Pennsylvania. He claimed that he had severed his connections with the Party in 1942. [Delete] [Delete] Bufiles contain numerous references to Al Capp. A cross-section of them are as follows: In 1940, a national training school for the Communist Party, USA, was reported held at his apartment although he was not present at the time. In 1948, he created a character known as "schmoo". By means of the episodes in his comic strip surrounding the "schmoo," he implied that the American economy was being mismanaged by vicious tycoons. His efforts were hailed in "The Worker" the East Coast publication of the Communist Party, USA, and he received high praise at a Communist Party meeting in New Haven in 1949. A 1949 issue of "Daily People's World" contained an article describing Capp as one of 200 "cultural leaders" who had signed an invitation for the re-establishment of American-Soviet understanding and cooperation. In 1956, his strip depicted an incident in which several persons were converted to outcasts because of questioning concerning them by government investigators.)

_______________________________________________________________________

February 1, 1961

United States Department of Justice
Washington 25, D.C.

Dear Mr. Hoover:

I have had the intentions to write to you some time ago but I kept putting it off thinking my suspicions were silly imagination.

Now I came to the conclusion is the time to write. One never is positive these days what might be uncovered.

Enclosed you will find a copy of the comic strip (LI'L ABNER) and my curiosity was aroused at the second part in which the lady is holding the phone with gloves and uses the expression HEW HESS HESS HARR -- USSR. If any information is going out it may be he is on the right side of the fence -- but again he might be on the wrong side. I have scrutinized this cartoon strip for years now and each day that goes by arouses my suspicions more and more. It seems that not only this one could produce leaks but others could do so as well.

I know that I shall feel better this being off my mind. Putting it off just seems to irritate one all the more.

Hoping my suspicions will be cleared up satisfactorily so that I can read the comics WITHOUT WONDERING if something is leaking out. Thank you for your patience in reading this letter.

Yours very truly,

[Delete]

_______________________________________________________________________

LI'L ABNER
By Al Capp



[WOMAN] PFINISHED! MAKE COMRADE-TO-COMRADE CALL TO KREMLIN!!

[MAN] TO CHIFF?

[WOMAN] TSUPREME CHAIRMAN OF TCENTRAL COMMITTEE, HEW HESS HESS HARR, SPIKKINK!! HOLLO, BALDY!! I GOT NEWS FOR YOU -- ??? -- HOLD PLISS THE PHONE!! IS A FONNY NOISE HOUTSIDE!! CAN A JET WARM OPP IN A BUILDINK?

[MAN] MAMMY!! -- YO' IS CRANKIN' UP TH' -- GASP!! -- "GOODNIGHT IRENE" PUNCH!!

_______________________________________________________________________

LI'L ABNER
By Al Capp



LI'L ABNER'S IDEEL "FEARLESS FOSDICK"

HIS RED LIGHT IS FLASHING!! HE'S DISCOVERED THE CENTER OF CRIME IN OUR CITY!!

AT LAST WE'LL FIND OUR TOP CRIMINALS

[STATION SLOB] WE'VE SIGNED UP "THE UNSPEAKABLES" AND "MICHAEL SHAMELESS PRIVATE EYE-GOUGER"!! IT'S GREAT STUFF FOR THE KIDS

The Washington Post and Times Herald B-20

141 FEB 9, 1961

_______________________________________________________________________

NICK KENNY

Capp Answers Video Violence

WIFE MEN have said that one picture is worth a thousand words. That's the way we felt reading Al Capp's popular cartoon "Li'l Abner" in last Saturday's New York Mirror. Capp had one of his cartoon characters (a TV producer) telling how he plans to produce a TV series that will teach kids how to murder, torture, and steal.

"Sponsors will pay me millions for corrupting youth. TV stations will give me prime time to do it," chortles the pen-and-ink Fagin. "But best of all I'll be respectable, and the F.B.I. won't put me on the "Ten most dangerous criminals' list, much as I'll deserve it."

This is cartoonist's Al Capp's answer to the video violence that is so rampant on TV. We urge readers to follow the Capp cartoon strip, especially latest episode touching on TV.

Cartoonists have an uncanny knack of spot-lighting what's wrong with the world. Here's one case where the pen may prove mightier than the sword. Hurry day!

New York Mirror - 12

Dec 15, 1960

57 Dec 21, 1960

_______________________________________________________________________

LI'L ABNER
By Al Capp



[DAISY MAE] YO' DONE RUN A LI'L CRIME SCHOOL, HUH, FAGIN?

[FAGIN] JUST A LITTLE SCHOOL, DEARIE -- TEACHIN' A LITTLE GROUP LITTLE CRIMES!! BUT THIS BOX PUT ME H'OUT O'BUSINESS. IT TEACHES 30 MILLION YOUNGSTERS BIG CRIMES ... IN TH' H'UTMOST DETAIL, AND IN TH' MOST H'ATTRACTIVE MANNER!! IT CONDUCTS NIGHTLY CLASSES IN KNIFIN', GUNNIN', H'EXTORTION, H'ASSAULT AN' BATTERY, AN H'EVERY TYPE O' 'IDEOUS H'EXECUTION!!

[DAISY MAE] IT'S A KINDA ELECTRONIC FAGIN, HUH, FAGIN?

New York Mirror - 13

DEC 27, 1960

63 Dec 30, 1960

_______________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

To: Mr. DeLoach

DATE: 9/25/61

FROM: [Delete]

SUBJECT: HONORABLE FRANK J. BECKER
MEMBER OF CONGRESS
LETTER DATED 9/19/61
FOLLOWING RECEIPT OF COPY OF
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD OF 9/11/61
FROM CONGRESSMAN BECKER

You will recall that we received a copy of the 9/11/61 issue of the Congressional Record from Congressman Becker which contained his statement "Unfair Attack on Law Enforcement Officers." Congressman Becker referred to the comic strip "Li'l Abner" drawn by Al Capp which depicts our Nation's law enforcement officers in a most unfavorable light. You telephoned Congressman Becker on 9/19/61 and conveyed the Director's appreciation for Becker's defense of the law enforcement profession.

CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS:

We have received another letter from Congressman Becker dated 9/19/61. He has enclosed a copy of a letter he sent to [delete] General Manager and Editor, United Feature Syndicate, Inc., and [delete] reply to him. In [delete] reply he advised Congressman Becker that he had talked to Al Capp and that Capp had assured him he would bring that sequence to a speedy close. [Delete] considered Congressman Becker's criticism justifiable and understandable. [Delete] advised that Al Capp is an independent contractor and not an employee of United Feature Syndicate.

RECOMMENDATION:

That the attached letter be sent to Congressman Becker in view of his continued interest in preventing attacks on law enforcement.

[Delete]

Enclosure

56 Oct 2, 1961

JCFM:jrb
(3)

_______________________________________________________________________

From the office of Representative Frank J. Becker
Republican, Third District, New York
1727 New House Office Building, Washington, D.C.
CA 4-3121, Ext. 4921

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 11, 1961

Congressman Frank J. Becker (R.-N.Y.) blasted cartoonist Al Capp on the Floor of the House of Representatives today for his "offensive, demoralizing and grossly unfair smear" of the nation's law enforcement officers.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

_______________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

DATE: 9-15-61

TO: Mr. DeLoach

FROM: [Delete]

SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF COPY OF CONGRESSIONAL RECORD OF 9-11-61 FROM CONGRESSMAN FRANK J. BECKER CONTAINING HIS STATEMENT "UNFAIR ATTACK ON LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS"

BACKGROUND:

By letter of 9-12-61 Congressman Frank J. Becker forwarded a copy of the 9-11-61 issue of the Congressional Record which sets forth a statement by him on page 17689 entitled "Unfair Attack on Law Enforcement Officers." At this time, he was inserting into the Record a letter from him dated 9-6-61 to [delete] General Manager and Editor of United Feature Syndicate, Inc. [delete] was taking issue both in the statement and in his letter to [delete] with the recent installments in the "Li'l Abner" comic strip by Al Capp which depicts our Nation's law enforcement officers in a most unfavorable light. Becker feels that a comic strip of this type will cause young offenders to lose respect and confidence in constituted authority. Becker feels that the comic strip will serve to smear the Nation's law enforcement officers. Congressman Becker forwarded this material in the belief that the Director would be interested in it and he would appreciate any comments the director would care to make

INFORMATION IN BUFILES: Alfred Gerald Caplin -- Summary N.Y.

We have had cordial relations with Congressman Becker who is on the Special Correspondents' List.

The Bureau has not conducted an investigation of Al Capp, whose full name is Alfred Gerald Caplin. [Delete] testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1958 and admitted he had served as State Secretary of the Communist Party, USA, in Louisiana, and as having served as Party organizer in West Pennsylvania. He claimed that he had severed his connections with the Party in 1942, [delete] [delete]. Bufiles contain numerous references to Al Capp. A cross-section of them are as follows: In 1940, a national training school for the Communist Party, USA, was reported held at his apartment although he was not present at the time. In 1948, he created a character known as "schmoo". By means of the episodes in his comic strip surrounding the "schmoo," he implied that the American economy was being mismanaged by vicious tycoons. His efforts were hailed in "The Worker" the East Coast publication of the Communist Party, USA, and he received high praise at a Communist Party meeting in New Haven in 1949. A 1949 issue of "Daily People's World" contained an article describing Capp as one of 200 "cultural leaders" who had signed an invitation for the re-establishment of American-Soviet understanding and cooperation. In 1956, his strip depicted an incident in which several persons were converted to outcasts because of questioning concerning them by government investigators.

