Donner, Frank J. The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System. New York: Vintage Books, 1981. 552 pages.
As a former director of the American Civil Liberties Union Project on Political Surveillance and someone who had been identified as a Communist in front of Congressional committees during the 1950s, it's not surprising that Connecticut-based attorney Frank Donner (1911-1993) emerged as the foremost scholar of U.S. domestic political surveillance. He wrote two major books on the subject: "The Age of Surveillance" (1981) on political intelligence by federal agencies, and "Protectors of Privilege" (1990), which looks at surveillance by police departments in major U.S. cities."The Age of Surveillance" has several chapters on the FBI and Hoover, and one each on the White House and CIA, the Internal Revenue Service, military surveillance, kangaroo grand juries, the role of Congressional committees, and private-sector intelligence. Most of the material in this book concerns surveillance during the late 1960s and early 1970s, although some historical background is included that goes back to the Palmer raids of 1919. The book is scholarly in tone, straightforward in its reporting, and very well-documented. It received high marks from a broad range of reviewers.
Halperin, Morton; Berman, Jerry; Borosage, Robert; and Marwick, Christine. The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies. New York: Penguin Books, 1976. 328 pages.
Published at the height of Watergate and the numerous revelations about the CIA and FBI, this book tries to put together much of the information known at that time in a comprehensive and coherent manner.Separate chapters deal with the following: CIA operations at home and abroad; the FBI's vendetta against Martin Luther King and its covert operations against other American dissenters; the domestic use of military intelligence; the National Security Agency; the IRS; and the use of grand juries to investigate, harass, intimidate and prosecute dissenters -- a picture that adds up to "the lawless state." The authors conclude by offering a long and detailed program to reform these practices.
As extensive as the book is, we now know that the U.S. government was a lot more lawless than the authors were aware at the time.
-- William Blum
Mackenzie, Angus. Secrets: The CIA's War at Home. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 241 pages.
In 1970, Angus Mackenzie launched a newspaper with his brother and two friends. It was one of more than 500 alternative periodicals produced by the counterculture. Most were harassed and infiltrated by local police, as well as by the FBI, the CIA, and military intelligence. Mackenzie and many other editors were arrested numerous times on trumped-up charges. When the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was given new teeth, Mackenzie filed requests to learn more about this repression. After long litigation and relentless efforts to defend the First Amendment, he still didn't have the full story. But he did have a garage full of official documents. His family published this book from his notes, after Mackenzie died in 1994 from a brain tumor.Several beginning chapters describe the repression of the sixties, and the rest is a chronology of the machinations behind the FOIA from 1975 to the present, as federal agencies progressively undermined the law. Defenders of openness and free speech were out-maneuvered, especially the ACLU. The favorite technique of the CIA requires that all employees sign a lifetime secrecy contract. This stood up well in court, so the Pentagon used it as a weapon against whistleblowers trying to expose waste and corruption. By now the battle against secrecy has been lost, even though the Cold War is over and the rationale for keeping secrets is largely extinct.
Mitgang, Herbert. Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America's Greatest Authors. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1988. 331 pages.
For years, journalist Herbert Mitgang has been using the Freedom of Information Act to track FBI and CIA surveillance of this country's artists, writers, and academics. As this readable book demonstrates, much of the "intelligence" government snoops amassed was mere rumor and misinformation. (The FBI, in particular, seems to have understood virtually nothing about the work or the politics of the men and women it hounded over the years.) And the whole project seems, finally, surreal. No one in the dossiers Mitgang has examined had any political following. Few even had worked-out political ideas. How can G-men stalking a painter like the late Georgia O'Keeffe, let's say, possibly make this country more secure? Why all this surveillance?The answers emerge from the files Mitgang has assembled. Populist cartoonist Bill Mauldin, for instance, had an FBI file opened on him after he helped integrate veterans' housing after the Second World War. Novelist Norman Mailer's sin was to criticize J. Edgar Hoover in public. And so it goes. The FBI, alas, has functioned less as a crime-fighting agency than as a domestic political police. And Ronald Reagan, for one, began his political career as an FBI informant reporting on fellow actors. -- Steve Badrich
Olmsted, Kathryn S. Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. 255 pages.
