I never knew my uncle.
Marvin Risen, my father’s brother, died long before I was born. He was an FBI agent in Nashville and was killed in a plane crash in 1943.
But decades later, when I was growing up, something about Marvin’s death still troubled my family.
My parents often talked about how they had never been given any answers about Marvin’s death, and that led them to speculate wildly, trying to connect the dots. They openly questioned whether he had been the victim of wartime sabotage. His plane crashed in the middle of World War II, and his Nashville FBI office was not far from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, then home to a critical part of the Manhattan Project: America’s top-secret program to build an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany. They sometimes wondered whether spies had blown up Marvin’s plane because he had uncovered an atomic espionage ring.
It wasn’t until this year — more than 80 years after my uncle’s death — that the full story of Marvin Risen and the Federal Bureau of Investigation would finally be resolved. But even then, the FBI’s painful treatment of our family would leave an open, unhealed wound.
In hindsight, I see that my parents long, failed struggle to grasp the truth about Marvin’s death wasn’t their fault. It was the result of the FBI’s callous handling of Marvin’s case — and many others like it. When my uncle was killed, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was at the height of his power, and he ran the FBI like a dictatorship. The bureau was a cult of personality built around Hoover; he served a total of 48 years in his post, first as director of the FBI’s predecessor, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigations, and then as director of the FBI from its renaming in 1935 until his death in 1972.
Hoover accumulated power in part through his legendary ability to manipulate the press to propagandize and glorify the FBI. He created a mythic origin story for the FBI built around its manhunts and gun battles with Depression-era gangsters like John Dillinger; FBI agents killed in shootouts with gangsters became Hoover’s martyrs. But that meant that FBI agents like Marvin, who died in accidents or from illnesses, were largely ignored by Hoover’s FBI — even if their deaths were work-related.
“NC16008 American Airlines DC-3. It crashed as Flight 63 in October 1943” by Hagley Museum and Library, used under CC BY 4.0; Newspapers.com.
On October 15, 1943, American Airlines Flight 63 crashed in rural Tennessee, killing all 11 people on board, including Marvin. The aircraft crashed soon after taking off from Nashville for a short flight to Memphis. Records show that, not long after leaving Nashville, the pilot radioed to air traffic control asking for permission to climb to 8,000 feet, possibly in an effort to find a band of warmer air to get rid of ice clinging to the wings and propellers, according to a later federal investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board, which then regulated commercial aviation. But as the plane gained altitude, ice continued to build, making it impossible to control.
The plane rapidly lost altitude and crashed into a wooded hill near Centerville, about 60 miles from Nashville. The area was so remote that the crash site wasn’t discovered until the next morning by a farmer, who then drove 3 miles to the town of Wrigley, where he could get a phone to call officials in Nashville. In its 1945 final report on the crash, the Civil Aeronautics Board was critical of American Airlines for allowing the plane to fly without deicing equipment; American had removed the equipment in the summer and had not yet reinstalled the gear for the fall and winter. The crash was caused by the “inability of the aircraft to gain or maintain altitude due to carburetor ice or propeller ice or wing ice or some combination of those icing conditions while over terrain and in weather unsuitable for an emergency landing,” the report stated. The agency’s report said that if the weather conditions on the route were known by the airline, that “should have precluded the dispatch of the flight in an aircraft not equipped with wing or propeller deicing equipment.”
The plane nosedived into the ground, leaving a crash scene so horrific that none of the bodies could be easily identified. It was so terrible that Ernest Gann, an American Airlines pilot and author, wrote about the crash in his acclaimed 1961 memoir on the dangerous early days of aviation, “Fate is the Hunter,” which was turned into a movie in 1964.
Marvin Risen could only be identified by his official FBI briefcase. He was just 27 when he died. He had been with the FBI since 1939.
After I grew up and became a reporter, my family’s questions about what had happened to my uncle remained unanswered. As a journalist covering intelligence and national security issues, I frequently reported on stories involving the FBI, and that experience taught me that it was not surprising that the bureau had failed my family. The FBI was insular and slow to change, and many aspects of the FBI’s culture still bore the imprint of J. Edgar Hoover long after his death.
So in the 1990s, I decided to take the initiative and find out what I could about Marvin Risen and the FBI. I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI for Marvin’s personnel file.
After a long wait of three years, a large package arrived at my doorstep from the FBI. Inside were hundreds of pages detailing my uncle’s life and death, shedding light on unknown aspects of my family history. It was revealed that my father had been interviewed by the FBI during the consideration of hiring his brother. The files disclosed that prior to becoming a special agent, Marvin had worked in the FBI’s fingerprinting unit and even served as a tour guide at FBI headquarters in Washington.
The most significant revelation in the files came from internal FBI memos concerning Marvin’s death. Following the plane crash, J. Edgar Hoover took a keen interest in the case, suspecting possible sabotage. However, the FBI eventually determined it was an accident, causing Hoover to lose interest. Despite this, Hoover and his associate Clyde Tolson chose not to include Marvin on the FBI Wall of Honor, reserved for agents who died in the line of duty.
Marvin’s widow, left to raise two young children after his death, was offered a secretarial job at FBI headquarters, which she declined. Marvin’s sisters attempted to discuss his case with Hoover at FBI headquarters, but were left waiting and ultimately ignored. Marvin’s widow later remarried another FBI agent, while their sons retained the Risen surname.
Tragically, one of Marvin’s sons died by suicide, while the other, Pat, lived until 2022 and had two sons of his own. One of them, Clay Risen, worked with me at the New York Times and continues to write for the publication, along with being an author of several books. Michael Risen, brother of Marvin Risen, is the associate head of school at the Norwood School, a private school in the Washington area. This spring, the FBI reached out to Michael to discuss their grandfather, Marvin Risen. After decades since Marvin’s passing, the FBI reevaluated their criteria for the Wall of Honor and found Marvin’s case. This led to Marvin being honored on the FBI’s Wall of Honor over 80 years after his death. The FBI ceremony, attended by family members including Michael, honored Marvin and seven others. Despite his personal history with the FBI, which includes being spied on and targeted as a journalist, Michael is willing to go to FBI headquarters for his work when necessary. However, the idea of attending a celebration, no matter how long overdue, did not appeal to me. I feel confident that Marvin Risen would empathize with my decision.
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