In May, 1961, the Spring, 1961, quarterly issue of NAFBRAT (National Association For Better Radio and Television) was reviewed. On page 11 of this quarterly, is a reprint of an article from the "New York Herald Tribune" by Al Capp. This article is "a first letter to a first lady." In it Capp cites the bad effects which some television programs have on children but in referring to the curiosity of children he concludes with "They may ask why some of the grownups who work for Pop, like J. Edgar Hoover and his lads, spend so much time with the comparatively small group of pornographers who furtively send still pictures of naked and writhing bodies through the mail and haven't the guts to lay a finger on the infinitely greater group of greater enemies of decency -- the television station owners ... "

In Al Capp's column in the 3-30-61 issue of the "New York Herald Tribune" under the caption "Too Poor To Be a Communist, " Capp related his experience in the 30's of how he was too poor to pay $1 membership fee in a Young Peoples' Social Club which turned out to be the Young Communist League. He concluded this article by stating "If I had had that dollar, my name would have eradicably been on their lists, entitling any Congressional committee thirty years later to denounce me as a traitor, and any investigative agency to reject my services to my country, because I was once a card-carrying subversive."

OBSERVATIONS:

Although Capp could have an ulterior motive in his depicting law enforcement officers in an unfavorable light in his comic strip, he could reasonably refute this argument by stating that he is actually taking a slam at the over preponderance of crime and violence such as in "The Untouchables" show. However, it is felt that Congressman Becker should be complimented for coming to the defense of law enforcement agencies.

RECOMMENDATION:

You or a representative of your office contact Congressman Becker and convey the Director's appreciation for Becker's forthright statement in defense of the loyal and dedicated members of the law enforcement profession.

[Delete]

9/19/61

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

DATE: October 7, 1963

TO: Mr. Mohr

FROM: C. D. DeLoach

SUBJECT: JACK O'BRIAN'S COLUMN
NEW YORK JOURNAL-AMERICAN
OCTOBER 4, 1963

Reference is made to Jack O'Brian's column in the New York Journal-American, October 4, 1963, which stated "All Capp's 'Tonight' appearance caught the 'Li'l Abner' cartoonist ridiculing everyone in sight: both Mr. and Mrs. JFK; J. Edgar Hoover, Sen. McClellan, etc."

[Delete] of my office heard this program. She recalls that Capp referred to various gangsters whom Valachi had mentioned, would make some comment about them, and then would say "Call him (by the name of some prominent person)." For instance, he referred to Buster, commented he was the gangster who carried the machine gun in his violin case and this made Senator McClellan think he was a musician. Capp then said "call him Norman Vincent Peale."

Capp referred to Senator McClellan's "inquiring mind" because the Senator stopped Valachi in the middle of explaining his initiation into La Cosa Nostra to ask Valachi if the table around which they were all sitting was "round or square." After laughing about that, he commented he wondered what Elliot Ness was doing about this, or J. Edgar Hoover. He then hesitated a minute and said "probably worrying."

Action: For information.

CDD:FML
(6)

1-Mr. Belmont
1-Mr. Evans
1-Mr. Rosen
1-Mr. Jones

102 OCT 14, 1963
53 OCT 16, 1963

_______________________________________________________________________

JACK O'BRIAN SAYS:

Pizza in Eye Not Very Filling

SID CAESAR's new TV series started last night much in the same old Caesar style, and the material rendered to Caesar didn't bury him, including in laughter; a commonplace program ... Not, however, Gisele Mackenzie, a queensize doll ... The show's biggest laugh came when Sid got pasted in the puss with a dripping, messy pizza; the new, possibly topical Valachi version of custard pies ... Its prize pun: Sid said he had a job as "a gopher," which meant "I gopher hot dogs, gopher pizzas," etc. ... That misplay on words wasn't even very funny 30 years ago ... Why are pizzas suddenly this season's commedy crust? ... NBC wanted its "Cosa Nostra" documentary last 7:30 to 8:30 to be more than it turned out -- a series of old Joe Valachi tapes plus some static interviews ... NBC had camera crews out getting films of the hoods and their homes, hangouts, etc., but turned up too little too late.... Pitsburgh literally lit up its whole downtown in honor of visiting son Perry Como ... We couldn't review the Como Show (Altra Baer reviews Perry's hour in these pages) but did see enough of Cyd Charisse to register a passing "wow" and note her lovely gams seemed to go straight up to her shoulders.

DR. KILDARE had a good and pertinent story well acted in most roles, especially by Thomas Gomez as the tricky lawyer and Barbara Billingsley as the unwilling litigant ... Kildare played a physician sued for malpractice after he stopped to help a mother in childbirth ... The play had its fine subtle sermon -- that laws to protect doctors from unjustified suits should be passed or doctors won't bother to reply to an unexpected cry for help from strangers ... Kildare lost the case; maybe he should have hired Perry Mason.

Al Capp's "Tonight" appearance caught the "Li'l Abner" cartoonist ridiculing everyone in sight: both Mr. and Mrs JFK; J. Edgar Hoover, Sen. McClellan, police, senators ... But his ridicule seemed mis-aimed when he came to comic conclusions as the result of TV dialogue he quoted which actually never happened ... Cutrate iconoclast Capp didn't knock Valachi, oddly ... Probably his sudden recent exposure on TV is either cause or effect of his new regular job on NBC's "Monitor" radio show.'

New York Journal-American - 22

Oct 4, 1963

cc: Tolson
Belmont
Conrad
DeLoach
Evans
Rosen
Sullivan

_______________________________________________________________________

WE DOUBT the Federal government should or will do anything official about controlling TV commercials ... We don't think the government has the right; but the networks certainly should get wise instead of shrewd and do something inside the industry to quiet the rising tide of public resistance to the frequency, noise and lack of taste in their commercials.

HERE'S A REAL SWITCH: Revue-Universal (MCA) made a pilot for an hour

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

_______________________________________________________________________

August 13, 1964

ALFRED GERALD CAPLAN, ALSO KNOWN AS AL CAPP
BORN: SEPTEMBER 28, 1909
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

The FBI has never conducted an investigation concerning Alfred Gerald Caplin, who is known professionally as Al Capp; however, its files contain the following pertinent information regarding him.

[Delete] testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1953, admitting he had served as State Secretary of the Communist Party, USA, in Louisiana. [Delete [Delete] alleged he severed his connections with the Party in 1942 [delete] [delete].

In April, 1949, [delete] was reported employed as the manager of Capp Enterprise, Inc., a firm organized by Al Capp. A reliable informant advised this Bureau on November 14, 1950, that he believed [delete] he was then working full time with [delete] Al Capp. (100-138754-681, pp. 45, 56.)

An article in the January 12, 1949, issue of the "Daily People's World," a west coast communist newspaper, listed Al Capp as one of two hundred "cultural leaders" who signed an invitation to a peace conference to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, March 25-27, 1949. He was quoted as asking for "re-establishment of American-Soviet understanding and cooperation which alone can make peace possible." (100-345137-A)

HHA:cmk
(10)

_______________________________________________________________________

On October 6, 1959, a reliable source advised the FBI that Al Capp must have been close to the Communist Party, if not an actual member. This informant based his conclusion on the fact that [delete] [delete] [delete].

In his column which appeared in the March 30, 1961, edition of the "New York Herald Tribune," under the caption "Too Poor to Be a Communist," Al Capp related his experience in the 1930's of being too poor to pay a $1 membership fee in a social club which turned out to be the Young Communist League. He concluded this column by stating: "If I had had that dollar, my name would have eradicably been on their lists, entitling any Congressional committee thirty years later to denounce me as a traitor, and any investigative agency to reject my services to my country, because I was once a card-carrying subversive." (100-354397-8).

(Request per [delete], Social Secretary, White House.)

_______________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

DATE: 8-13-64

TO: Mr. DeLoach

FROM: [delete]

SUBJECT: NAME CHECK REQUESTS FOR WHITE HOUSE

[Delete] Social Secretary of the White House, requested a check of Bureau files concerning the following individuals: [delete] Alfred Gerald Caplin (Al Capp)) [delete] [delete]

There are attached 14 memoranda reflecting the results of these checks.

RECOMMENDATION:

That you, Mr. DeLoach, furnish the attached letterhead memoranda to [delete]

Enclosures (14)

1-Mr. Belmont
1-Mr. Mohr
1-Mr. DeLoach
1-Mr. Evans
1-Mr. Rosen

JMM:cmk
(9)

141 AUG. 21, 1964

3 AUG. 20, 1964

64 AUG 28, 1964

_______________________________________________________________________

CAPP 5/25 NX

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. (UPI) -- AL CAPP, THE ACID-TONGUE CARTOONIST, NEARLY WAS DENIED AN AWARD BY A FEW STUDENTS AT PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SATURDAY NIGHT AFTER HE CRITICIZED THE NEW LEFT.

SPEAKING TO A STUDENT ASSEMBLY OF ABOUT 5,500, CAPP SAID THE MOVEMENT FOR STUDENT CONTROL OF THE UNIVERSITY WAS LIKE GETTING "THE LUNATICS RUN THE ASYLUM."

WHEN CAPP SAT DOWN, THE MASTER OF CEREMONIES, [DELETE], A JUNIOR FROM CARLISLE, PA., SAID THE COMMITTEE IN CHARGE OF THE PROGRAM HAD DECIDED NOT TO GIVE CAPP A NITTANY LION STATUTE, THE SYMBOL OF THE UNIVERSITY.

[DELETE] WHO WAS HOLDING THE STATUE INTENDED FOR CAPP, SAID THE CARTOONIST'S PRESENTATION "WAS NOT IN THE SPIRIT OF THE COLLOQUY PROGRAM WHICH AS AN INTERCHANGE OF IDEAS, A DIALOGUE."

[DELETE] WAS BOOED BY THE AUDIENCE AS HE LEFT THE STAGE.

[DELETE] A SENIOR HONOR STUDENT, THEN JUMPED UP OUT OF THE AUDIENCE, GRABBED THE STATUE FROM [DELETE] AND HANDED IT TO CAPP, MOST OF THE STUDENTS APPLAUDED [DELETE] GESTURE.

