From the Red Scare of 1919-1920 to the McCarthy period of the 1950’s to the COINTELPRO era of the 1960’s. The FBI has operated primarily as America’s political police. Set against this sordid background, the complex of FBI Operations conducted against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, including murder, kidnapping, and a range of other illegal activities, provides a shocking indictment of the lawlessness of the ” law enforcers”. Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against The Black Panther Party and The American Indian Movement will undoubtedly serve as the benchmark text for those concerned with understanding not only what happened to the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement, but the functional reality of America’s Political police.
This mentality and operational priorities of the FBI have remained constant despite the supposed “reforms” it underwent during the late 1970’s. In light of the Homeland Security Act, a measure which formally sanctions many of the worst abuses in which the Bureau engaged a generation ago, every activist in the country should become intimately acquainted with the experiences of the Black Panther Party and American Indian Movement.
This second edition features a new preface by Ward Churchill exposing the FBI’s recent efforts to prevent a presidential pardon of Leonard Peltier and its ongoing cover-up of a roster of murders of Aim members and sympathizers. Churchill pays particular attention to the FBI’s infiltration of AIM and the murder of Anna Mae Aquash.
