The Tragic Story of Jean Seberg

[Stevicus]

Actress Jean Seberg's Life Was Ruined By The FBI After She Gave Money To Black Panthers | LittleThings.com

I knew of this for years, although I came across this article which recounts the FBI's campaign against her, part of COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program - COINTELPRO - Wikipedia), which was "a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations."

Of course, nowadays many people believe the US government can do no wrong and dismiss any criticism as a "whacko conspiracy theory," but this is not something that can be so cavalierly rejected. This really did happen.

The story of Jean Seberg is one that is filled with hope, achievement, and a lot of sadness. Seberg's career began after her neighbor submitted her to a nationwide search for a star for the 1957 movie Saint Joan and ended in 1979 after Seberg took her own life.

What happened in between is scary, horrific, and downright difficult to understand. Here's the story of how and why J. Edgar Hoover's FBI relentlessly pursued a Hollywood actress and destroyed her career, reputation, and ultimately her life.

Seberg had a lot of hope about her career trajectory while filming Saint Joan. Unfortunately, critics and audiences alike didn't enjoy the movie, a realization that Seberg said really hurt.

She explained, "I have two memories of Saint Joan. The first was being burned at the stake in the picture. The second was being burned at the stake by the critics. The latter hurt more. I was scared like a rabbit and it showed on the screen. It was not a good experience at all."

Seberg went on to build a career in the French New Wave movement, most famously starring in Breathless. She was also married four times, to French director and writer Francois Moreuil; French diplomat, novelist, and intellectual Romain Gary; director Dennis Berry; and Algerian actor Ahmed Hasni. Seberg and Gary had two children together.

She met a member of the Black Panther Party and reportedly donated $10,500 to the organization, which triggered Hoover's FBI to start surveillance on her.

Seberg was known in particular for her support of Panther projects that benefitted children, including their free meal program, but in 1974 she told The New York Times that she wasn't as close to the organization as she had once been. She explained, "I had a very, very bad mental breakdown, and now I realise I wouldn’t want a person like me in a group I was a member of, as Groucho Marx would put it."

FBI agents Jack Solomon and Carl Kowalski were in charge of the investigation into Seberg's Panthers-related activities. Seberg was one of the targets of COINTELPRO, a particularly aggressive program run by the FBI that allowed agents to defame and intimidate their subjects.

Hoover allowed his team to start rumors that Seberg's 1970 pregnancy was the result of a relationship with a member of the Black Panthers and not her husband at the time. The FBI request read, "Bureau permission is required the publicize the pregnancy of Jean Seberg, well-known movie actress, by [REDACTED] Black Panther party, [REDACTED] by advising Hollywood Gossip columnists in the Los Angeles area of the situation. It is felt that the possible publication of Seberg’s plight could cause her embarrassment and cheapen her image with the general public."

The fact that there are people employed in the US government who actually think up things like this proves that they're capable of anything and that there's no line they won't cross. If anything, they're probably worse now than they were 50 years ago.

Seberg ended up having a miscarriage, yet she chose an open casket funeral just to prove that the baby was white and not a child of a Black Panther. The impact on her life would ultimately end in her suicide.

The rumors did much more than simply embarrass Seberg. Once the story began making the rounds in the press, Seberg ended up going into premature labor. Her baby died, and Seberg chose to have an open casket funeral to show the curious public that the baby was white, like herself and her husband.

That impact on Seberg's emotional and mental well-being was too much. She told The New York Times, "I began cracking up then, without knowing it. I decided to bury my baby in my home town. I did the whole deal. We opened the coffin and took 180 photographs, and everybody in Marshalltown who was curious what color the baby was got a chance to check it out. A lot of them came to look."

Before Seberg's body was found wrapped up in a blanket in her own car, she had been reported missing for 10 days. A bottle of barbiturates was also found in the car alongside a note Seberg had penned before taking her own life.

It wasn't mentioned in the article, but Seberg also played a leading role in the movie Airport (1970).

If there's any lesson in this, I would say it's that one should be skeptical of whatever governments and gossip columnists say, especially if it's clearly an attempt to denigrate, embarrass, or cheapen their image in the eyes of the public. There are those who discuss ideas and issues, and then there are those who focus on personalities and gossip.

