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Paul Bowles was recognized for a prolific literary legacy that ranged from his scores for Tennessee Williams plays to his paragon of outsider literature, The Sheltering Sky. One of the godfathers to the "Beat" poets, his existential novels focus on the loneliness of the spirit. He started his career as a music critic for the New York Herald Tribune. After his death last year, famed expatriate writer Paul Bowles was recognized for a prolific legacy that ranged from his scores for Tennessee Williams plays to his paragon of outsider literature, The Sheltering Sky. But nowhere in the many print eulogies that appeared after the author's Nov. 18 death

was there mention of Bowles the assassin, as the FBI once briefly suspected him of being, based on information in the files provided to APBnews.com under the Freedom of Information Act. The files allege that "Bowles ... reportedly was involved in the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940." A member of the party Bowles, the New York City-born son of a dentist, expressed sympathies for the Stalinist regime as a youth, becoming a member of the Communist Party while living in New York, said his biographer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno. "I think he joined more or less for opportunistic reasons," said Sawyer-Laucanno, who befriended his subject during the writer's later years. "He was never a good party member. He joined it to get some jobs, which isn't to say he wasn't very sympathetic." "He was basically running an errands for some friends from the New York party," Sawyer-Laucanno said. "The American Community Party had become very Stalinist, and Trotsky was a great villain." Sawyer-Laucanno said that Bowles knew the FBI was investigating him because of his Communist Party ties but was not aware he was ever considered a conspirator in the Trotsky assasination. The biographer said Bowles actually tried to resign from the party but was told it couldn't be done. "By no means was he a Communist. Paul liked to live very well," he said. Bureau tracked his movements According to an article in The Economist printed after his death, Bowles "commissioned, at his own expense, 15,000 stickers for distribution in Mexico that called for the death of the exiled Trotsky," who had become a leading foe of Stalinism while maintaining his call for world revolution. Stalin's agents, who had infiltrated Trotsky's staff, assassinated the exiled communist, stabbing him in the head with an ice pick while he sat at his desk on Aug. 20, 1940. The FBI files on Bowles, who died in Tangier, Morocco, his home of more than 50 years, are concerned mainly with tracking his movements via his passport stamps through the many countries he traveled to. The files also deal with his left-wing sympathies and his wife's membership in the Communist Party prior to World War II. Jane Auer Bowles left the party and signed an affidavit to that effect for the U.S. government. The FBI listed his case as one of "internal security"; Bowles -- who rose to fame with the 1949 publication of The Sheltering Sky -- was suspected by the bureau of " contact with leaders in the Communist Party" in Tangier. But direct involvement by Bowles in Trotsky's assassination would have been impossible, as the FBI reports that the godfather to the "Beats" first entered Mexico as a tourist in 1941, where he stayed for about 1 1/2 years with his wife, who was also a writer. Source for allegation was drunk The FBI also dismissed the extent to which Bowles was connected to the assassination plot. "[Redacted], who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is familiar with the details concerning the attempted assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico on May 24, 1940, and the assassination on August 20, 1940, advised that he never heard of anyone by the name of Paul Bowles involved in this affair," the file concludes. The file also notes that the original source of the allegation was a drunk. Though politically active before World War II, Bowles' existential fiction is markedly apolitical. The Sheltering Sky, which was made into a 1990 movie starring John Malkovich and Debra Winger, and his other novels focus more on the loneliness of the spirit. Bowles was also a former music critic for the New York Herald Tribune.