FBI Secrets: An Agent's Expose

Rating:
Summary: FBI Chicanery is reported
Review: "FBI Secrets: An Agent's Exposure" is a chronological narration written by whistleblower M. Wesley Swearingen about his career as Special Agent for the FBI during the period 1951-1977. The marketing forward by Ward Churchill (we are not privy to who he is) notes Wesley had the necessary courage, fortitude and character to reveal the intrinsic wrongness and illegal doings of the FBI over a span of several decades.

Wesley explains how he was able to muster the requisite conscience and personal integrity to expose, albeit belatedly, the bigotry, cheating, lying, burgularizing, wire taps, bugs and unauthorized surveillances he had participated in or witnessed during 25 years as Special Agent. Also emphasized is how the Black Panther Party, the Weatherman (militant college students of the SDS founded by Thomas Haden) and individual top political activists were subjected to harassment, censure and surveillance without due cause.

Swearingen is to be commended for writing about alleged eye-witnessed corruption in the FBI. He effectively indicts himself as a co-conspirator, something which ordinarily adds credence to a confession. As a writer, Wesley's naivete exposes himself as a haughty Special Agent who is troubled with financial and personal security, an over zealous need to make faultfinding remarks of his associates and a total inability to get along with others. Although it fails the rule of "It Takes a King to Unseat a King," the book's content is revealing, easy to digest, reasonably well arranged and does give one pause to ponder.

Rating:
Summary: COINTELPRO horrors
Review: "FBI Secrets: An Agent's Exposure" is a chronological narration written by whistleblower M. Wesley Swearingen about his career as Special Agent for the FBI during the period 1951-1977. The marketing forward by Ward Churchill (we are not privy to who he is) notes Wesley had the necessary courage, fortitude and character to reveal the intrinsic wrongness and illegal doings of the FBI over a span of several decades.

Wesley explains how he was able to muster the requisite conscience and personal integrity to expose, albeit belatedly, the bigotry, cheating, lying, burgularizing, wire taps, bugs and unauthorized surveillances he had participated in or witnessed during 25 years as Special Agent. Also emphasized is how the Black Panther Party, the Weatherman (militant college students of the SDS founded by Thomas Haden) and individual top political activists were subjected to harassment, censure and surveillance without due cause.

Swearingen is to be commended for writing about alleged eye-witnessed corruption in the FBI. He effectively indicts himself as a co-conspirator, something which ordinarily adds credence to a confession. As a writer, Wesley's naivete exposes himself as a haughty Special Agent who is troubled with financial and personal security, an over zealous need to make faultfinding remarks of his associates and a total inability to get along with others. Although it fails the rule of "It Takes a King to Unseat a King," the book's content is revealing, easy to digest, reasonably well arranged and does give one pause to ponder.

Rating:
Summary: Swearingen's Choice: The Grey Zone
Review: 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.

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Summary: This book was amazing....
Review: I was interesed in reading about the FBI, and found this book through Amazon.com. I just finished reading it, and I cannot tell you how much insite it has given me on our government. It is amazing the things they are able to do freely. You've got to read it for your self.

Rating:
Summary: COINTELPRO horrors
Review: 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.