![]() ![]() They directed me to the National Archives, providing a file reference number. Following a reasonable waiting period, another attempt was made to obtain this material. ![]() We were advised that the potentially responsive records were not in their expected location and could not be located after a reasonable search. We have attempted to obtain this material so it could be reviewed to determine whether it was responsive to your request. For my request about Greenlee they said:Ī search of the Central Records System reflected there were records potentially responsive to your FOIA. The FBI claim they have no records on Dixon, nothing whatsoever. These were all separate requests and what came back was very curious. I asked the FBI for files on the novel, on Greenlee himself, on Ivan Dixon who directed and co-produced the film, and on the film. To try to find out more, and to see if I could get paper confirmation of Greenlee’s anecdotal evidence of FBI suppression, I filed a bunch of FOIA requests. What did it do so wrong? Why did this particular story induce such a reaction? So this is an extremely unusual situation – a radical story that was rejected by the studio system (no surprises there), opposed by the FBI but also apparently used for training purposes, and also opposed by Jesse Jackson. He also talked about how Aubrey Lewis – one of the first black FBI agents recruited in the early 60s – said that the book was required reading at the FBI academy.įor a little more on the background to the production of the film we’re going to turn to an interview, one of the last Sam Greenlee ever gave, on the Project Brotherhood radio show. Greenlee told the same story he’d been telling for years – how he heard from Chicago theater owners that the FBI had been in touch, urging them to pull the movie from distribution. Greenlee continued to write books, poems and another screenplay, travelled widely, taught screenwriting for a while at a college in Chicago, and in 2011 was the centrepiece of a documentary called Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of The Spook Who Sat by the Door. He then adapted the story into a screenplay, helped raise funds for production mostly from small investors from the black community, and the film came out in 1973. After being rejected by every American publisher and quite a few others, he eventually managed to get the book published by an independent publisher in London in 1969. During this period he wrote his most famous work – The Spook Who Sat by the Door – and tried to get it published. He worked in Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Greece, staying on in Greece to continue his studies. In 1957 he joined the US Information Agency – a foreign propaganda arm of the US government. The same year he joined the US Army, becoming a first lieutenant before returning to university to do graduate studies in international relations. He won a scholarship to university and earned a degree in political science in 1952. But before we get to that – who was Sam Greenlee? He was born in Chicago in 1930 and grew up in the city. I have to say, I wish I had seen this film years ago because I love it. ![]() He covered this in his book and he’s mentioned the film to me numerous times, so I filed several freedom of information requests, watched some interviews with Sam Greenlee and watched the film. I was first told about the story of The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Simon Willmetts, an academic who wrote a very good book In Secrecy’s Shadow, about the OSS and the CIA in Hollywood. This is a story that comprises many of the topics that pique my interest – cinema, political radicalism, the intelligence agencies. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |