Progressive Lawyers under Siege

Colin Wark is associate professor of criminology and sociology at Texas A&M University-Kingsville.John F. Galliher is professor of sociology at Missouri University.

• Chapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Blacklisting during the Cold WarChapter 3: Lawyers and the Micro Environments in American Law Firms during the 1930s to the 1960sChapter 4: San Francisco and the Bay Area during the 1930s through the 1960sChapter 5: Harry Bridges Chapter 6: George R. AndersenChapter 7: Norman LeonardChapter 8: Richard GladsteinChapter 9: Conclusion: The Creation of Legal CultureEpilogueReferencesAppendix 1: Chronology of the Gladstein FirmAppendix 2: Excerpt from George Andersen’s FBI file. Appendix 3: Excerpt from Norman Leonard’s FBI file.Appendix 4: Excerpt from Richard Gladstein’s FBI file.

Progressive Lawyers Under Siege recovers a long-hidden history of McCarthy era efforts by the FBI to investigate, harass, and intimidate progressive lawyers. Wark and Galliher take us inside the social and legal worlds of McCarthyism through a fine grained analysis of FBI files that targeted a high-profile progressive law firm in San Francisco in the 1940s and 1950s. The authors paint a vivid picture of the anti-Semitic, anti-labor, and racially motivated efforts by the FBI to monitor and repress attorneys working on behalf of those fighting for economic and racial justice in an age of anti-Communist hysteria. Progressive Lawyers Under Siege, is no mere coda to history. In light of U.S. government efforts to penalize attorneys who represented suspected terrorists after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent revelations of widespread electronic surveillance of the U.S. population, this book offers a powerful cautionary tale about the lengths federal law enforcement will go to repress those who would provide legal counsel to people the government believes (often wrongly) to be enemies of the state.