The Bernstein Files

Available for over a year

For more than three decades the US government compiled covert reports on the political activities and associations of legendary conductor composer, Leonard Bernstein. With claims of connections to communists, the Black Panthers and radicals, concerns about Bernstein's politics had reached the White House and the House of Representative’s Un-American Activities Committee. The golden boy of classical music - with a string of Broadway hits - had been blacklisted by the FBI. Investigative reporter Jonathan Coffey travels to New York and Washington to open the secret FBI files on Leonard Bernstein and ask why the US Government spied him for more than three decades. Drawing on hundreds of pages of previously classified government files, Jonathan examines how the FBI, the US State Department, and the Nixon White House suspected Bernstein of being a Communist and even a national security threat. Jonathan speaks to Bernstein’s friends and family, as well as the political activists who saw his politics up close. He meets a former Nixon White House staffer who exchanged secret memos about Bernstein, and speaks to witnesses who attended an infamous fundraiser for the Black Panthers at Bernstein’s New York apartment. More than a century on from Leonard Bernstein’s birth, Jonathan reveals how the FBI, its Director J Edgar Hoover, and the Nixon White House tracked, monitored and may even have tried to damage the reputation of one of America’s most celebrated cultural figures. Producer: Graeme Stewart