The Dangers of Dissent: The FBI and Civil Liberties since 1965

As part of their coverage of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks, National Public Radio and PBS reported on a study of surveillance by private security guards at the Mall of America in Minneapolis. The practice, encouraged by federal policy, has resulted in thick dossiers documenting suspicious activity by shoppers, most of whom were innocently engaged in quite normal behavior. The mall guards routinely pass many of the files to local police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which maintains them, although for what reason remains unclear. This disturbing story, which identifies some of the trade-offs we have made as a nation in pursuit of security since the terrorist attacks, could not have surprised Ivan Greenberg, who documents a long history of similar abuses by the FBI against domestic dissenters since the early days of the Vietnam conflict. His conclusions likewise will not surprise scholars, such as Athan G. Theoharis, who have traced this sad history in numerous books and articles. But Greenberg aims to tell the story from the bottom up rather than the top down: he uses evidence from a sizable number of FBI surveillance files, obtained in truncated form under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and forty-seven antispying lawsuits against the agency to construct his account. From those sources, he concludes that the FBI has engaged systematically in widespread and persistent campaigns to obstruct dissent, resorting to questionable, if not illegal, tactics and then deceiving the public and Congress about the extent of its efforts.