A Paranoid State: The American Public, Military Surveillance and the Espionage Act of 1917

"A Paranoid State" examines the influence of middle to upper class anxieties through military intelligence officers' investigations of the American public in the First World War. Products of their past, Military Intelligence Department officers built upon a history of espionage activities in the Philippines and in episodes of strikebreaking at the turn of the century. On a massive scale for the first time in U.S. history, agents of military intelligence conducted a campaign of surveillance upon American citizens. These military officers were influenced by a larger movement in American society during the First World War, as evidenced by Congress' passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts and thriving vigilante organizations such as the American Protective League. While historians argue that the Wilson administration took advantage of the war-induced anxieties to eliminate major socialist and radical groups, such as the Wobblies, the argument offered here is that without the political paranoia that was pervasive among American elites and the middle-class those extreme actions may not have been successful.