
Richard Feynman Put Himself on the FBI’s Do Not Call List - danso
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/dec/13/richard-feynman-put-himself-fbis-do-not-call-list/
======
sbierwagen

      an unnamed colleague citing his hobby of cracking safes 
      at Los Alamos as evidence he was a “master of deception 
      and enemy of America.”
    

There is speculation that it was his ex-wife, Louise Bell:
[http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-
fe...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-feynman/)

~~~
saycheese
Feynman's willingness to think more objectively than most about the world and
share his thoughts likely resulted in a long list of enemies, people that
desired to control him, etc.

Most obvious person to report it was the head of security at Los Alamos;
Feynman told them about his exploits and actively tested the security.

~~~
a3n
"Never pen test without permission."

~~~
CalChris
Been there. Done that. Suffered the consequences.

~~~
sasas
Don't leave us hanging! What happened ?

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maverick_iceman
On a related note, there seems to be a nearly infinite demand for stories
related to Feynman in HN in particular[1] and internet in general. No wonder,
his colleagues like Schwinger and Gell-Mann were pissed off as they didn't
receive anywhere close to that kind of attention[2][3].

[1]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=feynman&sort=byPopularity&pref...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=feynman&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

[2] [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=gell-
mann&sort=byPopularity&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=gell-
mann&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

[3]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=schwinger&sort=byPopularity&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=schwinger&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

~~~
hug
Feynmann is not a popular figure just because of his contributions to physics.

I'd say his popularity stems from how engaging a person he is: It's hard to
watch Feynmann talk about something he's interested in (and he's interested in
_everything_!), and to see that twinkle in his eye, and not be gripped by
whatever the subject is. There's something special about his childlike wonder
at the way things work.

All of that, and he's absolutely astoundingly intelligent, articulate, and
friendly.

This video where he's asked how magnets "work" [youtu.be/ewcJR2nqDV4 - 7:30
long, from The Fantastic Mr. Feynmann] is amazing. He takes seven minutes to
respond to a question. He doesn't even answer the question properly, and yet
it's the perfect response. Even the most science-averse of my friends are able
to enjoy watching that video.

And that's just the science bit! He's also done crazy and interesting things:
Cracking safes in Los Alamos that had research documents on the atomic bomb
and leaving taunting notes. He used to work off napkins in topless bars. He
was just an all-round interesting guy.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that neither Schwinger nor Gell-Mann
have these same qualities.

~~~
ehudla
While different in personality from RPF, Gell-Mann's range of interests and
abilities is even more inspiring. I can't locate it now, but I recall the
anecdote of him learning Swahili on the plane ride over. Here's a profile of
him:

[http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/08/magazine/the-man-who-
knows...](http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/08/magazine/the-man-who-knows-
everything-murray-gell-mann.html)

Or check out his Santa Fe homepage to appreciate his incredible range of
interests.

[http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~mgm/Site/Front_Page.html](http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~mgm/Site/Front_Page.html)

------
saycheese
Little known fact, but all you have to do is ask not to be contacted, watched,
etc. - and the FBI will respect your request and note it in your file.

(Okay, ending sarcasm.)

Find it hard to believe they stopped, reads more like a note saying to stop
keeping "official" records.

~~~
okreallywtf
The sad thing being how much harassment essentially went on and how pointless
it was given that the soviets detonated a bomb just a few years after it was
invented. I don't know what else you can do, there must I assume be some
security measures but it only seems to make things marginally harder for
proper Russian intelligence agents and informants to get information out. I
guess it does increase the barrier-to-entry so that not just any 3rd world
intelligence agency can steal nuclear secrets.

By cyber-security standards the physical and information security measures
taken during the Manhattan project were pretty amazingly pointless. They did a
good job of keeping the process of enriching uranium secret from the regular
folks that worked on it, but that just kept them from going home and talking
to their friends.

The scientists working at Los Alamos knew an incredible amount about what was
going on and therefore represented single points of failure.

If a spy had been able to infiltrate Oak Ridge, granted they wouldn't have
gotten to see many steps of the process but the fact that lay-people didn't
know what they were working on didn't mean much.

The main security for the project probably lay in the fact that economically
no other nations involved in WW2 could have attempted such a program, even
with day-by-day updates of exactly what we were doing. By the time the kinks
were worked out it would have been way too late for any other entities to
attempt to copy it.

~~~
lostlogin
> The sad thing being how much harassment essentially went on

The past tense implies the intelligence community is better behaved now. The
old threat was communism, now it's terrorism.

~~~
Pica_soO
Somebody has to employ all those high-school bully's. Else they would be
standing at crossroads, doing stick-ups.

------
spathi_fwiffo
You would think being part of the Manhattan Project would have put him under
more intense scrutiny from the FBI, during the Red Scare.

The FBI even mention him as an associate of Oppenheimer in the notes showing
his 'do not bother' request.

~~~
okreallywtf
The first soviet atomic bomb was detonated in 1949[1] so this was nearly 10
years after that fact.

His association to Klaus Fuchs[2] was probably more suspect than Oppenheimer
(despite how suspicious they were of him) given he was allegedly an actual spy
(I say allegedly because I know how suspicious of the FBI people are around
here, and not without reason in some cases).

