Recently, in response to Emma Best’s 2017 FOIA request for files on former Federal Bureau of Investigation Deputy Associate Director Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, the FBI released an additional 137 pages. As fellow MuckRock user Paul Galante was quick to point out, those new pages include a 1998 letter by DeLoach to one of the producers of the “X-Files,” offering his thoughts on the script of the fifth season “flashback” episode “Travelers.”

To put it mildly, he was not a fan.

The long-retired DeLoach had been asked to serve in an unofficial, and uncredited, capacity as a consultant on the episode’s depiction of the Bureau in the ’50s. This was a role DeLoach was uniquely suited for, having spent years as the FBI’s main contact with the media.

Despite previous enthusiasm for television shows depicting intrepid federal agents solving mysteries, “The X-Files” was apparently not on DeLoach’s watchlist, having not bothering to learn the name of the main cast …

and unaware that by the time of his letter, the show had already been on the air for five years.

While DeLoach is critical of the “sophomoric” nature of the show as a whole, he is, characteristically, most upset by the episode’s depiction of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Considering that Hoover’s lines from the episode are lifted almost entirely from Senator Joseph McCarthy’s speeches, and as Best herself put it recently, under Hoover’s leadership “the Bureau played such a large role in McCarthyism that it could have more properly been called Hooverism,” we’ll leave the reader to decide if DeLoach’s criticism is fair.

DeLoach sent a “corrected” version of the script back to the producers and made it clear that he would be available for future consultations, so long as he was paid for it …

apparently unaware that the episode had already been shot, and aired just over a month later.

Read the full letter embedded below and the rest of the new release on the request page.

Image via FOX