Seth Rosenfeld’s book on the FBI and UC Berkeley, a culmination of 30 years of work, has been out for just a week, but its revelations are already creating consternation.

It’s not just the news that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent agents to spy on Berkeley professors and students starting in the 1940s and worked behind the scenes with Ronald Reagan to get UC President Clark Kerr fired. It’s not just Rosenfeld’s massive evidence that Hoover twisted the inner workings of the FBI to justify intensive spying on the Free Speech Movement and its leaders, including Mario Savio and Bettina Aptheker.  And it’s not just the news that top UC Berkeley officials, upset about unrest on campus, worked closely with federal agents to harm the reputations of students and professors they considered subversive.

What has people fired up is Rosenfeld’s revelation that Richard Aoki, a revered radical leader best known for providing the first guns to the Black Panthers, was an FBI informant. … Continue reading »