FBI suspected Ray Bradbury of communist sympathies

NEW YORK — The FBI gave Waukegan-native Ray Bradbury a mixed review.

According to documents declassified recently through the Freedom of Information Act, the bureau investigated the “Fahrenheit 451” author in the 1950s and 1960s because of suspected communist sympathies.

One informant warned agents that Bradbury, who died June 5 at age 91, wrote stories that were “definitely slanted” against capitalism. The informant added that science fiction itself could so terrify readers that they would succumb to “incompetence bordering on hysteria” and would be helpless during a third world war.

The bureau noted Bradbury’s opposition to Sen. Joe McCarthy and other anti-Communists and his support for civil rights. But it concluded that Bradbury had never been in the Communist Party and that interviewing him was unnecessary because he did not have “informant potential.”