Assault on the Left: The FBI and the Sixties Antiwar Movement / Edition 1

by James K. Davis

Overview

The New Left was founded in 1962, and as a social and political protest movement, it captured the attention of the nation in the Sixties. By 1968, the New Left was marching in unison with hundreds of political action groups to achieve one goal—the end of the war in Vietnam. Under J. Edgar Hoover's direction, the FBI went from an intelligence collection agency during WWII, to an organization that tried to undermine protest movements like the New Left. Hoover viewed the New Left as a threat to the American way of life, so in an enormous effort of questionable legality, the FBI implemented some 285 counter-intelligence (COINTELPRO) actions against the New Left. The purpose of COINTELPRO was to infiltrate, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize the entire movement. In truth, the FBI intended to wage war on the antiwar movement.

In this real-life spy story—J. Edgar Hoover and his G-Men, wiretaps, burglaries, misinformation campaigns, informants, and plants—Davis offers a glimpse into the endlessly fascinating world of the Sixties. Kent State, Columbia University, Vietnam Moratorium Day, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Cambodian invasion and March Against Death are all examined in this riveting account of the longest youth protest movement in American history. This is the only book devoted entirely to the New Left COINTELPRO, and the first one written after the declassification of more than 6,000 counterintelligence documents that reveal the true nature and extent of the FBI's Assault on the Left.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275954550
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/22/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

JAMES KIRKPATRICK DAVIS is president of Davis Advertising, Inc. in Kansas City. A student of American history for over 30 years, Mr. Davis is the author of Spying on America: The FBI's Domestic Counter-intelligence Program (Praeger, 1992). Mr. Davis also worked directly with Clarence Kelley, former Director of the FBI, as coauthor of the book Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director.

Table of Contents

The 279th Meeting of the National Security Council
The New Left and the Emergence of Anti-Vietnam War Protest
The New Left and the Confrontation at Columbia
Firestorm in Chicago
January-June 1969
The New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the Vietnam Moratorium Committee
Cambodia, Kent State, Etc.
The End of the New Left COINTELPRO
Selected Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The strength of this book…is the wealth of examples of how the secret security forces operate, recruit and fund their activities, with a useful history of its operations against the anti-war movement.” —Marxist Review

From the Publisher

Davis, an independent historian, sets his sights on the FBI's counterintelligence activity (COINTELPRO) against the New Left movement and its participation in anti-war protest during the 1960s. Ultimately, the account is an intriguing spy story ripe with wiretaps, burglaries, informants, and the general intrigue and double dealing readers expect from any study of J. Edgar Hoover and his G-Men as they waged their own personal war against the antiwar movement. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

A sad chronicle of the government's spying on citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

In 1939, writes Davis (Spying on America, 1992) President Roosevelt pressed FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate "sabotage, espionage, and subversive activities." With WW II looming, he was right to fear the first two. But, Davis shows, Hoover concerned himself largely with the third sphere, compiling dossiers on millions of Americans who harbored socialist sympathies or protested the governing policies of the era. In 1956, President Eisenhower authorized increased surveillance of suspected radicals, even endorsing Hoover's program of illegal breaking and entering to photograph "secret communist documents." With the rise of the antiwar movement in the 1960s, the antisubversion elements of the FBI embarked on their elaborate, and infamous, COINTELPRO operation, which extended breaking and entering to new heights: infiltrating leftist organizations with paid informants and agents provocateurs who encouraged peaceful groups to engage in terrorism; writing anonymous letters to fellow travelers, parents, and prospective employers charging leftists with illegal activities; targeting prominent dissidents with smear campaigns. The documents Davis offers are sometimes comical, as FBI agents attempt to mimic the language of hippies and Yippies and Black Panthers ("bring your own grass, pot, whatever," read one faked flyer announcing a demonstration). Yet, Davis shows, there was nothing at all funny about the government's secret program of violating Americans' civil rights. The COINTELPRO operation ultimately failed—thanks to federal ineptitude—and it did nothing substantial to halt the antiwar movement, which managed to stage some of the "largest mass demonstrations ever seen in the western hemisphere" despite the FBI's best efforts.

Nelson Blackstock's Cointelpro (not reviewed) and Davis's own earlier book cover much of this ground, but this well-researched study is a welcome investigation of political corruption in the supposed service of Americanism.

Kirkus Reviews