A Threat of the First Magnitude: FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration from the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union 1962-1974

Aaron Leonard and Conor Gallagher, A Threat of the First Magnitude: FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration from the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union 1962-1974 (London: Repeater Books, 2018) 330 pp. $11.10.

A Threat of the First Magnitude contributes to two separate, though overlapping, fields of historical inquiry. First is the growing body of work documenting the covert activities of the FBI. This field has expanded over the last half-century due not only to scholarly research but to the resolute determination of reformers and revolutionaries who were in many cases themselves the targets of the FBI. Indeed, since 1971, when members of the Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI broke into the Bureau’s offices in Media, Pennsylvania and liberated all the files, evidence has steadily accumulated, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that America’s secret police are as treacherous and contemptible as any in “totalitarian” states. One has only to glance at the Wikipedia entry on the Bureau to get a sense of this nefarious history. Leonard and Gallagher present new data and a nuanced interpretive framework, shedding light on previously unseen or overlooked material.

The second field is the Sixties. A voluminous literature covering the movements, organizations, wars and revolutions that shook the world between 1960 and 1980 is continually being added to not only as new data are uncovered but as the impact of the period continues to be felt. What Leonard and Gallagher bring to this field is a necessary corrective to certain distortions of the historical record, especially the effects that China, Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution had on social movements in the US. More specifically, this refers to the organizations that comprised the New Communist Movement which arose in the late 1960s and for a time had considerable influence, one certainly disproportionate to the size of its actual membership. The book’s title refers, in fact, to a quote from the FBI claiming that, in 1976, the Revolutionary Communist Party constituted “a threat of the first magnitude.” The authors go on to link these two fields of inquiry in thought-provoking ways.

Sifting through thousands of pages of FBI files, obtained largely through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Leonard and Gallagher reveal how the FBI arrived at its assessment of the RCP and what the Bureau did on that basis. The authors make two strong claims at the outset. First, regarding prevailing notions in both the aforementioned fields of inquiry, they write: “On the surface it appears the FBI in the Sixties and Seventies is a subject that has been plowed over and then over again, with little new to learn. What we found, however, was quite the opposite. Beyond the ‘usual suspects’ – the Black Panther Party, the Weatherman, a few key individuals and celebrities – a whole other realm remained untouched. Such groups as the Communist Party USA, the Socialist Workers Party, the Progressive Labor Party, and the Revolutionary Union, have been relegated to the margins, yet in many respects ‘that is where the bodies are buried.’”

The second claim is that a distinction must be made between the infamous COINTELPRO and counterintelligence, as such. Since COINTELRPO is an acronym for Counterintelligence Program, it might seem such a distinction is hair-splitting, or worse, a distraction from the substance of the matter, which is, after all, how the government sought by largely illegal means to subvert the largely legal activities of critics of that government. But what Leonard and Gallagher found through tireless research was that in spite of the much greater notoriety of cases involving the Black Panther Party, American Indian Movement, Weatherman, Martin Luther King and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Bureau devoted considerably more resources over a much longer period of time to infiltrating the Communist Party USA. In addition, SDS, and subsequently, New Communist Movement organizations such as the Revolutionary Union, along with the Socialist Workers Party and other Trotskyist groups, had larger numbers of infiltrators than their better-known counterparts and that many of these infiltrators went undetected for years. The point is not a minor one since it reveals the main focus of the FBI’s activity as well as the nature of that activity. More specifically, the role of informants was crucial to the Bureau’s work and it was not just any informant, let alone one fitting the classic description of agents provocateurs. On the contrary, what Leonard and Gallagher show is that the informants on whom the Bureau concentrated and relied were in the top ranks of the organizations they infiltrated and were not (as in the Panther and AIM cases) involved in murders, shootouts and violent disruption but rather remained trusted and influential leaders over extended periods of time. Though the role such informants played was greater than mere data-gathering and did include efforts to stir dissension, prevent alliances from bearing fruit, or subvert projects that might enjoy success, it was only after years of activity that these operatives were identified.

