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50 Years of Covert Operations in the US: Washington's Political Police and the American Working Class.
The 15-year political campaign of the Socialist Workers Party to expose decades of spying and disruption by the FBI and other federal cop agencies targeting working-class organizations and other opponents of government policies. Traces the origins of bipartisan efforts to expand presidential powers and build the "national security" state essential to maintaining capitalist rule. Includes "Imperialist War and the Working Class" by Farrell Dobbs.
: Editor's introduction; 20-page photo section; index.
Also available Spanish, Farsi
: Editor's introduction; 20-page photo section; index.
Also available Spanish, Farsi
126 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2014
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December 21, 2025
As you will learn from this book, the FBI, which is attempting to give itself a better image is and will always be the US political police. This gives us some of that history. The main article in it, by Larry Seigle, originally appeared in New International in 1987, while the (later successful) Socialist Workers Party lawsuit against the FBI was still going on. The book reprints that article, along with a few other articles and an update on the judges' decision, which still stands.
Two other books came out of this lawsuit, which was carried out amidst a massive publicity campaign, and several times was front page news in the New York ‘Times’: COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom and[ book:FBI on Trial: The Victory in the Socialist Workers Party Suit Against Government Spying|7045046].
Don't get taken in by the FBI's current war against Trump. As Leon Trotsky forcefully reminded us in 1939, “‘Under conditions of the bourgeois regime, all suppression of political rights and freedom, no matter whom they are directed against in the beginning, in the end inevitably bear down upon the working class, particularly its most advanced elements. That is a law of history.”
And it's being proved again. around the same time as the invasion of Mar-a-Lago, Cuban solidarity activists in Puerto Rico were being harassed by the FBI. Now there's an indictment against the Black nationalist African People’s Socialist Party and the allied Uhuru Movement.
Also, I recommend The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
Two other books came out of this lawsuit, which was carried out amidst a massive publicity campaign, and several times was front page news in the New York ‘Times’: COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom and[ book:FBI on Trial: The Victory in the Socialist Workers Party Suit Against Government Spying|7045046].
Don't get taken in by the FBI's current war against Trump. As Leon Trotsky forcefully reminded us in 1939, “‘Under conditions of the bourgeois regime, all suppression of political rights and freedom, no matter whom they are directed against in the beginning, in the end inevitably bear down upon the working class, particularly its most advanced elements. That is a law of history.”
And it's being proved again. around the same time as the invasion of Mar-a-Lago, Cuban solidarity activists in Puerto Rico were being harassed by the FBI. Now there's an indictment against the Black nationalist African People’s Socialist Party and the allied Uhuru Movement.
Also, I recommend The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
Displaying 1 of 1 review