David Cunningham (1) (1970–)

This is a sociological analysis of the FBI's campaign against dissident political organizations in the Sixties which seeks to examine the Bureau's limits as an intelligence organization, as opposed to acting as political police. These limitations included organizational infexibility, a lack of real analytic capacity, and a dearth of cultural imagination; this is over and above J. Edgar Hoover's own faults. To put it in perspective, while the Bureau found it a fairly easy task to destroy a show more semi-covert movement like the KKK, dealing with a true underground organization such as the Weathermen was a challenge that they never quite got their collective minds around. This suggests to the author that one should expect the FBI to have more "success" with the mission of harrassing unsightly political movements, rather than confronting actual security threats. Whether this country is ready for an actual national police force that could embody the needed characteristics to deal effectively with a true violent underground (let alone whether such a force could be effectively disciplined) is another question. show less