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To: H-1960S@H-NET.MSU.EDU Subject: O'Reilly Reviews Cunningham's _There's Something Happening Here_ H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-List@h-net.msu.edu (December 2004) David Cunningham. _There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence_. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. xvi + 366 pp. Tables and figures, appendices, notes, references, index. $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 0-520-23997-0. Reviewed for H-List by Kenneth O’Reilly, Professor Emeritus, University of Alaska Anchorage Protecting Your Freedom Formal FBI counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs) began in 1956 with an effort to expose, disrupt, or otherwise neutralize the Communist Party of the United States. Other efforts followed in the 1960s against such specific targets as the Socialist Workers Party and Puerto Rican nationalists as well as such generic targets as White Hate groups, Black Hate groups, and the New Left. In 1971, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover terminated all COINTELPROs after an anti-Vietnam War activist group burglarized a bureau resident agency in Media, Pennsylvania, and liberated dozens of documents. One COINTEL-New Left selection noted the goal of making activists believe that an FBI agent was hiding behind every mailbox, tree, whatever. Eventually, the principal headquarters files were released under the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 (as amended in 1974) and are readily available for purchase by research libraries through various microfilm companies. FBI counterintelligence had nothing to do with law enforcement. In fact, these extra-legal and extra-constitutional forays were so raw that under the Black Hate rubric, to cite just one example, bureau agents received cash rewards for egging on a murderous feud between the Black Panther Party of Huey Newton and US, a cultural nationalist group led by Maulana Karenga (who went on to found the Kwanzaa celebration). Methods included sending fraudulent letters to various Panther offices that included a body count tracking the feud’s progress: US – 6, Panthers – 0.[1] David Cunningham begins his study of COINTELPRO by framing broad historical questions. Was FBI behavior aberrant, a result of the unique politics and mass movements of the 1960s? Or did the fifteen-year period beginning in 1956 simply represent a natural evolution of bureau behavior dating back to its founding under the Theodore Roosevelt administration? In both cases, as Cunningham notes, historians too often explain things by reference to the idiosyncrasies of J. Edgar Hoover and his long reign (1924-1972). Unfortunately, the author leaves these questions in preference for a narrow focus on the “origins, functions, and inner workings of the COINTEL programs themselves” (p. xi). Cunningham narrows that focus even more by concentrating on the principal targets of the White Hate and New Left programs, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Here he detects a difference in motivation. While FBI officials attempted to control segregationist violence because they objected to the Klan’s methods, they sought to eliminate SDS because they objected to the anti-war movement’s ends. The book begins with an overview of FBI history from its founding in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation (the word “Federal” was added in 1935). The next few chapters include background on the KKK and the New Left in the 1960s; FBI target identification; specific COINTELPRO actions proposed, approved, and implemented; and an analysis of the program’s impact. These are followed by a chapter on post-1971 efforts against the American Indian Movement (AIM) and Committee in Support of the People of El Salvador (CISPES) that might lead a reasonable person to believe that COINTELPRO continued as a less-structured operation after Hoover’s termination order. The final chapter analyzes counterintelligence prospects and legacies for the so-called age of terrorism that commenced with the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. Cunningham, a sociologist, includes two extensive appendices—a typology of COINTELPRO actions and an analysis of organizational processes and outcomes. A table listing attacks on the anti-war movement notes both function (restrict ability to protest, break down internal organization, displace conflict, etc.) and form (plant evidence, utilize informants and media sources, supply resources to anti-New Left groups, etc.). The author employs logistic regression models to determine what factors influenced target selection. He concludes that the size of a dissident group, level of activity, and proclivity toward violence were less important than whether the group was national or strictly local. A third appendix consists of a nine-page target list that highlights, under the White Hate rubric, such surprising entries as the National Rifle Association (NRA). The author does not explain how or why the FBI zeroed in on the gun lobby. There is no NRA entry in the index. This is a careful book with few obvious errors—a notable exception being the identification of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy as chair of an investigations subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Given the subject mater, some might find the writing unusually restrained, although there are a few end-of-the-line jibes at “the jingoistic tenor of the [George W.] Bush administration” (p. 230). Others might find that the conclusions are so measured as to be hollow. “Once again,” the last line on the last page (p. 231) reads, “our ability to maintain our freedom requires vigilance, both by the FBI and the American public.” The COINTELPRO story makes clear that Hoover’s FBI demonstrated more vigilance that our freedoms could stand. Notes [1]. For a recent account of this feud, see Scot Brown, _Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism_ (New York: New York University Press, 2003). Copyright © 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H- Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
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