Files detail threats to Strom

WASHINGTON - The late Strom Thurmond made plenty of political enemies over his long and controversial career, including the kind the FBI feared might try to kill him.

The FBI on Monday released 836 pages Monday of its file on Thurmond, pages that show the S.C. Democrat-turned-Republican was the target of persistent harassers, from the merely disgruntled to the potentially lethal.

The documents cover most of Thurmond's record-setting 48 years in the U.S. Senate, and include information on FBI investigations into:

An S.C. man with a history of violence who had escaped from a state mental hospital

A Columbia man who wrote to "our dear senator" and promised to come to Washington or South Carolina and "settle it once and for all"

A lewd letter in which the writer acknowledged an obsession with Nancy Thurmond, the senator's wife.

The documents are windows into some of the more unpleasant aspects of political fame and include copies of threatening telegrams, results of handwriting tests and summaries of interviews with suspects.

One of the threats taken most seriously by the FBI involved a man who, in 1976, wrote letters to Thurmond, postmarked from Greenville, in which he said he despised Thurmond and his politics.

"I would give my cool seat in hell to be able to pull the trigger," the man wrote.

He signed the letter, "A $65 [a] month disable combat vet," apparently referring to the size of his monthly checks from the Veterans Administration, now known as Veterans Affairs.

In a document distributed to the FBI director at the time, an agent advises, "The Bureau has instructed that his [sic] matter must receive vigorous and continuous attention until fully resolved."

Other documents show the FBI had the Veterans Administration write a computer program to help identify a World War II veteran from the Upstate with certain characteristics the letter writer revealed about himself.

It is unclear how the investigation was resolved.

The State, which requested the Thurmond's FBI file after the senator died in 2003, counted 31 threats investigated from 1958 to 1989, the years covered in the released pages. They make up the second installment of Thurmond's FBI file to be made public.

The first installment, released in February, was smaller but with awider range in its subject matter.

It included items such as Christmas cards FBI officials sent to Thurmond and Thurmond's requests that the FBI look into civil rights leader Martin Luther King's alleged connection with communists.

This latest release focuses only on contact with Thurmond's office deemed menacing - first by the senator's staff, usually the first to read his mail and receive his calls, and then by the FBI itself, which assigned agents to investigate.

The documents do not indicate any of the threats resulted in prosecutions.

The threats came from men and women, whites and blacks, the political and seemingly apolitical.

Most did not articulate a particular problem with Thurmond's politics.

Some investigations are marked "EXTORTION" by the FBI, but none refers to his biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, whom Thurmond never acknowledged as his child.

Often the FBI identified the threat maker as mentally ill.

S.C. Law Enforcement Division chief Robert Stewart, who was personally involved in protecting Thurmond when he was in South Carolina, said division agents were with the senator when he was in the state.

"We had more threats against Sen. Thurmond than any other official that we provided security for, and I would think that would be because of his long years of service and the many issues he dealt with," Stewart said.

Frequently, Stewart continued, the division had to handle threats from the mentally ill.

Stewart said behavioral scientists and psychologists would help identify those who made truly credible threats; often the most threatening were committed or recommitted to mental hospitals.

"You have to take those threats very seriously," said Stewart, saying several mentally ill people have carried out threats against politicians, including John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan in 1981.

Stewart said he has no knowledge of any person ever getting close to hurting the senator while he was in South Carolina.

Thurmond, known for his bravado, tried to minimize threats brought to his attention, Stewart recalled.

"He wasn't scared of anybody. None of these things bothered him. But he did allow us to take extra precautions."

Mark Goodin, a senior aide to Thurmond from 1982 to 1988, said the number of threats against Thurmond was about average among U.S. senators. "Most received several a year. They're all taken seriously by the FBI."

Goodin remembered "one or two" Thurmond received that seemed scarier than most. But the senator never altered his schedule.

"Getting Strom Thurmond to cancel an appearance would have taken an act of Congress."