cover image Break-Ins, Death Threats and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement

Break-Ins, Death Threats and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement

Ross Gelbspan. South End Press, $14 (257pp) ISBN 978-0-89608-412-4

This report tells an infuriating story of FBI misconduct leading all the way to the Reagan White House. Gelbspan, a Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist now with the Boston Globe , focuses on Frank Varelli, a Salvadoran-born FBI employee who helped the bureau infiltrate and harass CISPESp. 3 , a group opposed to Reagan policies in Central America. The administration branded such groups ``terrorist,'' the author explains, ``simply because some of their opinions may conform to some positions held by the Soviet Union or another government which is considered hostile to the United States.'' The book documents close relations between FBI operatives and extreme right-wing groups like the John Birch Societyp. 22 and the Moonieschap 6, p. 76, p. 79 in this country and death-squad supporters in El Salvadorp. 58 . At its best, this is a taut piece of true-crime writing in the same vein as Desperados and The Westies. Even when it isn't dwelling on Varelli's narrative, the book is a competently written, if occasionally dry catalogue of the dirty tricks that government agencies have been using against citizens who are merely exercising their First Amendment rights. (June)