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“The Tapes Were the Heart of the Matter”: The IBW's Infiltration and Decline

Derrick E. White

in The Challenge of Blackness: The Institute of the Black World and Political Activism in the 1970s

This chapter chronicles the decline of the IBW and its struggle to survive in the increasingly conservative climate of the late 1970s. It also details the organization's persistent financial ... More

This chapter chronicles the decline of the IBW and its struggle to survive in the increasingly conservative climate of the late 1970s. It also details the organization's persistent financial troubles. At the center of the IBW's problems were a series of mysterious break-ins that destabilized the financially fragile organization. The break-ins appear to have been government sponsored by the likes of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). The IBW's demise meant the loss of a vibrant intellectual space that attempted to maintain the Black Freedom Struggle in the 1970s.Less

Conclusions: The Noisy Echo of Secrecy

in The Pontecorvo Affair: A Cold War Defection and Nuclear Physics

This chapter explores how Bruno Pontecorvo's presence in Russia was far more decisive than any information that Soviet intelligence had managed to harness earlier on, and examines the proliferation ... More

This chapter explores how Bruno Pontecorvo's presence in Russia was far more decisive than any information that Soviet intelligence had managed to harness earlier on, and examines the proliferation of accounts about him. It shows how the withdrawal of information from the public domain featured as a key tool of nuclear diplomacy. The chapter illustrates how the utilization of secrecy has impacted the current understanding of important transitions in nuclear science and security. Secrecy was employed in the Pontecorvo case to cover issues that had major implications for the handling of national and international affairs. The Pontecorvo affair reported that the mysteries connected with the spread of nuclear and other military technologies and the unlawful transfer of scientific information cannot be immediately understood, except for some marginal aspects. Revealingly, the new documents on this affair indicated that an intelligence program aimed at tackling atomic espionage may have never really existed.Less

The Legal and Political History of Italian Immigrants in the United States before 1941

Mary Elizabeth and Basile Chopas

in Searching for Subversives: The Story of Italian Internment in Wartime America

Chapter 1 traces the evolution in Italians’ social, political, and economic status in the United States, beginning with the effects of early twentieth-century immigration law, and conveys how their ... More

Chapter 1 traces the evolution in Italians’ social, political, and economic status in the United States, beginning with the effects of early twentieth-century immigration law, and conveys how their integration into American society influenced wartime policies. This chapter argues that Italians’ progression in the labor market coincided with their changing racial identity and white consciousness, but that political involvement was more instrumental in raising the public perception of Italians. This chapter also explains how the FBI built a domestic intelligence program through the collection of information about subversive individuals or organizations several years before U.S. involvement in World War II. A joint agreement in July 1941 between the War Department and the Justice Department established policy for handling suspicious persons of enemy nations residing in the United States.Less