According to FBI documents obtained by the Washington Post via FOIA, the bureau "closely tracked the grand and mundane aspects of the acclaimed novelist's life" from 1962-1977. It all started when notorious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover read a Mailer essay on Jacqueline Kennedy in Esquire in 1962, and decided that he needed more info on the author and social critic, who helped start the Village Voice in 1955. The Post obtained 165 pages of the FBI's 171 pages on Mailer, many of which were stamped CLASSIFIED and SECRET and SUBV. CONTROL, apparently referring to a program to watch suspected subversives, the Post reports.
