Customer Reviews

The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret Vendetta Against the World's Greatest Scientist

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The Einstein File by Fred Jerome, quickly dispels the poplar image
of Albert Einstein as an absentminded, head-in-the-clouds-genius.

Though Einstein is arguably the most widely covered, continuing
science story in history and is most noted for his scientific
theories that transformed our view of the universe. This book
chronicles the life of an Einstein that the masses knew nothing
about. An Einstein described as a troublemaker, an agitator, a
fervent pacifist, a socialist, and an open critic of racism.

Einstein arrived in the United States in 1933, the year of
the Nazi's ascent to power in Germany, and became the focus of
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. And by any means necessary the FBI amassed
a 'file cabinet' of information on him. Fred Jerome stumbled on
documents that addressed Einstein as a Spy and a Kidnap Plotter.
And a dossier where Jerome discovered the political dimension of
Albert Einstein's life and his intense commitment to social justice.

Jerome says when he realized how much had not been told to us about
the life of the 'Man of the Century', he felt as though he had been
robbed. This is not another biography of Einstein, some two hundred
have already been written. It is a window opened by the FBI on the
nature of Einstein's politics, the depth of his public involvement,
and the generosity of his endorsements of organizations he supported.
And it is this activism that made Hoover's Bureau consider Einstein

dangerous. This book reveals information that makes one think the
history we know is sanitized, and what we don't know is at times
appalling. It talks of a 'list' maintained by the FBI on celebrities,
political figures and anyone thought to have affiliatiions with the
Communist Party. It underscores the dangers that can arise, and the
rule of law that exists in times of obsession with national security.
And it creates questions on where the line should be drawn on the issue
of an invasion of privacy. This one will make you take a seat.

Reviewed by aNN Brown

Einstein was a troublemaker, the author informs us at the beginning of this book detailing, armed with the 1800 pages of files released by the FOIA, with Hoover's Albert-paranoia in action, aimed at the great scientist, especially in the years of the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and the Cold War. The public image of the greatest scientist of the twentieth century has been carefully manicured, but behind the teddy bear was a determined activist on many fronts, who fell afoul of not only the Nazis, but of the FBI. Einstein's valiant stands on social justice, racism, antisemitism, war, peace, and the Bomb barely enter public consciousness through the layers of the myth. The record of Hoover's manipulations and skullduggeries is almost pathetic in its pickiun character, next also to its bungling and misinformation. It is, for example, discouraging to watch how Einstein is deprived of security clearance, lest a man with such a reputation and global popularity be, we suspect the motive, able to influence or speak out from the inside on the use of the first atom bomb. The portrait left of the reactionary and racist Hoover at the head of a critical institution pursuing this biased and incomprehending agenda is nothing less than appalling. The portrait of Einstein's deep social concerns (read a triffle 'leftist') in action is the real man, please.

This is a must read book for many reasons. We have allowed J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy's abuses of power to slip quietly into fuzzy memory. We have failed to learn from history and are now condemned to repeat it.

Einstein emerges in this book as far more than a smart mathematician. He was a good and wise man. That so much of our government's power was engaged in an effort to discredit him is frightening.

Einstein experienced the Nazi's rise to power first hand. He could see the similarities between their anti-Semitism and our own racism. He had seen the Nazis attack the Communists and quash dissent. Einstein was a long time Pacifist, but he supported the war against the Nazis, even to the point of suggesting to FDR that we develop the Atomic Bomb before Hitler could.

Einstein was never a Communist. He valued his freedom of thought and expression too much. He saw how dangerous narrow nationalism could be and that it could threaten democracy. Einstein and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt were strong supporters of the United Nations and Human Rights. This earned both extensive FBI files, along with Martin Luther King Jr., whose Civil Rights efforts were also seen as a threat by Hoover.

After World War II, Nazis were eagerly embraced as anti-Communists and recruited into the growing "intelligence community". Einstein, an avowed Socialist, was feared to be, if not actually "Red" at least "Pink", and not to be trusted. If he had not been so well known and loved, he would surely have been stripped of his citizenship and deported. Hoover certainly tried. Fortunately for Einstein, there was no real evidence at all against him, just allegations from completely unreliable sources, innuendo and irrational fear.

Today, the flames of irrational fear are again being fanned in our country. Fear is again being used to justify injustice and erode our civil liberties. Everyone should read this book, and take it as a warning.

Needless to say, I was not surprised. This book is of course another in a long line of books exposing Hover, the FBI and our not so pure system.
Albert Einstein was clearly a good man and it is becoming rather apparent that J. Edgar Hoover was not.
When people complain about how their tax dollars are spent, I don't understand why organization like the FBI and the CIA are so defended by so many. Are these people just not informed?
I know that even history is not always accurate or in some cases even rather political and deceptive but so many people can't be lying about Hoover and these secretive organizations of ours.
We are beginning to make the Communists look reasonable. I can hardly believe all this and I just don't see how so many others can be in this state of denial. I don't get it.

