Cloak and Gavel: FBI Wiretaps, Bugs, Informers, and the Supreme Court

By Alexander Charns and Alexander Charnes

The separation of powers becomes a meaningless cliche as Alexander Charns - using the Federal Bureau of Investigation's own files - reveals how that agency undermined the independence of the U.S. Supreme Court for a half-century. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's goal was simple: to push the Supreme Court to the right on issues of civil rights and criminal law. His techniques ranged from illegal wiretapping to spreading disinformation, from using Justice Abe Fortas as an informant to trying to hound liberal Justice William O. Douglas off the bench. Cloak and Gavel, the definitive work on the FBI-Supreme Court relationship, is based on thousands of pages of FBI documents that Charns fought for eight years to obtain. One 2,000-page file was released only after he filed hundreds of Freedom of Information requests and brought lawsuits against the FBI. It establishes Hoover's strategies to influence the Senate confirmation process, incite the public against the Warren court, lobby for legislation to counteract judicial rulings, and use numerous informants inside the Court to both monitor and influence it. Charns was given special permission to conduct research using Justice Abe Fortas's papers, which had been sealed until the year 2000. These papers proved Fortas had acted as an informer for the White House and for the FBI during his tenure on the bench. Fortas ultimately left the Court in disgrace after an ethics scandal unrelated to his informant role. Charns also suggests that Hoover's death did not end the FBI's attempts to influence Congress and the federal judiciary - as evidenced by the role of the FBI in the explosive Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Senate hearings in 1991. Until now, no onehas examined the ultimate constitutional violation - the FBI's attempts to influence the Court by any means available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252018710
• ISBN13: 9780252018718
• Release Date: July 1992
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Are you looking for the FBI to investigate misconduct?<p>

If you are looking for the FBI to investigate misconduct-Don't!!!Since my legal difficulties began over four years ago (now going on five), I have seen and read many articles about the atrocities occurring within the prison systems and the hope by some that the FBI, like the Lone Ranger, would come riding to the rescue. Only recently I have happened upon a book that upon reviewing should send those looking for a fab FBI hostage team to come to your aid - well - "forgitaboutit." Thanks to the Internet, more information is available to all of us - not just the privileged elite. A book, well worth reading, which was found surfing the Internet, is entitled Cloak and Gavel: FBI Wiretaps, Bugs, Informers and the Supreme Court by Alexander Charns. The author, an attorney located in Durham, N.C., filed a freedom of information act lawsuit in order to obtain some documents. Revelations from the material obtained from the lawsuit point to a scheme by the FBI, which amounts to a nothing more than judicial shakedowns in efforts to obtain favorable rulings for law enforcement in the courts. From the papers received by Charns, the time frame for this extortion stretches from 1935 to 1989 and leads one to believe that the process is ongoing. These actions ranged from seemingly innocuous "throwing out the red carpet treatment" for newly appointed judges and their law clerks, taking and providing 8 x 10 glossies at taxpayer expense of their visit to FBI offices to a rather Stalinsque effort to leak "confidential information" that the agency collected while doing background checks. This information, if released, could cause judges and other court personnel embarrassment. "Play ball with us or else." Additional strategies, considered and implemented, called for identifying "court informants" to provide a heads up on any lawsuits, which would challenge law enforcement efforts or be adversarial to the FBI. These court informants would provide "confidential information" of the discussions behind the "closed" chambers doors and furnish the opportunity for the FBI to gain leverage and prevent any ambushes that would dilute their and other law enforcement powers. The knowledge was then passed along to the appropriate persons within the Attorney General's office. An informal arrangement was established in which FBI agents and U.S. attorneys were and are now more welcome in the chambers of justices and judges than "defense lawyers or citizens." Can you spell ex parte? The plan also called for the FBI to "educate" naïve federal judges about law enforcement. It was the agency's hope that "they could be a tremendous force for keeping some of these stupid appellate opinions from coming out." Would this effect a decision to "publish" or "unpublish" an opinion? Of course all of this smacks of currying favor by the FBI and "most other federal agencies, and some state agencies [which] are doing the same thing." So if you are looking for the FBI to investigate misc