It may come as a surprise to viewers of "The X Files," but prior to the 1970s there was almost no information in the officially-acknowledged public record to suggest that the FBI and CIA had ever engaged in illegal or questionable activities. Then in the wake of Watergate, reports surfaced in the press of CIA involvement in the coup in Chile, and massive domestic spying by the CIA and FBI against war protesters. These were followed with stories of CIA plots to kill foreign leaders. The Church Committee in the Senate, and the Pike Committee in the House, were formed to investigate.Congressman Michael J. Harrington (D-MA), and journalists such as Seymour Hersh (New York Times) and Daniel Schorr (CBS), played a significant role in exposing this secret history. At the time, many thought that the momentum for exposure would lead to significant reforms. But a year later the climate had changed dramatically. Harrington was in trouble with the House Ethics Committee for leaking information about Chile, the Pike Committee report was suppressed by Congress, and Daniel Schorr was fired from CBS after leaking the Pike report to the Village Voice. The author suggests that the momentum for reform was lost when the revelations became more than a deluded, complacent public could comfortably bear.
Reavis, Dick J. The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. 320 pages.
This book is based on interviews with Waco survivors, trial transcripts, and the not-yet-released transcript of the telephone conversations between Branch Davidian members and the FBI negotiators. It shows convincingly that the BATF and FBI, as well as some sensation-mongering journalists who didn't bother to question the propaganda fed to them by the authorities, all share as much responsibility as Koresh himself for the deaths at Waco. The actions of Judge Walter S. Smith, Jr. at the San Antonio trial one year later added to the tragedy. Journalists, at least, should have known better. When the Fort Worth coroner's office reported that six of the mothers and children died from "blunt force trauma" (meaning that the tank's boom sent chunks of concrete tumbling onto their heads), several newspapers interpreted the phrase to mean that the victims were bludgeoned to death by other members. This was about average for American journalism during the 51-day siege.One shortcoming of this book is that Reavis spends too much time describing the strange and uninteresting theology behind Koresh's beliefs. Another is that he doesn't mention the Cult Awareness Network, a group that helped set the stage for the hysteria. If Reavis had omitted much of the former and added the latter, a book that's merely good and well-written could have been better.
Here are the names most frequently mentioned in the above books:
