Description
Book SynopsisThis book traces the evolution of FBI spying from 1965 to the present, through the eyes of those under investigation, and through numerous FBI documents, never used before in scholarly writing, that were recently declassified using the Freedom of Information Act or released during litigation (Greenberg v. FBI).
Trade ReviewIn The Dangers of Dissent, Ivan Greenberg turns the Freedom of Information Act into a weapon of protest. The result is an expose of FBI misconduct over forty years and a report from the legal trenches by a litigator against the government. Very informative. -- Chris Waldrep, San Francisco State University
A curtain has more or less descended upon the operations of the FBI since the 1975 Senate Church Committee hearings, and this book does more to pull back that curtain than any other source I am aware of. What we do know about FBI operations since 1975 has come in bits and pieces which have been carried in the press on a very episodic basis. Dangers of Dissent puts together all that has been in the public record, plus a great deal which Greenberg has uncovered by using the Freedom of Information Act and by being in personal contact with individuals who have been involved in litigation with the FBI. It also brings together an amazing number of secondary sources, including newspapers, periodical literature, and scholarly books. This book is easily the most important source of information on the post-1975 FBI to date. I would certainly recommend the book to anyone with interests in the FBI, the intelligence agencies, or the current state of American civil liberties. -- Robert Justin Goldstein, Oakland University and The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Ivan Greenberg has written a tour de force on the history and transformation of the FBI in relation to civil liberties and political involvement in a democratic society over the past 50 years. This comprehensive and balanced yet critical analysis of The Dangers of Dissent is an excellent primer on the subject, locating the centrality of its discussion in the rise of an information and surveillance society. -- Gregg Barak, Eastern Michigan University; author of Violence and Nonviolence: Pathways to Understanding
Table of Contents1 Introduction Chapter 2 1. State Crimes 3 "Counter-Intelligence" Methods 4 The FBI Encourages Violence 5 Advice on Fighting Repression 6 "Testilying" and Falsification Chapter 7 2. The Evolution of Seventies Spying 8 COINTELPRO Aims and Ends 9 Congressional Questioning 10 Surveillance of the Left 11 Senate Church Committee 12 Black Bag Jobs 13 Carter Appoints a New Director Chapter 14 3. Has the FBI Really Changed? 15 Reagan Revives Spying 16 Spying on the Nuclear Freeze Movement 17 Spying on African-American Elected Officials 18 Surveillance of Right-wing Groups Chapter 19 4. The Need for Enemies after the Cold War 20 Enemies at the Millennium 21 Peace Dividend 22 Who are the Terrorists? Chapter 23 5. The Terror Scare 24 Denver, New York City 25 "October Plan" 26 Violations, Watch Lists and Databases Chapter 27 6. Information Flow and Political Policing 28 FBI Power and the FOIA 29 Early Lawsuits 30 Police Legitimacy 31 Concealing the Identities of Informers 32 The Privacy Act Chapter 33 7. Suing the FBI for Spying 34 Old Left Plaintiffs 35 Race and the FBI 36 New Left Plaintiffs 37 Plaintiffs Losses 38 Post-COINTELPRO Cases Chapter 39 8. The FBI in the Surveillance Society
