50 years ago Background Intelligence was a joke.
In Dec ‘64 I took my pre-induction physical in San Antonio. It included filling out a form: Have you ever been a member of ... have you ever been involved in ... the KKK, White Citizens Council, Communist Party, etc.
I answered honestly that as a student of sociology I had attended meetings of the Communist Party in Illinois and Mississippi and of the KKK and White Citizens Council in Mississippi. I answered honestly that I was not a member and not a supporter of any of them. That I was a member of YAF and YFG and supported them.
From Dec ‘64 to Jan ‘66 they investigated me. Later as personnel clerk I was able to read the complete file of that investigation, and of similar investigations, most notably of a fellow libertarian in my unit in Ft Carson, CO.
The investigation consisted of sending letters to the FBI and to police departments in Seattle area, in Illinois, in Mississippi and in Texas inquiring for information about me. Each of those departments then sent letters to all the other departments inquiring if they had information on me. Each of those departments then replied to all the other departments that they had x number of inquiries about me. They then followed up that they had x + y inquiries about me.
The letters back and forth snowballed into many hundreds of letters. Each letter was date stamped and signed as received.
Not a single police agency, not the FBI, not anyone made any effort to develop any information on me beyond sending letters asking if anyone else had information on me.
Nobody developed any information on my controversial activity my senior year of high school.
Nobody developed any information on my pre-knowledge of the JFK assassination and contact with the FBI regarding that.
Nobody developed any information on my intense involvement in many Alinsky organizations in Chicago.
All of the above were easy to discover with minimal effort.
Both at pre-induction Dec 64 and at time of induction in Jan 66 the sergeants handling everything regarded my support for Goldwater as treasonous. They asked me how I could be loyal to LBJ. My answer was that the oath I took was to be preserve and protect the Constitution and that is what I would do.
After I had been officially inducted, the sergeant refused to ship me out and verbally sent me home, which forced me to be awol my first 5 days in the Army. Finally they let me in and shipped me out.
After leaving the Army I again attended many Communist and far left meetings, and Alinksy and all anti-Chicago Dem machine groups in 1968 and after. The BI activities of the FBI and Red Squad were a total joke. The undercover agents had no understanding of the personalities and motivations of the people in the groups they were infiltrating.
They had no freedom to choose which groups to infiltrate. They infiltrated what upper level bureaucrats told them to infiltrate. Of course, during that period, it was popular to be the most left of any group. So groups were constantly spitting and new groups forming more left than the old group (6 months old) that they rejected as a sellout to the Daley machine.
The approach of the BI bureaucrats was so slow and bureaucratic that they were always years behind what was the real extremist group.
You do know this post is going in your file don't you?
It is not background INTELLIGENCE. Try investigation for a TS security clearance. All you had was a NAC. It is a national agency type check. You had no Top Secret clearance.