Customer Reviews

Negative Intelligence: The Army and the American Left, 1917-1941 (Twentieth-Century America Series)

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I stumbled across this book at the local community college library. I thought it was interesting title, so I sat down with it instead of my Calculus homework. I then spent the next four hours immersed in the hidden history of 20th century domestic counter-intelligence programs, aka "negative intelligence." Suddenly, I understood that the COINTELPRO of the 1960s wasn't an isolated American phenomenon. There was 50 years of practice behind those programs, and this book is the nitty gritty history of that. For those with an ideological bias towards the "right," don't dismiss this book just because it has the term "left" in the title - you need to know about how your government conducts surveillance and agitation against counter-establishment groups, too.

Talbot concludes the introduction to his book noting, "Most Americans, I dare say, have had a pristine vision of a country unencumberd by a meddling army. Like so much of our history, that belief turns out to be largely mythical". This book is essential reading for anyone interested learning about the destruction of the American left or interested in understanding how America's security aperatus rationalizes setting aside the law to enforce conformity to their social and political objectives.