The Imperial Bureau

A revelatory new history of the FBI that explores the relationship between domestic political surveillance and the emergence of the US national security state

Throughout its history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has tracked and monitored domestic political movements—and its war on American dissent is far from over. The FBI has in recent years spied on both the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements. Following the national uprising in response to the police murder of George Floyd, the response of Donald Trump’s arch-reactionary attorney general was to unleash an FBI task force on “violent anti-government extremists.” From the Civil Rights Movement to the Red Scare, to movements against US foreign policy in Vietnam, El Salvador, and Iraq, the FBI has always been the main vehicle for domestic political repression.

The Imperial Bureau tells both the history of the FBI from its inception—how, propelled by its domestic surveillance mission, it became an intelligence agency and helped found the modern national security state—and by focusing on how the FBI currently polices dissent, gives the most comprehensive picture to date of the FBI as a vehicle for political repression.Chip Gibbons is a journalist and researcher. His work has appeared in Jacobin, In These Times, and The Nation. He authored the report Still Spying on Dissent: The Enduring Legacy of FBI First Amendment Abuse. He is a frequently cited expert on the history of FBI political surveillance and the impact of the Espionage Act on press freedoms.

Chip is the Policy Director of Defending Rights & Dissent, an organization founded by victims of the House Un-Amercan Activites Committee that works to protect the right to engage in political expression. In this capacity, he has advised both state and federal lawmakers on the First Amendment implications of pending legislation and has appeared on, Democracy Now!,  Al Jazeera and BBC World News. He hosted  their limited podcasts series Primary Sources, focusing the challenges faced by whistleblowers, Still Spying, which explored the history of the FBI. He can be found online at https://chipgibbons.org/.