Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success

Appendix

Appendix "A Pretty Grim and Bitter Pay-Off": Additional Information on Capra's Security Clearance Crisis from Newly Released U.S. Government Files When Frank Capra learned in 1951 that the United States government considered him a bad security risk, he commented, "Probably the biggest laugh of the year if it wasn't so tragic." This remark appears in Capra's Security Board File, the selfjustifying 225-page document he submitted on December 29, 1951, to the ArmyNavy -Air Force Personnel Security Board (ANAFPSB). That document convinced the board to issue Capra the security clearance it earlier denied him for the classified Defense Department/California Institute of Technology think tank Project VISTA. "In order to prepare some kind of an answer in the ten days allotted me," Capra wrote the board, "I have worked night and day secretly and furtively to try to keep the world from crashing round me and my family." In 1992, within a few months after the original publication of Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, I was able to obtain from the Department of Defense, through the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a copy of the entire Security Board File. Officially identified as "SUBJECT: Capra, Frank Russell; DOSSIER NO. X6184946," the file from the Investigative Records Depository, Fort Meade, Maryland, was released with 122 pages of related documents on the investigation . In 1992 and 1994,1 obtained heavily redacted copies (a total of 196 pages) from Capra's previously unreleased FBI files covering the years 1938-1964 (files entitled "FRANK RUSSELL CAPRA, aka Francesco Capra," Nos. 7-2403, 10039546 , and 123-12626). The first of these three files concerns the 1938 break-in at Capra's home in Brentwood; the other two relate to the bureau's investigation of Capra's suitability for security clearances for Project VISTA and the State Department 's Voice of America program. In 1993, also through FOIA, I received copies of two documents from the State Department concerning invitations to Capra from Latin American film festivals in 1976-77. More significant information gathered during a previously undisclosed investigation of Capra by the State Department's 658 Appendix Security Division in 1948 turned up in some of the FBI documents released in 1994. This collection of 543 pages of newly declassified material helps round out the story of the greatest crisis of Capra's life. For the first edition of this book, I had been able to piece together the essential elements of the story from Capra's own papers at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where I first read his Security Board File, and from other documents I obtained in 1986 through FOIA. Those documents include 55 partially redacted pages of the 226-page Army Intelligence (G-2) file on Capra; G-2 conducted its own investigation as part of Capra's clearance procedure . Pages had been removed from the file with indications that it would be necessary to apply for them to other agencies, including the FBI. However, a request to the FBI and an appeal to the Justice Department were turned down in 1986. By January 1992, when I began making further FOIA appeals through my attorney, Maurice L. Muehle, Capra was no longer living.1 That factor evidently prompted government agencies to release most of their remaining files on him. Some information from the 1992 FOIA releases was incorporated in the 1993 Touchstone paperback edition of this book. Additional information from the 1992— 94 document releases has been inserted into the main body of the book for this edition. Much of the material contained in this Appendix has remained unreported until now. Key pages from Capra's Security Board File and pages from 1952 and 1964 FBI reports on Capra are reproduced at the end of this section. The material still redacted in the FBI files includes the names of various sources of information on Capra, notably confidential FBI informants. One government informant is identified by name: film director Sam Wood is listed in a 1952 FBI document as having provided information on Capra to the State Department in 1948. Wood, who died in 1949, was the first president of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, the anti-Communist organization that spearheaded the blacklist and provided information on Hollywood people to the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC). After Capra filled out a Personnel Security Questionnaire on June 14, 1951, Project VISTA requested that he be given a "top secret" clearance...