Spying on America: The FBI’s Domestic Counterintelligence Program

Exploring all five COINTELPRO operations, this work chronicles the period when the FBI monitored - and in many cases disrupted - virtually the entire social and political protest movement in America. COINTELPRO, an acronym for Counterintelligence Programme, directed its efforts against the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Klu Klux Klan, black nationalist hate groups, and the New Left movement. From 1956 until COINTELPRO’s exposure in 1971, the FBI expanded its domestic surveillance programmes and increasingly employed questionable, even unlawful methods. Davis demonstrates how the system of checks and balances designed to prevent such occurrences was simply not functioning - until an illegal act uncovered the secret activities.