Suchergebnisse

A startling history of the forlorn war between the Weather Underground and the FBI, based on interviews and 30,000 pages of previously unreleased FBI documents In the summer of 1970 and for years after, photos of Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, and other members of the Weather Underground were emblazoned on FBI wanted posters. In Bad Moon Rising, Arthur Eckstein details how Weather began to engage in serious, ideologically driven, nationally coordinated political violence and how the FBI attempted to monitor, block, and capture its members—and failed. Eckstein further shows that the FBI ordered its informants inside Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to support the faction that became Weather during the tumultuous June 1969 SDS convention, helping to destroy the organization; and that the FBI first underestimated Weather's seriousness, then overestimated its effectiveness, and how Weather outwitted them. Eckstein reveals how an obsessed and panicked President Nixon and his inner circle sought to bypass a cautious J. Edgar Hoover, contributing to the creation of the rogue Plumbers Unit that eventually led to Watergate

This essay reviews a new biography of Agnes Smedley, a radical American writer and journalist who secretly worked for the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party on various endeavors, including espionage. When Smedley was accused in the late 1940s of having been a Soviet spy, she staunchly denied the allegations and depicted herself as an innocent victim of a McCarthyite smear. Ruth Price, the author of the new biography, initially expected to find that Smedley had indeed been unjustly accused of spying for the Soviet Union. But as Price sifted through newly available materials from Russia and China, she made the disconcerting discovery that Smedley had in fact eagerly served as an agent of influence and spy for the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists. This case illustrates some of the complexities that arise when assessing why certain Western intellectuals and government officials decided to become spies for the Soviet Union.

Critical review of Ruth Price's book The Lives of Agnes Smedley (2005) that incorporates previously unavailable documents & witness accounts that reveal an unexpected view of Smedley's life. Price corrects previous biographical errors to narrate Smedley's career work underground for China, a Soviet military intelligence agency, & her long-standing connections with the Chinese Communist movement. Smedley's intense personality & inappropriate behavior made her an uncomfortable espionage agent for the Soviet Union & the Chinese Communists. Her stunning hypocrisy toward the US & deep commitment to the oppressed & poverty stricken is indicative of her transcendence beyond any nationalist metanarrative to the US. References. J. Harwell