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ELEANOR ROOSEVELT FBI FILES
3,900 pages of files copied from FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., covering Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, writer, columnist, lecturer, and humanitarian. Documents from 1940 to 1975 include correspondences between former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Mrs. Roosevelt, FBI monitoring of her political activities and travels, her newspaper column, citizens' correspondence concerning Mrs. Roosevelt's liberal views, threats made against Mrs. Roosevelt's life and well being and newspaper clippings.
"Eleanor Roosevelt's FBI file is one of the wonders of the Western world. It is one of the largest individual files that Hoover compiled."
--- Blanche Cook, historian and journalist, author
of "Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume I, 1884-1933"
300 additional pages of documents include correspondences between Eleanor Roosevelt and Robert F. Kennedy, original texts and transcripts of speeches and interviews while Mrs. Roosevelt campaigned for John F. Kennedy's presidential race.
Included are 400 pages of files covering Joseph P. Lash. The FBI covered Lash because of his socialist politics during his college days and his friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. An affair between Lash and Mrs. Roosevelt has been alleged and disputed. Files chronicle Mrs. Roosevelt's intervention on behalf of Lash, when he was turned down for an officer's commission in the Navy. Lash instead joined the Army as a meteorologist. Files show that the Army Counterintelligence Corps placed a listening device in a Chicago hotel room occupied by Lash. A memo by a FBI agent conveys his belief that a recording was made, confirming a physical relationship between Lash and Mrs. Roosevelt. Files contain transcripts of intercepted correspondences between Mrs. Roosevelt and Lash. Files show the Army considered a court martial of Lash for having an affair with his future wife Trude Pratt, who at the time was married to another man. Files contain transcripts of recordings of hotel room conversations between Lash and Pratt. In 1972 Lash won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his biography of the Roosevelts, "Franklin and Eleanor." |
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