If more people could learn to respect one and discard the other, the public would be a lot less susceptible to misinformation. Do you agree or disagree and why?

 

[Debater Slayer]

Throughout many points in the United States' history, its governments and their apparatuses, especially the CIA and U.S. Army, have been responsible for immense and multilayered suffering and abuse both domestically and abroad.

There is a reason many people today find it beyond reprehensible and dubious when the U.S. tries to posture as a global ambassador of goodwill or a broker of peace, such as in Ukraine. It more often than not is not remotely so; it just happens that sometimes its geopolitical interests align with morally sound courses of action.

 

[Revoltingest]

Actress Jean Seberg's Life Was Ruined By The FBI After She Gave Money To Black Panthers | LittleThings.com

I knew of this for years, although I came across this article which recounts the FBI's campaign against her, part of COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program - COINTELPRO - Wikipedia), which was "a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations."

Of course, nowadays many people believe the US government can do no wrong and dismiss any criticism as a "whacko conspiracy theory," but this is not something that can be so cavalierly rejected. This really did happen.









She met a member of the Black Panther Party and reportedly donated $10,500 to the organization, which triggered Hoover's FBI to start surveillance on her.







The fact that there are people employed in the US government who actually think up things like this proves that they're capable of anything and that there's no line they won't cross. If anything, they're probably worse now than they were 50 years ago.

Seberg ended up having a miscarriage, yet she chose an open casket funeral just to prove that the baby was white and not a child of a Black Panther. The impact on her life would ultimately end in her suicide.







It wasn't mentioned in the article, but Seberg also played a leading role in the movie Airport (1970).

If there's any lesson in this, I would say it's that one should be skeptical of whatever governments and gossip columnists say, especially if it's clearly an attempt to denigrate, embarrass, or cheapen their image in the eyes of the public. There are those who discuss ideas and issues, and then there are those who focus on personalities and gossip.

If more people could learn to respect one and discard the other, the public would be a lot less susceptible to misinformation. Do you agree or disagree and why?

Your post illustrates why I so vigorously oppose
giving government more control over us.

 

[Revoltingest]

Throughout many points in the United States' history, its governments and their apparatuses, especially the CIA and U.S. Army, have been responsible for immense and multilayered suffering and abuse both domestically and abroad.

There is a reason many people today find it beyond reprehensible and dubious when the U.S. tries to posture as a global ambassador of goodwill or a broker of peace, such as in Ukraine. It more often than not is not remotely so; it just happens that sometimes its geopolitical interests align with morally sound courses of action.

What do you think USA should be
doing regarding Russia & Ukraine?

 

[Debater Slayer]

What do you think USA should be
doing regarding Russia & Ukraine?

That's a topic worthy of its own thread. Delving into it here would derail this one.

But to summarize, there are multiple things I believe the U.S. could and should have done differently about the situation with Russia and Ukraine long before the Russian invasion.

 

[Revoltingest]

That's a topic worthy of its own thread. Delving into it here would derail this one.

You started it, bub.
I was curious.
So elsewhere it'll be.

 

[Debater Slayer]

Your post illustrates why I so vigorously oppose
giving government more control over us.

It also illustrates why I firmly support defamation laws, albeit within a specific limit.

 

[Revoltingest]

It also illustrates why I firmly support defamation laws, albeit within a specific limit.

That same government that engaged & engages in such
mischief would now have even more police powers over us.
I don't share your optimism that there'd be a net benefit.
(I wouldn't want to have the kind of speech regulation that
Germany has...it's so bad that many buy legal insurance
because of rampant litigation over insults.)
Imagine a Trump presidential win in 2024....would you want
him to wield such power?

As things stand, we have civil courts for cases rising to
that level of problems caused.

 

[Stevicus]

Your post illustrates why I so vigorously oppose
giving government more control over us.

