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Citizen Surveillance

In 1917, as the US entered WWI, amateur spy networks, citizen surveillance, sprang up around the country to help the federal government root out German spies, conscientious objectors and workers' unions. Since the beginning of the war in 1914, the Wilson administration had been fretting over possible German activities in the country. Some of those activities, they worried, might be of concern with regard to security. The notion of what exactly the Germans might be up to was vague — something to do with espionage and sabotage. Whatever it was, all things German became abhorrent to Americans. German-American citizens were arrested and their property confiscated; German immigrants were deported; German names on breweries even bolstered the cause of Prohibitionists. And in an ancient echo of the "Freedom fries" of our own era, sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage".

There were other threats to worry about, too — socialists, labor activists and immigrants. Irish immigrants were of particular concern, since they had little affection for that staunch US ally, Britain. Some Irish had, before 1917, gone so far as to hope out-loud for a German victory. But as much of a concern as they were, the Irish were, then, mostly working-class nobodies. German-Americans, however had moved into all strata of society, including powerful positions in business and industry. Who knew what they might be up to in their private offices?

The Bureau of Investigation (BI), precursor to the FBI, had only about 400 agents in 1917. Keeping their eyes on the enormous German-American population was a daunting task. Fortunately for the BI, the American people came forward to help fill in the gaps. Several organizations sprang up around the country, such as the Boy Spies of America, the American Defense Society, the All-Allied Anti-German League and the Knights of Liberty. The largest and most widespread of these organizations was the American Protective League (APL), founded by a wealthy Chicago advertising executive named Albert M. Briggs.

The APL started as a network of volunteers employed to keep an eye on German intrigue in Chicago-area businesses. Their agents were not police officers or people familiar with law enforcement. They were bankers, insurance brokers, lawyers, merchants and other white-collar professionals. Their purview was business.

The fastidious paranoia of the American Protective League is evident in the way its operations were parceled out among several bureaus, including Administration, Finance, Investigation and Intelligence. The Intelligence Bureau was itself broken down into nine divisions: Real Estate, Financial, Insurance, Professional, Hotels, Transportation, Public Utilities, General Merchandise and Industries. The Industries Division was then further organized into 10 subdivisions; among these were such trades as Munitions, Chemicals and Paints, Foodstuffs and the catchall Miscellaneous, which was again divided into 10 subunits, including such nests of intrigue as Paper Trades and Cigars and Tobacco, as well as the typically more sinister Motion Picture Producers and Photographers.

Agents of the APL were to "promptly report . . . any and every case of disloyalty, industrial disturbance or other matter likely to injure or embarrass the Government of the United States." In particular, the agents of the Bureau of Intelligence took an oath to report any information "from whatever source derived, tending to prove hostile or disloyal acts or intentions on the part of any person whatsoever." They further swore not to disclose their membership in the organization or any facts and information connected with its work, except insofar as it was necessary to carry out that work. Of course, they also swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, never mind that some of their duties might conflict with the rights of private citizens.

With their members in high places throughout the business world, the APL was able to gather whatever minutiae it liked under any stone it decided to turn over. The Financial Division of the Intelligence Bureau, for example, was able to "furnish investigators facts with regard to foreign transactions." The Hotels Division could "make prompt and reliable reports on the doings of all transients." The Insurance Division provided information about the uses of buildings as well as "life insurance data" of individuals.

In 1917, when the US entered the war, Briggs approached A. Bruce Bielaski, chief of the Bureau of Investigation, with a proposal to allow the APL to assist them in protecting the nation from German spies. Bielaski decided to accept Briggs's offer. Since he was competing with the Treasury Department's secret service for jurisdiction in these matters, it seemed like a healthy move for his department. The APL then became a semi-official branch of the Justice Department under Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory.

The APL set up branches in cities across the country. Within a few months, they had 100,000 members nationwide. Each corporation, or division, had a captain and under him several departmental lieutenants, with companies of operatives beneath the lieutenants. By the end of the war, there were 250,000 members in more than 600 cities.

Members were not paid, but they did get a badge that designated the wearer to be an "auxiliary to the US Justice Department." In effect, the APL was a secret society of vigilantes from the elite classes operating without legal jurisdiction, but with the full knowledge and blessing of the attorney general. The cost of their operations, running into the millions of dollars, was funded through a group of corporations, as well as the US government.

The Justice Department made manufacturing companies, especially any with government contracts, a target of especially close monitoring. APL volunteers from corner offices to shop floors were on the lookout to pounce upon anybody who might be a German operative or even just a dissenter with regard to President Wilson's war policy. Anybody with a German surname became a person of interest. Thus, ordinary German- American citizens who had never imagined themselves taking up spying as a vocation soon found themselves harassed, persecuted and spied upon.

However, it turned out that German spies skulking around corporate America were not so plentiful. In fact, not a single case of a German spy caught by the APL was ever documented. Therefore, the APL's mission to look fox suspicious German activities in American businesses began to take a backseat to other, more pressing matters. The Justice Department wanted them to find and report draft dodgers, called "slackers". APL agents were eligible for a monetary reward for each slacker caught.

The APL also started working for the military, though still under the nominal control of the Justice Department. Volunteers not only reported slackers, but also infiltrated peace organizations and patrolled areas around military bases in order to keep them free of liquor and prostitutes.

