FBI Secrets: An Agents Expose [Paperback]

M. Wesley Swearingen (Author), Ward Churchill (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

An agent from 1951 to 1977, Swearingen collaborated on two previous books the bureau no doubt hates: Agents of Repression and The COINTELPRO Papers. His new book is autobiographical, tracing his involvement with the FBI from the time he signed on after World War II to his retirement and beyond, as Swearingen began to testify to "FBI chicanery" on behalf of bureau victims. Swearingen began his career doing "black bag jobs" on Communists in Chicago. In Kentucky and New York City, he spent years doing serious criminal investigations, which had been his goal in joining the FBI. But Hoover fixated on the threat posed by such groups as the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, Swearingen explains, and the Constitution once more went out the window. Some of his stories (e.g., the bureau's harassment of Jean Seberg) are familiar, but Swearingen is more explicit than most on the FBI's role in the police raid that killed Chicago Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and in the framing of Los Angeles Panther Geronimo Pratt for a crime he didn't commit. FBI Secrets won't win awards for graceful prose, but it does shed new light on an important pattern of corruption and repression. Mary Carroll --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

A former FBI agent exposes the agency's fallacies and wars against political freedom in this country, telling of intrigue, sanctioned murder, and perjury alike. This first-person insider's account will prove intriguing and educational for any interested in secret agency actions. America First! Bill Kauffman Prometheus Books 0-87975-956-9 $25. -- Midwest Book Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: South End Press (1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896085015
• ISBN-13: 978-0896085015
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,116,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Swearingen's Choice: The Grey Zone, January 23, 2003

By 

Kenneth R. Kahn (Baltimore, Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: FBI Secrets: An Agents Expose (Hardcover)

After a lifetime of devoted service conducting illegal wiretaps, break-ins and burglaries, known as "black bag jobs" former FBI agent Wesley Swearingen decided to tell all about an FBI that few people really know.

To be fair, government employees, no matter what agency employs them, are awash in an ocean of fraud, waste, corruption and general mismanagement perpetuated by their so called "supervisors." These individuals are generally unemployable, mediocre and incompetent. Thank God for government service, the largest, most pernicious public employment and welfare system in existence next to the Pentagon and its arms suppliers, or they'd be on the streets.

"FBI Secrets" does more than expose specific secrets documenting COINTELPRo-type programs designed to deny and destroy the rights of American citizens to actively engage in political dissent, it exposes the moral dilemma faced by those who perpetuate them. Admittedly, this agent waited until after retirement to expose what he knows; but he reveals to the reader the torment of an agent who became disillusioned with the agency yet had a career to protect.

Swearingen could have simply walked away. it would not have stopped these invasive violations of American's civil liberties but, at least, he would nt have been involved. With hindsight, and through the work of many investigative journalists and authors, information concerning how the FBI violates the civil rights of American citizens is abundantly avaialble.

The history of the founding of the FBI, beginning in 1908 with the corrupt Bureau of Investigation, the Palmer raids, orchestrated by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and executed by an unknown federal bureaucrat named J. Edgar Hoover, stands in stark contrast to the James Stewart inspired cinematic travesty, "The FBI Story." Certainly, the author's slim, yet powerful volume, stands as a beacon of truth next to this cinematic garbargio.

The peculiarities of the Director, his life-long homosexual relationship with Clyde Tolson, his liasons with other rich and pwerful gay men, such as Lewis Rosenthiel of Schenley, the red baiting Roy Cohn and New York's Cardinal Spellman made, in large measure, what the Bureau what it is today, the nation's political police.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars COINTELPRO horrors, March 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: FBI Secrets: An Agents Expose (Paperback)

The author is a former agent and as such has written the most recent and most authoritative insider account which describes the day-to-day office level details of COINTELPRO (when it functioned illegally). The keeping of secret lists of people to be arrested and sent to detention camps is morally repulsive enough,but the bureau did far more than this. It broke into buildings to gather evidence, planted bugs and incriminating evidence. It used this illegally obtained material to blackmail others, including public figures. It directly interfered in the administration of justice by intimidating witnesses, in some cases having its informants perjure themselves by coming forth with false testimony. It even had people murdered.
Knowledge of such activites is of particular importance now because of the legalization and reestablishment of COINTELPRO which occurred with the enactment of the Patriot Act. This event totally changes the security landscape both for activists and for corporate America. Its implications are guaranteed to be a force chilling to democratic ideals, a new dark period in American history. This book should be a starting point for any corporate strategist charged with maintaining an even foothold as acts of repression unfold. As checks and balances disappear, abuses of power emerge. It is now legal for any federal investigator to demand any business document without court supervision whether it be the reading habits of library patrons, the member rosters of organizations,or the minutes of closed meetings. Any person which reveals the material has been compromised is guilty of a federal felony.
The author describes how he was taught to pick locks and sneak into look for evidence. He had to do it at risk of expulsion from the FBI if he was caught. Now it has been legalized and no legal record of the breakin is required. With these new powers agents may easily subvert third party security firms and alarm companies that are paid to protect their custormers. A careful read of the atrocities the bureau committed in the past vs what they can do now legally is very sobering.

5.0 out of 5 stars FBI Exposed, January 11, 2011

By 

Mr. Calvin A. Young "cayoung144" (Fairfax, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: FBI Secrets: An Agents Expose (Paperback)

Shows how we Americans are really not as free as advertised. FBI did and probably still doing monstrous things to our country. We do need a revolution of ideas and a rising up of our citizens to get back the freedoms given by the founding fathers. This book shows just how insidious Hoover and others acted to take away our freedoms in the name of that freedom. All He was really interested in was his own grandisment and power at the expense of ordinary Americans. Worst of all, so many in Congress went along with him.