The FBI's 15-Year Campaign To Ferret Out Norman Mailer

On at least 12 dates in 1964, FBI agents approached confidential informants to ask about the novelist, but not one of the sources could offer any "current" information, the file shows.

A 1967 memo examined Mailer's purported trip to Havana that year to observe a conference of the Latin American Solidarity Organization. The memo makes passing reference to investigative files it maintained on others who reportedly attended the conference, including writers Nat Hentoff and I.F. Stone. Hentoff told The Post that he did not attend the conference; Stone is deceased.

Another memo from 1967 lists a wedding reception that Mailer attended. The following year, the file shows, Mailer contributed a sketch to a literary auction that brought in a top bid of $32.50. The bureau learned of the gift because it was reported in the New York Times.

In 1969, at Hoover's direction, an agent prepared a five-page, single-spaced review of Mailer's book "Miami and the Siege of Chicago," about the 1968 political conventions. The review carefully itemized all six references made to the FBI.

"It is written in his usual obscene and bitter style," the agent wrote. "Book contains reference to . . . uncomplimentary statements of the type that might be expected from Mailer regarding the FBI and the Director."

Another memo similarly noted that during a 1965 talk in Berkeley, Calif., Mailer's comments were "interspersed with vulgar remarks."

A 1970 memo lists the name of an individual who had included Mailer as a reference when he applied for a job with Time Inc., a full 16 years earlier. Authorities redacted the individual's name before releasing the file to The Post.

Hoover died in 1972, but Mailer retained the bureau's interest.

In 1973, a former FBI administrator told the bureau he had been contacted by Lloyd Shearer, an editor at Parade magazine, who said that Mailer had just finished a book about Marilyn Monroe. The former FBI man said it would allege that an FBI coverup helped conceal the circumstances of the sex symbol's death in 1962.

Shearer said the book would allege that FBI agents had gone to the telephone company in Santa Monica, Calif., and removed a "paper tape" of Monroe's calls.

The FBI memo went on to say that "a number of individuals in the Los Angeles Office recall hearing stories and gossip outside the Bureau at the time of Marilyn Monroe's death to the effect that she had made some calls to Bobby Kennedy shortly before her death, but that discreet inquiry in this office and a review of our indices revealed no confirming facts and certainly no indication of any Bureau involvement as alleged by Mailer."

The FBI wrestled with how to handle Mailer.

"The Bureau may desire to explore what avenues might possibly be utilized which would result in the allegation being removed from Mailer's book," the head of the FBI's Los Angeles office wrote. But the bureau ultimately concluded that public actions by the bureau "would merely serve to feed the fires of publicity, which Mailer is attempting to stoke."

Bobby Kennedy, who it has been long speculated had a brief affair with Monroe, was U.S. attorney general and Hoover's boss at the time of her death. An FBI memo in 1973 stated that allegations of an affair in gossip magazines "were branded false and no factual support existed for them."