FBI Informant: Women’s Rights Activists Feel U.S. is “Oppressive Society”
An FBI informant who attended a women’s liberation movement meeting in New York City reported on this day that most of the women attending had as their goal liberating women from an “oppressive society.”
According to the U. S. Senate Church Committee investigation, informants were the primary source of information about the Women’s Liberation Movement.
As with so much FBI spying on political groups, there was no information regarding discussion or plans for any criminal action in violation of federal law, which would have been the only valid pretext for an FBI investigation. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972) obsessively regarded any political movement critical of American society as a threat to national security.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) had been founded only three years before, on June 30, 1966, and the FBI began spying on its activities (see the NOW FBI file, below).
Learn more: Athan Theoharis, The FBI & American Democracy: A Brief Critical History (2004)
Learn more about the Church Committee’s investigation of the FBI’s use of informants (pp. 227-270): http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports_book3.htm
Read the best biography of Hoover: Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (1991)
Visit the National Organization for Women web site
Read the FBI file on NOW: http://vault.fbi.gov/National%20Organization%20for%20Women%20%28NOW%29