FBI Intensifies Use of Informants on College Campuses
An FBI memorandum to all of its field offices on this day directed agents to intensify their efforts to develop sources of information on colleges and universities.
It strongly advised, however, that “such investigations should be “conducted in a most discreet and circumspect manner,” in order to avoid “embarrassing” the Bureau.
The FBI was very conscious of the public uproar that had recently occurred when secret CIA funding of student organizations was exposed (February 15, 1967).
Read the Senate Church Committee report on the FBI’s use of informants (pp. 225-270): http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports_book3.htm
Read: Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (1991)
Explore the FBI’s Secret Files at the FBI FOIA Vault: http://vault.fbi.gov/reading-room-index/
Learn more: Athan Theoharis, The FBI & American Democracy: A Brief Critical History (2004)
The “Sixties” really began in the mid-1950s and ended in the early 1970s. Read: Christopher B. Strain, The Long Sixties: America, 1955-1973 (2016)