Left: cropped view (with our highlighting) of a page in Philip Johnson's FBI report. (See link to archive.org version below.) Right: early 1930s photo portrait of Philip Johnson.
Fun, or rather interesting fact: Philip Johnson, an architecture and design curator at the then-fledgling Museum of Modern Art in New York in the early 1930s, aspired to become "The American Hitler", his secretary told the FBI.
She was reported to have told this to an FBI agent when Philip Johnson (1906-2005) was under investigation some years later regarding "internal security" and Nazi agentry.
Here we spotlight his FBI report. It's a real page turner!
Twelve years ago, Matt Novak at Gizmodo uploaded it, and we also see it on archive.org.
The file details Johnson's suspicious activity in New York, Cleveland, and Boston, as well as some accounts of his extensive travel to Germany. Johnson had attended a Nuremberg rally in 1938 and reportedly loved it, and he interacted with national Nazi administration officials, and a lot more.
The investigation against Johnson started late, in 1940, when the FBI was starting to focus on the Nazi threat. Before this, it is understood that the FBI focus was on Communist threats. US Naval Intelligence at times, especially via Ellis M. Zacharias in southern California, was an earlier monitor of German and US Nazi activity. (See his book Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer published after WWII.) The State Department was also involved. As described by historian Bradley Hart, the three entities were in a kind of power struggle over who should be in charge.
There are multiple questions that result when reviewing Johnson's FBI file, but here are two for starters.
First, what prompted the investigation? It was a Memorandum sent to E. A. Tamm by FBI colleague A. Rosen: "Victor Taylor, Attorney in the Anti-Trust Division, was referred to me... some information concerning a Philip Johnson who is alleged to be engaged in certain Nazi activities in New York City..."
From the Anti-Trust Division? Johnson's father and colleagues were very much involved through the decade in Nazi-era business tie-ups to Germany and companies investigated by the Anti-Trust Division. But as of yet, any Taylor report regarding this and anti-trust matters, and those companies and people involved, has yet to be identified.
Second, then starting here, a design colleague of Johnson's spoke to the FBI. He gave details that Johnson was acting like a Nazi spy in New York. Johnson's residence, unusually discrete via an alley, also may have been a key point of Nazi agentry at that time.
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As things turned out, Johnson's pro-Nazi pals, five of them, ended up in grand jury investigations, with some convicted for related Nazi agentry charges. But Johnson, with an elite family and connections, wasn't put forward...
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In c. 2020, after an uproar about Johnson's name in the Museum of Modern Art building in New York, museum PR said that the museum would begin an investigation. Nothing about this has since been put forward...
Bizarrely, but not so in morally bankrupt far left culture, the Connecticut state government tourist office spotlighted Philip Johnson's architecturally-acclaimed glass house last year.
The stylish, Modernist, post-Nazi acts as a symbol of today's far left Connecticut government, as well as a glowing symbol of their morally bankrupt values.
Is this another example of today's left elite protecting their Nazi-loving and Nazi-tied historical figures, while in other instances performing outrage, and demanding cancelling for political and MSM purposes?
YES.
To learn more, listen to my YouTube talk "Philip Johnson, Nazi agent / architect, advanced research: "Cover stories". To find out the latest on my investigation into Johnson and the buried history of American pro-Nazis in the social-business set, see this overview page and multiple articles at AFP-sister publications, The Connecticut Centinal (including a case on appeal involving a 1950s Johnson design STILL in the CT Superior Court) and Georgia Record.