[DELETE] LATER APOLOGIZED TO CAPP. "I GOT CARRIED AWAY WITH MY PERSONAL FEELINGS," HE SAID. "IT WAS A MISTAKE AND AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT FOR WHICH I OFFER MY DEEPEST APOLOGIES."

CAPP, WHO ACCEPTED THE APOLOGY, TOLD [DELETE] "THERE'S SOMETHING FOR YOU TO LEARN HERE TONIGHT."

"NINETY-EIGHT PER CENT OF THE YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY ARE GOOD PEOPLE," CAPP EARLIER TOLD THE AUDIENCE. "THEY ARE THE ONES WHOSE COLLEGE EDUCATIONS ARE BEING DISRUPTED, WHOSE COLLEGES ARE BEING BURNED, WHOSE CAREERS ARE BEING INTERRUPTED BY A TWO PER CENT GROUP OF HYENAS. NOW TWO PER CENT MAY NOT BE MUCH, BUT TWO PER OF CANCER IN A BEING CAN DESTROY THAT BEING UNLESS THERE IS SOMETHING DRASTIC DONE."

ASKED HIS REACTION TO THE STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY, HE SAID:

"THAT'S LIKE SAYING THERE IS A LEPER COLONY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. THE NAME STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY" SOUNDED FIND TO ME UNTIL I SAW THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY THEY WERE TRYING TO BUILD."

GA/AA1223PED

WASHINGTON CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE

_______________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

DATE: 5-24-68

TO: The Director

FROM: [delete]

SUBJECT: The Congressional Records

UNDER CONSTRUCTION ... Mr. Rarick also advised that "on the evening of May 15, 1968, the Police Association of the District of Columbia honored the famed cartoonist, Al Capp, at the annual dinner meeting of the Association." He inserted in the Record the remarks made by Mr. Capp on that occasion. Mr. Capp stated "I'm surprised anyone came. You guys are 'out.' It isn't the 'in' thing to be in law enforcement today. It's much more 'in' to be in lawbreaking. --- We live in a time when Bonnie and Clyde are 'in' and when one presidential candidate can't wait to throw J. Edgar Hoover out."

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

_______________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

[delete]

DATE: 7/2/69

TO: [delete]

FROM: [delete]

SUBJECT: AL CAPP
CARTOONIST
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

[delete]
[delete]

By letter of 6/26/69, our Boston Office submitted a reprinted speech delivered by Al Capp, the well-known cartoonist, at the Franklin Pierce College, Rindge, New Hampshire, on 4/27/69, appearing in the 6/25/69 edition of "The Boston Globe." In his speech, Capp is critical of Harvard University's handling of student agitation and during the speech, takes Harvard Economist John Kenneth Galbraith to task. Also submitted is a "Letter to the Globe from Al Capp" which appeared in the same edition of the Globe. In this letter, Capp alleges that Galbraith in commencement addresses made unfavorable references to both Capp and Mr. Hoover. According to Capp, Galbraith supposedly questioned the right of Capp and the Director to comment on the campus situation since neither had any experience in the field. Capp then largely defends the Director and ends his letter by making reference to the FBI National Academy as a great "graduate" school and states: "No student of Hoover's ever burned his country's flag, beat up his instructors, or screeched obscenities at school the day he graduated."

This material was submitted with the thought that the Director may want to write Mr. Capp thanking him for his favorable comments. [delete]

By letter dated 6/27/69, [delete] secretary to Al Capp, sent, at Mr. Capp's direction, copies of the aforementiond commencement address and letter to the Globe to the Bureau. [delete] expressed gratitude to our Boston Office for its help in furnishing him information regarding the Director.

Both Al Capp (also known as Alfred G. Capplin) and John Kenneth Galbraith are, of course, well-known to the Bureau. In the past, Capp has been praised by the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) and its publications for some of his comic strips which have implied, among other things, that the American economy was being mismanaged by vicious tycoons, that several persons were converted to outcasts because of questioning concerning them by government investigators and like matters. In 1961, a Congressman criticized Capp for unfair attacks on law enforcement officers in his comic strip, "Li'l Abner," and, that same year, Capp wrote in a column that during the 1930's he was too poor to pay a membership fee in a social club that turned out to be the Young Communist League. He concluded that if he had joined, thirty years later any Congressional Committee would be entitled to call him a traitor and any

Enclosure
1-Mr. DeLoach-Enc

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JUL 9, 1969

CONTINUED -- OVER

investigative agency would be entitled to reject his services to his country. [delete] [delete] admittedly held a position in the CPUSA during the late 1930's. In recent years, Capp has become increasingly conservative in many of his views. In addition to his cartooning, he has become a very active speaker who expresses strong views against student agitation. Galbraith, subject of FBI investigations in 1941, 1950, 1961, and 1965, is widely known as a liberal and one who has been a sharp critic of American foreign policy through his participation in the Americans for a Democratic Action. Our investigations reflect Galbraith was closely associated with individuals affiliated with communist front groups and, in the case of [delete] a Communist Party member in 1961, Galbraith's name was in the files of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

OBSERVATION:

That despite Capp's previous background, inasmuch as he has in recent years shown a tendency toward a more conservative point of view and since his letter to the Globe does contain favorable comments regarding the Director and the Bureau, it would seem appropriate to write him a letter expressing appreciation for these kind comments.

RECOMMENDATION:

That in line with above, attached letter be sent to Mr. Capp.

_______________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

DATE: 7/25/69

TO: DIRECTOR, FBI
Attention: Central Research Unit,
Research-Satellite Section,
Domestic Intelligence Division

FROM: SAC, BOSTON (62-0)

SUBJECT: AL CAPP
SYNDICATED NEWSPAPER CARTOONIST
INFORMATION CONCERNING

[delete]

Rebulet 7/14/69

Enclosed for the Bureau is a cop of an address by JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, entitled, "One More Look at Our Current Troubles," which was delivered at a Commencement Convocation of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Mass., on 6/12/69.

Also enclosed is a clipping from the 6/8/69 edition of the "Worcester Sunday Telegram." The clipping is entitled, "Galbraith Deplores 'Harassment' of Universities." The Bureau will note that this clipping mentions that JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH remarked during a commencement speech to graduates of Assumption College, Worcester, Mass., on 6/7/69, that voices rising against universities and warnings issued to college administrators were coming from people who have never much concerned themselves with the issues behind student unrest. He described FBI Director J. EDGAR HOOVER as one of these people and stated parenthetically after mentioning the Director by name, "Who went from chasing old Communists to chasing the SDS." It would appear, therefore, that the remarks of GALBRAITH made at Assumption College on 6/7/69 either paralleled or were identical to those he made at MIT on 6/12/69.

An established reliable source at Assumption College has advised that GALBRAITH did not submit a prepared text prior to his commencement address and stated that he intended to speak from notes.

Consequently, there is no transcription of GALBRAITH's remarks presently available at Assumption College. The reliable source added, however, that the entire graduation exercise had been recorded on tape and that it would be possible to transcribe GALBRAITH's speech if such were desired. 100-354-397-11

2-Bureau (Encs. 2)
2-Boston
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[Delete]

Boston will attempt to obtain a transcription of Assumption College speech of GALBRAITH and will forward it to the Bureau as soon as it is received.

_______________________________________________________________________

ONE MORE LOOK AT OUR CURRENT TROUBLES

Address by John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, at the Commencement Convocation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 12, 1969

I have always, as I have said often before, had some difficulties with the baccalaureate address as an art form. It is an occasion for a kind of final moral instruction to the young. The problem is that I have never heard of anyone being influenced by that instruction -- anyone saying, "My entire life was altered by that speech of Everett Dirksen." Or Hubert Humphrey. Perhaps this is no longer true -- now that President Nixon has also spoken. The graduates of the Air Force, Academy and the General Beadle State College may have been permanently affected. But that would only be because the students in these two fine old educational institutions had special appreciation courses in the non-stop, non-sequitured, endurance-tested, self-regenerating cliche. The President has long been experimenting with this prose form. Henceforth he must be counted a master.

And this year there is a further and more serious problem. That is the generation gap. The old, one of which indisputably I am becoming, are no longer assumed to have anything to say to the young. Communication, I read every day in the papers, has broken down. Or as the better scholars say, the dialogue has been suspended. You will appreciate my sense of difficulty and hazard.

Also, I have been on a sabbatical leave this year. Besides giving me a bad sense of guilt (I did return for the recent troubles at Harvard) distance has induced a considerable feeling of mystification. This comes not so much as I survey the campus scene as I look at the reaction to it. As a substitute for noncommunication, let me share with you my sense of puzzlement.

Clearly there has been much tribulation in the universities during this past year. But as I survey the scene, I am struck less by the contention on the campuses than by the odd gallery of specialists which has constituted itself the authority on the situation. Whose voices do we hear on campus disorder and violence? Are they of people who have long been deeply and passionately concerned with education? Do we hear those who are known to be sensitive to the issues which are agitating students and faculties -- men with a record of long, and intimate concern with the war in Vietnam, the military-industrial complex, the draft, race, educational administration? Alas, no. The new sages in the university world, the sources of the advice on how to end disorder, are Strom Thurmond and John McClellan and their allies of the late feudal era in the United States Senate; and Joseph Alsop, whom we had hitherto celebrated as the Edward Gibbon of the Viet Cong; and Al Capp, whom many of us had supposed was the permanent Peter Pan but who is now the Fearless Fosdick of the youth-baiting right; and J. Edgar Hoover, poor old man, as he makes the unhappy transition from the good old-fashioned Communists he knows and cherishes to the incomprehensible S. D. S.; and Spiro Agnew and Walter Annenberg.

