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FBI Secrets: An Agent's Exposé
From the '50s to the '70s in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, Swearingen records his participation in campaigns against Communists and Moslems, Weathermen, Black Panthers and other organizations.eaders interesteed in domestic repression or U.S. history more generally will find invaluable primary source material in this historic expose. This is the first insider's account of the COINTELPRO era.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 10, 2021
When M. Wesley Swearingen joined the FBI in 1951 as a young, idealistic agent, he didn't know that he would learn the expertise of burglary or that J. Edgar Hoover would instruct agents to violate extortion and kidnapping laws. He wasn't aware that FBI agents would plot assassinations of American citizens, such as the Black Panthers Fred Bennett, Frank Diggs, Sandra Lane Pratt, Jimmie Carr, Bunchy Carter, and Jon Huggin, and put innocent people in jail just because they are black or Native American — because yes, the FBI was intensely racist; the agents who had joined the Bureau at the same time as Swearingen, he noticed, were all white Anglo-Saxons, and Director Hoover did not tolerate "women, Negroes, or minorities" as Special Agents. (This could have been a red flag, but Swearingen came from a family that adored Hoover, and it had been impressed on him that the director's methods and decisions should never be questioned.)
For many years, Swearingen remained a most unlikely person to become a whistle-blower. He idolized J. Edgar Hoover. He was a young overzealous patriot, "a real 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' who loved his country." He was a dangerous person to have in public service because when there appeared to be a threat to the U.S government, he placed the other agents and himself above the law. When he did "bag jobs" — illegal break-ins — against suspected Communists in Chicago, he was violating the Constitution of the United States with the approval of the FBI, not protecting the Constitution from the alien traditions we in the FBI defined as "un-American," "subversive," and "communistic," as the Bureau claimed. However, at the age of twenty-five Swearingen was all for his country – right or wrong.
Only much later, after more than twenty-five years of service, did he become completely disillusioned — and for a reason. He had witnessed the agency target organizations as different as the Black Panther Party, American Indian Movement,the Weathermen faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, the Communist and Socialist Workers parties, and onward still, to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Every Mother for Peace, even Duke University. To discredit such "deviants", the FBI employed fair means and foul (mostly foul): it circulated defamatory rumors about them in their communities or planted false reports about them in the media; it caused "politically objectionable individuals" to be evicted from their homes and fired from their jobs by contacting their landlords and employers; it orchestrated the repeated arrests on fake charges of those targeted; it obtained the conviction and consequent imprisonment of "key activists" by introducing fabricated evidence against them at trial; it provoked inter-group violence, and even outright assassinated selected leaders.
Because the FBI's dishonesty and corruption were so glaring and widespread, by the end of his tenure Swearingen had lost his ability to distinguish between different levels of corruption, writes he. In the beginning of his FBI career, he had been shocked by the fact that senior agents encouraged newbies to cheat on exams. After twenty years of seeing the whole Bureau cheat on examinations, create phony informants and reports, manufacture fake statistics, lie to the Department of Justice and the U.S Congress etc., though, he had come to accept is as the only way to survive in the Bureau. The fact that Swearingen saw the framing for murder and subsequent life imprisonment of Elmer Pratt, the Los Angeles leader of the Black Panther Party, as a target of COINTELPRO, as about a two on a scale of one to ten is enough to tell us volumes about the FBI.
Swearingen's book is a treasure. Here is a career veteran of the bureau's clandestine wars against political freedom in America — a participant in literally hundreds of burglaries, disinformation campaigns, and worse — giving us shocking details. For instance, he recounts a drinking scene in which another agent, a friend with whom he had long worked in Chicago, confessed the burear's involvement in the December 1969 assassinations of Illinois Panthbr leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. He also casts light on the FBI's more-or-less continuous subversion of "objectionable" electoral candidates, the hyper-reactionary racial and sexual attitudes of the average agent, the use of street gangs during the late-60s and early- 70s as surrogates with which to destroy the Panthers, and much more.
