Northwood News ♦ February 2018

FOIA: Seeing Myself Through My Neighbors’ Eyes

By David L. Perlman

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us! — Robert Burns (1786)

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and the diligence of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I have been able to see myself as others see me — well, some others anyway.

Thus, I discovered that a neighbor (name deleted) told the FBI that my wife and I were both “very arty.” Most puzzling was a comment that “the Perlmans (deleted) their two young children.” I’m sure we wouldn’t have deleted Linda or Arthur unless they had been very, very naughty.

Some background: The year was 1965 and I had a job I enjoyed on the staff of the AFL-CIO News, then the weekly newspaper of America’s union federation. I wasn’t much interested when a friend told me the labor reporter for the Voice of America was retiring and suggested that I apply for the job. But I agreed to consider it.

The rather daunting five-page form I was sent was titled “Security Investigation Data for Sensitive Positions.” I dutifully listed every address where I had lived since 1937, schools I had attended, organizations I had joined, and jobs I had held. Months passed and I heard nothing more. By then, I was no longer interested in the broadcasting job and I assumed the agency was no longer interested in me.

The author with his two not-so-naughty children, Linda and Arthur, in front of their Caddington Avenue home in the 1960s. His Freedom of Information Act request showed what his neighbors thought of him: that he was against racial discrimination, believed all are created equal, and was just too broad-minded and principled to entrust with a top-secret security clearance.

I was curious, however. In 1983, I invoked the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of my FBI files. I learned that the investigation had gotten off to a rocky start. The FBI couldn’t verify my claim that I had been born in New York City in 1924. I have a certified copy of my birth certificate. It cost me $2. Perhaps the FBI hadn’t sent in the fee.

The Great Depression was not yet over when I was 17. My mother had to take a live-in job with an orphanage in Cleveland. I moved to a furnished room and found work at the minimum wage of 37.5 cents an hour, or $15 for my 40-hour week. I took evening session classes at New York’s tuition-free City College.

The FBI tracked down my employer but Mr. Gross said he couldn’t be expected to remember all the “boys” he had hired and fired. I remember Mr. Gross, however. When I said I’d have to leave if I didn’t get a raise, he asked when I was leaving.

After Pearl Harbor, my mother and I found jobs in wartime Washington, D.C. My path led to the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, then to the Army and combat with the 99th Infantry Division.

When I returned to City College, journalism became my career goal. My first newspaper job was in Jennings, a small city in Louisiana. My predecessor stayed on to introduce me to local newsmakers before moving to a larger paper in Opelousas, where the FBI found him. He remembered I liked to cover fires and would hitch a ride on the fire engine. I could say that I didn’t have a car and riding with the volunteer firemen was the quickest way to cover a story. But I can’t deny that I did like to ride the fire engine.

The FBI then diligently traced my path to Beaumont, Texas, to the Washington bureau of a radio news service and to the labor movement, where for nearly 40 years I wrote for and edited union newspapers. After Laura and I were married, the FBI followed our trail from Greenbelt to the Silver Spring neighborhood [this one] where our two children would grow up.

A neighbor (name deleted) said my wife and I “appear to be fine, upstanding, moral people whose personal behavior is above reproach. However, I have always felt that if anyone I knew ever turned out to be a Communist, it would surprise me least to find Mr. Perlman that person.”

Our suspicious neighbor explained: “I know of no activities that Mr. Perlman engages in that could be considered subversive. He is, on the other hand, a vociferous proponent of labor unions. He strikes me as a person who has never had to do any manual labor in his life and, consequently, I find his union mentality sort of phony.... Under the circumstances, I felt that I should express my opinions, unfounded though they may be.”

I was intrigued to learn that the FBI’s legendary director, J. Edgar Hoover, had taken an interest in my investigation. He found puzzling a report from the FBI’s New York office quoting a source who said he would not recommend me for a “top-level security position” because I was “the type of person who is against racial discrimination” and would support the U.S. policy in Vietnam.

“By return airtel, clarify,” the FBI chief ordered.

The return airtel explained that T-9 (deleted) said he would not say that Perlman was a CP (Communist Party) sympathizer in the true sense of the word. “Source said he considered Perlman a liberal and by this he meant that Perlman is a broad-minded type of person … who would be for freedom of speech and freedom of the press but would tend to be a little excessive in the use of these freedoms. He felt Perlman would be a sympathizer with Martin Luther King, Jr., on integration as he believes all are created equal. He believed Perlman to be a man of principle, who would fight for his country, honest and loyal. He would recommend him for a government job but not for a top-level security position such as entrusting him with the battle plans of the United Sates as, in his broad-minded liberal way, he might discuss them with an unauthorized person.”

You’ve got to watch out for those liberals.

[David L. Perlman is the father of NFCCA Secretary Linda Perlman, who still lives in that house on Caddington Avenue. This article first appeared in “Tales from Riderwood” and is reprinted with permission of the author.] ■