In the wake of my loss in Moldea v. New York Times, I received documents that likely would have impacted the manner in which we had conducted the case. This new information provided important insights into the relationship between the FBI and the National Football League, as well as the Washington Post and its selection of a journalist who was also a well‑known stalking horse and informant for the FBI, to review Interference.
In early 1992, I received a call from a colleague, journalist Dick Brenneman, who told me that a newly‑released book—Alien Ink: The FBI's War on Freedom of Expression, written by author Natalie Robins—revealed that the FBI had maintained a covert "Book Review Section," which had been used to sabotage authors and their published works.
Brenneman added that my embattled 1989 book, Interference, was named in Robins's book and, according to the author, had been one of the FBI's targets—in fact, one of its last two targets before the section went out of business. Brenneman knew that I had been extremely critical of the FBI in my book for its suppression of numerous investigations involving National Football League personnel and a variety of underworld figures.
I had never heard of Robins—who was the wife of Christopher Lehmann‑Haupt, the New York Times's widely respected daily book critic. For whatever reason, she never attempted to interview me. But I certainly appreciated her fine work.
I began making my own inquiries, going first to the New York Times Book Review. Explaining the contents of Robins's new book, reviewer David Traxel had written:
Since antiquity, governments have feared writers because of their willingness to subvert official truths while seductively arguing for visions of their own. . . .
The Federal Bureau of Investigation had begun gathering information on American writers at least a decade before J. Edgar Hoover assumed command in 1924, but he brought an energetic efficiency and sense of mission to the task that resulted in hundreds of journalists, novelists, short‑story writers and poets receiving unwanted reviews. . . .
What they [independent researchers] found ranged from the banal (newspaper clippings, extracts from Current Biography, bone‑headed interpretations of the writings that would make a freshman blush with embarrassment) all the way up to serious trouble (malicious and anonymous letters, wiretap transcripts, agent reports)—all perhaps evidence that they had been victims of the sabotage programs the agency ran against those it considered a threat.[1]
Did the FBI's "book‑reviewing" operation end with J. Edgar Hoover's death? In Robins's book, she wrote:
In the eighties, the Book Review Section of the FBI, which had begun life in 1920 as the Publications Section, was placed under the Public Affairs Section. During the 1950s, book reviews had been handled by the Central Research Section, and in the 1960s, by the Research Satellite Section. In the 1970s, they were back under the Central Research Section.
Today, FBI deputy assistant Milt Ahlerich says that certain books are of interest to the FBI "not from an investigative standpoint necessarily," and that "in a very limited fashion we will review five or six books a year." The FBI is no longer looking for subversive writing, but "technique or new research that's being done—maybe a current work on terrorism, a current work on foreign counterintelligence."
In addition, according to FBI special agent Susan Schnitzer, "The authors of books reviewed are not indexed, because it is not done for investigative reasons."
What interested the FBI in the eighties? Thirteen books. . . .
Robins then noted these thirteen books, including:
In 1989, the Bureau reviewed Interference, by Dan E. Moldea, and Donnie Brasco: An FBI Agent Undercover in the Mafia, by Joseph D. Pistone and Richard Woodley. As of May 1990, no further books were reviewed. [2]
In the wake of calling several sources at the FBI—who, unfortunately, did not have access to records in the bureau's Book Review Section—I filed a Freedom of Information Act request, asking for the FBI's "review" of Interference referred to in Alien Ink.
Then, after a four‑year wait, I finally received the FBI's files regarding my book about professional football. These documents indicated that—unknown to me—the FBI had essentially placed me under investigation in August 1989, within days after the release of Interference.
The collection of records in the FOIA package ranged from my probe of the Teamsters Union—which led to my first book, The Hoffa Wars in 1978—to my work at the left‑wing Institute for Policy Studies to my 1986 book, Dark Victory, Ronald Reagan, MCA and the Mob, to my probe of the NFL in Interference.
In a portion of a background report to Milt Ahlerich, the FBI deputy assistant who coordinated the investigation of me and my work, an unnamed FBI special agent wrote:
I am responding to your request for information concerning the author, Dan Moldea. Mr. Moldea is the subject of Bufile 190‑3181, containing five sections. These files contain FOIPA requests dating from 1977 and continuing to the present. The primary subjects of his requests appear to relate to alleged organized crime figures and the Teamsters Union.
Mr. Moldea is also identified in Bufile 9‑60052, Serial 855, dated October 1975. This file identifies Moldea as a self‑ identified, free‑lance writer. . . . [Moldea] previously lived in the Detroit, Michigan, area, and did extensive research on the Teamsters Union. He developed valuable sources close to the Teamsters Union, and planned to put this information into book form. . . . It appeared from Moldea's [theories about the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa] that he was quite knowledgeable of local Teamster politics and individuals associated with the disappearance of Hoffa.
Dealing specifically with Interference, FBI Special Agent Scott Nelson wrote in another report:
Ostensibly providing a public service, the author has turned out a glaring commentary on law enforcement's efforts, or the lack thereof, to rid professional sports of organized‑crime influence. At the Federal level, he charges that only the Kennedy and Carter administrations made a serious attempt at curbing organized crime.
Mr. Moldea is highly critical of Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and provides a mixed review of the FBI. While he acknowledges the positive results of some Bureau investigations, he also points out an instance in which the FBI was allegedly uncooperative with the IRS [the Donald Dawson case], that a new Agent working a major gambling case [the Computer Group investigation] was naive to the practices of bookmakers and that the FBI conducted electronic surveillance without court authorization.[3]
The FBI, which widely disseminated these and numerous other reports about me, also featured and highlighted the horrific reviews of Interference by Gerald Eskenazi for the New York Times and Sandy Smith for the Washington Post.
Did the FBI attempt to sabotage Interference as a favor to the NFL? I believed that there was clear evidence that it did.
And, if there was any doubt, in January 1996—with hundreds of qualified candidates to choose from—the NFL's high command selected Milt Ahlerich, the special agent who had supervised the FBI's investigation of Interference and me, to succeed Warren Welsh as the new chief of NFL Security.
ENDNOTES
[1] David Traxel, New York Times Book Review, “J. Edgar Hoover, Literary Critic – Alien Ink,” April 12, 1992.
[2] Natalie Robins, Alien Ink: The FBI’s War on Freedom of Expression (William Morrow and Company, 1992), pp. 373-374,
[3] Letter from SA Scott Nelson to Mr. Ahlerich, “Re: Book Review, Interference, by Dan E. Moldea,” September 1, 1989.