Source:
New York TimesBy COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: June 25, 2007
One entry, dated April 14, 1954, was about I. F. Stone, who was described as being a writer from New York. Mr. Stone, it was noted, condemned Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s “persecution of innocent citizens” and likewise the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate’s corresponding committee.
Another on Oct. 24, 1966, noted that as a result of a F.B.I.-approved counterintelligence operation, Richard Lawrence Davis, who was running for a seat on the state committee of the Michigan District Communist Party, was cast under a cloud of suspicion as part of an effort to sow division in the group.
And an entry on Feb. 20, 1974, described how a source had penetrated the Revolutionary Union in Baltimore and had been able to participate in forming a new chapter of the party in Washington, D.C. The source, it said, also had a close personal relationship with Dana Beal, a leader of the Yippies, and provided information on their activities.
From 1940 to 1975, thousands of reports like these were part of extensive files compiled by the F.B.I. while it carried out a clandestine surveillance campaign on the National Lawyers Guild, an organization founded in New York in 1937 and associated with the labor movement and liberal causes.
They are among a trove of documents that archivists are poring over for the first time. The files provide a detailed history of the lawyers guild and include memos to and from the office of J. Edgar Hoover, internal F.B.I. analysis of the organization, typed and handwritten reports from covert informants and papers identifying people used by the agency to spy on the guild and other groups.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/nyregion/25archives.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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