Steve Jobs, the former Apple CEO who passed away in October of last year at age 56, was recommended for a post during the George H. W. Bush administration, according to a 191-page file on the Apple co-founder released by the FBI on Thursday. The FBI conducted interviews on Jobs in 1991 as part of a background check for a Jobs appointment to the President’s Export Council. On Thursday, the Commerce Department confirmed that Jobs served on the council during the first Bush administration.
But the FBI interviews with colleagues, neighbors and friends of Jobs also highlight some unflattering aspects of his personality. He’s described as someone who “alienated a lot of people… as a result of his ambition,” according to one interview summary in the dossier.
Others individuals said that they questioned Jobs’ honesty and integrity, nothing that he would “twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals.” Another interviewee said that Jobs’ personal life was “lacking due to his narcissism and shallowness,” but that he possessed “far-reaching vision.”
Several pages in the dossier also allude to a $1 million bomb threat that was made against Apple on February 7, 1985, a few months before the company let Jobs go.
The FBI also interviewed Jobs for the background check. Jobs told the bureau he’d not used any illegal drugs in the previous five years, but that he’d experimented with marijuana, hashish and LSD between 1970-1974 while he was in high school and college. In the recent authorized biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Jobs acknowledged his earlier drug use and also said that he’d not been initially close to his daughter, Lisa (his child born out of wedlock with ex-girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan).
To read the full FBI dossier on Steve Jobs, click here.