Richard Edward Noble - The Hobo Philosopher - Author of:

Mein Kampf - An Analysis of Book One

It seems that wherever there is darkness in modern American history, our cross-dressing, fascist, homosexual, voyeur, and "number one" law enforcement officer for life -- J. Edgar Hoover is not to be found very far behind. This account of his "hounding" of Time magazine's "Man of the Century" and the greatest Scientist since Sir Isaac Newton is just another sordid chapter in the life and times of "bad boy" (?), J. Edgar.

The bad news on Hoover just never stops coming and never stops getting worse. Not only was he effectively a "controlled" agent of the mob (who held pictures of him engaged in fellatio delecto with his boyfriend and second in command of the FBI, Clyde Tolson); or that a number of authors have him heavily implicated in the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, but now Fred Jerome tells us here that he also was a "foaming-at-the-mouth" Franco supporting Fascist, a rabid racist and anti-Semite, and one of the engineers on the Red-baiting train of which Wisconsin Congressman Joe McCarthy was the conductor?

As if it Hoover's reputation could not take another body blow, we find here that it does indeed take another one that is at least as bad as the others. In the irony of all ironies, we discover here that Hoover's number one suspect in a plot to steal A-bomb secrets and hand them over to the Russian, was none other than Albert Einstein himself -- the very man (along with Leo Szliard) who had "tipped off" President Roosevelt to the possibility that Hitler was about to build an Atomic bomb (and therefore strongly urged the U.S. and the allies to get cracking on building one themselves)?

But Hoover's suspicions by definition had to be unfounded since it was Hoover's own FBI that had already denied the eminent Scientist a security clearance that would have allowed him access to the very secrets he was being accused of "giving away?" Not only was Einstein rejected from working on the "Manhattan Project," where most of his Jewish scientist friends and colleagues had already been "cleared" and were leading the charge to build the bomb, but he was also put under suspicion for associating with them? Their mail was routinely opened; their home surreptitiously broken into, and they were all obtrusively trailed daily for several years. Hoover's paranoid logic went as follows: If these cleared Jewish scientists all consulted with Einstein, then they must be sharing top secrets about the bomb with him. And thus Einstein must be the U.S. hub of a Jewish run Russian spy ring, a ring that is handing over our A-Bomb secrets to the Russians. QED.

No one ever accused Hoover of being smart, but his "red-baiting" tactics that resulted in the hunting down of Einstein, and other scientists who even remotely knew Einstein, in every respect bordered on the ridiculous, and Hoover and the FBI knew it. The best proof of this idiocy is that the real spies Karl Fuchs and the Rosenbergs, actually got away until after the war?

However, in pure paranoid and evil style there was another aspect of Einstein's life that Hoover could not face: Einstein was a pacifist and a rare breed in America, a true anti-racist. In fact, the book's summary of Einstein's involvement in fighting racism against blacks in the U.S., is a mini-history of the civil rights movement from the mid-30s until his death in 1955. It is a rich rendition that even some of the best Civil Rights books have not covered as well, and is alone worth the price of the book. This history, of lynching, appeals to Presidents to pass an anti-lynching bill, boycotts and protest movements, organizing, fund-raising, etc. is packed with eye opening often little known facts. Several of which stuck out in my mind among the many interesting details that the author shares with the reader.

The first is that the very university that had rescued Einstein from Hitler's anti-Semitic racism, Princeton U., was nearly as racist and anti-Semitic as was the Third Reich itself. Princeton U not only had a severe quota against the admission of Jewish students in 1933 when Einstein arrived, but also, other than the recently recruited Einstein, had only one other Jewish professor teaching there.

Einstein called America "a boring and barren society," and thought that Americans felt relieved that they were not immigrants, not black, not homeless, not gays, not Jews, (at least, not yet). He also thought honorary degrees were ostentatious and refused all but one offered to him by Lincoln University, a small all male black University 60 miles from Princeton, in Pa. The president of Lincoln at the time was Horace Mann Bond, the father of Julian Bond, the first black to be nominated for Vice President on the Democratic ticket in the modern era. Julian, only six at the time, remembered meeting with Einstein in the reception following the granting of the honorary degree.