I understand what you mean, although the concept of "control" can work in different ways. Some people believe that it's more than sufficient to simply have a document enumerating our rights and restricting the government from abuses of power. However, Hoover's COINTELPRO would demonstrate that a piece of paper does not prevent government from crossing that line, even when they take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

 

[Revoltingest]

I understand what you mean, although the concept of "control" can work in different ways. Some people believe that it's more than sufficient to simply have a document enumerating our rights and restricting the government from abuses of power. However, Hoover's COINTELPRO would demonstrate that a piece of paper does not prevent government from crossing that line, even when they take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

What we need is more control over government.
When officials & minions break the law &/or violate
civil rights, there should be prosecution & punishment.
As we've seen with so many, eg, Nixon, Clinton, Trump,
there are no real sanctions against wrongful acts.
It's rare that a Blagojevich type actually goes to prison.
That should change. But until it does, I'll stick to giving
government no additional power over us...especially
in the area of criminalizing speech.

 

[Stevicus]

Throughout many points in the United States' history, its governments and their apparatuses, especially the CIA and U.S. Army, have been responsible for immense and multilayered suffering and abuse both domestically and abroad.

There is a reason many people today find it beyond reprehensible and dubious when the U.S. tries to posture as a global ambassador of goodwill or a broker of peace, such as in Ukraine. It more often than not is not remotely so; it just happens that sometimes its geopolitical interests align with morally sound courses of action.

I've thought about issues like this for most of my life. My early formative years were during the Vietnam/Watergate era when there was a broad cynicism about government and the establishment. I think that view always stuck with me and influenced my impression of government, politics, and how things are often presented to the U.S. public.

More than anything else, I wanted to understand why. For similar reasons, I wanted to learn more about the Cold War and our primary adversary, which is how I first became interested in studying about Russia and their history.

Sometimes, I encountered those who might look at events like this and agree that they're wrong, yet still tend to act as apologists and focus on the larger causes of what was motivating the government and political leadership at the time. After all, from an American point of view, it could be argued that whatever they were doing, it was for Americans, to protect us and to protect our freedom. I never agreed that argument myself, but I've encountered it many, many times.

Some people might look back and ascribe to a case of temporary insanity within the government. Guys like Hoover, Nixon, McCarthy, Goldwater - they were somewhat paranoid and unbalanced - and their type abounded during those years, even to include members of my own extended family.

Observing our history, as well as looking at the overall situation since I've been alive, I think that there are those people who believe in a certain philosophy which can't adequately labeled or pigeon-holed, but they believe in it so fervently that whatever they do to advance that philosophy is a righteous thing. As noted above, many would argue that they do it for the cause of "freedom," but that's more of a vague slogan than anything concrete or explanatory of the reasons why.

 

[sayak83]

It also illustrates why I firmly support defamation laws, albeit within a specific limit.

In India defamation is widely used by the govt to stop the press publish negative articles about politicians and other powerful people.

 

[Revoltingest]

In India defamation is widely used by the govt to stop the press publish negative articles about politicians and other powerful people.

I'd expect such mischief here too.
There have been legislative efforts to make it
a crime to insult cops. Let's not give them yet
another bogus reason to arrest innocents.

 

[Debater Slayer]

In India defamation is widely used by the govt to stop the press publish negative articles about politicians and other powerful people.

Same in the Middle East. That's why I believe in having limits on defamation laws, and separation of powers should also help keep their application in check.

 

[Debater Slayer]

That same government that engaged & engages in such
mischief would now have even more police powers over us.
I don't share your optimism that there'd be a net benefit.
(I wouldn't want to have the kind of speech regulation that
Germany has...it's so bad that many buy legal insurance
because of rampant litigation over insults.)
Imagine a Trump presidential win in 2024....would you want
him to wield such power?

As things stand, we have civil courts for cases rising to
that level of problems caused.

Proper separation of powers should ensure a president couldn't act as a one-person government.

 

[Revoltingest]

Proper separation of powers should ensure a president couldn't act as a one-person government.

But as we observe, Presidents (not just Trump)
are able to wield more power than expected in
ways not imagined. And then there's Congress,
who have behaved badly (ie, ways I dislike) at
various times.
Clearly, I don't share your confidence that our
government will use this newfound control over
speech to our benefit.