Civil Society, Congress, and the Movement to Democratize the National Security State, 1970-1978

REINING IN THE STATE: CIVIL SOCIETY, CONGRESS, AND THE MOVEMENT TO DEMOCRATIZE THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE, 1970-1978 A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Katherine A. Scott May, 2009 i © by Katherine Anne Scott 2009 All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the battle to democratize the national security state, 1970-1978. It examines the neo-progressive movement to institutionalize a new domestic policy regime, in an attempt to force government transparency, protect individual privacy from state intrusion, and create new judicial and legislative checks on domestic security operations. It proceeds chronologically, first outlining the state’s overwhelming response to the domestic unrest of the 1960s. During this period, the Department of Justice developed new capacities to better predict urban unrest, growing a computerized databank that contained millions of dossiers on dissenting Americans and the Department of Defense greatly expanded existing capacities, applying cold war counterinsurgency and counterintelligence techniques developed abroad to the problems of protests and riots at home. The remainder of the dissertation examines how the state’s secret response to unrest and disorder became public in the early 1970s. It traces the development of a loose coalition of reformers who challenged domestic security policy and coordinated legislative and litigative strategies to check executive power. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Graduate students depend upon the goodwill of others. My parents, Mike and LeOla, started me on this intellectual journey when I was a little kid. My dad made sure that I had plenty of books to read. My mom always told me I could be anything that I wanted to be. Their generous financial and emotional support sustained me. This dissertation is for them. My advisors patiently guided me through this project. David Farber pushed me to ask big questions. I can’t thank him enough for his support, advice, and for convincing me to come to Philadelphia. He is a role model. At Temple University I’ve had the privilege of studying with Richard Immerman and Beth Bailey. Their teaching and scholarship contributed more to this dissertation than they know. David Greenberg encouraged me to pursue this project several years ago at the Journal of Policy History conference in Charlottesville. His enthusiasm for the topic came at a critical time and his continued support is much appreciated. Many colleagues at Temple contributed to this work, both formally and informally. Drew McKevitt, David Zierler, Abby Perkiss, Kelly Shannon, Holger Lowendorf, Wendy Wong, Ryan Edgington and Jay Wyatt asked tough questions, argued their points, and sometimes convinced me to look differently at things. I’m thankful for their friendship. Writing the dissertation has taken longer than I would have liked. Yvan Charpentier cheerfully supported me in incalculable ways. No one works harder than he does and his professionalism motivates me to do better work. Most importantly, he makes me laugh. For the last nine months I’ve enjoyed getting to know little Clara even as I’ve endeavored to focus on the work at hand. She makes me laugh too. Je vous aime tous les deux . This work literally would not have been possible without the support and assistance of many people. Thanks to the Center for Force and Diplomacy at Temple University for its financial support. Alan Fisher assisted me at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library. Thanks to the Gerald Ford Presidential Library for support and especially to archivist Stacie Davis for unearthing so much rich material. Dan Linke helped me wade through the voluminous collection of ACLU papers at the Mudd Library at Princeton University. William Davis answered dozens of questions about congressional committee papers and processed classified documents in record time at the National Archives. Chris Pyle, Mel Wulf, Aryeh Neier, John Shattuck, Lawrence Baskir, and Charles Peters patiently answered many questions. Their perspectives strengthened this project immensely and I thank them for it. iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. vi CHAPTER 1 ‘WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY?’: RAMSEY CLARK AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S RESPONSE TO URBAN DISORDER, 1967-1968 ................................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 2 CONTAINING DISSENT: THE PENTAGON’S RESPONSE TO URBAN DISORDER AND MASS PROTEST .................................................................................... 37 CHAPTER 3 SENATOR SAM, OR: HOW LIBERALS LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE A SOUTHERN SEGREGATIONIST ....................................... 69 CHAPTER 4 “A PROLOGUE TO A FARCE OR A TRAGEDY”: CHALLENGING EXECUTIVE POWER, 1971-1973 ..................................................................................... 119 CHAPTER 5 REASSERTING FIRST PRINCIPLES: TRANSPARENCY AND PRIVACY POST-WATERGATE, 1974-1975 ...................................................................................... 167 CHAPTER 6 UNDER THE RULE OF LAW: CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT AND THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT .............................................. 212 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 260 v INTRODUCTION In June of 1977 American Civil Liberties Union attorney John Shattuck, a 1968 graduate of Yale Law School, was on the road. He woke up early and put on his brown suit, left the hotel room and drove down a busy street to the community center on Main where he parked his car. A few cast furtive glances at the young man as he entered the room, then quickly returned to whispered conversations. Shattuck unpacked the pamphlets and brochures from his worn briefcase, placing one, “Litigation Under the Amended Freedom of Information Act,” in the center of the table. When his powerful baritone voice echoed through the room, people quickly took their seats. Shattuck began by describing the goals of the Campaign to Stop Government Spying--to offer legal advice to victims of government surveillance, to teach them how to use new laws like the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act revisions to obtain copies of their files. A few in the audience scribbled on notepads. Shattuck had conducted dozens of meetings like this around the country in the last year. The seminars represented the triumph of a movement, started in 1970, to democratize the national security state. In 1977, the House Committee on Government Operations published the first of its kind guide on how to request records from federal agencies. Nearly 50,000 copies of this guide were printed and distributed by men like Shattuck to American citizens from 1977 to 1986. Members of Congress, the House Committee on Government Operations, the Congressional Research Service, and other federal agencies distributed thousands vi more. The guide was so widely used that one congressional committee describes as one of the “most widely read congressional committee reports in history.”1 The popularity of the FOIA law speaks to a critical under-historicized aspect of democratic practice in the American polity. During the 1970s a loose coalition of reformers like Shattuck, operating largely outside of partisan electoral politics, fought to restrain the federal government’s wide- scale efforts to curtail civil liberties and to surveil the American public. Political historians have yet to explore how these neo-progressive reformers, deeply informed by the politics of the 1960s, instigated sweeping institutional reform. Forging an extensive knowledge network, they worked to develop capacities, formulate policies, and implement new institutional forms in the national security state. They institutionalized a more democratic domestic security policy regime and developed political and legal tools that enabled Americans to challenge state power. Neo-progressives aimed to democratize the national security state by forcing government transparency, controlling government surveillance programs, and reinvigorating judicial and legislative oversight of the executive branch. These reformers, like their early twentieth century progressive counterparts, believed in the power of institutions to mediate change in American life. During the 1970s, neo-progressives stood apart from the radical left and the anti-government right—rather than overthrow or demolish American political institutions, neo-progressives sought to reform them. Their 1 House of Representatives, “A Citizen’s Guide on Using the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974 to Request Government Records,” 109 th Cong., 1 st sess., <http://www.fas.org/sgp/foia/citizen.html>. vii efforts to improve citizens’ access to government information, at a moment when the United States economy was transforming from a manufacturing base to an information base, proved prescient. 2 This dissertation explores the movement to rein in the national security state. The story begins with the explosion of domestic security

Load more