“Potential Sabotage Agent”: A journalist, the Communist Party and the FBI

FBI surveillance has been a significant topic of historical research in the last seven decades especially in relation to communism and members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). This study examined the FBI records of Robert Fowler Hall (RBH), a journalist and newspaper owner who served as both a district organizer and later as a reporter and editor for The Daily Worker in the 1940s and 1950s. Our findings showed that the FBI surveilled RFH and his activities, including his stories and columns for the Worker, from the 1930s into the 1960s. The Bureau surveilled his personal relationships, his meetings with Party members, his travels (both stateside and internationally) and his visits to the U.S. embassies of communist countries. FBI agents framed RFH as a communist activist who posed a security threat and not as a dangerous radical. The FBI gleaned most of the information about RFH via informants and surveillance, but with few personal interactions. More than 70% of the FBI documents on RFH were summaries of previous reports shared among the Bureaus.