Everyone knows that the FBI actively opposed Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and others, in a program of covert action against political dissidents called COINTELPRO. (There were Congressional hearings exposing -- and dismantling -- the program in the early 1970's. Some recent discussion on PBS with Bill Moyers.)
What's news to me is that the FBI had 2,000 pages on Albert Einstein as well, collected from 1933 to 1955. Because of Einstein's pacifism, his activism, and his socialist sympathies, he became a target for J. Edgar Hoover. In addition to compiling whatever they could find about Einstein, the FBI conducted interviews with informants in a search for "derogatory information."
During the 1950's, Hoover tried unsuccessfully to paint Einstein as a Soviet spy, and there was a serious attempt to get him deported, which Einstein -- who apparently knew the score -- was able to avoid.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312316097/102-6476082-4381718?v=glance&vi=reviews
"Meticulously researched and beautifully written, The Einstein File details a bleak chapter in this nation's history, when a rogue elephant FBI rode roughshod over civil liberties, including the rights and privacy of one of the world's great scientists."
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FBI dossiers on other famous people, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
http://foia.fbi.gov/famous.htm
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