''The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies'' was written in 1976 jointly by

Morton H. Halperin Morton H. Halperin (born June 13, 1938) is an American analyst who deals with U.S. foreign policy, arms control, civil liberties, and the workings of bureaucracies. He served in the Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, and Obama administrations. He has t ...

, Jerry J. Berman, Robert L. Borosage, and Christine M. Marwick. It recounts abuses of power by the

U.S. Government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, executi ...

throughout the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

, and is concerned mostly with

surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing, or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as ...

methods and overstepped boundaries. Topics mentioned include: *The

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

and

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

using illegal intelligence and intimidation methods through

wiretaps Wiretapping, also known as wire tapping or telephone tapping, is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connecti ...

and

COINTELPRO COINTELPRO (a syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltr ...

. *The use of dissent-limiting programs such as

Operation Chaos Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) domestic espionage project targeting American citizens operating from 1967 to 1974, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson and expanded under President Richard Nixon ...

to link dissenting anti-war organizations to the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, and extensive FBI investigation and sabotage of

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, civil and political rights, civil rights activist and political philosopher who was a leader of the civil rights move ...

*U.S. Government activity in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

, and its part in the Chilean coup that put dictator

Augusto Pinochet Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean military officer and politician who was the dictator of Military dictatorship of Chile, Chile from 1973 to 1990. From 1973 to 1981, he was the leader ...

in power.

References

1976 non-fiction books Works about the Cold War History of law enforcement in the United States {{ColdWar-book-stub