The intervention of Ambassador Annenberg is especially interesting. I suppose as a former ambassador, I react professionally here. He used the occasion of his maiden speech as our new plenipotentiary in London to denounce students -- American, not those at the London School of Economics. And, speaking out bravely, he demanded an end to permissiveness at Harvard, Swarthmore and, of course, Berkeley. One wondered why. Was it because the British were especially aroused about this issue? That is hard to believe. They are known to suffer our misfortunes with some fortitude. Was it because Mr. Annenberg, who has spent a lifetime cultivating the clientele of the Morning Telegraph and The Daily Racing Form, those Guttenberg Bibles of the gambling episcopate, not to mention the Philadelphia Inquirer, had suddenly at 60 developed a passion for people who could read? No, that seems too optimistic. I fear there was another reason. He was encouraged to the choice. Some old hand in the State Department took cognizance of the new man and decided that little as he knew about education, he was even less knowledgeable on all other subjects.

But let me get back to my theme. Any matter on which Strom Thurmond, John McClellan, Joe Alsop, Al Capp, Spiro Agnew, J. Edgar Hoover and Walter Annenberg are in solemn agreement obviously has another side. That tells us something.

But I come to another problem. It is violence that is being deplored. And I am the least violent of men. But then we find those who deplore violence are those who urge violence. I was a delegate in Chicago last summer. I am an avowed and card-carrying member of the liberal establishment. I am not without other natural advantages. So I had an adequate view of the proceedings. The violence at Chicago was not the work of youngsters who came in protest against the war. The violence was all accomplished, some imaginative verbal aggression apart, by those who speak in the name of law and order. And Richard Daley, the ultimate author of that violence, was greatly applauded by the enemies of violence. I am not a defender of the tactic of taking over university buildings -- although I think it was a little invited by those who proclaimed them to be not buildings but holy tabernacles. But at my own university, as elsewhere, the greatest violence came not from those who did this foolish thing. It came from those who, interrupting for a moment a lifetime of speeches about reliance on reason, abruptly ordered in the police. Even a reasoned consultation with the faculty was not possible: it would have jeopardized the security of the operation.

In California the use of violence by the defenders of law and order has, of course, entered a new dimension. It shows us the danger against which we are guarding. No one has suggested that the street people, students, faculty members and citizens of Berkeley who were agitating for that park were much disposed to violence. And no one denies that Ronald Reagan, the most compulsive spokesman for law and order in all the country, mobilized the soldiers and was responsible for the buckshot, helicopters and spraying of a noxious gas in violation of the Geneva Convention. It has long been a point that those who were most indifferent to violence in Vietnam were most concerned about violence here at home. It is now a point that those who talk most unctuously about violence here at home are least reluctant to unleash it here at home.

Before anyone asks us to listen to the wickedness of violence let him, henceforth, establish his credentials as an opponent of violence -- both at home and abroad. Otherwise let us ignore him. Or rather if he is a politician let us be sure that we remember him.

Another thing. I hear the instant educational sages whom I mentioned at the outset proclaiming that university faculties are to blame because they are permissive. And I sense that some of my fellow educators wince a bit at that term. Let us wince no more. To be permissive is to inquire whether the other person has a grievance. And it is to try to understand that grievance. And even though we find his behavior inconvenient or objectionable we do not immediately react by banging him over the head. We recognize that he is another human being with another point of view. Possibly he has another and even hostile sense of values. But even then our instinct is to permit, not deny. That is the instinct of civilized men. Let us be proud of that instinct. And especially in the universities.

So much for those who are engaged in the newest political pastime, that of attacking the universities. Let us give them nothing. But what of the universities; surely there must be some instruction for them. What of balanced liberal view, now in some places so unfashionable? You must expect something on the other side. You are quite right.

For those who seek social change, including those who seek great change, I cannot, for the life of me, see that the university is the enemy. That our universities need reform I do not doubt. Rather before the students got around to worrying about Harvard, I had urged that we have a look at our obsolete administration and leadership -- one admirably related to the classical student aberrations of idleness, alcohol and sex but not much related to the modern world of deep political concern. I received a rather lofty brush-off; another difficulty with many of the more devout enemies of violence is that automatically they use its absence as an excuse for inaction. But larger issues than university reform are at stake. In the United States the universities are the instruments of change -- and they are, very nearly, the only instruments of change. And nothing could better affirm the fact than that the present ferment occurs in the universities. Not in the unions, not in the legislatures, not even to the same extent in the slums. The point is also affirmed by the enthusiasm with which the people who most dislike social change have joined in the attack on the universities. If the American university is a bulwark of the existing power structure, that news has not reached a lot of people who are members of the power structure.

In the years ahead, the universities will need to defend themselves. They are not helpless. On the contrary, their power is great. Numerous senators, congressmen, governors and legislators, including some whose instinct might be to attack the universities, are remaining commendably silent this year. They are aware, as other politicians of lesser wisdom are not, that next year university activism may well manifest itself in politics. And they have not forgotten who engineered the improbable ascent of Eugene McCarthy in the improbable state of New Hampshire. And they remember the collapse of Lyndon Johnson and what happened to Hubert Humphrey when they alienated the university community. I hope in 1970 that we can have a general and salutary assault on the political careers of all who are assuming that universities are an easy and harmless object of political diatribe. But we will be able to defend ourselves and launch this kind of counterattack only if we are not busy tearing ourselves apart. That must not happen.

If universities are to be internally at peace, they must be governed. That means all must respect the necessary rules by which universities are run. That, of course, does not mean that they will be politically tranquil places; universities enrolling millions of politically motivated men and women will never again be passive. Some issues that currently divide the university community are simply not worth a fight. With others, I have doubts about course offerings in Afro-American studies now coming into fashion on many campuses. Much of the instruction, despite the best efforts to the contrary, will be poor; the content, I suspect, will often be superficial. A sudden expansion of Irish studies would involve difficulties. But we can afford to try. If these fields of study don't work out, the students will be the first to desert them for something better. As with the Afro studies, so with experiments in radical social studies and student instruction -- matters which are currently agitating some of my more sensitive colleagues at Harvard. But on some things there can be no compromise. Some things, odd as it may seem, man has learned.

There must, in the university, be a tolerance of every reasonable and competently argued position -- and there can be no physical or other disruptive barrier to that argument. That holds for Herbert Marcuse; it holds for Walt Rostow. It holds for Marx and Herbert Spencer and Vilfredo Pareto if their return can be arranged and most definitely for Mao Tse-tung if a leave of absence can be managed. Only those may be excluded who insist by physical means on reserving the right of speech to themselves, and even that rule must be applied with restraint. There are few enough rules in life that have been truly learned -- and to which there are no exceptions. This is one. I wonder, incidentally, why the most obdurate member of S.D.S., the man most bent -- as the modern saying goes -- on radicalizing other students, would disagree. On the basis of the most acute personal experience I can testify that nothing so inculcated doubts about the foreign policy that my radical friends so deplore as its uninterrupted defense by Dean Rusk.

Some equally firm rules must apply to university government. I enthusiastically concede to students the management of student life. Doubtless that government will be imperfect; so is most government. But few occupations for an adult male are less graceful than the supervision of the sex life of an unconsenting undergraduate. So with other behavior. But the setting of academic standards and the selection of academic faculty must equally be a matter of faculty government. I am not here protecting my prerogatives as a faculty member. Few things do so little for my vanity as meetings to pass on the promotions of my younger colleagues. In point of fact, to my considerable discredit, I rarely attend them. But the treatment of heart disease or delirium tremens requires professional judgment. So does the selection of physicians. There is no doubt that the present process is biased in favor of orthodoxy. But it is the best there is. And students seem admirably able to resist the resulting conservatism these days. And the student interest is at stake. If professional competence is absent, students are the first to suffer -- and on recent form, the first to complain. No question of democracy is here involved. I am excluded from the process by which Harvard selects its chemistry faculty for promotion. And even its psychiatrists. That may be undemocratic of the chemists and psychiatrists. But surely it is a wise abridgement of democracy. Students must share my exclusion and are wise to wish it. The case of firm academic standards of achievement is similar. They are imperfect, but no substitute for inducing effort has ever been found. It is unlikely that this will suddenly happen, with all the economy of intellectual effort that might be involved, in the year 1969.

If rules allowing all tolerant men to speak and excluding obstruction to such speech exist, they must be enforced. The most important instrument of enforcement must be the belief of the community that these rules are right. But this is not enough; a little itching powder is an effective weapon against a naked multitude armed only with a just cause. Those who do not accept the accepted rules of the community cannot reasonably protest their exclusion. With others, I was unhappy about some of the preliminary rules promulgated by the faculty student body -- the Committee of Fifteen -- at Harvard this week. I would have liked, as you will gather, a more even-handed view of violence. There must be a procedure against students who resort to violence. There should also be a procedure against administrators who, without reckoning the consequences, unwisely invite the violence of the police. (I am assured that in further deliberations this will come up.) But the Committee was fairly elected by faculty and students. It fairly reflected the views of the community. (I do not believe, as has been suggested, that it involved any concessions to the Board of Overseers. I cannot imagine anyone taking that honorific body so seriously.) One must support judicial process in a university as elsewhere. That, unequivocally, I urged and did. Nothing is more profoundly in the interest of all the community.

One final point. I am struck by the gloom that pervades the modern university community. It is a widely held view that Harvard is tottering on the brink; one slight further nudge and it will tumble into the Charles and the splash will be noted even here at MIT. Or to change the metaphor, everywhere we look we see a great wave of repression rolling up. Soon it will engulf us.

I do not wish to seem an optimist. I am not above protecting my reputation for scholarship and insight by spreading a little gloom. But let us not be too depressed. Universities are going to survive. For one thing, as a matter of simple economics, the modern industrial community cannot survive without them. It was not some new access of enlightenment that brought the recent vast expansion in university numbers and budgets. It was because any state, any city, any community will promptly become economically and industrially obsolete in the absence of a good university system. Universities will be here when those that are now making a career of harassing them have been called to what we may all hope will be a properly ambiguous reward. (As I have said, perhaps we can speed the earthly aspects of that reward.) Just because life has been tranquil in the past does not mean we cannot survive a little strife. Engineers, we know, are not all that sensitive. Neither are economists. Perhaps not even modern poets. So let us be of reasonably good cheer. All is not over yet. On the contrary, I counsel you, as members of the graduating class, to remember that your great test lies ahead. You have sought, not without success, as undergraduates to be a source of radical pressure on your university. Now you must do something really difficult and promote a similar pressure from the alumni.

