The FBI vs the SWP
Greg Parker@gpfloor
117 Posts
#1 · September 4, 2024, 2:46 pm
Quote from Greg Parker on September 4, 2024, 2:46 pmAt its peak, the Socialist Worker's Party (SWP) had no more than 2,500 members and never advocated violence. Yet as at 1977, the FBI had used as many as 1,600 informants against the organization in its (then) 38 year old "investigation" of the party - many of those informants had infiltrated the group by become active party members.The attached article tells the story of one such infiltrator, Timothy Redfearn. Redfearn wrote the FBI in 1971 offering to become an informant. The then 19 year old son of a Protestant minsiter had at the time, been under federal investigation for extortion and had a history of debilitating depressive episodes. Despite this background, the FBI had no qualms about using him - and in fact described him as "stable and reliable", even as he faced break and enter and theft (of firearms) charges, paying him $400 a month to provide a steady stream of illegally obtained SWP documents, membership lists, personal bank statements of members, and outright gossip, and other data including their sexual proclivities and eating habits.For all of that, all the FBI really learned from Redfearn is that at meetings, the main discussions were about declining sales of The Militant and the situation in places like Vietnam, Angola and Chile.The questions are would the likes of the SWP have flourished and become a threat to the status quo without the FBI having waged a covert war against it?And does the nebulous threat posed by such groups justify the use of such massive amounts of human another resources, as well as regularly breaking the laws you are supposed to uphold?The 1977 story about Redfearn grew out of a $40,000,000 lawsuit filed by the SWP against the FBI. Most of all, the SWP wanted the names of the remaining infiltrators in its midst.The SWP and YSA filed the lawsuit July 18, 1973, in federal court in Manhattan. They charged government agencies with “illegal acts of blacklisting, harassment, electronic surveillance, burglary, mail tampering, and terrorism” against the socialist organizations. The case dragged on until 1987. The SWP won.
At its peak, the Socialist Worker's Party (SWP) had no more than 2,500 members and never advocated violence. Yet as at 1977, the FBI had used as many as 1,600 informants against the organization in its (then) 38 year old "investigation" of the party - many of those informants had infiltrated the group by become active party members.
The attached article tells the story of one such infiltrator, Timothy Redfearn. Redfearn wrote the FBI in 1971 offering to become an informant. The then 19 year old son of a Protestant minsiter had at the time, been under federal investigation for extortion and had a history of debilitating depressive episodes. Despite this background, the FBI had no qualms about using him - and in fact described him as "stable and reliable", even as he faced break and enter and theft (of firearms) charges, paying him $400 a month to provide a steady stream of illegally obtained SWP documents, membership lists, personal bank statements of members, and outright gossip, and other data including their sexual proclivities and eating habits.
For all of that, all the FBI really learned from Redfearn is that at meetings, the main discussions were about declining sales of The Militant and the situation in places like Vietnam, Angola and Chile.
The questions are would the likes of the SWP have flourished and become a threat to the status quo without the FBI having waged a covert war against it?
And does the nebulous threat posed by such groups justify the use of such massive amounts of human another resources, as well as regularly breaking the laws you are supposed to uphold?
The 1977 story about Redfearn grew out of a $40,000,000 lawsuit filed by the SWP against the FBI. Most of all, the SWP wanted the names of the remaining infiltrators in its midst.
The SWP and YSA filed the lawsuit July 18, 1973, in federal court in Manhattan. They charged government agencies with “illegal acts of blacklisting, harassment, electronic surveillance, burglary, mail tampering, and terrorism” against the socialist organizations. The case dragged on until 1987. The SWP won.
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