by WorldTribune Staff, March 21, 2017
Bestselling novelist Jack Engelhard notes that U.S. President Donald Trump “can take heart from Ernest Hemingway…”
In the last years of his life, Hemingway “was especially fearful of the FBI and the IRS” and believed “he was being wiretapped,” Engelhard, author of Indecent Proposal, wrote for Israel’s Arutz Sheva on March 21.
“That car that just pulled up? That was THEM, and so were those two men who just entered the restaurant. That was his state of mind, day to day, and he was sure that his phone had been tapped,” Engelhard wrote of Hemingway.
“The experts assured him that he was imagining plots and schemes that did not exist. There was no surveillance of him. It was all in his mind, the experts insisted.”
But, Engelhard asked, was Hemingway really hallucinating?
“No doubt Hemingway had issues, something had snapped, but now this from A.E. Hotchner’s “Hemingway in Love” –
“Fifty years after his death, in response to a Freedom of Information [petition], the FBI released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba.
“Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone in the hall outside his room was tapped and that nurse Susan may well have been an FBI informant.”
Engelhard wrote: “Yes, he had complained about the nurses and even the doctors and no one believed him until the facts proved him correct. (Too late for Hemingway.)”
Now, as the current American president tweets about how former President Barack Obama “had him snooped … no one believes Trump, either – at least not the people who count, beginning with the news media,” Engelhard wrote.
Supposedly “neither the FBI, through James Comey, nor various Congressional committees studying the matter can find anything to support Trump’s suspicions.”
During testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on March 20, Comey said: “With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets.”
Engelhard wrote: “Well then, no information means no information either way, so Trump can still be right until proven wrong.
“But we are left with the impression – now making headlines – that Trump’s claim has been debunked. Not quite – though the entire hearing was an effort, by the Democrats, led by ranking member Adam Schiff, to debunk and to destroy Trump, period.
“Schiff was relentless in making statements, posing as questions, that would always tie Trump and members of his staff to the Russians…the Russians…the Russians.
“For the Democrats it will always be the Russians, and indeed Comey handed them the banner of the day, that yes, the FBI is probing those alleged ties.”
Trump “could have used more help” from his own party, Engelhard said, “but then, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will ever fully understand President Trump.
“Trump operates on instinct and his instincts have served him well – well enough to make it to the top, against all odds.
“The odds are still against him – but betting against him is still not recommended as a smart bet.”
Hemingway and Trump: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean the FBI isn’t on your case added by World Tribune on
View all posts by World Tribune →