Anti-war sentiments, perhaps because they were naturally more widespread and visible than espionage and treason, became one of the main focuses of APL operations. Unfettered by official governmental department rules and law enforcement protocols, APL agents were free to interpret what disloyalty was and what to do about it. Agents were untrained, undisciplined and, for all the fussy hierarchy within a given company, hardly restrained by higher authority.

Moreover, they had the Espionage Act of 1917 on their side. This legislation, like the APL itself, grew out of a virulent strain of fear that had spread across the country; it muzzled free speech and equated dissent with a lack of patriotism, if not downright treason. Passed at the urging of President Wilson, the Espionage Act gave the government a wide berth in going after anyone who didn't think highly of Wilson's policies. One victim of the law was Eugene V. Debs, Socialist Party presidential candidate, who received a prison sentence of 10 years for making a speech that "obstructed recruiting". Debs ran for president in 1920 from his prison cell.

There was plenty of legal cover to go after people suspected of committing a vaguely defined crime, such as obstruction of the war effort. The way the APL and the Justice Department saw it, a hesitation to accept US war policies wasn't illegal in itself, but what was hiding behind it?

APL agents would not stand idly by. They broke into offices, wiretapped telephones, intercepted mail, confiscated private documents, looked into bank accounts and confronted ordinary citizens that they found suspicious. In short, they did whatever their conscience, warped reasoning or inflated self-image demanded. The BI either looked the other way or actively used their services in joint operations; after all, the APL was not a government organization bound by pesky restrictions like the Bill of Rights. They could do what the BI could not do itself.

The Patriot Act: Preserving Life and Liberty Congress enacted the Patriot Act by overwhelming, bipartisan margins, arming law enforcement with new tools to detect and prevent terrorism: The USA Patriot Act was passed nearly unanimously by the Senate 98-1, and 357-66 in the House, with the support of members from across the political spectrum. The Department of Justice's first priority is to prevent future terrorist attacks. Since its passage following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Patriot Act has played a key part - and often the leading role - in a number of successful operations to protect innocent Americans from the deadly plans of terrorists dedicated to destroying America and our way of life. While the results have been important, in passing the Patriot Act, Congress provided for only modest, incremental changes in the law. Congress simply took existing legal principles and retrofitted them to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network.

In some states, the APL worked with Committees of Public Safety (CPS), which were in charge of the war efforts in each state. But these committees were, unfortunately, often overpopulated by excitable types who found in the APL a willing gang of enforcers for some of their more strongarm tactics. In other areas, existing anti-labor organizations joined with the APL to go after the International Workers of the World (IWW), or "Wobblies". Despite their cute name, the Wobblies were scary to almost everybody, but especially the wealthy and powerful. Denounced by newspapers, state governments, municipal organizations and businesses as a threat to internal security, they made an easy target for the federal government and the APL.

The Wobblies were, in fact, a major concern of the Bureau of Investigation, as well as the business elites who made up the APL. On 5 September 1917 the APL assisted the BI in simultaneous raids on IWW offices in 24 cities across the US. They seized financial records, membership lists and correspondences, among other materials, and they charged leaders with various infractions of wartime statutes. The many trials that followed kept the IWW so busy defending themselves that they effectively put an end to the movement to create a single big labor union.

A year later, slackers were the focus of BI/APL attention. In September 1918, in New York City, Newark and Jersey City, 2,000 APL agents assisted the BI, local police departments and the military, confronting men on the street, in shops and restaurants, demanding to see their draft registration card or a birth certificate showing they were over the draft age. Those who didn't have the documents on hand were crammed into holding areas until their case could be sorted out, which took up to two days.

Unlike the IWW raids, however, this massive rounding up of ordinary Joes on the street was not so popular. However fearful people were of the vague threats creeping among them, they were not afraid of their brothers, friends, neighbors — or themselves. The raids were met with angry editorials in the press and denunciations in Congress. Attorney General Gregory tried to defend the BI as simply employing the only method they could under the circumstances, but privately he blamed the American Protective League.

By this time, the APL had grown beyond its original intent, and beyond any legal restraint. Complaints were pouring into the attorney general's office accusing the APL not only of wiretapping, strikebreaking and illegal arrests, but also of extortion, kidnapping, rape and even murder in the case of Frank Little, an IWW organizer who was lynched by an angry mob.

After the war ended, Attorney General Gregory ordered the APL disbanded. The Justice Department held "mustering out" ceremonies in various cities across the nation to thank the APL members for a job well done and to tell them they could go home. But some didn't seem to get the hint. The war's end, in fact, only turned up the heat on the Red Scare. Workers were striking all over the country. The nation was in a near panic. Now it wasn't Germans, but Bolsheviks who were everywhere. Although Wilson brought the troops home from Europe, some of them remained camped in the frozen wastelands of Russia, fighting for nobody knew what.

A number of APL units protested their dismissal and called for a permanent place in the Justice Department or another branch of the federal government. Gregory had had enough, however, and refused. Nevertheless, in opposition to Gregory's order, many branches held on to their records and case files for future use and for the benefit of local police departments. Some units continued to operate with the support of their local governments and some eventually formed splinter groups.

The ghost of the APL continued on in other forms as well. Many corporations adopted the APL technique of employing agents to watch the shop floor for union organizing. Indeed, until 1924, the federal government continued to recall some APL members to ferret out disloyal activities. In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover took over the Bureau of Investigation and ended the practice. Hoover didn't want a bunch of amateurs mucking around in places where his trained agents were hiding. Paranoia was for professionals.

G. J. Hamel. The American Protective League. History Magazine. October/November 2008.

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