ABZUG BELLA S (D-NY) ADAMS JAMES B AGEE PHILIP BURNETT FRANKLIN AGUILERA DAVY ALANIZ LOUIS ANTHONY ALBERTSON WILLIAM ALEXANDER DONALD C ALGREN NELSON ALLISON NORMAN AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION AMERICAN MERCURY MAGAZINE AMERICAN SECURITY COUNCIL ANDERSON JACK (COLUMNIST) ANDERSON JOHN B (R-IL) ANDERSON MAXWELL ANDERSON MAYNARD ANGLETON JAMES JESUS ARENDT HANNAH ARNOLD PHILIP (HOUSTON) ASHBROOK JOHN M (R-OH) ASPIN LES (D-WI) AUDEN WYSTAN HUGH AVRAAM RENOS BACON LESLIE BAIN SARAH L BAKER HOWARD H JR (R-TN) BAKER RUSSELL BALLESTEROS ROLAND BECKER TERRENCE JR BIDDLE FRANCIS BOOS JACK BRADLEE BENJAMIN C BRANCH BRAD BRANCH DAVIDIANS BREAULT MARC BRENNAN CHARLES D (CHIP) BRIGANCE JIMMY BROOKS JACK (D-TX) BROWNELL HERBERT JR BRYAN ALBERT V JR BUCK PEARL S BUFORD BILL (BATF) BUSH GEORGE H.W. BUTTERFIELD ALEXANDER P CALDER ALEXANDER CANO RAY CAPOTE TRUMAN CARLUCCI FRANK CHARLES CASEY WILLIAM JOSEPH CASTILLO JAIME CAULFIELD JACK J CENTER INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CHAMBERS WHITTAKER CHENEY RICHARD BRUCE CHILE CIA IN CHURCH COMMITTEE CHURCH FRANK FORRESTER (D-ID) CLARK RAMSEY CLARK WILLIAM P COGDELL DAN COLBY WILLIAM EGAN COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW COOK FRED J COUNTER INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS BRANCH COUNTERSPY MAGAZINE CRADDOCK GRAEME CROW RODNEY DARRIGO STEPHEN JR DE GUERIN DICK DE LOACH CARTHA D (DEKE) DE TRANI JOSEPH R DEAN JOHN WESLEY DELLUMS RONALD V (D-CA) DIEM NGO DINH DONNER AARON DOOLITTLE JAMES H (GEN) DOS PASSOS JOHN DOYLE CLIVE DREISER THEODORE DUBE LOUIS J DUCOTE JEROME EASTLAND JAMES O EDWARDS DON (D-CA) EHRLICHMAN JOHN D EISENHOWER DWIGHT DAVID ELLSBERG DANIEL ENGELMAN RON ENGLAND MARK EVELAND WILBUR CRANE EVERS ERIC FAGAN LIVINGSTONE FATTA PAUL FAULKNER WILLIAM FAWCETT KEN FELT W MARK FERRERA SALVATORE JOHN FITZGERALD A ERNEST FORD GERALD R FULBRIGHT J WILLIAM GALBRAITH JOHN KENNETH GARFINKEL STEVEN GASCH OLIVER GATES ROBERT MICHAEL GELB LESLIE H GERVAIS PERSHING GIAIMO ROBERT N (D-CT) GINSBERG ALLEN GLOMAR EXPLORER GODFREY HOWARD BERRY GOLDBLOOM IRWIN GOLDWATER BARRY MORRIS GOODWIN GUY L GRAHAM KATHARINE GRAHAM PHILIP L GRASSLEY CHARLES E (R-IA) GRATHWOHL LARRY GRAY L PATRICK GREANEY JOHN K GREENE GRAHAM GREIDER WILLIAM B HALLIN DANIEL HALPERIN MORTON H HAMMETT DASHIELL HAMPTON FRED JR (PANTHERS) HARRINGTON MICHAEL JOSEPH (D-MA) HARTNETT DAN (BATF) HEBERT EDWARD (D-LA) HELLMAN LILLIAN HELMS RICHARD MCGARRAH HEMINGWAY ERNEST HERSH SEYMOUR M HIGGINS STEPHEN E HINCKLE WARREN HOFFMAN CLARE E (R-MI) HOLLINGSWORTH VICTORINE HOOVER J EDGAR HOUSTON LAWRENCE REID HOUTEFF VICTOR HUDDLESTON WALTER D (D-KY) HUFF RICHARD L HUNT E HOWARD HUSTON THOMAS CHARLES HUXLEY ALDOUS ICHORD RICHARD H INFORMATION DIGEST INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE JACKSON HENRY MARTIN (SCOOP D-WA) JAMAR JEFFREY JEWELL SHERRI JOHNSON JAMES P (R-CO) JOHNSON LOCH K JOHNSON LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON MARLIN (FBI) JOHNSTON BILL (WACO TX) JONES DAVID (BRANCH DAVIDIANS) JONES PERRY KARAMESSINES THOMAS HERCULES KARENGA RON KASTEN ROBERT W JR (R-WI) KATZENBACH NICHOLAS D KELLEY CLARENCE M KENDRICK WOODROW (BOB) KENNEDY EDWARD M (D-MA) KENNEDY ROBERT FRANCIS KIMBALL PENN T KING KENNETH (BATF) KING MARTIN LUTHER JR KIRKPATRICK JEANE J KISSINGER HENRY A KNOPF ALFRED A KORESH DAVID KORRY EDWARD M KU KLUX KLAN LADD D MILTON LAPHAM ANTHONY A LAROUCHE LYNDON HERMYLE LAWSON MARGARET LEGION JUSTICE LEHMAN WILLIAM (D-FL) LEMNITZER LYMAN L (GEN) LEVI EDWARD H LEWIS ANTHONY (NYT) LEWIS SINCLAIR LIEBLING ABBOTT JOSEPH LONG EDWARD V (D-MO) LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT LUMUMBA PATRICE LYNCH LARRY LYNCH MARK H LYNN JAMES THOMAS MACKENZIE ANGUS MACLEISH ARCHIBALD MAILER NORMAN MALCOLM JOYCE LEE MANN THOMAS (NOVELIST) MANSFIELD MIKE J (D-MT) MARCHETTI VICTOR L MARDIAN ROBERT CHARLES MARSHALL BURKE MARTIN SHEILA (BRANCH DAVIDIANS) MARTIN WAYNE (DOUGLAS WAYNE) MARTINEZ JULIETTE MATHIAS CHARLES M JR (R-MD) MATTESON CATHERINE MATTHEWS JOSEPH BROWN MAULDIN WILLIAM H MAYERFELD ERNEST MAZZOLI ROMANO LOUIS (D-KY) MCCARRAN PATRICK A (D-NV) MCCLELLAN JOHN L (D-AR) MCCLORY ROBERT (R-IL) MCCORMICK DARLENE MCCOY ALFRED WILLIAM MCDONALD LAWRENCE PATTON MCLEMORE JOHN MCMAHON HENRY MEESE EDWIN MENCKEN H L MEYER CORD JR MILFORD DALE (D-TX) MITCHELL ROY M MITGANG HERBERT MONDALE WALTER F MOORE HENRY MORGAN ROBERT BURREN (D-NC) MORISON SAMUEL LORING MOSS JOHN EMERSON (D-CA) MOYERS BILL D MOYNIHAN DANIEL PATRICK (D-NY) MULLONEY DAN MURPHY MORGAN (D-IL) NATIONAL CAUCUS LABOR COMMITTEES NATIONAL STUDENT ASSOCIATION NEDZI LUCIEN N (D-MI) NESSEN RON NEW YORK TIMES NORUSIS RICHARD OAKES JOHN BERTRAM OBER RICHARD OHARA JOHN (1905-1970) OKEEFFE GEORGIA ONEAL WILLIAM M JR OPERATION CHAOS OSBORN HOWARD J PALMER A.MITCHELL PARKER DOROTHY ROTHSCHILD PATTERSON JOSEPH (BATF) PEELER JIM PEGLER WESTBROOK PHILLIPS DAVID ATLEE PIKE COMMITTEE PIKE OTIS G (D-NY) PILLSBURY MICHAEL E POINDEXTER JOHN M POPKIN SAMUEL PROJECT JENNIFER PROUTY L FLETCHER PROXMIRE WILLIAM (D-WI) PYLE CHRISTOPHER H QUICKSILVER TIMES RABORN WILLIAM FRANCIS JR RAMPARTS MAGAZINE RANSOM HARRY HOWE REAGAN RONALD W REES JOHN HERBERT REES SHEILA LOUISE RENO JANET RESTON JAMES BARRETT (SCOTTY) RICE ELMER RICHARDS ANN W RICKS BOB A (FBI) RIDDLE RUTH RIZZO FRANK L ROCKEFELLER NELSON ALDRICH RODEN BEN RODEN GEORGE B RODEN LOIS RODRIGUEZ ROBERT (BATF) ROGOVIN MITCHELL ROMERSTEIN HERBERT ROONEY JOHN J (D-NY) ROSENTHAL ABRAHAM MICHAEL ROWE GARY THOMAS RYAN JACK C (FBI) SAFIRE WILLIAM L SALISBURY HARRISON E SANDBURG CARL SAROYAN WILLIAM SCHERLING HENRY SCHLESINGER JAMES RODNEY SCHNEIDER STEVE (BRANCH DAVIDIANS) SCHORR DANIEL L SCHROEDER KATHRYN SCHROEDER MICHAEL SCHUDSON MICHAEL SCHWARZ FREDERICK A.O. JR SCHWEIKER RICHARD S (R-PA) SCREEN ACTORS GUILD SEAGRAVES JERRY SECRET ARMY ORGANIZATION (SAN DIEGO) SEIB CHARLES B SESSIONS WILLIAM S SHAHN BEN SHAW IRWIN SHEINBAUM STANLEY K SHERWOOD ROBERT EMMET SIKORSKI GERRY SILONE IGNAZIO SMITH WALTER S JR SNEPP FRANK W SNIDER L BRITT SOCIETY PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS SONOBE SCOTT KIJORO STANTON JAMES (D-OH) STEIN RALPH (CIAB) STEINBECK JOHN STENNIS JOHN C (D-MS) STERN LAURENCE M (LARRY) STONE ISIDOR FEINSTEIN STOUT REX SULLIVAN WILLIAM C SUTTON S THOMAS TEED CYRUS R THOMAS MARJORIE TOLSON CLYDE ANDERSON TOWER JOHN GOODWIN (R-TX) UNITED STATES LABOR PARTY VAN DEMAN RALPH H WARNER JOHN S SR WASHINGTON POST WELCH RICHARD SKEFFINGTON WESTERN RESEARCH WHEELER SHARON WHITE ELWYN BROOKS WICKER TOM WILDER THORNTON WILHELM R KENNETH WILLARD RICHARD K WILLIS STEVE WILSON EDMUND WOODWARD ROBERT UPSHUR WOOLSEY R JAMES WULF MELVIN L ZIMMERMANN JACK
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