The FBI File on Louis D. Brandeis

15Apr24

One night back in 1998, I was reading News of the Weird and one of its stories struck a chord with me. It was about a Minnesota law student whose hobby was requesting copies of the FBI files of celebrities. I can’t remember the student’s name now but it was distinctive enough for me to recognize it the next day when I saw it in my work email inbox. In the email, he introduced himself, explained his hobby and suggested that since the FBI was getting rid of a lot of its old files, I should do a Freedom of Information Act request for their file on Louis Brandeis. (Side note: it turns out the student was a fan of News of the Weird and was delighted to hear that he had been mentioned in it.) So, I filled out the form and then after a few weeks forgot all about it. So, it was a pleasant surprise a year and a half later when I received in the mail a thick envelope from the FBI.

The file ended up being both more, and less, interesting than I expected. Mostly less. It was interesting to see what the FBI decided to keep. But most of what I got was so commonplace that I cannot understand their rationale for keeping it. I assume some of it was donated/mailed to them but some of it had to have been gathered by the agents themselves. A couple items probably had some research value (although I doubt the veracity of them) but of it seems to have little or no value at all. Regardless, here is a list of everything I received, so everyone else can make up their own minds about it.

The first item is a copy of the July 1944 newsletter Money. Money was a publication devoted to … well, I guess, just criticism of the American finance system. And what was Brandeis’ connection to this publication? They used his quote “We must break the money trust or the money trust will break us” on their masthead. That’s it. He is not mentioned in any of the articles and there is no indication that he was ever aware of the newsletter.

Then, there are copies of two book reviews from the New York Times Book Review: on for Felix Frankfurter’s Mr. Justice Brandeis and another for Alpheus Mason’s Brandeis: Lawyer and Judge in the Modern State. There is also a clipping from the October 17, 1934, Muncie Evening Press about Brandeis’ supposed influence on FDR’s New Deal.

There is a page of four short clippings from unidentified and undated from newspapers. One clipping is about Brandeis donating money to the Jewish Labor Federation of Palestine. Another is an announcement of how well a cheap edition of Other People’s Money is selling, while another clipping is about how someone had called for Brandeis to be drafted to rehabilitate America’s financial system. The most intriguing clipping has the headline “Daughter of Justice Brandeis is member of Radical Union.” The radical union? The American Civil Liberties Union. Unfortunately, the photocopying of the article is so bad, most of it is illegible.

There is a page titled “Information taken from ‘Commonwealth College Fortnightly’ Official Organ of Commonwealth College,” which lists contributions made to the college by Brandeis and his wife. Commonwealth College was a Mena, Arkansas school that had been founded by Socialists to train people in socio-economic reform. The school’s radical agenda made it a frequent target of conservatives.

There is a page titled “From Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Issue of Feb. 8, 1912 Page 144″ which is a retyped excerpt of an article that casts Brandeis in a negative light over his involvement with the United Shoe Machinery Company.

There is a 2 page anti-communistic, and anti-Semitic, pamphlet from 1935 called Justice Brandeis Unfit? Brandeis, and other prominent American Jews such as Benjamin Cardozo, Felix Frankfurter and Albert Einstein are accused of being communist agents.

There is an ad for Other People’s Money with a written note listing the names of Brandeis’ daughters.

There is a typed copy of a letter the FBI received that claimed that Wilson appointed Brandeis to the Supreme Court as a reward for talking a Mrs. (Mary) Peck into not releasing a series of love letters that were supposedly written by Wilson. This letter is accompanied by a letter by J. Edgar Hoover thanking the writer for the letter. (The sender’s named is obscured so that it is impossible to see what it is.)

There is a copy of a column titled “Other People’s Lives” that was written by “the Squire of Krum(?) Elbow” that is from some untitled and undated publication. This anti-Semitic column not only reiterates the Mary Peck charges but also blames Brandeis for America’s entry into World War I and the Communist Revolution in Russia.

There is a copy of a 1954 Westbrook Pegler column titled “We Were Not Told What Brandeis Taught Truman.” Pegler describes a mysterious meeting that took place between Brandeis and Truman and repeats a claim that Brandeis had desired to “wreak havoc” in the United States.

The last item in the folder is probably my favorite. It is a 1941 report by Special Agent J. F. Elich. But it is impossible to tell what the report is about since it is so heavily redacted.

About all I can ascertain from it is that Brandeis did not know the person the agent was inquiring about and that an intermediary (presumably Alice Brandeis) had to act as a go between because she said that “Brandeis did not ever speak over the telephone.”

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