________________________________________________________________________

[admin]

July 3, 1969

Mr. Al Capp
122 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02116

Dear Mr. Capp:

I have received [delete] letter of June 27th, with enclosures, and it was indeed thoughtful of you to have her send on this material. I appreciate your kind comments regarding my administration of this Bureau, and I trust that our future endeavors will continue to merit your approval.

Sincerely yours,

J. Edgar Hoover

1-Boston-Enclosure
1-Mr. DeLoach (Detached)
1-[delete] (Detached)

NOTE: See [delete] Memo dated 7/2/69, captioned "Al Capp, Cartoonist, Cambridge, Massachusetts."

TDH:paa
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________________________________________________________________________

AL CAPP

June 27, 1969

[delete]
[delete]
[delete]
[delete]

Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, Director
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
U.S. Dept. of Justice
Washington, D.C. 20535

Dear Mr. Hoover:

Mr. Capp has asked me to send you the enclosed copy of his commencement address delivered at Franklin Pierce College on April 25th, along with his letter to the Editor, both reprinted in The Boston Globe on June 25th.

I have marked in red his references to you in the letter to the Editor.

Mr. Capp is most grateful to the Boston office of the F.B.I., who were so helpful in furnishing him this information.

Sincerely,

[delete]

Secretary to Al Capp

AL CAPP
122 BEACON STREET
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02116

JUL 31, 1969

________________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

DATE: 8/12/69

DIRECTOR, FBI
Attention: Central Research Unit
Research-Satellite Section,
Domestic Intelligence Division

FROM: SAC, BOSTON (62-0-16854)

SUBJECT: AL CAPP
SYNDICATED NEWSPAPER CARTOONIST
INFORMATION CONCERNING

Rebulet 7/14/69 and BSlet 7/25/69.

Enclosed for the Bureau are two copies of an address by JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH which he delivered at graduation exercises at Assumption College, Worcester, Mass., on 6/7/69, which address was taped by the college.

2-Bureau (Encs. 2) (RM)
2-Boston (62-0-16854)
(1-161-156) (GALBRAITH)
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________________________________________________________________________

SAC, Boston (62-0)

7-14-69

Director, FBI

AL CAPP
SYNDICATED NEWSPAPER CARTOONIST
INFORMATION CONCERNING

Reurlet captioned as above, dated 6-26-69.

Your communication makes reference to two recent commencement addresses made by Harvard Professor John Kenneth Galbraith in which he commented unfavorably on Director John Edgar Hoover and Al Capp. The Bureau desires that you discreetly obtain, if possible, copies of these addresses.

They should be marked to the attention of the Central Research Unit, Research-Satellite Section, Domestic Intelligence Division.

LLW:ser/bls
(5)

NOTE:

Copies of these commencement addresses, place not given, requested by Assistant Director W. C. Sullivan

JUL 11, 1969

________________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

DATE: 6/26/69

TO: Director, FBI (ATT: Crime Records)

FROM: SAC, Boston (62-0)

SUBJECT: AL CAPP
Syndicated Newspaper Cartoonist
INFORMATION CONCERNING

Enclosed are original and three copies of a newspaper clipping from the 6/25/69 issue of THE BOSTON GLOBE, page 17, which includes the reprinted speech delivered by AL CAPP, the well-known creator of the nationally-syndicated cartoon "Li'l Abner," on April 27 at the Franklin Pierce College, Rindge, New Hampshire, where Mr. CAPP received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities.

In this speech, Mr. CAPP pointedly reprimands Harvard. Also accompanying his reprinted speech is a "Letter to the Globe from Al Capp" which mentions commencement addresses given by Harvard Economist JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH in which Mr. GALBRAITH allegedly refers to Mr. CAPP and Mr. HOOVER.

Since Mr. CAPP's letter to the GLOBE indicated Mr. GALBRAITH did not speak about Mr. CAPP or Mr. HOOVER in a favorable light, it is interesting to note Mr. CAPP defends Mr. HOOVER with unusual good humor.

Review of local newspapers concerning the alleged remarks of Mr. GALBRAITH does not disclose any references to the Director or Mr. CAPP.

This is brought to the attention of the Bureau for information. The Bureau may desire to write Mr. CAPP thanking him for his favorable comments. Boston indices do not indicate any unfavorable references to him. His current residence address is: 124 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02128.

Enclosures (4)

RJR:MIW
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________________________________________________________________________

Al Capp reprimands Harvard

I live in Cambridge, Mass., a stone's throw from Harvard -- but if you duck you aren't hurt much -- and I know you'll believe me when I tell you I'd rather be speaking here today. It's safer, and it's at your sort of college that I can use the commencement speaker's traditional phrase. I can say you're the hope of the future without bursting out laughing, as I would if I said it at a Harvard commencement -- assuming, of course, that there will be a commencement there this year. They haven't heard from the Afros or the SDS yet.

Three of four of the Afros may decide that commencements are racist institutions, and then five or six SDSers may decide that commencements are a CIA plot, and then of course the entire faculty, administration and student body of Harvard, with the courage that has made them a legend, will replace its commencement by some sort of ceremony more acceptable -- something they know the boys will approve of -- say, a book burning; they loved that at Columbia, or a dean killing; they never quite accomplished that at University Hall. Dean Ford let them down by having recuperative powers they didn't count on.

But the fact that you can have a commencement here without getting down on your knees to a student wrecking crew, or without calling up the riot squad, is mainly luck. You enjoy advantages Harvard doesn't.

For one thing, you have the advantage of not being so revered for the wisdom and courage of past generations of administrators that you haven't noticed the moral flabbiness and intellectual flatulence of the majority of your present generation of administrators and faculty. You show me any institution with such a glorious past that anyone presently employed by it is regarded as retroactively infallible, and I'll show you a collection of sanctimonious fatheads.

But the greatest advantage Franklin Pierce has over Harvard is that you are not rich enough to hire three such famous professors as Rosovky, Galbraith and Handlin and not extravagant enough to waste the wisdom of the only one of them with guts and sense -- Handlin. All three are world-renowned historians. All three this week have helped make history.

Prof. Henry Rosovsky was born in Danzig. When the young Nazis invaded the University of Danzig in the '30s and beat up its professors and disrupted its classes, Rosovsky's family gave up their citizenship and fled to the United States. In the '60s, Rosovsky was teaching at Berkeley. When the young Nazis invaded there, Rosovsky gave up his professorship and fled to Harvard. When the young Nazis invaded there the other day, Rosovsky gave up the chairmanship of his department and started packing.

Prof. Galbraith, as national chairman of the ADA, was the intellectual leader of the Democratic Party in the last election and one of the nation's few political thinkers over 19 who mistook Sen. McCarthy's menopausal capriciousness for high-principled statesmanship.

Prof. Handlin has won the Pulitzer Prize and other honors for his histories of those groups who, so far, have risen from their ghettos by sweating blood instead of shedding it, by shaping up instead of burning down.

Although Harvard is the home of these three wise men and hundreds more, it was the only bunch in town that was dumfounded at what happened there. Everybody else in the community expected it. We had all watched Harvard for the last few years educate its young in the rewards of criminality. We had watched Harvard become an ivy-covered Fagin.

We saw it begin a couple of years ago when Secretary of Defense McNamara was invited to speak at Harvard. Now, it is true that McNamara was a member of a despised minority group, the President's Cabinet, but under the law, he had the same rights as Mark Rudd. Harvard's Students for a Democratic Society howled obscenities at McNamara until he could not be heard.

He attempted to leave the campus. The SDS stopped his car, milled around it, tried to tip it over. McNamara left the car. The SDS began to club him on the head with the poles on which their peace posters were nailed. If it hadn't been for the arrival of Cambridge police, who formed a protective cordon around McNamara and escorted him through a series of interconnecting cellars of university buildings to safety, he might have been killed.

The next morning, Dean Monro was asked if he would punish the SDS. And he said -- and if you want to know where the malignancy started that has made a basket case of Harvard, it started with this -- Dean Monro said that he saw no reason to punish students for what was purely a political activity. Now, if depriving a man of his freedom to speak, if depriving him of his freedom to move, if damn nearly depriving him of his life -- if that's political activity, then rape is a social event and sticking up a gas station is a financial transaction.

Now there's nothing unusual about a pack of young criminals ganging up on a stranger on their turf as the SDS ganged up on McNamara; it's called mugging. And there's nothing unusual about a respected citizen, even a dean, babbling imbecilities in an emotional crisis; it's called a breakdown.

Both are curable by the proper treatment, but there was something unusual, and chilling, too, about seeing the responsible authority, Harvard, treat a plain case of mugging as democracy in action and a plain case of hysterics as a dean in his right mind.

Well, after Harvard taught its young that they way to settle a difference of opinion is to mug anyone who differed with them, it was no surprise that they'd soon learn that shoving a banana into an instructor's mouth is the way to win a debate and bringing a meat cleaver to a conference is the way to win a concession. Because that's what's happened at Harvard in the last month.

When its militants stormed into the opening class in a new course on the causes of urban unrest and stopped it because they found it ideologically offensive, the instructor attempted to discuss it with them. So one of the militants shoved a banana into his mouth. This stopped the instructor, of course, he stopped the class and then Harvard dropped the entire course.

This week, the Crimson published a photograph of a black militant leaving a historic conference with the administration -- historic because it was here that the administration granted black students, and only black students, hiring, firing and tenure powers equal to that of any dean. The militant was holding a meat cleaver. The next day, Pres. Pusey said that Harvard would never yield to threats. Shows how silly a man can look when he doesn't read his local paper.

