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

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.