MuckRock is excited to announce that thanks to the generous support of MIT Press, JPat Brown and Beryl Lipton will be presenting a talk this weekend at the 2019 Oxford Literary Festival on our book, Writers under Surveillance: The FBI Files.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation file on Oleg Lyalin offers new insight into what’s been called “the single biggest action taken against Moscow by any western government” - the 1971 expulsion of dozens of Soviet personnel. According to the narrative established at the time, and repeated even in recent publications, Lyalin’s defection “led to the discovery and deportation of 105 Soviet officials who were accused of spying in Britain” and was prompted by a drunk driving arrest. As his FBI file shows, however, the real story is more complicated than that and has long been one of MI-5’s closely held secrets.

A recent FBI FOIA release prompted by the author’s lawsuit shows that in early 1985, L. Ron Hubbard’s son Ronald DeWolf wrote the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division a letter detailing a number of accusations - including Scientology’s alleged, and unsubstantiated, KGB connection, and that his father had once asked him to steal a hydrogen bomb.

In 1952, Allen Dulles, then Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, provided a copy of Winston Churchill’s recently-published World War II memo to establish some naming guiding conventions for his covert staff.

After decades as a West Coast leftist, Ramparts editor Warren Hinckle finally landed a place in the FBI’s files after his magazine ran a pro-IRA ad and credited a Michigan Senator for its creation.