The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

In The Time of Illusion, Jonathan Schell had wondered whether America would have the stomach to live with the truths that the 1970s uncovered. First, in 1971, came the exposure of COINTELPRO, a decadeslong project within the FBI to disrupt dissident leftist organizations by illegally infiltrating and spying on them. That same year, the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the New York Times and the Washington Post, revealing to America that its leaders had lied to the country about the war in Vietnam and knew it was unwinnable. In 1974, Richard Nixon resigned as a result of the investigations opened in the aftermath of the Watergate break-in. America would continue unveiling disturbing truths about itself a year later, when the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, better known as the Church Committee, began publishing its findings. Beyond revealing the scope of COINTELPRO in even greater detail, the Church Committee showed that the CIA conducted mind control experiments involving LSD and electroshock therapy on unsuspecting civilians, that the FBI had been opening Americans’ mail without warrants, that the government had spied on Martin Luther King Jr. and attempted to blackmail him, and that the NSA had instituted a massive spying operation conducted with the cooperation of U.S. telecommunications companies.