Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department's Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent

ISBN-13: 9780299228965 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 470 str.

William H. Jr. Thomas

Opis

In a study with significant relevance to questions of government authority in contemporary America, author William H. Thomas argues that the U.S. Justice Department, in its efforts to suppress anti-war sentiment during World War I, went considerably beyond its official charge of prosecuting objectors through espionage and sedition statutes. Drawing on a massive collection of microfilmed reports written by Department detectives from around the nation, Thomas demonstrates how they simultaneously augmented this more open, public mission with subtler forms of coercion, stifling opposition by engaging in covert methods of surveillance and intimidation-a new and significant finding. Based on this research, he concludes that the secret methods used in subsequent decades against the left and other organizations regarded as subversive were pioneered during, rather than after, World War I.