Nixon's War at Home: The FBI, Leftist Guerrillas, and the Origins of Counterterrorism

by Daniel S. Chard

Overview

During the presidency of Richard Nixon, homegrown leftist guerrilla groups like the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army carried out hundreds of attacks in the United States. The FBI had a long history of infiltrating activist groups, but this type of clandestine action posed a unique challenge. Drawing on thousands of pages of declassified FBI documents, Daniel S. Chard shows how America's war with domestic guerrillas prompted a host of new policing measures as the FBI revived illegal spy techniques previously used against communists in the name of fighting terrorism. These efforts did little to stop the guerrillas—instead, they led to a bureaucratic struggle between the Nixon administration and the FBI that fueled the Watergate Scandal and brought down Nixon. Yet despite their internal conflicts, FBI and White House officials developed preemptive surveillance practices that would inform U.S. counterterrorism strategies into the twenty-first century, entrenching mass surveillance as a cornerstone of the national security state.

Connecting the dots between political violence and "law and order" politics, Chard reveals how American counterterrorism emerged in the 1970s from violent conflicts over racism, imperialism, and policing that remain unresolved today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469664507
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	09/28/2021
Series:	Justice, Power, and Politics
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,068,714
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Daniel S. Chard is visiting assistant professor of history at Western Washington University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Outside of seemingly paranoid circles, counterterrorism was a little-discussed part of the American state long before 9/11. In this incredibly researched and well-written book, Daniel S. Chard guides us into the multiple forms that the efforts to counter insurgencies in the 1960s and 1970s took. Anyone concerned about our freedoms needs to read this, and now."—Susan M. Reverby, author of Co-Conspirator for Justice: The Revolutionary Life of Dr. Alan Berkman

With clarity and novelistic freshness, this book offers a persuasive account of the advent of 'counterterrorism' as a practice and priority of the U.S. state as it responded to the 'guerrilla' violence of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also a fascinating, personality-driven story of the bureaucratic infighting that dogged law enforcement. Amidst all of this is a revelatory narrative of the final years of J. Edgar Hoover, long vilified as an enemy of civil liberties, as he attempted to resist Richard Nixon's efforts to interfere with FBI practices, leading to an utterly novel connection between the war on domestic terrorism and the Watergate scandal. Drawing from countless FBI documents and presidential communications, this is a stellar work of history and a major achievement."—Jeremy Varon, author of Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies

Daniel Chard is the first historian to show how the FBI's war on antiracist, anti-imperialist radicals led to the downfall of the Nixon presidency while also establishing a template for the broad-brush, inhumane, and ineffective counterterrorism policies of the United States after 9/11. Nixon's War at Home is original, fascinating, and as relevant as ever."—Christian G. Appy, author of American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity

Editorial Reviews

07/26/2021

Historian Chard debuts with an immersive and eye-opening account of how the Nixon administration’s fight against the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, and other insurgent groups gave rise to counterterrorism tactics and philosophies of “punitive policing” that reshaped American politics. Chard excels at taking an isolated incident, such as the 1970 takeover of a Marin County, Calif., courtroom by “Black radical prisoners,” and exploring how its ripple effects resulted in the implementation of “extralegal” and morally dubious investigative practices, including warrantless wiretaps and the mailing of “anonymous, inflammatory materials intended to sow distrust and discord within organizations.” Chard also tracks how increasing pressure exerted by the “celebrity status” of these leftist guerilla organizations led to tensions between the White House and the FBI, and contributed to FBI associate director Mark Felt’s decision to leak information about the Watergate break-in to the press. Making excellent use of declassified FBI documents, Nixon’s White House tapes, and other sources, Chard shines a light on this turbulent era, though the links he draws to the “war on terror,” mass incarceration, and other contemporary issues are somewhat undeveloped. Still, this is an incisive and well-informed survey of the political struggles of the 1960s and ’70s. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

An immersive and eye-opening account of how the Nixon administration's fight against the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, and other insurgent groups gave rise to counterterrorism tactics and philosophies of 'punitive policing' that reshaped American politics. . . . Making excellent use of declassified FBI documents, Nixon's White House tapes, and other sources, Chard shines a light on this turbulent era."—Publishers Weekly

An impressive first book by a young historian. . . . Nixon's War at Home offers genuine contributions to the continuing examination of the Long Sixties." —CHOICE

Besides being a well-documented research project supported by a robust amount of references, the book is successful in explaining the conceptual development of counterterrorism."—The Society for U.S. Intellectual History

An ambitious book that engages with several disciplines and historical subfields. Scholars of counterterrorism will benefit from Chard's analysis of the escalating cycles of violence, and he adds important nuance and clarity to the history of Watergate. . . . Nixon's War at Home will serve as a critical foundation for further research on the counterintelligence operations that succeeded the COINTELPROs."–H-War

From the Publisher