During World War I, fear that a network of German spies was operating on American soil justified the rapid growth of federal intelligence agencies. When that threat proved illusory, these agencies, staffed heavily by corporate managers and anti-union private detectives, targeted antiwar and radical labor groups, particularly the Socialist party and the Industrial Workers of the World.
Seeing Reds, based largely on case files from the Bureau of Investigation, Military Intelligence Division, and Office of Naval Intelligence, describes this formative period of federal domestic spying in the Pittsburgh region. McCormick traces the activities of L. M. Wendell, a Bureau of Investigation \u201cspecial employee\u201d who infiltrated the IWW\u2019s Pittsburgh recruiting branch and the inner circle of anarchist agitator and lawyer Jacob Margolis. Wendell and other Pittsbugh based agents spied on radical organizations from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Camp Lee, Virginia, intervened in the steel and coal strikes of 1919, and carried out the Palmer raids aimed at mass deportation of members of the Union of Russian Workers and the New Communist Party.
McCormick\u2019s detailed history uses extensive research to add to our understanding of the security state, cold war ideology, labor and immigration history, and the rise of the authoritarian American Left, as well as the career paths of figures as diverse as J. Edgar Hoover and William Z. Foster.
About the Author :
Charles H. McCormick is professor emeritus of history at Fairmont State College. He is the author of Leisler's Rebellion, 1689-1691, and This Nest of Vipers: McCarthyism and Higher Education in West Virginia, 1951-1952.
Review :
McCormick's well-written and researched study is not only a valuable addition to the literature on Pittsburgh radical and labor politics during the World War I and Red Scare eras, but is as well an important contribution to the literature on the World War I era, the Red Scare, labor and radical history, and federal surveillance (FBI) policy and history.
A well-crafted exploration of the course and impact of the First Red Scare . . . Stands out as both an example of the thorough use of sources and an original stylistic approach to writing history. . . . A valuable exploration of an often overlooked period in American history.
McCormick's broadly researched, meticulously documented, yet compact monograph analyzes federal 'efforts to define, understand and suppress leftists' during World War I and the Red Scare. . . . Fills a significant void in the historiography of U.S. governmental suppression.
A valuable look at the inner workings of the federal domestic intelligence operations during a formative period.
An excellent case-study on how and why the red scare occurred, with Pittsburgh as [the] focal point. . . . Informative and compelling reading.