Another historical factoid that deserves singling out was revealed while Einstein joined the NAACP and fought unsuccessfully to get an anti-lynching law passed. It was the fact that there was a dramatic increase in vigilante killing of blacks, mostly black soldiers returning from the victory against Hitler's racism in Europe. One of the Black Battalion's that had distinguished itself was the 761st Tank Battalion, known as the "Black Panthers." It was designated by Patton to play one of the key roles in the battle of the Bulge. The all-black unit fought for 183 straight days, capturing or destroying thirty major towns, four airstrips, ammunition dumps, and hundreds of armored vehicles and tanks. The insignia for the 761st was the double "V" - for victory over the Nazis in Europe and over racism back at home in the U.S. I had not known that the "Black Panther Party" named itself after this battalion.

And finally, the author also mentions the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade," an integrated contingent of young U.S. volunteers that fought in the Spanish Civil war against the Fascist, Francisco Franco. It was the first racially integrated military unit in the history of the U.S. Einstein's anti-Fascism made him an early and ardent supporter of the "Lincoln Brigade." Hoover of course never forgave Einstein for being an anti-racist and used his close ties to the "Lincoln Brigade" over and over as yet another element to darken Einstein's FBI file.

An incredible read. Five stars

This book is both insightful about the FBI under J Edgar Hoover and Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was clearly a great man as a scientist and as a humanitarian. He had his failings, particularly the way he treated his first wife.

I am amazed how well Einstein wrote. His letters were incredibly well written--easy to understand, grammatically correct, and pointed. He wrote better letters than anyone I have read. It is my understanding, not from this book, that Professor Einstein spoke German most of the time and that his graduate assistants at Princeton were all German speaking. If that is true, then his English writing skills are even more impressive.

The book offers insight into why Einstein was not part of The Manhattan Project, which he highly encouraged by letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

This is a good book on a narrow topic.

This is an easy-to-read, in-depth exploration of how right-wing ideology and right-wing political forces damaged the US during the 20th century. Want to understand what led to Obama's election and the Tea Party's rise? Read this book to learn the roots of it all. Plus it is genuinely funny (or, depending on your view, horrifying.)

By now it should come as no surprise to anyone that J. Edgar Hoover was less than the squeaky clean, impartial, investigator that the FBI's PR people made him out to be. Einstein was just one of many on Hoover's list of enemies. This book, based on the 1800-pages of Einstein's FBI file, is an account of J. Edgar Hoover's abortive attempts to discredit Albert Einstein and possibly have him deported, and why Hoover held such animus towards Einstein.

The author clearly states his background and bias, so the reader knows from the beginning that this will be a defense of Einstein against the material in his FBI file. However, he also makes it clear in the preface that he will try to be objective, but that this is not always possible. He uses the parable of a wolf attacking grandma (ala Little Red Riding hood) and the absurdity of cheering equally for the wolf and for grandma. The author (Fred Jerome) lets the material in the file act as the prosecutor of the case against Einstein, while he presents the defense's case. He lays out the material in Einstein's FBI file and shows that it was so unsubstantiated and of such poor quality that in the end Hoover had to drop the idea of "getting Einstein".

The gist of the book is that the 1800 pages of the file were based of baseless claims (in some cases made by insane asylum inmates who were claiming Einstein was controlling their minds), information obtained from Hoover's prewar association with the Gestapo and postwar ex-nazi's working as anti-communists for the US. Jerome refutes these items point by point. Jerome is clear - Einstein was a pacifist (but recognized the threat that Nazi Germany posed and was willing to suspend his pacifism to fight against it), was an anti-racist (with close associations with many African-Americans such as Marion Anderson) who was willing to standup and protest not only murder, but also the day to day discrimination endemic in Einstein's America. Einstein also was an advocate of socialism, and non-cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee and with Joe McCarthy's Senate committee. All these activities made him a threat in Hoover's eyes. Jerome is also clear that Einstein was not a Communist, never was a spy, never had specific information of value to give to anyone, never sought to overthrow the US government, and refutes all of the claims to the contrary. These charges seem improbable today, but in Hoover's eyes and those of many extreme rightwing Americans they sounded very plausible. Jerome tries to paint a picture of post war America and the real fear of communism that the cold war evoked, and how this helped drive the FBI's activities. He also shows that much of this was based on Hoover's personal hatred of Einstein and many others.

I liked this book a lot, but I cannot give it five-stars. The photographs in this paperback edition were very poorly reproduced. They look like scanned copies of the glossy photographs in the hardbound version of this book. Some showed clear scanning artifacts, others were merely murky and indistinct. I expect more from a $20 book. I was also put off by the shrill tone that Jerome sometimes exhibits, and after a while by the somewhat repetitious and tedious nature of the book. From my perspective, this weakened his message and the quality of the book. A good defense an attorney knows when to rest his case, less he antagonize the jury. However, while clearly hostile to the FBI, the book only becomes a screed in the last few pages.