Behind Islands in the Stream: Hemingway, Cuba, the FBI and the crook factory

After the Spanish Civil War, thousands of Spanish fascists immigrated to Cuba. With financing by the American Embassy in Havana, Hemingway recruited a ragtag band to spy on the fascists. He called them the "crook factory." The FBI became enraged that he was poaching on their territory.

Ernest Hemingway lived in Cuba for 20 years--1940-1960. After the Spanish Civil War, thousands of Spanish Falange (Spanish fascists) immigrated to Cuba. They were thought to be a threat to Cuba and to the U.S. With the blessing of, and financing by, the American Embassy in Havava, Hemingway recuited a ragtag band to spy on the Falange. He called them the "crook factory." The FBI became enraged that he was poaching on their territory. Later some of them worked as crew members on his yacht, the Pilar, when he hunted Nazi submarines in the Caribbean. Those adventures became the last segment of his novel, "Islands in the Stream," published in 1970. The FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, never forgave nor forgot Hemingway.The FBI followed him for the rest of his life. He knew it but couldn't prove it; many of his friends simpy thought him paranoid.