Assault on the Left: The FBI and the Sixties Antiwar Movement
In 1939 President Roosevelt first authorized the FBI to investigate subversive activities in the United States. Here Davis (Spying on America, LJ 5/1/92) takes up the bureau's assault on "the New Left" 30 years later. The New Left included militant student organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which mobilized against the war in Vietnam. Davis contends that in the New Left Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) used by the FBI, the bureau went far beyond gathering information and pursued secret actions against groups and individuals that weakened the antiwar movement. Along the way, the FBI "circumvented First and Fourth Amendment guarantees and thus exceeded its authority." To support his claim, Davis draws on hundreds of FBI documents. Yet in the end he gives us only the documentation of the COINTELPRO actions, not a historical or contextual analysis of the FBI's actions. Only for collections with a strong interest in this area.?Roseanne Castellino, LucasVarity Corp., Buffalo, N.Y.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.