Ten Famous People You Never Knew the FBI Kept Tabs On

The FBI keeps tabs on many more people than you realize. They aren’t just watching terrorists or criminals or keeping their infamous “Most Wanted List” of thugs and hooligans whom they desperately ask the public for help in catching. No, the FBI has its hands in all kinds of different pots—including tracking celebrities!

Believe it or not, down throughout the years, the FBI has spent countless resources and thousands upon thousands of man-hours tracking various famous people. The reasons behind some of those assignments were mildly interesting in terms of possibly being related to national security. But some of the other details were downright goofy from the start.

In this list, we’ll take a look at ten of those instances. These are the stories of ten notable people whom the FBI kept tabs on during their lifetimes. We’ll lay it all out there and then let you be the judge: Were these moves warranted?

Related: 10 Famous People Who Were Secretly Spying on Us

10 Walt Disney

Walt Disney was very close with many agents and employees of the FBI for about 30 years, from the early 1930s until his death in 1963. It all came about during the Great Depression when Disney started to inform the agency about people around the entertainment industry suspected of anti-American tendencies. Then, during the McCarthy era and the federal fight to sniff out communists who were supposedly hell-bent on taking down the United States with their anti-American ways, Disney went into overdrive.

That’s right—Walt Disney was an FBI informant and, in effect, a spy against the rest of Hollywood. For the last three decades of his life, the FBI kept a critical file on Disney in which he named names of possible and suspected communist sympathizers in Hollywood. He was a crucial source of information for the FBI since he knew pretty much everybody around Los Angeles and the entertainment industry at the time. And in turn, he got something out of the deal, too: the FBI allowed him to film The Mickey Mouse Club at FBI headquarters in Washington.^[1]

9 Helen Keller

Helen Keller may have been the first deaf and blind person to receive a Bachelor’s degree. She accomplished so much during her eventful life that she was immortalized on the Alabama State quarter to properly celebrate her achievements. But did you know that Keller also had much of the FBI’s attention for a large part of the early 20th century? Keller was a socialist as far as the political spectrum was concerned. During her life, she was a staunch opponent of President Woodrow Wilson. She was also a supporter of birth control. And to go even further, she co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union.

All of that was considered remarkably radical at the time. After all, looking out for things like women’s rights and pushing civil liberties during a time when there certainly weren’t that many of them led the powers that be to take a very dim view of Keller. Things were even taken up a notch from there because Keller routinely wrote in the New York Call, which was a well-known socialist newspaper in the early 20th century. Ultimately, the FBI was hot on her trail for well over a decade, compiling a significant file trying to cover all her activities, viewpoints, whereabouts, and associates.^[2]

8 Charlie Chaplin

In 1922, J. Edgar Hoover opened a file on the silent film icon Charlie Chaplin that would soon grow to become more than 2,000 pages long. To hear Hoover and the rest of his FBI cronies tell it, Chaplin was a communist sympathizer and a potential threat to national security. He was highly suspect because he wasn’t an American citizen (he was born in the United Kingdom and had citizenship there). Furthermore, he was an actor, and those in the then-new entertainment industry were seen as highly suspicious and dubious.

The FBI was so serious about their concerns over Chaplin, the (alleged) communist, that they even hired the British intelligence agency MI5 to spy on Charlie. For several years, the two intelligence agencies worked in tandem, monitoring all Chaplin’s activities and associates very, very closely. It all came to a head in 1925. After a routine trip to London, Chaplin was refused re-entry into the United States by the U.S. Attorney General. Enraged at the slight, Chaplin and his wife moved to Switzerland to leave it all behind. He lived there for the next 25 years until his death.^[3]

7 John Denver

Between 1977 and 1990, the FBI put together 33 pages worth of materials on the singer known as John Denver. The folk musician was really named John Deutschendorf, though it’s not particularly suspect that he would have taken a stage name. After all, many singers and other performers have done that, right? But more than Denver’s actual identity, the FBI was concerned with something else: whether he was dangerous because of his outspoken anti-war views and beliefs.

Even though Denver was never named as a suspect in any major crimes, the files did note specific information about his appearance at a 1971 anti-war rally. Furthermore, the files documented in great detail his alleged drug use—a funny holdover from a bygone era. Oh, and the files also contained some stuff that was meant to protect Denver from overzealous fans. That would include no fewer than 17 death threats the singer received, all of which were sent by a German woman in 1979. Perhaps she was just really mad that he changed his last name from its German heritage to perform with a stage name?^[4]

6 Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson is best known for his life in baseball, including becoming the first-ever player to break the so-called “color barrier” and compete with white Major Leaguers as a Black man. His career on the field was much more than that, though. He was one of the best baseball players of his generation. Today, he is in the Hall of Fame not only for his social achievements in the sport but also because he was a damn good ballplayer. Oh, and he’s also in the FBI’s files, too. Because he was quite the political kingmaker after his playing career ended!

