Fisher apparently succeeded because the next FBI memo from Gleason noted that Buckley contacted him and said "he had changed his mind considerably about the matter and was now of the opinion that the articles appearing in The Harvard Crimson were vicious and insidious in addition to being journalistically poor." Buckley then wrote a letter, now part of an ever-expanding FBI file on The Crimson, to arrange a forum between the FBI and members of the Yale community to "outline to them the actual roll [sic] of the FBI in the state and community levels." Buckley offered himself as an "impartial" moderator.

The Yale Forum

THE FBI ACCEPTED Buckley's offer, and in October, Nichols--the main FBI speaker--reported the meetings details to Hoover. One full page of that five-page memo was later inked out "to protect the name of an individual interviewed by the FBI." Nichols elaborated, rather proudly, on his ability to dodge questions at the forum. One professor barraged him with questions, Nichols boasted in the memo, and "in answering him I would pick out the part that lent itself to the easiest discussion and then launch into a discussion of the Bureau. There were some questions he asked that I never did answer."

Nichols also heaped praise on a certain young man:

I was very much impressed with William Buckley, the editor of the Yale Daily News. I have a definite feeling that we will hear from this young man in years to come. I would say very definitely that he is pro-FBI. I invited him to visit the Bureau and told him I would like for him to meet the Director.

Nichols said he "got quite a kick" out of Buckley's strategy of sprinkling News reporters among the audience so that every time the Crimson reporter would take notes "his men would jostle him."

Buckley then wrote to Hoover after the event, stressing, "I don't think you can possibly realize the good that was done here last night...You have contributed more than a dozen classes and a score of periodicals to the enlightening of the student mind on all-important question [sic]." Attached was a blind copy from Buckley of a letter he wrote to Simon suggesting that the Crimson president "exercise a little control over the flamboyance of some of your men." Buckley continued to send blind copies of his correspondence with Simon to FBI officials.

A year later, in 1950, the New York Times Magazine published a letter by Simon which questioned federal wiretapping policies. His FBI file expanded a fraction more. M.A. Jones of the FBI Washington office reviewed his case and "recommended that no action be taken in answer to Simon." A handwritten message at the bottom of the memo read, "I agree--JEH."

The Retrospective

THE CRIMSON files have expanded since then, but most of the early players have died: Yale president Charles Seymour, Provost Furniss, the "badgering" professor at the forum. But some still remember the incident.

Despite the FBI story that Henry Margenau, the physics professor, formally denied that his encounter with the FBI ever took place, Margenau now says, "I was visited by an FBI agent on several occasions--once or twice a year for several years--then nothing." He recalls the speech before the New Haven Youth Movement and confirms that "the FBI admonished me for speaking" to a group with "red tinge." He adds that he "probably" did inform the FBI of subsequent offers to lecture when he didn't know the political orientation of the audience. Margenau says he is still puzzled over the FBI's excessive interests in his speechmaking plans. "I thought it was very strange" when the FBI "quizzed me...After all, I was a scientist, no communist."

Margenau was close to Cohen at the time of the Cohen controversy, and he helped to clear the post doctoral student's name. "There were people in the philosophy department who thought he was a threat," Margenau said. Cohen left Yale two years after his Yale appointment and is a professor at Boston University. (He is presently traveling in Europe and was unavailable for comment.)

One of the Harvard participants, Fairfield, continued to investigate intelligence activities and wrote a series called "The Wiretappers" that filled The Reporter, a now-defunct periodical, almost cover-to-cover in 1952 and 1953. Fairfield, who now lives in Wisconsin, says Buckley made up the story about News staffers jostling a Crimson reporter at the Forum because no Crimson reporter covered the event.

He did hear, however, that Buckley "waved a sheaf of papers at the audience--later to be stylized by Joe McCarthy as 'I held in my hand'--and announced that they were affidavits from everyone the Crimson reporter had interviewed at Yale, each denying the quotes attributed to him." Fairfield says he asked Buckley for copies of these affidavits but Buckley "icily informed me that he had no intention of honoring my request. I could then only concluded that he had lied about the affidavits."

S. William Green, managing editor of The Crimson in 1949 and now New York State congressman, says he checked Fairfield's facts and "talked to some of his sources, especially in the philosophy department, before the story ran," and he is "confident that it was true."