Seth Rosenfeld

Seth Rosenfeld’s Subversives, an exposé of J. Eager Hoover and the FBI’s secret campaign called COINTELPRO designed to track and/or ruin thousands of Californians, is both intense and gripping. Rosenfeld names a rogue’s gallery of FBI surrogates, and co-conspirators, including Governor Ronald Reagan, Edward Meese (Reagan’s Chief of Staff), San Francisco reporter Ed Montgomery, Vice-Chancellor Alex Sherriffs (the mole in the U.C. Berkeley Administration), Herbert Ellingwood (Meese’s go-between to the FBI about Reagan’s plan to harass Berkeley targets with code and tax violations), Major General Glenn C. Ames (National Guard Commander responsible for gassing homes, stores, a hospital, and students during the People’s Park troubles), Sheriff Frank Madigan (whose guards abused People’s Park detainees at Santa Rita Jail), and Richard Aoki (FBI agent provocateur who armed the Black Panthers before a confrontation at Sather Gate). There are more, but these named above show how wide and high this conspiracy went. Sprinkled with telling quotes from interviews and documentation, Subversives author Rosenfeld names FBI initiatives, digs up the who, what, when, how and where of secret contacts, and confirms findings by interview, research and over two decades of Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits filed on the FBI to cut through the lies and get at the truth.

Power corrupts. Secrecy breeds contempt for others, and Hoover had a lot of both to hide. If an unsuspecting individual disagreed with Hoover’s politics, that person was tagged communist or subversive, assigned a numbered data file, and tracked without decency or due process. Often interrogation, covert political manipulation, espionage, harassment, smear campaigns, and job loss resulted. Rosenfeld covers early events, beginning with the avuncular, but two-faced and ambitious Ronald Reagan, who informed for the FBI on his Hollywood “friends” while President of the Screen Actors’ Guild. A blacklist resulted, ruining livelihoods. Reagan’s own arrogance, intolerance, and disrespect for others would set the scene for the1960’s, when then Governor Reagan continued his pattern of betrayal, using a web of cooperative and secret information sharing between the Governor’s office, FBI, police, military, and highly placed moles in educational institutions such as U.C. Berkeley.

Both Hoover and Reagan held the University of California, Berkeley in particular enmity, and Rosenfeld shows their interference to be systemic and extensive. Think working to deny tenure or remove professors, fire administrators, spy on non-violent protestors, curtail student speech, arrest those opposed to the Vietnam War, and mow down the People’s Park gardeners. The FBI amassed secret lists and reports, paid informers, did black bag break-ins, invaded privacy to copy private documents, set up wiretaps, spread disinformation and smear campaigns; and fed information gathered under-the-table to Reagan, who cooperated with police and called up national guard soldiers to perform the heavy work at the University and city of Berkeley--arrests, beatings, shotguns loaded with birdshot (for wounding) and buckshot (to maim or kill), even using a helicopter to spray tear gas. Those whose opinions did not embrace far-right politics, were in for a Kafkaesque investigation at best, and/or treated to martial law, arrest by cops right out of an storm trooper scenario (Santa Rita Jail 1969); and at the worst, to face a life-threatening encounter with the business end of a bayonet (People’s Park 1969). If not on life support, civil rights were on the critical list.

Rosenfeld had the investigative chops to drill down through years of FBI obfuscation to uncover enough misconduct to file four FOIA requests and lawsuits to force the Bureau to disgorge a room full of files exposing the sad truth. Disturbing, maddening, at times horrifying, Subversives is riveting read for anyone concerned about civil liberties and our democracy. A new appendix to the 2013 edition discusses the Freedom of Information lawsuits filed in support of this book. Contains extensive footnotes. Lists of organizations and people interviewed. Indexed. Highly recommended.___Val Morehouse, Reviewer.… (plus d'informations)