After several months, yesterday I finally finished Seth Rosenfeld’s terrific book Subversives – The FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power.
usually when I ‘m reading a book like this and I then pick up other books while reading it, I most time don’t go back to the book. This book an exception the book is just so good and the story that it tells about the FBI and the student protests at the University of California so much a part of my past that I couldn’t give up! While I was at the University of Florida (1970-1974) I was involved in two campus demonstrations one concerning black enrollment and studies and the other an antiwar demonstration after the announcement of the mining of Haiphong Harbor, etc nether approached the violence that was seen at Berkeley!
Subversives is a fascinating book based on over 250,000 pages of FBI files, whose release the agency spent over a million dollars trying to stop, it took Seth Rosenfeld over thirty years to get the files released, but the fight was worth it. Subversives tells the story of the FBI’s program to combat the student protests not only at Berkeley but throughout the country. The book chronicles the story of the FBI’s surveillance, infiltration,planted news stories,poison-pen letters, and secret detention lists all revolving around the Free Speech Movement and other protests at the University of California , Berkeley!
The book centers around the intertwining of the lives of Clark Kerr, the liberal Quaker President of the University, Mario Savio, the leader of the Free Speech Movement and Ronald Reagan, former actor, President of the Screen Actors Guild and future President of the US. While we all knew that the FBI was keeping track of leftist radicals during this period I don’t know if anyone knew the extents of the agency’s actions, beyond J. Edgar Hoover’s inner circle!! Since I was young and not that politically active in the early to mid-60s a lot of the action in the book was new to me, I particularly unfamiliar or forgot the fight and protest that arose around People’s Park. What really struck me about Reagan was how the events of these early years shaped his actions as President.
Here’s some praise for the book…..
“Subversives is more than a documentary history it has the insight that comes only with relentless reporting. This book is the classic history of our most powerful police agency and one of the most influential political figures of our time secretly joining forces” – Lowell Bergman investigative report for The New York Times and Frontline
“Subversives will shock even those who have become used to the national security state and its excesses. With this book,Seth Rosenfeld restores the California tradition of courageous muckracking of Lincoln Steffens, and the sharp indictment of the powerful that we associate with Jack London.” Ishmael Reed author of Juice! and Mumbo Jumbo.
If you are someone like me who lived through the sixties and seventies this book will bring back a lot of memories and maybe bring back some of that old fire. The actions of the police and government officials during this time should be studied because as we watch the action in Ferguson, Missouri, the police are responding in much the same way as they did back then, and you know what they say “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” Let’s hope not! (Book 20 for 2014)!
Related articles
- The FBI’s secret war against Berkeley (berkeleyside.com)
- Reagan’s FBI Past (thedailybeast.com)
- ‘Subversives’ Tells How Academic Freedom Came Under Fire and Was Changed Forever (Review) (popmatters.com)