WASHINGTON -- Decades of digging by the FBI unearthed allegations tying 'liberal thinker' Albert Einstein to a bevy of plots - a Hollywood takeover, for one -- but no evidence the physicist was a Communist Party member.
A 1,500-page file kept by the bureau on the Nobel Prize-winning theoretician includes claims linking him to the Lindbergh kidnapping and purporting that he invented a mind-control machine.
The documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show the FBI failed to substantiate key suspicions that apparently sparked the 23-year probe, including an assertion his Berlin office had been used as a 'drop' for Soviet agents in the 1930s.
In one of the final entries in the file, the FBI noted, 'Extensive investigation in U.S. reflected Einstein affiliated or his name extensively associated with literally hundreds of pro-Communist groups.
'No evidence of CP membership was developed,' it added.
The FBI file described Einstein as a 'pacifist' and a 'liberal thinker' affiliated in some way with more than 30 'Communist-front' organizations.
'He has opposed militarism and universal military training in the United States and has espoused world government,' the file said.
The Einstein file was released by the FBI as the result of a request by Richard Schwartz, a professor at Florida International University who is studying the effects of politics on science.
Einstein, who died in 1955, formulated a special theory of relativity and other ideas that helped open the door to the atomic age. He fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, settled in Princeton, N.J., and became an American citizen.
Dr. Otto Nathan, executor of Einstein's estate and editor of a collection of his writings on peace, called the file 'nonsense' in a telephone interview this week, but declined additional comment.
An FBI spokesman, asked why the bureau kept a file on Einstein, said the agency is not required under the information act to 'justify or explain' its actions beyond what is contained in the file.
The file, opened in 1932, contains newspaper clippings as well as anonymous notes alleging Einstein's Communist ties. In one memo, an informant told the FBI that Einstein had invented a robot that could 'read the human mind.'
The bureau later learned that either the informant or the purported victim of the mind-control device had spent two years in a mental institution.
Another informant claimed in 1951 that Einstein had framed Bruno Hauptmann, who was convicted and electrocuted for kidnapping aviator Charles Lindbergh's son in 1932.
The FBI's file also details Einstein's efforts to curb nuclear proliferation and ease the threat of annihilation by nuclear war.
One accusation on file was from a person who claimed having met Einstein through an acquaintance, who in turn asserted the scientist was taking control of every studio in Hollywood. The meeting was said to have taken place in a Los Angeles hotel, but Einstein never took a room there, the FBI found.
'It would make a wonderful absurdist drama,' Schwartz said of the material, adding most of the investigations into Einstein were ordered by longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
Schwartz, who has written an article in the current issue of The Nation magazine based on the FBI file, said he requested the material in 1980. It took until last April for the bureau to remove information considered too sensitive to release for national security reasons, he said.
The file also includes a letter from a German woman asserting Einstein was a Communist. The FBI found the claim was based on the fact the scientist refused to stand during the playing of the German national anthem. Einstein's parents were Jews and his property was confiscated by the Nazis in 1934, when he was stripped of German citizenship.
John Shattuck, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Einstein file is a 'particularly shocking example of a long train of political surveillance by the Hoover FBI.'
'It demonstrates, as all other examples demonstrate, that it is essential that the FBI be kept out of investigating people's political activities,' he said.
