>Feds Worked to Quash Faculty Careers 
> 
>SAN FRANCISCO, June 8 2002 (AP) - The FBI, working covertly with the CIA and 
>then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, spent years unlawfully trying to quash the voices 
>and careers of students and faculty deemed subversive at the University of 
>California, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. 
> 
>For years the FBI denied engaging in such activities at the university. But a 
>17-year legal challenge brought by a Chronicle reporter under the Freedom of 
>Information Act forced the agency to release more than 200,000 pages of 
>confidential records covering the 1940s to the 1970s, the newspaper reported 
>in a special section for its Sunday editions. 
> 
>Those documents describe the sweeping nature of the FBI's activities and show 
>they ranged far beyond the campus and into state politics as the agency 
>plotted to end the career of UC President Clark Kerr while aiding Reagan's 
>political career. 
> 
>Only after federal judges repeatedly ruled that the FBI had drifted 
>unlawfully from intelligence gathering into politics - and the case was about 
>to be heard by the Supreme Court - did the FBI settle, removing much of the 
>blacked-out material in the files. 
> 
>In its unsuccessful battle to keep them secret, the agency had said its 
>actions had been proper - that it had merely tried to protect civil order and 
>national security during a time when the nation feared Communism and waged 
>war in Vietnam. 
> 
>``Things are done a lot differently today,'' FBI spokesman Bill Carter told 
>the Chronicle. ``The files speak for themselves.'' 
> 
>The broad outlines of the illegal FBI campaigns became public in the 1970s as 
>Congress held hearings that showed the FBI and CIA had disrupted the lives of 
>law-abiding citizens and organizations engaging in legitimate dissent. 
> 
>The documents obtained by the Chronicle show just how extensive these 
>activities were in California, how Kerr and others were targeted, and how 
>eagerly Reagan worked to quash protests. 
> 
>Gov. Reagan intended to mount a ``psychological warfare campaign'' against 
>subversives, file tax evasion and other charges against them, and do anything 
>else it could to restore moral order, Herbert Ellingwood, Reagan's legal 
>affairs secretary, told the FBI in a request for confidential information 
>about people on campus. 
> 
>The records show FBI director J. Edgar Hoover agreed to provide such 
>information from the agency's files. 
> 
>``This has been done in the past,'' the director said, ``and has worked quite 
>successfully.'' 
> 
>The Office of Ronald Reagan referred the Chronicle's questions to Edwin Meese 
>III, Reagan's chief of staff as governor. Meese said the FBI, as far as he 
>knew, gave Reagan no special political help, and that he did not remember 
>planning any activities against ``subversives.'' 
> 
>``There was never any concentrated strategy to do these things,'' he said. 
> 
>The documents also show that the FBI tried to protect Reagan from being 
>implicated for lying about his own past as a member of several groups 
>officially deemed subversive by altering his security clearance. 
> 
>Reports that Reagan informed on his fellow actors at a time when the FBI was 
>trying to root out suspected subversives have surfaced before, but were 
>downplayed. In 1985, when the FBI released some documents about Reagan, a 
>Reagan spokesman said he had only a ``very minor'' involvement with the 
>bureau at a time when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. 
> 
>The records obtained by the Chronicle reveal who it was that Reagan and his 
>first wife, Jane Wyman, named during a 1947 meeting with FBI agents: Larry 
>Parks (``The Jolson Story''), Howard Da Silva (``The Lost Weekend'') and 
>Alexander Knox (``Wilson''). Each was later called before the House 
>Un-American Activities Committee and blacklisted in Hollywood. 
> 
>The new documents also show Reagan's contacts with the bureau were more 
>extensive than he acknowledged or has been reported: Files show he repeatedly 
>gave the FBI names of people he suspected of being communist over the years. 
> 
>Hoover, meanwhile, ordered agents to investigate the 6,000 UC faculty members 
>and top administrators. The resulting report in 1960 listed professors' 
>political activities, and said many had engaged in ``illicit love affairs, 
>homosexuality, sexual perversion, excessive drinking or other instances of 
>conduct reflecting mental instability.'' 
> 
>CIA Director John McCone also was involved, meeting with Hoover in January 
>1965 after the Free Speech Movement held its first sit-ins. Records show they 
>decided to leak information to conservative UC Regent Edwin Pauley, who would 
>``use his influence to curtail, harass and at times eliminate'' liberal 
>faculty members. Pauley had hoped to fire Kerr. 
> 
>The FBI blamed the liberal Kerr for allowing the campus protests to grow, and 
>Hoover himself wanted a crackdown at Berkeley before student protests grew 
>nationwide. 
> 
>When, to Hoover's dismay, President Lyndon Johnson picked Kerr to become his 
>secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, the FBI background check included 
>damaging information the agency knew to be false, and Johnson withdrew the 
>nomination, the documents show. 
> 
>Reagan was elected California's governor in 1966 after repeatedly consulting 
>with the FBI while campaigning against ``campus malcontents and filthy speech 
>advocates'' at Berkeley. One of his first moves was to fire Kerr, who never 
>received another White House appointment. 
> 
>Kerr, whose own FOIA request was denied by the FBI, said he was unaware of 
>the plots against him. ``Maybe I was too naive, but I never assumed they were 
>taking efforts to get rid of me,'' he told The Chronicle.