While most studies of the FBI focus on the long tenure of Director J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972), The Dangers of Dissent shifts the ground to the recent past. The book examines FBI practices in the domestic security field through the prism of "political policing." The monitoring of dissent is exposed, as are the Bureau's controversial "counterintelligence" operations designed to disrupt political activity. This book reveals that attacks on civil liberties focus on a wide range of domestic critics on both the Left and the Right. This book traces the evolution of FBI spying from 1965 to the present through the eyes of those under investigation, as well as through numerous FBI documents, never used before in scholarly writing, that were recently declassified using the Freedom of Information Act or released during litigation (Greenberg v. FBI). Ivan Greenberg considers the diverse ways that government spying has crossed the line between legal intelligence-gathering to criminal action. While a number of studies focus on government policies under George W. Bush's "War on Terror," Greenberg is one of the few to situate the primary role of the FBI as it shaped and was reshaped by the historical context of the new American Surveillance Society.
- ISBN10 6612936649
- ISBN13 9786612936647
- Publish Date 16 November 2010 (first published 14 October 2010)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 28 September 2011
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
- Imprint Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
- Format eBook
- Pages 345
- Language English