The bulk of the book is comprised of case studies of particular informants starting with a context-setting account of Roman Malinovsky, a Tsarist agent who became a leading Bolshevik, fooling all his ostensible comrades, including Lenin, until he was exposed. Next up is Morris Childs and his brother Jack who were high ranking members of the CPUSA, attending meetings with Khrushchev and Soviet leaders and bringing funds from the USSR back to the CPUSA. Childs eventually met with many leaders of Communist Parties, including Mao Zedong. In fact, the role that Childs played in providing information to three presidents, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon, had a direct bearing on policy decisions. Among such decisions was the persecution of Martin Luther King. Childs informed his handlers of King’s importance in international affairs, the sympathy with which his cause was regarded by other governments and the harm this was doing to the reputation of the US. Contrary to the still prevailing notion that J. Edgar Hoover’s sociopathic personality was responsible, the evidence reveals a systematic campaign to destroy King on the part of the US government.

What follows are chapters dealing with the FBI’s creation of a “Maoist” sect, “The Ad Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party,” for the spread of disinformation, a thorough account of Richard Aoki’s case, providing irrefutable evidence that Aoki was a longstanding FBI informant, rounding off with several chapters dealing with the infiltration of America’s genuinely Maoist groups. These chapters are less important for their detail – which is frankly tedious – than for their purpose in revealing not only the extent and effectiveness of FBI infiltration but what was actually at stake in broader political terms. This is particularly noteworthy given the fact that even copiously researched studies of America’s intelligence agencies fail to mention investigation of “Maoists” even though such cases bear on matters of strategic interest to the US government. Indeed, this raises questions about Sixties scholarship in general.

While the New Left has been covered extensively, one of its key components, the New Communist Movement, has been virtually ignored by historians. To date, only a couple of books, Max Elbaum’s Revolution In the Air and Leonard and Gallagher’s previous effort, Heavy Radicals, have been devoted to the subject. Is this due to a consensus, arrived at by evidence-based research, that America’s Maoists were insignificant when compared with Weatherman, the Black Panthers or AIM? Leonard and Gallagher challenge that notion, presenting evidence that the New Communist Movement was, for a time, larger and more influential than most of its competitors in the field of radical organizing and that, furthermore, this was the basis for the FBI’s assessment and subsequent response. The research also points to underlying reasons this aspect of Sixties scholarship has been smothered beneath a cloud of dismissal.

On the one hand, the RCP alienated so many people from so many different quarters of oppositional politics that discussion of its origins and early promise have been rendered anathema, to this day. On the other, the FBI and the government more generally were only too glad to ensure the erasure of any trace of that promise, especially certain concepts that might appeal to the public at large. “Workers of the world, unite!” is still a dangerous idea. Indeed, the erasure of America’s Maoists is not only a mistake for historical inquiry, but it contributes to the FBI’s ongoing efforts to disrupt and derail current organizations and movements. To a large extent radical or revolutionary opponents of capitalism and/or US policy (including Maoists) have failed to accurately measure their own strengths and weaknesses. All too often the strategies and tactics that were most effective have been misappraised, then jettisoned, in favor of one or another dead end, including violence for its own sake, media-playacting, vacuous academic theorizing and various forms of identity politics. Leonard and Gallagher show that, for a brief period, the threat of a revolutionary movement inside the US, linking with its counterparts in China, Vietnam, Cuba and other “Third World” countries, was, in the eyes of the US government, more serious than even participants in that movement realized.

In sum, this book is arguing for a reappraisal. It calls for a more thorough and empirical evaluation of the role of the government, the role of different movements and organizations and, ultimately, the role of ideas, in the history of the United States. While it offers no prescriptions it does suggest that adherence to principle, discussed openly and widely in democratic organization, is the best means of neutralizing agents of repression while at the same time advancing the cause of human liberation.

Mat Callahan
Editorial Board member, Socialism and Democracy
info@matcallahan.com