Reagan Told FBI of Suspected Hollywood Communists in ‘40s

SANTA BARBARA —  President Reagan and his then-wife, actress Jane Wyman, during the 1940s provided the FBI with confidential information on suspected communist activities of their Hollywood colleagues, the White House acknowledged Sunday, confirming a published report.

However, Administration officials, responding to information acquired by the San Jose Mercury-News under the Freedom of Information Act, said the role of the President and Wyman was a minor one during the years after World War II.

During that time of chilling Soviet-U.S. relations, which preceded Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy’s notorious accusations of a widespread communist influence in Hollywood and Washington, the FBI and the House Committee on un-American Activities were conducting a widely publicized investigation of the film industry for communist ties.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes described the report as “an old story. It’s been out before.”

Role Called ‘Minor’

Reagan, Speakes said, had only a “minor role. . . . The FBI was trying to contact all the people who had testified before the House un-American Activities Committee.”

Reagan, as head of the Screen Actors Guild, had testified before the panel in October, 1947, saying he resigned from at least two Hollywood groups when he had become convinced they had communist leanings.

Accounts of his testimony show that he told the committee that a “small group” within the Screen Actors Guild acted as a “fifth column in disguise” and “more or less follows the tactics we associate with the Communist Party.”

The documents obtained by the Mercury-News also revealed, however, that the President had criticized the House committee for the hardball tactics it employed in flushing out possible communists in the film community--tactics that led to the firing of many of those suspected.

First Contact With FBI

Reagan’s first contact with the FBI reportedly came in 1943, when he had been assigned to the Army-Air Corps motion picture unit, and recounted nearly “coming to blows” at a cocktail party, when an unidentified German sympathizer made anti-Semitic remarks.

In early 1947, he told the FBI that he had resigned from an organization known as the Hollywood Independent Citizens’ Committee of Arts, Sciences and Professions, which was the target of an FBI investigation.

FBI spokesman Manuel Marquez in Washington questioned whether Reagan could have properly been described as an informant.

“People give us information all the time,” he said.

Reagan is entering the final week of a three-week vacation at his ranch near here.

A group of veterans opposed to U.S. policies in Central America announced plans Sunday to climb about four miles to the gate of the mountaintop ranch and leave him a message today.

Philippa Winkler, a representative of the Veterans Speakers Alliance, said between 50 and 100 persons, mostly from the San Francisco area, would “deliver letters to the President demanding that he halt what they feel is our steady slide into another interventionist war, this time in Central America, and that he respect and support the peace efforts of the Contadora group of Latin American nations.”