BIOGRAPHER SAYS FBI HOLDS BACK INFORMATION ON ROBESON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505290025-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: January 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 :CIA-RDP90-005528000505290025-5
ASSOCIATED PRESS
9 ,~anuary 1985
BIOGRAPHER SAYS FBI HOLDS BACK INFORMATION ON ROBESON
NEW YORK
The FBI is holding back information that could either confirm or refute
suspicions that the i1.S, government broke down Paul Robeson's health by 5].ipping
him drugs, a biographer of the trailblazing. black actor and singer said
Wednesday.
Ina suit filed Dec. 28 in federal court, author Martin Doberman alleged that
the FBI violated the Freedom of Information Act by denying him files on Robeson
and Robeson`s family and by "radically censoring" the files it turned over.
The FBI has b0.days to respond to the suit, in Washington, spokesman Bill
Carter said the bureau would not comment on pending litigation.
Robeson, who died in 1976, spent "his last 12 years as a kind of recluse and
physically a wreck," Doberman said.
"He Lived in a room in his sister's house in Philadelphia and I'm trying to
explain what happened to him, what caused the physical and emotional decline,"
he said.
"one of the theories that's been very prominent is that our government in the
earl 1960s the FBi tine GIA it isn't ver clear who's bean asst ned the
role was resRonsible fora rug-induce nervous reakdown," uberman sand.
"The CIA was doing that elsewhere, that's well documented.."
!loch of what. has been turned over to him "has been almost totally censored,"
said Doberman,
"Whole pages are inked out. from top to bottom and are absolutely useless," he
Said.
Doberman said that among the large chunks of evidence withheld by the FBI
were documents an Robeson called "status of health files," about which "they
have refused to release even a single piece of paper, even inked out."
"If they have nothing to hide, why don't they just release them and clear the
whole thing up?" Doberman. said.
From as early as 1.942, there never was a day that Robeson wasn't tracked by
an agent of the government, Doberman said.
During his life as a performer and champion of left-wing causes, Robeson was
lionized in the Soviet tin ion and .widely condemned in the united States.
Doberman., who said he has been working on Ro,beson's biography with Robeson
family cooperation for about three years, is a distinguished professor at Lehman
College of the Gity University. His earlier biography, "Charles Francis Adams,"
won the 1962 Bancroft Prize.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 :CIA-RDP90-005528000505290025-5