Antiwar Protest Surveillance, 1960s

The U.S. government spied on an estimated 2 million individuals and 3,000 groups that voiced opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1973. These peaceful protestors were taking advantage of their constitutional right to dissent to the government’s Vietnam policy. Governmental surveillance was designed to neutralize or eliminate the protestors’ voice, even though the right to disagree is widely recognized as a fundamental liberty in a democratic society. The scope of the spying graduated quickly from student protestors to black militants and then to “radicals,” very broadly defined. This entry examines the birth of the antiwar protest movement and then highlights the surveillance tactics carried out toward the movement by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Richard Nixon administration, the U.S. ...