FBI Files on Frank Sinatra

The FBI Files on Frank Sinatra contain records kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning Frank Sinatra. These records are comprised of 2,403 pages.

Frank Sinatra, with his Mafia ties, his ardent New Deal politics and his friendship with John F. Kennedy was a natural target for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. The FBI kept Sinatra under surveillance for almost five decades beginning in the 1940's with, for example, an erroneous report that the star paid $40,000 for his 4-F draft status, through the early 1980's when he was successful in efforts to get his Nevada Gaming license renewed. The documents include accounts of Sinatra as the target of death threats and extortion schemes. They also betray rampant paranoia and strange obsessions at the FBI and reveal nearly every celebrated Sinatra foible and peccadillo.

The files reveal, for instance, that for a year Hoover investigated Sinatra's alleged Communist affiliations, but came up empty-handed. Readers learn that the budding star, to get an exemption from military service, told draft-board doctors that he had an irrational fear of crowds. Furthermore, the files provide many glimpses of Sinatra's associations with mobsters, his rendezvous with prostitutes, and his extramarital affair with Ava Gardner, which preceded their marriage. Other celebrities mentioned in the files are Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, Peter Lawford, Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and his girlfriend, singer Phyllis McGuire.

The FBI's secret dossier on Sinatra was released in 1998 in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Tom and Phil Kuntz have published a compilation of excerpts from the files, supplemented by other declassified documents and explanatory commentary. The authors present evidence that scandalmongering journalists fed the bureau unsubstantiated, damaging rumors that the FBI pursued. It is also shown that, in exchange, the FBI occasionally doled out dirt on Sinatra to the press.

Further reading
*Tom and Phil Kuntz, The Sinatra Files: The Secret FBI Dossier (2000)

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