Pres. Pusey said that, by the way, at a televised mass meeting advertised as one in which all sides of the question would be fairly represented, The Harvard student body was represented by a member of the SDS (numerically, they are less than 1 percent). The average resident of the Cambridge community was represented by a black militant graduate student who lives in Roxbury and commutes in a new Cadillac. And anyone who'd call that unfair representation would have been mean enough to say the same thing about the Chief Rabbi of Berlin being represented by Adolf Eichmann.

And so when Harvard was raped last week, it had as much cause to be surprised as any tart who continued to flounce around the fellas after they'd unbuttoned her bodice and pulled down her panties.

What surprised the world was Harvard's response. Nowhere in the world was Mayor Daley's response to precisely the same sort of attack by precisely the same sort of mob more loftily denounced than at Harvard. Yet in its moment of truth, Harvard responded in precisely the same way Daley did.

Pusey called for the cops just as Daley did, and the cops treated the criminals at Harvard just as firmly as they treated the criminals in Chicago. The Harvard administration applauded Pres. Pusey's action to a man. There's no record that they ever applauded Daley.

That either proves that the Harvard administration believes in the divine right of kings to act in a fashion that, in a peasant, is considered pushy. Or it may prove that Pres. Pusey is just as Neanderthal as Mayor Daley. Or it may prove that Pres. Pusey learned how to handle Neanderthals from Mayor Daley. At any rate, if they're looking for a new president of Harvard, I suggest they teach Mayor Daley to read and write and offer him the job.

Let's forgive the president of Harvard for not having the grace to thank the Mayor of Chicago for teaching him how to protect his turf; they aren't strong on graciousness at Harvard this year. But as a member of the Cambridge community, what alarms me is that Harvard doesn't have the brains to protect itself, and the community, from further, more savage and inevitably wider-ranging attacks. And I feel that I have the right to speak for some in the Cambridge community, possibly equal to that of any resident of Roxbury who parks his car there for a few hours a few days a week.

I've lived in Cambridge over 30 years. My children and grandchildren were born and raised in Cambridge. I help pay the taxes that support Harvard. I help provide Harvard with the police that it will increasingly need to protect it from the once-decent kids it has corrupted into thugs and thieves -- the sanctimonious kind.

I ask, and my neighbors in the Cambridge community are asking: If a horde of howling, half-educated, half-grown and totally dependent half-humans can attack visitors in their cars, and deans in their offices, and get away with it, how long before they'll widen their horizons a block or two and attack us in our homes?

If they can use clubs and meat cleavers on the Harvard community today and get away with it, who stops them from using clubs and meat cleavers on the Cambridge community tomorrow? Certainly not the Harvard community. If it was necessary last week for Harvard to organize a round-the-clock guard to prevent the untoilet-trained pups they've made into mad dogs from blowing up the Widener Library and the Fogg Museum, must we of the Cambridge community prepare to defend ourselves from the pack Harvard has loosed among us? Or should we all pull a Rosovsky and take off to safe, sane Saigon where it's legal to shoot back at your enemy?

When the president of Harvard proved that, in a crisis, he was the intellectual equal of the mayor of Chicago and called the cops, it was his finest hour. Although it was true that he had presided over the experimental laboratory that created the Frankenstein's monster that stomped mindlessly into University Hall, fouling everything in its path, he did, at long last, recognize what he had wrought and took the steps to rid his university and our community of the filthy thing.

After throwing the SDS out physically, the next sane move was obviously to keep them out officially, and expel them. And leave them to the criminal courts to educate, or to the Army, or the gutters of Toronto, or the rehabilitation centers and public charity of Stockholm. Their few score places at Harvard, and those of their sympathizers, could have been instantly filled by any of the tends of thousands of fine youngsters, black and white, they had been chosen instead of.

And Harvard could have gone on with pride and strength as an institution of learning, as an example of the vigor of the democratic process to other universities, instead of degenerating into the pigpen and playpen it is today. But after the president of Harvard made the one move that might have saved Harvard, the Harvard faculty in the words of San Francisco State President Hayakawa, betrayed him.

And that brings us back to Rosovsky and Galbraith. And to Handlin.

Rosovsky, whose family had given up and fled when the German Nazis invaded the University of Danzig, who gave up and fled when the California Nazis invaded Berkeley, gave up the chairmanship of his course and started packing when the Cambridge Nazis invaded University Hall. And, all over this country -- at Cornell, in New York -- other professors are using the Rosovsky solution: giving up and running away. The only trouble with it is that, sooner or later, you run out of places to run away to.

Now, the Galbraith solution is one that is bound to be popular with his fellow puberty-worshipers: those who have just achieved puberty, and those who worship those who have just achieved it as sources of infinite wisdom and quite a few votes. But I'm not criticizing Galbraith's religious convictions. What I say is, in this country, any professor who is panting to get back into public life is free to worship the SDS chapter of his choice.

Galbraith's solution is to promptly restructure our universities -- and Harvard more promptly than any other, because in Galbraith's opinion, those who administer Harvard have "little comprehension of the vast and complex scientific and scholarly life they presume to govern." Well, now, who does Galbraith presume to replace them with?

If those who created Harvard, and made it into the vast and complex scientific and scholarly structure it became, must be restructured out of it because they have too little comprehension, who has enough? The only ones who claim they have, and who will shove a banana into the mouth of anyone who denies it, are the student militants.

And so the Galbraith solution is a forthright one: Let the lunatics run the asylum.

Well, I'm going to tell Galbraith the news: they've already tried your sort of restructuring, Ken. They tried it at Berkeley; they tried it at Cornell; they tried it at Harvard all last week, and the result was that on Friday, a mob of militant students, of a Harvard frenziedly restructured to suit their wildest whims, marched into the Harvard planning offices.

They shouted obscene charges at Planner Goyette. When he attempted to answer, they shouted him down with obscenities. They demolished the architectural mode of Harvard's building plans, they kicked over files, they hurled telephones to the floor. And while Goyette cowered and his secretaries screams, they marched out, uninterfered with by the six policemen who were summoned there presumably to see that they remained uninterfered with, unrebuked and of course, unsatisfied.

And they won't be satisfied until Harvard is restructured the way they restructured Hiroshima. They'll be back, on another day, to another office. Possibly Galbraith's.

Well, those were the voices that prevailed at Harvard, the resigners like Rosovsky, the restructurers like Galbraith. There was another voice, however, the voice of Oscar Handlin.

Prof. Handlin said he was appalled at the argument that the students' takeover of University Hall, their attack on the deans, their destruction of private property and their thefts from personal files were unwise but not criminal. It was criminal, said Handlin, by ever decent standard.

If Harvard had not chickened out, said Handlin, if it had had the courage to recognize the criminality on its campus over the last few years, beginning with the beating up and silencing of McNamara and continuing through unnerable other incidents of brutal deprivation by its mad-dog students of the rights of those who dared to dissent with them, it "would not be in the position it is in today following the road that Berkeley has followed, following the road that has destroyed other universities."

Oscar Handlin urged Harvard not to go down that road. That was last week. This week, Harvard has gone so far down the road that it can never turn back. In this last frantic, fatal, foolish week, Harvard has reversed the civil rights advances of the last 20 years.

Today at Harvard, any student with the currently fashionable color of skin is given rights denied to students of the currently unfashionable color. Harvard, which educated the President who brought American into the war that defeated fascism, today honors and encourages and rewards its fascists. Harvard, which once turned out scholars and gentlemen, now turns out thugs and thieves -- or let me put it this way: now, if you are a thug and thief, Harvard's won't turn you out.

Once people were attracted to the Cambridge community because Harvard was there. Today, because Harvard is there, people are fleeing the Cambridge community, even Harvard's own.

Harvard's tragedy was that it was too arrogant to consider that it too might be vulnerable to the cancer that is killing other universities. And when Oscar Handlin diagnosed it as malignant, Harvard was too cowardly to endure the radical surgery that could safe its life.

And that's why I can say that colleges like yours, as yet too unproven to have become arrogant, and too determined to prove yourself to be anything but courageous, are the hope of the future. Because I believe that America has a future.

It has become unfashionable to say this; it may be embarrassing to hear it; but I believe that America is the most lovely and livable of all nations. I believe that Americans are the kindest and most generous of all people.

I believe there are no underprivileged Americans; that even the humblest of us are born with a privilege that places us ahead of anyone else, anywhere else: the privilege of living and working in America, of repairing and renewing America; and one more privilege that no one seems to get much fun out of lately -- the privilege of loving America.

________________________________________________________________________

Letter to the Globe from Al Capp

The Globe recently reported two commencement addresses given by a neighbor of mine in Cambridge, Ken Galbraith, recently -- in both of which he mentioned me.

Now, I have made two commencement addresses, too, recently. They were crowded out of the Globe by the space necessary to report Ken's addresses ... And the word is around town that while courtly Ken is paying a great deal of attention to Capp, churlish Capp is ignoring courtly Ken.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I appreciate the Globe's kindness in publishing this to let Cambridge know that I am as generous with my commencement addresses as the next guy. Possibly even more. Galbraith said the same thing about me -- and J. Edgar Hoover -- in BOTH of his. He said we had no right to comment on the campus situation because we had no experience in the field. Neither of us, he said, and said again -- "have long been deeply and passionately concerned with education."

Now, this is the same Galbraith who deeply and passionately acclaimed the appointment of the tousle-haired kid, just six years out of law school, who had never tried a case in court, as Attorney General of the United States. The fact that that kid turned out to be a good one makes Galbraith's derision of Mr. Hoover's qualifications and mine even more difficult to understand unless of course you realize that neither of us has ambassadorships to pass out.

Now I won't argue my familiarity with the college scene. It is true, and I admit it, that in the last two and a half years, I have been invited (by students) to lecture at fewer than 171 colleges and universities; 170 to be exact. (Which, I think, is more lectures than Galbraith has given to his class.) And that I have 72 scheduled for next season -- all at the request of the students on those campuses.

