Informants by the Hundreds: FBI Penetration of the CPUSA

Abstract

Abstract Examination of the role of FBI informants in the Communist Party of the United States of America from its formation until the 1970s indicates that FBI recruitment of informants and penetration of the CPUSA was smaller during the Party’s heyday in the 1930s than during its decline after World War II and collapse in the 1960s and 1970s. FBI efforts to recruit informants produced a significant number of valuable assets and stoked Party paranoia.