U.S. government surveillance and the women's liberation movement, 1968-1973: a case study.(Case study)

SOMETIME IN 1981 in Washington, D.C., a friend suggested I take advantage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to see if I had a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file. My friend, an attorney, specialized in litigating FOIA requests for journalists, authors, and academics, so when he offered to do all the paperwork, I accepted. I had been active in the New Left and the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so I thought, well, maybe there will be a mention or two of my name somewhere.

I had underestimated the U.S. government's interest in my life. Six hundred and forty-six pages had been compiled about me by various agencies of the U.S. Department of Justice. (1) Files on me--referred to as "Subject"--existed at FBI Headquarters and at FBI field offices in New York City, Newark, San Diego, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and Boston. As I would eventually find out, the material that would be released to me was collected between October 4, 1968, and May 21, 1973.

I became a concerted focus of surveillance in July 1968 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when, about to begin a tenure-track job as an assistant professor of Hispanic literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, I started working with a New Left organization, the New University Conference (NUC). The surveillance continued throughout the two years I lived in Pittsburgh (July 1968-July 1970) and the year I lived in San Diego, California (July 1970-July 1971). In both places I was affiliated with a university and active in NUC and in the women's liberation movement. My file contains informants' reports and copious press clippings about my participation in the women's liberation movement from both Pittsburgh and San Diego. Recommendations to place me on the Security Index/ADEX because of "subversive" activities were sent to FBI headquarters, one from the Pittsburgh field office in late 1969 and one from San Diego in 1971. (2)

In 1969, in Pittsburgh, I was considered a "dangerous subversive" because "subject is a national coordinator for New University Conference (NUC), a new organization to promote revolutionary changes, not only in universities, but in the social system of the US [and because] Roberta Salper was one of 15 NUC members who traveled to Cuba during the period July 25-August 21, 1969." (3) No mention is made of the women's movement in this recommendation to put me on the Security Index in 1969.

In 1971, the San Diego field office again recommended I be placed on the ADEX, judging me to be a danger to national security this time because of "subject's membership in the New University Conference, her relationship with members of the Revolutionary Union, and her role as an active leader in the Women's Liberation Movement." (4) (Emphasis added).

What had changed in the FBI's vision of the women's liberation movement and my role in it between 1969 and 1971? Why had the FBI not considered the women's liberation movement a threat to national security in Pittsburgh in 1969, but did in 1971 in San Diego?

In light of recent discussions among feminists about the existence of U.S. government surveillance of the women's liberation movement in its early years, this essay is my attempt to figure that out. I discuss the process of obtaining my FBI file, its contents and my activities, particularly in Pittsburgh and San Diego, and then I focus on those parts of the dossier that deal with the women's liberation movement. By analyzing these parts in the context of both the whole file and the historical moment, I offer some conclusions about the nature of FBI surveillance in the early years of the women's liberation movement.