08/28/2026
During the final years of his life, Ernest Hemingway was deeply paranoid that he was being constantly surveilled by the FBI.
Having sustained repeated concussions and decades of heavy drinking, he was a manic depressive. He grew reclusive, telling friends his car was bugged, his phone tapped, his mail opened, and pointing out strangers he took for federal agents.
However, more than twenty years after his death, the FBI’s file on him was released, revealing that J. Edgar Hoover had in fact placed him under surveillance beginning in the 1940s, when Hemingway was running an amateur counterintelligence operation out of Cuba.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.
- Broken Bow
