Assault on the Left: The FBI and the Sixties Antiwar Movement

(Hardback)

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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 comprising literally thousands of participants to achieve one goal: the end of the war in Vietnam. In an enormous effort of questionable legality, the FBI implemented some 285 counter-intelligence actions against the New Left. The purpose of this counter-intelligence programme, COINTELPRO, was to "infiltrate, disrupt and otherwise neutralize" the entire movement. In truth, the FBI meant to wage war on the antiwar movement. For this book, James Kirkpatrick Davis has researched the entire field of more than 6,000 previously classified COINTELPRO documents to reveal the nature and extent of the FBI's assault on one social/political protest movement. A real life spy story - J. Edgar and his G-Men, wiretaps, burglaries, misinformation campaigns, informants and plants - "Assault on the Left" offers a glimpse into the world of the sixties.

Reviews

The strength of this bookis 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 *

Author Bio

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.