Nbadan
08-18-2013, 01:37 AM
Rosenfeld's book, Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power, is now out in paperback. It details how the FBI employed fake reporters to plant ideas and shape public opinion about the student movement; how they planted stories with real reporters; and how they even managed — with the help of then-Gov. Ronald Reagan — to get the UC Berkeley's President Clark Kerr fired.
To research the book, Rosenfeld pored over 300,000 pages of records obtained over 30 years from five lengthy Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against the FBI.
The records "show that during the Cold War, the FBI sought to change the course of history by secretly interceding in events, by manipulating public opinion and taking sides in partisan politics," Rosenfeld says.
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/16/212381996/student-subversives-and-the-fbis-dirty-tricks
For me, one of the gems of that report was learning that Reagan was an FBI informer:
Starting in Hollywood in the 1940s, Ronald Reagan developed a special relationship with the FBI. He became an FBI informer, reporting other actors whom he suspected of subversive activities, and later when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, the FBI had wide access to the Guild's information. At one point, the Guild turned over information on 54 actors it was investigating as possible subversives.
http://m.npr.org/news/Arts+%26+Life/159373688
His SAG members were begging him for assistance in keeping them from appearing before the HUAC and McCarthy hearings, without knowing that he had already turned them in. J. Edgar Hoover illegally assisted his election as California's Governor.
To research the book, Rosenfeld pored over 300,000 pages of records obtained over 30 years from five lengthy Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against the FBI.
The records "show that during the Cold War, the FBI sought to change the course of history by secretly interceding in events, by manipulating public opinion and taking sides in partisan politics," Rosenfeld says.
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/16/212381996/student-subversives-and-the-fbis-dirty-tricks
For me, one of the gems of that report was learning that Reagan was an FBI informer:
Starting in Hollywood in the 1940s, Ronald Reagan developed a special relationship with the FBI. He became an FBI informer, reporting other actors whom he suspected of subversive activities, and later when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, the FBI had wide access to the Guild's information. At one point, the Guild turned over information on 54 actors it was investigating as possible subversives.
http://m.npr.org/news/Arts+%26+Life/159373688
His SAG members were begging him for assistance in keeping them from appearing before the HUAC and McCarthy hearings, without knowing that he had already turned them in. J. Edgar Hoover illegally assisted his election as California's Governor.