According to the Feynman Bio I'm reading right now [3], Fuchs was said to have
joked (when Feynman wasn't around) that he would be the most likely person to
be a spy because of how often he left the base alone to visit his sick wife
(or so he said).

[1] [http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/soviet-atomic-
program-...](http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/soviet-atomic-program-1946)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs)
[3] [https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Life-Science-Richard-
Feynman/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Life-Science-Richard-
Feynman/dp/0679747044)

~~~
simplicio
"I say allegedly because I know how suspicious of the FBI people are around
here"

Fuch's was caught by MI5, not the FBI. And he gave a detailed confession even
before he was arrested. So there isn't really any reason to be suspicious of
his conviction.

~~~
Bartweiss
Feynman himself casually notes Fuchs as "the fellow who turned out the be the
spy", and despite their friendship never offered an skepticism about the
conviction.

~~~
pvg
Fuchs confessed before he was prosecuted.

------
halspero
Check out the FBI file:

[https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-
america-10/fbi...](https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-
america-10/fbi-files-on-richard-feynman-1165/#file-4617)

The sheer amount of black ink, rubric, marginalia, stampage, redaction, etc,
is a reminder of how deeply dysfunctional (and even hellish) bureaucracies can
be. It may not have been _possible_ for the FBI to stop investigating Feynman
without orders from the top.

------
RangerScience
Fun Feynman fact: He was friends with an artist who, among other things, built
a home in the hills of Altadena (an LA suburb) using discarded construction
materials from the area, and that was predominantly not enclosed, as he had
claustrophobia from being smuggled out of Armenia during the genocide - I
think in a coffin?

Wikipedia has some of the information:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jirayr_Zorthian#Friendship_wit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jirayr_Zorthian#Friendship_with_Richard_Feynman)
, but if you go to the ranch the people there will tell you more.

~~~
thfuran
That sounds more like a Zorthian fact than a Feynman fact.

~~~
RangerScience
Eh. The people in your life are pretty significant, and I doubt most people
here have heard of Zorthian. For example, it's both a Tesla and Twain fun fact
that they were buds, but I don't have to explain who either of those people
are.

Edit: Still, fair critique.

------
EekSnakePond
I find that nostalgic personalities such as Feynman imply that the authorities
of the past were not only evil, but conquered, and therefore, sublimated into
the dominant mythos of progress.

In the post-9/11 world, this mythos is central to the authority of authority:
"See? We no longer run overt, clumsy, and brutal humint! We learned our
lesson, thanks hippies!"

Everyone nods in agreement and dismisses the people saying, "Covert sigint
just got cheaper, that's all."

~~~
okreallywtf
I don't dispute that they have done harm, but I think everyone is getting a
little ahead of themselves. We have no idea what it is like (yet) to live in a
true police state but judging by the average perception on HN right now about
the FBI, CIA, NSA we're getting shaken down in the street daily and spied on
in our homes.

The truth is much more nuanced and these are massive bureaucracies and if you
average the effects of everyone in them and all that they do I honestly don't
know whether its a net positive or negative. The problem is if they do
something right, we'll likely never know and we can never really know what our
lives would be like if they didn't exist.

We should fight injustices and be vigilant but I think people understate the
good and overstate the bad. If I could wave a wand to do away with them here
and now I wouldn't know what to do, but I know I wouldn't do it without
question.

------
lucb1e
Some jokes are being made in the thread how you can extricate yourself from
surveillance by the FBI by asking not to be watched, but seriously, what is
this list?

The article mentions that he "has stated he does not desire to be interviewed
at any time by FBI Agents relative to matters of any kind". Why would the FBI
reach out to him in the first place? I don't know about mr. Feynman but I
don't regularly get contacted by the Dutch FBI (which is what anyway, the
KLPD? I don't even know) for interviews, unless I did something wrong or when
they think I know something to help further an investigation. I can hardly
imagine anyone (let alone mr. Feynman) witnessing crimes (especially ones that
warrant FBI investigation rather than a local police office's) that it was
becoming a real burden for him to keep giving interviews.

~~~
astronautjones
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism)

------
adamgamble
I read the title as Richard Stallman and I was super confused.

~~~
skykooler
So did I - although it does sound like something Stallman would try to do.

~~~
keithpeter
I think that Stallman is so completely transparent and articulate about his
views and so totally outer field that I think he is unlikely ever to be close
to an investigation into (say) documents being leaked or anything.

~~~
hulahoof
Or Stallman has devised the perfect cover, only time shall tell

------
pimlottc
Slightly off-topic, but the magnifying-hover feature on the scanned images is
pretty useful and done wel without being overly intrusive to the design.

------
mvidal01
I wonder who else is on this list?

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TeMPOraL
I don't understand how this list works - you can just go and ask FBI not to be
interested in you, and they whitelist you from their investigations?

~~~
atmosx
Doesn't make sense, if it was simple as that I think virtually _everybody_
would do that, because 9 out of 10 when the feds (or any other police body) is
interested in you, it's not a good thing (for you, might good for the
society)...

~~~
TeMPOraL
Exactly; that's why I don't understand what's up with this list.

