Activists Under Surveillance - by Jpat Brown & B C D Lipton & Michael Morisy (Paperback)

About the Book

"This is the third volume of FBI files produced by the MuckRock team. This one is focused on Activists and consists of documents from the FBI files obtained by over 4,000 Freedom of Information Act Requests made by the MuckRock team. Some of these documents are available elsewhere (by FOIA requests made by others, and are ostensibly in the public domain). But much of this material has been released for the first time as a result of MuckRock's FOIA requests. As with the previous two volumes, Morisy's team at MuckRock have done a lot of work in sifting through the files, compiling and curating material from almost 2 million pages of released documents. As with the previous volume the documents are arranged by alphabetically by subject (activist). Each section of documents starts with a short introduction, which provides a brief summary and context for the documents that follow ... Activists include: Roger Nash Baldwin; Cesar Chavez; Hedy Espstein; Elizabeth gurley Flynn; Betty Friedan; Thelma Glass; Fred Hampton; Abbie Hoffman; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Harvey Milk; Bayard Rustin; Margaret Sanger; Aaron Swartz; John Trudell; Malcolm X; Howard Zinn."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Selections from FBI files on political activists including Betty Friedan, Abbie Hoffman, Martin Luther King, Aaron Swartz, and Malcolm X.

The FBI has always kept tabs on political activists. During the directorship of J. Edgar Hoover, it was a Bureau-wide obsession. Did you see that guy who didn't quite look like a journalist, taking pictures at a demonstration? He was probably FBI. Did you say something mildly subversive in a radio interview? It went in your file. Did you attend a meeting of a left-leaning organization? The attendee who didn't contribute but took copious notes was possibly an informant. This third volume of selected FBI files liberated by MuckRock documents the FBI's pursuit of activists and dissenters ranging from Margaret Sanger to Malcolm X.

Despite the absence of evidence, Hoover suspected Communist influence in every political protest. He grilled Martin Luther King, Jr., about Communist sympathizers in the civil rights movement (while offering reporters off-the-record hints about King's extramarital affairs). The Bureau investigated the supposed threat posed by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers but not threats to them, even after the detonation of a bomb in their office. The Bureau persevered: files on Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein cover six decades, from unfounded rumors of Communist connections to her participation in a Black Lives Matter demonstration.

Recently, we hoped against hope that a former FBI director would save us from our current political predicament. These documents remind us of the FBI's troubling history.

The Activists
Roger Nash Baldwin, Cesar Chavez, Hedy Epstein, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Betty Friedan, Thelma Glass, Fred Hampton, Abbie Hoffman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harvey Milk, Bayard Rustin, Margaret Sanger, Aaron Swartz, John Trudell, Malcolm X, Howard Zinn

Review Quotes

This work by Brown, Lipton, and Morisy reminds us that the powerful institutions of the federal government are only as good as the men and women who lead them.--New York Journal of Books--

About the Author

JPat Brown is Executive Editor of MuckRock.

B. C. D. Lipton is Senior Reporter at MuckRock.

Michael Morisy is cofounder of MuckRock.