Of G-Men and Eggheads: The FBI and the New York Intellectuals

In this repetitious book, Rodden (Lionel Trilling and the Critics) focuses on three prominent mid-20th-century American intellectuals—Irving Howe, Dwight Macdonald, and Lionel Trilling—and the scrutiny they received from the FBI. As Rodden points out, although each of these writers expressed radical views about society and literature, each was firmly anti-Soviet, and the Bureau’s investigations were misplaced. For example, the FBI targeted Trilling because of his friendly but not close acquaintance with Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers. Macdonald, meanwhile, aroused interest in part because of his brief membership in a Trotskyist—and therefore anti-Soviet—cell, and Howe came to the Bureau’s attention because of his long involvement with Trotskyism. Rodden draws on their writings, as well as on the FBI’s dossiers on the writers, to reveal that none of them ever constituted a security risk; rather, they were, to use MacDonald’s phrase, “critical Americans.” Rodden concludes, convincingly but unsurprisingly, that the lesson to learn from these cases is that government needs to exercise restraint in conducting surveillance on American citizens who pose no threat to national security. (Feb.)