That Time the FBI Conspired To Get George Foreman an Award for Boxing

The FBI is concerned with a great many things today. Incels. Orgasm cults. Facebook posts. Safe-deposit boxes. Encryption.

But in October 1968, the Bureau was concerned with whether George Foreman got the proper recognition as a boxer. Files released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that the Racial Intelligence Section of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division intervened to get Foreman an additional award for his patriotism after winning an Olympic gold medal.

Foreman “gave every American an emotional lift when immediately after defeating Inoas Chepulis [Jonas Čepulis] of the Soviet Union…he showed the world that he was proud to be an American by waving a small American flag,” Associate Director G.C. Moore wrote in a memo to Assistant Director William Sullivan.

The Bureau also saw Foreman as a useful cudgel against domestic opponents. Foreman’s patriotic victory display, Moore wrote, “was in sharp contrast with the earlier despicable black power-black gloved demonstration of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the Olympic victory stand and the anti-Vietnam stand of Cassius Clay.”

Smith and Carlos were kicked off the American team for making a black power salute after winning a 200-meter race. Clay, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali, had won an Olympic gold medal for boxing in 1960. He was convicted of defying the military draft in 1967—Ali opposed the Vietnam War on religious grounds—a conviction that was overturned in 1971.

Back in 1968, Moore suggested helping get Foreman his “justly deserved award,” on the recommendation of two special agents who belonged to the American Legion. With the approval of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau eventually settled on trying to get Foreman the Americanism Award from the Freedoms Foundation.

Although he was nominated for the award, Foreman didn’t win that year. He did win a George Washington Honor Medal from the Freedoms Foundation in 1974.

Foreman, who died in March 2025, had a long career after his Olympic victory. He remained undefeated until his famous “Rumble in the Jungle” with Ali. He retired in 1977, became a Christian minister in the 1980s, returned to boxing in 1994, and began marketing the famous George Foreman Grill that same year.

Reason requested Foreman’s FBI file after he passed away, and the Bureau released the memos on his Olympic victory earlier this week.

The FBI’s interest in Foreman came amidst COINTELPRO, a paranoid Cold War counterintelligence program that treated everyone from draft resisters and Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Ku Klux Klan as vectors for foreign subversion. In addition to trying to get Foreman an award, the Bureau heavily spied on Ali and Carlos.

Ali ultimately got the last laugh. During his 1971 match with Joe Frazier, a group of dissidents known as the Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI used the boxing match as a distraction to break into an FBI office in Pennsylvania and steal the COINTELPRO files. The burglary led to Congress reining in the FBI’s power.

Fortunately, America has learned from those dark days. Surely, the FBI no longer uses fantasies about foreign conspiracies as an excuse to spy on Americans and interfere with domestic politics. Right?

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