Abuse of Power: How Cold War Surveillance and Secrecy Policy Shaped the Response to 9/11

3. The Politics of Wiretapping

3 The Politics of Wiretapping T he rationale for President Franklin Roosevelt’s secret wiretapping directive was that this technique would enable the FBI to anticipate threats to the “national defense”—that is, planned acts of espionage or sabotage. President Harry Truman’s unknowing broader authorization of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wiretapping of “subversive activities” and Attorney General Herbert Brownell’s authorization of FBI bugging during “internal security” investigations were also intended to anticipate foreign-directed operations that could threaten the nation’s security . Indeed, some FBI wiretapping and bugging operations did address legitimate security threats. Beginning in 1940, for example, the FBI wiretapped the German, Japanese, Italian, and Soviet embassies. Thereafter, and in succeeding years, the FBI wiretapped and/or bugged the offices of the Soviet Government Purchasing Commission (stationed in the United States during World War II to expedite the Lend-Lease program), the residence of Soviet consular official Peter Ivanov, the headquarters of the U.S. Communist Party and various Communist Party branch offices, prominent Communist Party members (Earl Browder, Steve Nelson, Alexander Bittelman, William Dieterle, James Miller, John Lawson, Waldo Scott, Herbert Biberman), six pro-Fascist and pro-Nazi organizations (including the pro-German Peace Now Movement), and suspected Soviet spies (including Alger Hiss, Judith Coplon, Victor Kravchenko, Boris Morros, Jean Tatlock, Haakon Chevalier, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Emmanuel Larsen, Andrew Roth, Bernard Redmont, William Remington, Felix Inslerman, 46 / Chapter 3 George Silverman, Harry Dexter White, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, Alfred Stein, Elizabeth Sasuly, Irving Kaplan, Victor Perlo, Donald Wheeler, Michael Greenberg, Joseph Gregg, Maurice Halperin, Peter Rhodes, James Harper, Ronald Humphrey, Ronald Pelton, John Walker, Aldrich Ames, Brian Kelley, and Robert Hannsen). FBI wiretapping and bugging operations, moreover, extended beyond legitimate security threats to encompass a disparate group of radical and left-liberal activists and organizations whose political activities senior FBI officials believed were potentially treasonous. Those tapped and/or bugged included radical activists (David Dallin, Charles Malamuth, C. B. Baldwin, Frank Oppenheimer, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Helene Weigel, Berthold Viertel, Anna Seghers, Bodo Uhse, Richard Criley, Frank Wilkinson), prominent liberal and radical attorneys (Bartley Crum, Martin Popper, Thomas Corcoran, David Wahl, Benjamin Margolis, Carol King, Robert Silberstein, National Lawyers Guild, Fred Black), radical labor leaders and unions (Harry Bridges; United Auto Workers; National Maritime Union; National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards; United Public Workers; United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers; Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers; International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union; CIO Maritime Committee; Congress of Industrial Organizations Council), journalists (I. F. Stone, Philip Jaffe, Kate Mitchell, Mark Gayn, Leonard Lyons, William Beecher, Marvin Kalb, Henry Brandon, Hedrick Smith, Lloyd Norman , Hanson Baldwin, Inga Arvad), civil-rights activists and organizations (Martin Luther King, Jr.; Malcolm X; Southern Christian Leadership Conference ; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; March on Washington Movement; Gandhi Society for Human Rights; Elijah Muhammad ; Nation of Islam; Stokely Carmichael; H. Rap Brown; Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee; Alabama Peoples Education Association; Committee to Aid the Monroe Defendants; Southern Conference for Human Welfare; Black Panther Party; Universal Negro Improvement Association; African Liberation Day Committee), the Students for a Democratic Society, Ku Klux Klan, National Committee to Abolish HUAC, Socialist Workers Party, Washington Bookstore Association, Northern California Association of Scientists, Federation of American Scientists, American Association of Scientific Workers, pre–World War II isolationists (Henry Grunewald, Ethel Brigham, John O’Brien, Lillian Moorehead, Laura Ingalls, America First, Jehovah ’s Witnesses, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce), and even prominent personalities (Joe Namath, Harlow Shapley, Edward Condon, Edward Prichard , Muhammad Ali, Benjamin Spock).1 The shift in FBI wiretapping from national defense to political surveillance began within a year after President Roosevelt issued his secret wiretapping directive in May 1940. In June 1940, FBI officials, at the request of the White The Politics of Wiretapping / 47 House, initiated an investigation of Henry Grunewald based on uncorroborated allegations that Grunewald headed a German espionage ring. Resuming this investigation of Grunewald in May 1941, FBI agents this time tapped him, the resumption having been triggered by a report from military intelligence (the military’s source, however, was the same individual who had triggered the FBI’s 1940 investigation). Installed on June 4, 1941, this tap continued until September 13, 1941. The resultant investigation uncovered no information that Grunewald was a spy but did record his political and shady business contacts . FBI agents, moreover, tapped Grunewald again on June 22, 1945...