Ray Bradbury: Super Secret Communist? FBI Investigated Writer In 1960s

Ray Bradbury spent his life writing science fiction and questioning the motives of government; therefore it should come as no surprise that, in the 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spent time investigating Bradbury in regards to his political leanings.

According to FBI files obtained by the Huffington Post through the use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the famed and now deceased writer was reported to the FBI by screenwriter Martin Berkeley. Martin admitted to the House oUn-American Activities Committee several years earlier that he was a Communist. Martin would go on to name 155 people he believed to also be involved with the Communist party.

During his testimony, Martin Berkeley specifically said science fiction writers were likely to be Communists because of the ideas they shared.

In speaking out against Ray Bradbury, the screenwriter claimed his work was “definitely slanted against the United States and its capitalistic form of government.”

In one of the more shocking statements of his claims, Martin said Ray Bradbury was using his novels to scare people and, by doing so, making it “very possible to conduct a Third World War … which the American people would seriously believe could not be won since their morale had been seriously destroyed.”

Ray Bradbury at the time did not back down from Martin Berkeley’s claims, going so far as to take out a full-page ad against the House Un-American Activities Committee in which he calls the groups probes “claptrap and nonsense.”

Ironically, by investigating Ray Bradbury without a valid cause, the FBI fed right into the very issues the author wrote about.