Ray Bradbury was actively investigated by the FBI during the 1960s after several Hollywood informants reported some of his political statements to the Bureau reports the Huffington Post, which has obtained copies of the files through a FOIA request.

Bradbury aroused the suspicion of the FBI due to his outspoken criticism of the U.S. government and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was investigating real and suspected communists in America. In a full-page ad in Variety, Bradbury had denounced the committee’s probes as “claptrap and nonsense” and several informants in Hollywood also voiced their suspicions about the acclaimed writer to the bureau.

Among the FBI’s findings was that Bradbury had been arrested by the LAPD during World War II for violating the Selective Service and Training act. He would later be ruled ineligible for military service due to bad eyesight. But this makes for an interesting sidebar to Bradbury’s story that he volunteered for Red Cross work during the war because Robert Heinlein was angry that he didn’t try harder to enlist.

[Thanks to Bill Warren for the story.]