FOR WHOM THE SPIES TOIL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302430025-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: October 10, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302430025-4
ARTICLE
0t4 PACE
WASHINGTON POST
10 October 1983
For Whom the Spies Toil
Hemingway Ran a Spv Ring,
According to WWII FBI Files
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Oct. 9 (AP)-
Novelist Ernest Hemingway ran a spy ring of fish-
ing buddies, bartenders and over-the-hill jai alai
players in Cuba during-World War II, according
to FBI files quoted by a newspaper here today.
The ring was bankrolled by the U.S. ambassa-
dor to Cuba, but its existence-and Hemingway's
political views-caused the late FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover to spy on Hemingway himself, the
report said.
The report appeared in a copyright story in
The Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel,
which based its account on documents obtained
under the Freedom of Information Act. -spokesman said there
[ Washington,
comment oBnl the story before Tues-
woul would be no no c
day.]
The.Hemingway ring was organized in the early
years of World War II, when Cuba was filled with
Nazi sympathizers and when German U-boats
prowled the waters south of the United States.
The report said Hemingway eventually had 26
anti-Nazi spies in Cuba, while the FBI had only
16 people to spy on the Nazis and on Hemingway.
The newspaper quoted confidential memos to
Hoover from FBI agent R.G. Leddy, who said
most. of the spying seemed to have taken place at
Hemingway's favorite bars, nightspots and fishing
waters.
Hoover, in ordering g his agents to keep an eye
-on Hemingway, wrote in one memo: "Hemingway
has no particular love for the FBI. His judgment
is not of the best."
The FBI never found evidence that Hemingway
was subversive or un-American, although its re-
ports repeated rumors that the writer "might
have" communist ties or sympathies.
"No information has been received which would
definitely tie -him with the Communist Party or
which would indicate that he is, or has been, a
Party member," Leddy wrote in a report dated
April 21, 1943.
"His views are liberal," Leddy wrote later. "And
he may be inclined favorably to communist polit-
ical philosophies. Because oanof his y length particular
embarrass
Hemingway ay go
the bureau."
Hemingway's 'ring was formed in September
1942 when Spruill.Braden, the U.S. ambassador
to Cuba, agreed to bankroll it under the code
me "Crime Shop," the newspaper said.
A month later, Leddy reported to Hoover that
the ring was getting $1,000 a month from the em-
bassy and that most members were anti-Fascists
Hemingway had met while covering the Spanish
revolution.
Leddy reported the ring was based at the writ-
er's farm outside Havana and "grew from an or-
ganization of four full-time operatives, alleged to
be former members of the Spanish police force,
and 12 part-time undercover agents employed as
barkeepers, waiters, etc."
He said it eventually had .26 members operating
"all up and down the island" and at sea aboard the
Pilar, Hemingway's 40-foot. sport fishing boat,
which the U.S. Embassy outfitted with automatic
weapons, hand grenades and gasoline.
Leddy told Hoover that Hemingway "personally
had 122 gallons of gasoline charged to him from
the embassy's private gasoline allotment for the
month of April 1943."
Hemingway once reported a U-boat sighting
from the Pilar, but Leddy claimed he could not
find any other witnesses, even though Hemingway
reported that the Nazi sub had surfaced near a
Hemingway later wrote of U-boat hunting ad-
ventures, and his youngest son, Gregory, told of
submarine searches in his biography, "Papa."
"When I was 12, my father convinced the am-
bassador to Cuba that the Pilar could be con-
verted to a sub destroyer," he wrote. "Two men
were stationed in the bow with submachine guns
and two in the stern with [Browning automatic ri-
fles] and hand grenades."
Leddy eventually reported from Havana that
Hemingway's band of spies had been "terminated
... This action resulted from general dissatisfac-
tion over reports submitted" to the embassy.
The newspaper, however, said the end of the
war did not close the FBI file on Hemingway and
Hoover's men reported on his activities through
the years. Included in the files were a news clip-
ping about his airplane crash while on an African
safari; a detailed report on a drunken argument
with an Australian journalist in Havana over the
edibility of lion meat; and a 1961 memo on Hem-
ingway being hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic,
where, an agent wrote Hoover, "he is seriously ill,
both physically and mentally." That July, Hem-
ingway shot himself to death in Ketchum, Idaho.
He was 61.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302430025-4