Secret files released by the FBI this last week supplied a trove of celebrity news, albeit somewhat dated. The Associated Press went shopping under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act for "every high-visibility memorandum" filed since 1974. Of course, they didn't get everything there was, or everything they wanted. There are rules, for instance, preventing the FBI release of scuttlebutt on people who happen to be alive. But the AP did get a stack of paper, six inches high, containing enough material to fill slack on their wire for a few days.

We learned, to our amazement and titillation, that U.S. federal agents dismissed John Lennon as a revolutionary threat, on the grounds he was always stoned.

That Marilyn Monroe might have been tailed, after she did or didn't apply for a visa to Russia. (Turns out from other sources she wasn't sleeping with President Kennedy, however: so give him another five days off Purgatory.)

That Albert Einstein was watched, in a desultory way, for three decades -- thanks to all the young leftists he hung out with, and the manifestoes of various Communist front organizations he would casually sign, or of which he would equally casually agree to be "honorary chairman". (I daresay the fact he knew how to make atomic bombs entered into the assessment.)

That Liberace caught the attention of the federal fuzz for his gambling habit. (I'd have thought it would have been for something else.)

That Andy Warhol enjoyed more than 15 minutes of fame, at FBI headquarters.

That even J. Edgar Hoover raised a memo-writer's eyebrows -- for associating with such Hollywood lowlife as Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra.

That we may infer that Otto Preminger kept begging to be accepted as a stoolie.

And that, neither last nor least, "The Doors" may once have been investigated, for no particular reason. It was just that the FBI received so many complaints about their "filthy, vulgar" music.

I'm still trying to find what they had on Lucille Ball.

Yes, those were the good old days, when the FBI (and, our RCMP) investigated people just for being Commies. Or alternatively, to establish that they were not. From this distance in time, it seems all so risible. Our own lives are risible, too, to say nothing of our current batch of celebrities -- but we have to look at another generation to see the joke.

And if we do, with our wits sufficiently strung to make music, we may discover that the memo which seems ludicrous now, may not have been when written.

To fully appreciate this, we would have to read each memorandum in its original context, which has long since evaporated. We would require a broad knowledge of contemporary events, and to suppress our knowledge of events that came later. An effort of the educated imagination would thus be necessary, to supply a semblance of what is now gone. Without it, from this distance, we can hardly distinguish what was deadly serious from what may have been, even when it was written, a pull on someone's leg.

Since 1972, it has been the official policy of the FBI not to inquire into people's political affiliations. Yes, Richard Nixon brought in that reform -- that radically liberal U.S. President, who cut and ran from Vietnam, recognized Communist China, sought détente with the Soviets, and appointed the judge who wrote Roe v. Wade, to recall four other reckless acts. And from Canada to Japan, other democratic governments have since ordered their investigative services to follow the American lead.

It goes without saying today, that cops have no more business in the political theatre, than in the nation's bedrooms. (In fact, they are increasingly tasked to enforce "political correctness".)

This will change, from necessity. For as we've begun to re-learn since 9/11, political and even religious affiliations can be of crucial significance in the commission of great crimes. A police force that is genuinely incurious about memberships in fanatical secret societies, is a police force indifferent to the defence of the constitutional order.

Our re-learning must be painful, for we have forgotten that democracy does not exist in a moral and ethical vacuum; that it cannot be shapeless; that it does not persist as a function of nature; that it will not survive without diligent attention to forces that threaten it on every side. That freedom requires vigilance against the enemies of freedom, and that not all these are external.

Officers of the FBI and like organizations undoubtedly made many silly judgements in former generations, some of which are now exposed. But we, who eschew any judgements at all, are in no position to judge them.