Instead of being the "youth baiter" he called me, it's youth which offers me bait, namely the highest fees paid to any campus speaker, even knowing that for it they will get the roughest treatment.

But Mr. Hoover doesn't deserve quite all of Prof. Galbraith's contempt. Some of it, possibly. Our kindly Mr. Chips never mentions Mr. Hoover without a scornful reference to his age ... "poor old man" was the phrase he used at MIT. It is true that Mr. Hoover has grown old in the service of his country and that, of course, makes him a legitimate object of Galbraith's contempt.

But he does have credentials as an educated man, and as an educator. Galbraith neglected to mention Mr. Hoover earned his Bachelor of Laws Degree and Master of Laws Degree from George Washington University. He also founded one of the nation's great graduate schools, the FBI National Academy, in 1935. He has been its director ever since. No student of Hoover's ever burned his country's flag, beat up his instructors, or screeched obscenities at his school the day he graduated.

AL CAPP

Cambridge

________________________________________________________________________

Federal Bureau of Investigation Records Branch

13/14 List

All References (Subversive & Nonsubversive)

Mains, summaries. References Only & see from 1/66.

Subject: Capp, Al
Birthdate & Place: 9/28/09 New Haven, Conn
Address: 122 Beacon St., Boston
Localities: Capp Enterprises
Date: 12-5
Searcher Initials: 735

FILE NUMBER

100-354397
9-29612
94-43760-3 Sum 6/51
100-401767-7 ep#11 Sum 3/18/59
62-112228-31-A Daily News 6/2/60
94-1-152-9590 ep#6
100-3-1148890
100-440423-471ep#1
105-142803-20
105-145828-7
Caplin, Alfred Gerald
100-354397-8 Sum, 9/15/61
105-71010-19 P#6

DEC 5, 1969

R-659

________________________________________________________________________

December 10, 1969

D.C.

MR. AND MRS. AL CAPP

(same localities)

Summary

Alfred Gerald Caplin who is known professionally as Al Capp and who was born on September 28, 1909, at New Haven, Connecticut, has not been the subject of an investigation conducted by the FBI. However, our files contain the following pertinent information concerning him. [Delete] [Delete]

[Delete] testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1958, admitting he had served as State Secretary of the Communist Party, USA, in Louisiana. [Delete] alleged he severed his connections with the Party in 1942. [Delete] [delete]

An article in the January 12, 1949, issue of the "Daily People's World," a west coast communist newspaper, listed Al Capp as one of two hundred "cultural leaders" who signed an invitation to a peace conference to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, March 25-27, 1949. He was quoted as asking for "re-establishment of American-Soviet understanding and cooperation which alone can make peace possible." (100-345137-A)

NOTE: Per request of [delete], Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs.

LMG:hlh/lrr (7)

________________________________________________________________________

Photo
cc to: USIA
REQ. REC'D: 8-11-70
AUG. 25, 1970
ANS BY: GRUP TS

Photo
cc to: USI - 4
REQ. REC'D: 7-29-70
AUG. 10, 1970
ANS BY: KJJ TS

________________________________________________________________________

MR. AND MRS. AL CAPP

[Delete]

In his column which appeared in the March 30, 1961, edition of the "New York Herald Tribune," under the caption "Too Poor To Be a Communist," Al Capp related his experience in the 1930's of being too poor to pay a $1 membership fee in a social club which turned out to be the Young Communist League. He concluded this column by stating: "If I had had that dollar, my name would have eradicably been on their lists, entitling any Congressional committee thirty years later to denounce me as a traitor, and any investigative agency to reject my services to my country, because I was once a card-carrying subversive. " (100-354397-8)

In recent years, in addition to his cartooning, Mr. Capp has become a very active speaker who expresses strong views against student agitation in the schools. (100-354397-10)

Our files contain no additional pertinent information concerning captioned individuals.

The fingerprint files of the Identification Division of the FBI contain no arrest data identifiable with captioned individuals based upon background information submitted in connection with this name check request.

________________________________________________________________________

SECRET

December 11, 1969

BY LIAISON

[Delete]
Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs
The White House
Washington, D.C.

AL CAPP

Dear [delete]:

Reference is made to your name check request concerning [delete], and some other individuals.

The central files of the FBI reveal no pertinent derogatory information concerning the following individuals:

[Delete]

The fingerprint files of the Identification Division of the FBI contain no arrest data identifiable with the above individuals based upon background information submitted in connection with this name check request.

Enclosed are separate memoranda concerning the following individuals:

1-Mr. DeLoach-Enclosures (sent direct)
2-Mr. Gale-Enclosures (sent direct)

51 DEC 30, 1969

[Delete]

[Delete]

Mr. and Mrs. Al Capp

[Delete]

[Delete]

This letter of transmittal may be declassified when it is removed from the enclosure bearing a classification.

Sincerely yours,

Enclosures (9)

________________________________________________________________________

A8 -- Eau Claire Leader-Telegram Thursday, April 22, 1971

Says Girls Molested

Columnist Reveals Al Capp 'Incidents'

By Jack Anderson
Bell-McClure Syndicate

WASHINGTON -- All Capp, the famed cartoonist and caustic critic of college students, was shown out of town by University of Alabama police a few years ago after he allegedly made indecent advances toward several coeds.

The incident, hushed up for three years by the university administration, is both ironic and significant. For Capp's scathing denunciations of college students and their morals have made him one of the most controversial commentators of the day.

He now has a syndicated newspaper column and his broadcast commentaries are heard on some 200 radio stations. He was even approached to run for the Senate. But his principal forum has been the campus where some of his biting remarks have become famous.

Capp Denies Charges

Reached at his studio in Cambridge, Mass., Capp told my associate Brit Hume that the Alabama allegations made him sick and he would neither confirm nor deny them. Instead, he immediately boarded a plane and flew to Washington to discuss the matter with us.

In our office, he repeatedly declined to discuss the episode, claiming it made him ill. All he would say was: "I have never become involved with any student." Pressed, he finally listened to a review of the allegations and, when questioned about them, specifically denied them.

It gives us no pleasure to make these revelations about a man whose legendary "Li'l Abner" cartoon creations have amused millions of Americans for generations.

But Al Capp today is much more than a gifted cartoonist and brilliant humorist. He is a major public figure, whose views reach and influence millions. He even seriously considered running against Se. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

'Right to Know'

Therefore, we believe the public has a right to any information which may bear on his qualifications to speak, particularly when the incident involved is so obviously relevant to the selfsame subjects on which he has been holding forth.

In a widely quoted speech at Princeton, Capp said: "Princeton has sunk to a moral level that a chimpanzee can live with, but only a chimpanzee. It has become a combination playpen and pigpen because it disregards the inferiority of the college student to every other class."

"President Nixon," Capp has said, "showed angelic restraint when he called students bums." On another occasion, he said: "Colleges today are filled with Fagin professors who don't teach ... they just corrupt."

Although Capp denies any misconduct and says he cannot remember being asked to leave Tuscaloosa, we have confirmed the Alabama incident with a number of high-level university officials.

They include Dean of Women Sarah Healy and University Security Director Col. Beverly Lee. On instructions from then University President Dr. Frank Rose, Lee went to Capp's hotel, asked him to leave and followed his car to the town line.

Capp On Campus

In addition, we have established the details of Capp's alleged encounters with the four young women involved. Two of them have given us notarized affidavits recounting their experiences.

Based on our interviews and affidavits, here is what occurred: Capp arrived in Tuscaloosa Sunday, Feb. 11, 1958, to make a speech as part of the university's annual arts festival.

Late that afternoon, a coed, active in the arts program went to his room at the Stafford Hotel to deliver a university yearbook and other materials he had requested for his speech the next night.

Capp told the young woman he was [illegible] with her and disclosed [illegible] and other materials he had requested for his speech the next night.

Capp told the young woman he was impressed with her and discussed the possibility of hiring her to help produce the "Capp on Campus" radio series, then in progress.

He began making forceful advances toward her and exposing himself to her. She tried to leave but found she could not get the door open. She finally broke free and locked herself in the bathroom until he agreed to let her go.

Although she was not injured, she was sufficiently upset by the experience to be admitted a few days later to the university infirmary where she remained under sedation for several days.

That evening, another coed, whose job it was to greet visiting speakers, went to see Capp at his hotel. He exposed himself to her and made suggestive comments. She, too, found she could not open the door, but he let her go when she threatened to open a window and scream.

The next afternoon Capp was introduced in his room to another woman student who has just completed a taped interview with his staff for a planned broadcast called the [illegible] Morality." Capp exposed himself to her and made suggestive comments. She immediately left.

Late that night, he brought another coed to his room where he said a party was planned. There was no party, however, and Capp made an unsuccessful [illegible] at the girl.

Exodus from Town

The next morning, reports of the four incidents had [illegible] the university administration and Dr. Rose sent [illegible] to Capp's room. "He [illegible] to get out and he [illegible] out and went to Bir [illegible]," Lee told us.

[Illegible] why no charges were brought against Capp, Dean [illegible] explained: "The young girls were not physically [illegible] and we felt that the [illegible] and notoriety should [illegible]."

________________________________________________________________________

FBI

VIA AIRTEL

TO: DIRECTOR, FBI

FROM: SAC, MILWAUKEE (62-0)

SUBJECT: AL CAPP
MISCELLANEOUS -- INFORMATION CONCERNING

Re Milwaukee teletypes April 28 and April 30, 1971.

Enclosed is a Xerox copy of the Eau Claire, Wisconsin Police Department investigation concerning the misconduct of AL CAPP when he was in Eau Claire in April of 1971.

The Milwaukee Office is not conducting any investigation and the enclosed data is merely for the Bureau's information.

