During World War I, in the period of the Red Scare, and throughout the Great Depression, the army's domestic spy agency mounted an extensive surveillance campaign focused on civilians and groups deemed subversive. Negative Intelligence traces the fascinating and astonishing story of military espionage on the home front. Created by Major General Ralph H. Van Deman in 1917, the Negative Branch of Military, or MI, spied on American reformers in a program of civilian surveillance that surpassed even that of the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation. Among the targets were the Industrial Workers of the World, the American Civil Liberties Union, and “Negro Subversion.” Documentation of MI's program of domestic espionage is from recently opened Military Intelligence archives. Closely allied with private vigilante groups, the Army conducted illegal raids, made illegal arrests, subjected many citizens to interrogation, and developed an elaborate filing system for its dossiers. After World War I the hysteria continued, with MI's direct focus beamed upon a new enemy, the Bolsheviki. Although MI's abuses have been overshadowed by those of the Department of Justice, army espionage was in many ways more aggressive than its civilian counterpart. Negative Intelligence documents these abuses and shows how until 1921 the attempts to restrain MI's work failed. After this time, with limited staff and funding MI could do no more than maintain close liaison with private super-patriotic groups. However, the coming of the Great Depression fired up the rebirth of the army's civilian espionage programs. Then as World War II approached, internal security once again became a national policy, and J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation moved his powerful network into the supreme position of domestic spying.

Very little has been written about America's own history of anti-Semitism. In this shocking book, the first documented examination of anti-Semitism in an American governmental institution, Joseph Bendersky shows that such racism permeated the highest ranks of the U.S. military throughout the past century, having a very real effect on policy decisions. Through ten years of research in more than thirty-five archives, the author uncovered irrefutable evidence of endemic and virulent anti-Semitism throughout the Army Corps from the turn of the century right up to the 1970s. This fully developed and clearly articulated perspective had a direct effect on policy discussions and decisions, affecting such matters as immigration, refugees, military strategy, and the establishment of Israel. Written with novelistic intensity and attention to intriguing detail, The "Jewish Threat" forces us to revise some of our cherished notions about our country and its most revered leaders.

Written with the sweep of an epic novel and grounded in extensive research into contemporary documents, Savage Peace is a striking portrait of American democracy under stress. It is the surprising story of America in the year 1919. In the aftermath of an unprecedented worldwide war and a flu pandemic, Americans began the year full of hope, expecting to reap the benefits of peace. But instead, the fear of terrorism filled their days. Bolshevism was the new menace, and the federal government, utilizing a vast network of domestic spies, began to watch anyone deemed suspicious. A young lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover headed a brand-new intelligence division of the Bureau of Investigation (later to become the FBI). Bombs exploded on the doorstep of the attorney general's home in Washington, D.C., and thirty-six parcels containing bombs were discovered at post offices across the country. Poet and journalist Carl Sandburg, recently returned from abroad with a trunk full of Bolshevik literature, was detained in New York, his trunk seized. A twenty-one-year-old Russian girl living in New York was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for protesting U.S. intervention in Arctic Russia, where thousands of American soldiers remained after the Armistice, ostensibly to guard supplies but in reality to join a British force meant to be a warning to the new Bolshevik government. In 1919, wartime legislation intended to curb criticism of the government was extended and even strengthened. Labor strife was a daily occurrence. And decorated African-American soldiers, returning home to claim the democracy for which they had risked their lives, were badly disappointed. Lynchings continued, race riots would erupt in twenty-six cities before the year ended, and secret agents from the government's "Negro Subversion" unit routinely shadowed outspoken African-Americans. Adding a vivid human drama to the greater historical narrative, Savage Peace brings 1919 alive through the people who played a major role in making the year so remarkable. Among them are William Monroe Trotter, who tried to put democracy for African-Americans on the agenda at the Paris peace talks; Supreme Court associate justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who struggled to find a balance between free speech and legitimate government restrictions for reasons of national security, producing a memorable decision for the future of free speech in America; and journalist Ray Stannard Baker, confidant of President Woodrow Wilson, who watched carefully as Wilson's idealism crumbled and wrote the best accounts we have of the president's frustration and disappointment. Weaving together the stories of a panoramic cast of characters, from Albert Einstein to Helen Keller, Ann Hagedorn brilliantly illuminates America at a pivotal moment.

He highlights similarities and differences among the constitutional programs and ideologies, paying particular attention to the Kolchak government as the chief anti-Bolshevik force in the region.