FBI SECRETS gives one plenty food for thought and raises many important questions about patrotism and the trust we have in governmental agencies whose men's faces we've never seen.
For many years, Swearingen remained a most unlikely person to become a whistle-blower. He idolized J. Edgar Hoover. He was a young overzealous patriot, "a real 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' who loved his country." He was a dangerous person to have in public service because when there appeared to be a threat to the U.S government, he placed the other agents and himself above the law. When he did "bag jobs" — illegal break-ins — against suspected Communists in Chicago, he was violating the Constitution of the United States with the approval of the FBI, not protecting the Constitution from the alien traditions we in the FBI defined as "un-American," "subversive," and "communistic," as the Bureau claimed. However, at the age of twenty-five Swearingen was all for his country – right or wrong.
Only much later, after more than twenty-five years of service, did he become completely disillusioned — and for a reason. He had witnessed the agency target organizations as different as the Black Panther Party, American Indian Movement,the Weathermen faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, the Communist and Socialist Workers parties, and onward still, to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Every Mother for Peace, even Duke University. To discredit such "deviants", the FBI employed fair means and foul (mostly foul): it circulated defamatory rumors about them in their communities or planted false reports about them in the media; it caused "politically objectionable individuals" to be evicted from their homes and fired from their jobs by contacting their landlords and employers; it orchestrated the repeated arrests on fake charges of those targeted; it obtained the conviction and consequent imprisonment of "key activists" by introducing fabricated evidence against them at trial; it provoked inter-group violence, and even outright assassinated selected leaders.
Because the FBI's dishonesty and corruption were so glaring and widespread, by the end of his tenure Swearingen had lost his ability to distinguish between different levels of corruption, writes he. In the beginning of his FBI career, he had been shocked by the fact that senior agents encouraged newbies to cheat on exams. After twenty years of seeing the whole Bureau cheat on examinations, create phony informants and reports, manufacture fake statistics, lie to the Department of Justice and the U.S Congress etc., though, he had come to accept is as the only way to survive in the Bureau. The fact that Swearingen saw the framing for murder and subsequent life imprisonment of Elmer Pratt, the Los Angeles leader of the Black Panther Party, as a target of COINTELPRO, as about a two on a scale of one to ten is enough to tell us volumes about the FBI.
Swearingen's book is a treasure. Here is a career veteran of the bureau's clandestine wars against political freedom in America — a participant in literally hundreds of burglaries, disinformation campaigns, and worse — giving us shocking details. For instance, he recounts a drinking scene in which another agent, a friend with whom he had long worked in Chicago, confessed the burear's involvement in the December 1969 assassinations of Illinois Panthbr leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. He also casts light on the FBI's more-or-less continuous subversion of "objectionable" electoral candidates, the hyper-reactionary racial and sexual attitudes of the average agent, the use of street gangs during the late-60s and early- 70s as surrogates with which to destroy the Panthers, and much more.
FBI SECRETS gives one plenty food for thought and raises many important questions about patrotism and the trust we have in governmental agencies whose men's faces we've never seen.
September 12, 2012
Wow. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. . .
I find it amazing that the "black bag" operations could ever take place to begin with...
And the FBI had the audacity to raid his home while he was writing his book... Oddly enough though I wasn't surprised when they finally did it. It only confirmed the twisted system he had alleged they were.
I find it amazing that the "black bag" operations could ever take place to begin with...
And the FBI had the audacity to raid his home while he was writing his book... Oddly enough though I wasn't surprised when they finally did it. It only confirmed the twisted system he had alleged they were.
June 27, 2009
Short overview of fbi political repression in the 50s-70s written by a former fbi agent who came public with government wrong-doing.
This stuff is well documented including in the congressional record during the 70s, so conspiracy theory it is not.
Many have feared the "patriot act" would legalize all the crimes of this era.
This stuff is well documented including in the congressional record during the 70s, so conspiracy theory it is not.
Many have feared the "patriot act" would legalize all the crimes of this era.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews