Military Intelligence Spies on Bonus Army – Agents Hear “Voices of Jewish Accent”
Agents of the Military Intelligence Section (MIS), who had been spying on the Bonus Army march on Washington, on this day revealed their social and political biases by reporting that they had heard “voices of Jewish accent.” A later memo reported that “notably local Colored Communists and certain Russian girls were openly obscene.”
The Bonus Army was a march on Washington consisting of 17,000 World War I veterans and another 25,000 family members and supporters, who encamped in Washington, D.C., to demand early payment of their scheduled veterans bonuses because of the Great Depression. The Military Intelligence Section (MIS) of the Army, which engaged in spying on political activity during World War I and through the 1920s, spied on the Bonus Army by sending undercover agents to their meetings.
The MIS had spied on Roger Baldwin and the National Civil Liberties Bureau during World War I and set the stage for a Justice Department raid on the NCLB offices in August 1918.
The Bonus Army encampment lasted for about two months, and the de facto village was peaceful and maintained its own range of social services. Finally, in response to reports of violence, President Herbert Hoover ordered the army to expel the Bonus Army from the city. The resulting military operation on July 28, 1932, was one of the worst violations of the right of freedom of assembly in American history, and it permanently stained the reputation of President Hoover.
Read: Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic (2004)
Watch a documentary on the Bonus Army: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSC1lbfXfRQ
Read the FBI file on the Bonus March: http://vault.fbi.gov/Bonus%20March
Learn about the history of military spying on Americans: Joan Jensen, Army Surveillance in America, 1775–1980 (1991)