Photo by Paul Sableman | CC BY 2.0
History often follows something of a dialectical pattern – power begets resistance, war generates blowback, and so forth. In 1960s America, it was a brutal imperialist war in Indochina – the bloodiest in U.S. history – that gave rise to some of the largest and most incendiary protests this country has ever seen. There was, at the same time, a crucial third part to this dialectic: massive governmental repression designed to quell those protests. Much is known about the war and the deep opposition to it, far less about the nefarious work of the FBI and kindred intelligence agencies to crush not only the antiwar movement but other forms of social revolt.
Thanks to the remarkably diligent and patient efforts of one activist, filmmaker, and investigator, that state of affairs could dramatically change. Nina Gilden Seavey recently won a landmark federal lawsuit to gain access to a vast collection of files held by U.S. intelligence agencies that for years infiltrated, probed, and sought to disrupt anti-Vietnam War mobilizations of the 1960s and 1970s. There can be no doubt: security-state attempts to destroy or at least impair those mobilizations were considerably more ambitious – and more effective — than generally believed.
Seavey, professor of Media Studies and Public Affairs at George Washington University and whose father was prominent St. Louis civil-rights attorney Louis Gilden, has fixed her sights mainly on…