2-Bureau (Encs. 1)
1-Milwaukee (62-0)
DMW:EF
(3)

67 JUN 8 1971

________________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

DATE: 5-18-71

TO: [Delete]

FROM: M. A. Jones

SUBJECT: AL CAPP
(TRUE NAME: ALFRED GERALD KAPLIN)
CARTOONIST
RESEARCH: CRIME RECORDS

SYNOPSIS:

Cartoonist Al Capp, creator of "Li'l Abner," charged by [delete] [delete]. Background information on Capp reflects contact in 1930's and 40's with communist groups but since the 60's a strong personal effort to support law, order and patriotism and expose "far left" radical elements. [Delete] was Communist Party member in Louisiana and Pennsylvania, but testified before Senate Subcommittee that such relations were severed in the 1940's. Wisconsin school official recalled rumor that Capp involved in similar moral incidents in Colorado last year, and a Jack Anderson column alleges similar behavior by Capp in Alabama three years ago. [Delete] Detailed police reports regarding alleged crimes suggest good possibility Capp so involved but also suggest good possibility of entrapment to publicly embarrass Capp and neutralize his effective anti-liberal speaking campaign. Details follow.

RECOMMENDATION:

XEROX for the Director's information.

1-Mr. Mohr
1-[Delete]
1-[delete]
1-Mr. Rosen

JRH:dmc

COPY MADE FOR MR. TOLSON

DETAILS -- OVER

Recent news stories have reported criminal charges filed against well-known cartoonist Al Capp, creator of "Li'l Abner," on alleged morals offenses [delete] [delete]. The Milwaukee Office has forwarded copies of police investigative reports and legal process concerning this matter.

CRIMES ALLEGED:

Complainant, [delete] alleges [delete] [delete]

Notes by Capp concerning the incident reflect his version, noting his system of interviewing students of different viewpoints to secure various campus opinions. Capp claims that in instant interview [delete] [delete]

DETAILS CONTINUED -- OVER

[delete] greeted people calling at his door. He said the door was unlocked at all times, that she was free to go and that a waiter brought coffee during this time.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION REGARDING AL CAPP: Summary B. in N.Y., N.Y., WIC., COLO, MASS, AAJ

Bufiles contain several references reflecting that in the 1940's and 1950's, Capp was reportedly in contact with individuals and groups considered communist or communist oriented. In the March 30, 1961, issue of the "New York Herald Tribune," under the caption "Too Poor To Be A Communist," Call related an experience in the 1930's of how he was too poor to pay the one-dollar membership fee in a Young Peoples' Social Club which in fact was the Young Communist League. He concluded the article "If I had had that dollar, my name would have eradicably been on their lists, entitling any Congressional committee thirty years later to denounce me as a traitor, and any investigative agency to reject my services to my country, because I was once a card-carrying subversive."

Also in 1961, Capp was criticized by a New York Congressman for a scene in the "Li'l Abner" comic strip which depicted police officers accepting bribes. In October, 1966, however, Capp was listed as a speaker of the 73rd Annual Conference of the IACP and in recent years he has become an outspoken advocate of law and order and a strong promoter of patriotism. [Delete] was a member of the Communist Party [delete], and in 1958, so testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, admitting past Communist Part membership but claiming he had severed his connections with the party in 1952. There was no arrest record definitely identifiable with Al Capp, although an individual named [delete]

The recent Eau Claire, Wisconsin, police investigation included a comment by Student Activities Director [delete] that he had heard of alleged involvement by Capp in an incident about a year ago in Gunnison, Colorado, at another university,

CONTINUED - OVER

wherein Capp reportedly indecently exposed himself. Another similar charge against Capp was mentioned in a Jack Anderson column on 4-22-71, which alleged he made indecent advances towards four coeds at the University of Alabama approximately three years ago.

BACKGROUND OF COMPLAINANT:

[Delete] is not identifiable in Bufiles or Identification Division records. According to Eau Claire police information [delete] [delete] reportedly told Al Capp [delete]. She also reportedly informed investigating police officers that [delete] [delete]

OBSERVATION:

A reported pattern of similar incidents suggests Capp did, in fact, commit the improprieties charged. [Delete, however, [delete] [delete]

RECOMMENDATION:

For the Director's Information.

________________________________________________________________________

Enclosure to Bureau -- Re AL CAPP
MISCELLANEOUS -- INFO CONCERNING
Copy of Complaint and Warrant

This enclosure not to be opened without supervisor's permission.

[Delete]

________________________________________________________________________

Office of District Attorney
Eau Claire County -- State of Wisconsin
COUNTY COURTHOUSE -- EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN 54701

LAWRENCE W. DURNING
DISTRICT ATTORNEY

HOMER C. MITTELSTADT
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY

M. DANIEL SASSO
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY

May 7, 1971

Mr. Thomas S. Eisenstadt
Sheriff,
Suffolk County
Boston, Massachusetts

Re: State of Wisconsin
Vs: Alfred Gerald Kaplin a/k/a Al Capp

Dear Sheriff Eisenstadt:

We enclose herewith a certified copy of the complaint and warrant in re: the above named defendant.

We are informed that he resides in your County or is temporarily being hospitalized at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.

Upon his arrest will you please notify us as to whether or not extradition proceedings will be necessary, as we do intend to extradite.

Very truly yours,

/s/ Lawrence W. Durning

Lawrence W. Durning
District Attorney

LWD:ns
cc: Eau Claire Police Department
Arvin R. Ziehlsdorff, Chief

Eau Claire County Sheriff
Harold MacLaughlin

100-354397-18

________________________________________________________________________

FBI

VIA AIRTEL, AIR MAIL

TO: DIRECTOR, FBI

FROM: SAC, MILWAUKEE (62-)-12944)

SUBJECT: AL CAPP
MISCELLANEOUS -- INFORMATION CONCERNING

ReMIAirtel 5-7-71

[Delete] Enclosed for the information of the Bureau is a copy of the complaint and warrant alleging misconduct on the part of captioned individual. No investigation is being conducted by the Milwaukee Office, and it is being furnished to the Bureau in event it receives any inquiries concerning this matter.

[delete]

2-Bureau (Enc. 2) (Air Mail) "ENCLOSURE ATTACHED"
1-Milwaukee (62-0-12944)
DMW:mcs
(3)

57 JUN 11, 1971

________________________________________________________________________

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Memorandum

DATE: 11-11-71

TO: [delete]

FROM: [delete]

[Delete]
[delete]
[delete]

SUBJECT: AL CAPP
(TRUE NAME: ALFRED GERALD KAPLIN)
CARTOONIST
RESEARCH: CRIME RECORDS
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION MATTER

[delete]

Re memorandum [delete] to [delete] 5-18-71 a [delete] Capp, creator of "Li'l Abner," was charged [delete] [delete] Wisconsin warrant issued for arrest of Capp. At time of issuance of warrant, and subsequent thereto, Capp hospitalized in Boston, Massachusetts. Capp claims complainant, [delete] [delete]. Purportedly, in 1930's and 40's Capp had contact with communist groups; however, since the 60's he has exhibited a strong personal effort to support law and order, and expose radical elements.

Re memorandum points out that Capp allegedly involved in [delete] [delete] [delete] also suggests a calculated attempt to neutralize his efforts [delete]

On 11-9-71 Identification Division was in receipt of Capp's fingerprints from the Police Department, Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Prints reflect he was fingerprinted by the named agency on 10-12-71, charged with sodomy, indecent exposure and adultery. Disposition was shown as pending. He was fingerprinted as Al G. Capp with Alias Alfred Gerald Kaplin, born 9-28-09, New Haven, Connecticut. A search of the Identification Division records failed to reflect a prior record on Capp.

1-Mr. Mohr
1-[delete]
1-[delete]
JJL:[delete]

[delete]

CONTINUED -- OVER

We have learned that on 10-12-71 Capp voluntarily arranged to appear at the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Police Department in answer to the arrest warrant outstanding and be fingerprinted. His attorney stipulated to Wisconsin authorities that hearing or trial proceedings be conducted in a manner to exclude the presence of the general public.

ACTION:

For information.

________________________________________________________________________

Federal Bureau of Investigation Records Branch

Main Summaries. References Only

Subject: Capp, Al
Date: 3/27
Searcher Initials: 217

FILE NUMBER

100-354397
94-43760-3 Summ 1951
100-354397-17 (Summ 5-18-71
100-401767-Level p#11 I
Al G. (Bu)
5I
All (var)
100-354397-15 Summ 12-11-69
Caplin, Alfred Gerald (aka)
100-354397-8 Summ 9-15-61
Chaplin, Alfred Gerald
NR
Kaplin, Alfred Gerald
5I

________________________________________________________________________

[Delete]

March 29, 1973

AL CAPP
True Name: Alfred Gerald Caplin
Cartoonist

Reference is made to your telephonic request of March 27, 1973, for a name check on the above-captioned individual.

SUMMARY

Alfred Gerald Caplin, who is known professionally as Al Capp, was born September 28, 1909, at New Haven, Connecticut. He has not been the subject of an investigation conducted by the FBI; however, our files contain the following pertinent information concerning him.

[Delete]

There is enclosed a newspaper article captioned "Says Girls Molested -- Columnist Reveals Al Capp 'Incidents'" under byline of Jack Anderson, which appeared in the "Leader-Telegram," an Eau Claire, Wisconsin, newspaper on April 22, 1971.

According to our files, in the 1930's and 1940's Capp purportedly had contact with communist groups; however, since the 1960's he reportedly has exhibited a strong personal effort to support law and order and expose radical elements. (100-354397)

Enclosed is an FBI identification record, no number assigned, for Al G. Capp, which record may pertain to the individual about whom you are inquiring.

Original and 1 - [delete]
DWL:jml (5)
Enclosures (2)
1-62-35717

55 APR 17, 1973

NOTE: Per telephonic request on 3-27-73 from [delete] [delete] JWB

Hand delivered to [delete]
3/30/73