My personal feeling is that if the feds hadn't been following him, he would have latched onto something else to be paranoid about. He was depressed and developed paranoia. It's very unlikely that they were the cause of the depression or contributed to a faster downfall.<p>Anecdotally, I had a close family member go through what sounds like very much what Hemingway was going through, although it was the builders out to get them, not the feds. They would seem them trailing them everywhere, every tradesman, every building site, every van was a tail set up for them and them alone.<p>The “Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it’s my account.” echos the things that they would say. It was extremely distressing for them and us.<p>It recently happened again, this time the paranoia prominently featured the egyptians. They had recently given a talk on the history of the egyptians. That's all it took.<p>Luckily for us we lived in an age where they have a pill which made it all go away in less than 2 weeks.