Dangerously Provocative: Co-optation and Exploitation of Women’s Groups by U.S. Intelligence Agencies

• In Event: US Crisis Response

Abstract

This article examines how U.S. intelligence agencies, specifically the FBI and CIA, monitored and targeted women’s groups from the early 1900s to the 1970s as part of a broader campaign against Communism, the New Left, and other perceived anti-U.S. ideologies. Through a feminist analytical lens, this article explores how women’s groups were perceived to threaten the patriarchal structure during the first through second waves of the feminist movement, when views of those groups shifted from useful mouthpieces without agency to potential violent, subversive organisers. We theorise a spectrum of intelligence agency responses—from co-optation, passive surveillance, active surveillance, to undermining—and apply these engagement strategies to examine six cases: the Committee of Correspondence (co-optation), the National Organization for Women (passive surveillance), the Third World Women’s Alliance and the Women’s Liberation Movement (active surveillance), and the Sojourners for Truth and Justice and the Weatherwomen (undermining). By analysing these cases, the article highlights how the agency’s chosen engagement strategy depended on factors such as organisational tactics, ideological orientation, and suspected ties to global Communism. This study broadens our understanding of intelligence practices concerning potentially subversive social movements and explores the implications of these historical engagements for contemporary feminist and civil rights movements.

Author

• Katie M Whipkey, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author