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Bron 11/9/43 “as I remember”.
Entered Wheaton College 1961.
I did not do a “FOIA” ... which to my understanding, did not exist by that acronym in the 60’s. Many thousans of file “envlelopes” and their contents were stored in a “storage room” on Ft Carson, Colo. I was a company cler/personnel clerk for a couple weeks at Ft Carson before going to Vietnam where I was a company clerk.

I had expressed my interest to see those files to a casual acquaintance friend who was assigned there. He invited me in. At that time there was no PII. He and I broke no law. His superior sergeant knew I was there.

My file was between 3 and 4 inches of paper. I did not read every word. I flipped through the pages, mostly looking at the city and progression of dates.

Of course, I had this file because, at pre-induction, and repeated inductions since then, I had trutfully answered that I had attended meetings of groups on their list... both segregationist groups and communist groups. The segregationist groups Nov-Dec before that pre-induction and communist groups, John Birch Society, etc over several years in Chicagoland....many “student” groups.

Some Americans live very isolated lives. Others don’t. Just before hitchhiking across the country (Chicago-Mississippi-Tx-CA-WA and back to Chicago) I had worked several Chicago Precincts for Goldwater. In those precincts I tripled the vote of Nixon and doubled the vote of Ike. Outside those precincts I convinced about a dozen on the far left to vote for Goldwater because he would bring the revolution closer.

I was out of touch. My birthday was just after election day. I turned 21. I had not even been old enough to vote. I chose to hitchhike across the country and get in touch with at least a few people. I chose Mississippi for obvious reasons. I had had prior contact with Ben Carson type football players from northern Mississippi. I went there first and then worked my way south with a lot of time in Hatiesburg as well as the Brookhaven area.... and sleeping in SNC crash houses in between.

I learned a lot of people are not like me.