After he retired from the game, and then really in earnest after he was elected to the aforementioned Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, Robinson got involved with politics. He vocally and visibly supported presidential bids by Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, and Hubert Humphrey. He was also involved in promoting the Civil Rights Movement.

The combination of those things pushed the FBI to start a file on Robinson in 1966. They were most concerned about his supposed involvement and connection with the Harlem chapter of a center of the International Workers Order, which the federal government saw as a communist organization. Jackie Robinson?! A communist?? Come on. There’s nothing more American than baseball—or a baseball hero!^[5]

5 George Steinbrenner

George Steinbrenner is best known as the cranky and very particular owner of the New York Yankees. He was legendarily made fun of by pretty much everybody during his very long time in Major League Baseball—including, infamously, by Seinfeld character George Costanza for so many years. But beyond all that fun and happiness, Steinbrenner was actually being tracked by the FBI for the last few decades of his life. And some of the reasons why there was a file on him may surprise you!

The whole thing started in 1973 when the FBI started putting together thick files detailing Steinbrenner’s illegal monetary contributions to Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign from years before. Steinbrenner eventually pleaded guilty in a related court case and was fined $15,000 for the trouble. The FBI also detailed Steinbrenner’s prolific pleas to be pardoned from the charge. But on that, at least, he got what he wanted; in 1989, as one of his last acts as President, Ronald Reagan officially pardoned Steinbrenner of the charges. The FBI file still stuck around, though!^[6]

4 Marilyn Monroe

Of all the people on this list who were being followed and tracked by the FBI, you may have already heard the story of Marilyn Monroe. But you probably don’t know that she wasn’t the one the FBI was originally tracking. (And it wasn’t John F. Kennedy, either!) Marilyn’s FBI file came about because of her husband, Arthur Miller, to whom she was married between 1956 and 1961.

The FBI thought that Miller was a communist. Or, at the very least, they wondered if the man had serious communist sympathies. Knowing that, they kept tabs on everybody with whom he ran in tight circles—including a series of Marxist and communist groups. But in time, they also kept track of his wife, too. It just so happened that his wife happened to be the uber-famous and most revered starlet of her generation.

Conspiracy coats this whole story, by the way; Monroe’s FBI file even goes far enough as to document a few of the leading theories about her untimely death in 1962—including one claim made as part of Norman Mailer’s biography that she was killed by none other than the FBI and the CIA. Creepy!^[7]

3 Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston had some very public troubles during her life with drugs, money, and difficult (and dangerous) relationships. But she also had a fraught history with the FBI. Or, at least, she had a fraught history that got so rough-and-tumble at one point that the FBI was forced to step in and monitor the situation. It all came about when the FBI opened its file on the singer in 1988. Their report details a shocking situation: a superfan of Houston’s living in Vermont had sent a batch of no less than 79(!) increasingly threatening love letters to the singer. But that was far from the only issue she faced.

Another superfan from the Netherlands had been sending disturbing cassette tapes to the performer with hints that they might harm her. And as if that weren’t enough, a friend of Houston’s reportedly tried to put out a $250,000 extortion attempt against her. That friend (yeah, “friend”) was threatening to go public with highly personal details about Whitney’s relationship with Bobby Brown. The sum of those three issues forced the FBI to act. So they opened a file on Houston and began monitoring the shady people trying to take advantage of her. Maybe being rich and famous isn’t so easy after all…^[8]

2 Anna Nicole Smith

Anna Nicole Smith will forever be famous for marrying that old guy (yeah, you know the one) and then going after all his money after he kicked the bucket. But did you know that Smith was thought to possibly be involved in a plot to kill the old guy’s son at one point? In 2000 and 2001, the FBI opened up a file and dove into an investigation to discern whether Smith had been involved in a plot to kill E. Pierce Marshall—the son of her late oil tycoon husband.

At the time, Smith and Marshall were fighting over hundreds of millions of dollars that his late father (her late husband) had earned in the oil business. The thought was that Smith might have possibly been involved in a plot to kill Marshall in order to keep all the money for herself. So the FBI opened a file and began doing some digging. In the end, though, they could never make a case against Smith, and prosecutors eventually decided there wasn’t enough evidence to charge her or pursue legal action.^[9]

1 Steve Jobs

In 1991, the FBI conducted a routine background check on Apple co-founder Steve Jobs when he was being considered for an appointed position on President George H.W. Bush’s Export Council. While such an esteemed spot is very coveted in certain political and business circles, it also requires the FBI to dive into your life to be sure of your background, past associations, and past activities. And that’s exactly what they did with Jobs.

According to the file released to the public years later, several people the FBI interviewed on the matter questioned Jobs’s honesty. The file claimed that respondents stated Jobs would “twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals.” Uh-oh! Furthermore, the FBI file reported that Jobs himself admitted to them that he’d experimented with LSD as a teenager. He called the use “a positive life-changing experience.” However, we have no doubt that those at the FBI felt a bit differently.^[10]