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

By James Kirkpatrick Davis

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 to achieve one goal--the end of the war in Vietnam. Under J. Edgar Hoover's direction, the FBI went from an intelligence collection agency during WWII, to an organization that tried to undermine protest movements like the New Left. Hoover viewed the New Left as a threat to the American way of life, so in an enormous effort of questionable legality, the FBI implemented some 285 counter-intelligence (COINTELPRO) actions against the New Left. The purpose of COINTELPRO was to infiltrate, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize the entire movement. In truth, the FBI intended to wage war on the antiwar movement.

In this real-life spy story--J. Edgar Hoover and his G-Men, wiretaps, burglaries, misinformation campaigns, informants, and plants--Davis offers a glimpse into the endlessly fascinating world of the Sixties. Kent State, Columbia University, Vietnam Moratorium Day, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Cambodian invasion and March Against Death are all examined in this riveting account of the longest youth protest movement in American history. This is the only book devoted entirely to the New Left COINTELPRO, and the first one written after the declassification of more than 6,000 counterintelligence documents that reveal the true nature and extent of the FBI's Assault on the Left.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275954552
• ISBN13: 9780275954550
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Daniel W. Baggott, M.A.

The New Left movement was founded in 1962 with the idea of organizing a massive protest against the Vietnam War. Historians have written extensively about the movement and its crusade to expose the American people about how the war became a quagmire with no end in sight. However, little is known about the federal government's reaction against the New Left, particularly the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Thanks to James Krikpatrick Davis, we know way more about the FBI's counterassault against the antiwar movement with his intriguing book Assault on the Left: The FBI and the Sixties Antiwar Movement. Using more than 6,000 declassified FBI documents and other primary sources, Davis provides an in-depth look of the Bureau's counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO; it's goal was to "infiltrate, disrupt, and neutralize" the entire movement. The FBI operation, Davis contends, had no oversight by either the Justice Department or Congress and allowed to run rampant in order to disrupt the New Left. As the oldest republic in the world, the author contends that America "should perhaps know more than any nation on earth about individual liberties" (page 214) and that the federal government failed to provide a check on the COINTELPRO operation to safeguard individual liberties. This book somewhat fits in with the rest of the historical literature of the 1960s despite the author of not being a professional historian but rather a student of history for over thirty years. It provides a good, detailed description of the FBI counterintelligence program against the New Left but sometimes the writing style was a little choppy and repetitious. Finally, this book is recommended for any history buff and for professional historians as well to get a glimpse of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation against the antiwar movement. Therefore I give it 4 out of 5 stars.