Sunday Feature: The Bernstein Files

Investigative journalist Jonathan Coffey tells the story of how the FBI and other parts of the US Government spied on composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein over three decades. Drawing on hundreds of pages of previously classified FBI files, Jonathan examines how the FBI, the US State Department, and the Nixon White House suspected Bernstein of being a Communist and a national security threat. In a series of rare interviews, Jonathan speaks to Bernstein's friends and family, as well as the political activists who saw Leonard Bernstein's politics up close. He meets a former Nixon White House staffer who exchanged secret memos about Bernstein, and speaks to witnesses who attended an infamous fundraiser for the Black Panthers at Bernstein's New York apartment. On the centenary of Leonard Bernstein's birth, Jonathan reveals how the FBI, its Director J Edgar Hoover, and the Nixon White House tracked, hounded, and tried to damage America's most celebrated conductor