Irving Kristol, father to Fox News talking head Bill Kristol, was the intellectual architect of neoconservatism, a fierce anti-communist, and staunch Republican. So why did FBI counterintelligence agents investigate his contacts with a suspected Soviet agent in the 1980s? The elder Kristol made no secret of his youthful flirtations with socialism. Like many neoconservatives, he was a college Trotskyite who lurched radically rightward after World War II. By 1982, he was universally acknowledged as a chief engine of right-wing thought in American politics and one of the minds behind the Reagan Revolution. Which is why it’s so curious that, according to FBI documents obtained by Gawker under the Freedom of Information Act, he was the subject of a five-month FBI counterintelligence investigation in 1988.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=117461