Reining in the state : civil society and Congress in the Vietnam and Watergate eras

Resource Information

The work Reining in the state : civil society and Congress in the Vietnam and Watergate eras represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in European University Institute. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Reining in the state : civil society and Congress in the Vietnam and Watergate eras

Title remainder

civil society and Congress in the Vietnam and Watergate eras

Statement of responsibility

Katherine A. Scott

Creator

• Scott, Katherine A., (Katherine Anne)

Subject

• Civil society -- United States
• Executive power -- United States
• Separation of powers -- United States
• Transparency in government -- United States
• United States -- Politics and government -- 1969-1974

Language

eng

Summary

Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon dramatically expanded the federal government's domestic security apparatus to cope with social unrest that rocked their administrations. By the mid-1970s, the Justice Department and Army maintained some 400 databanks containing nearly 200 million files on supposedly subversive individuals and organizations. Katherine Scott chronicles the subsequent public response to that government action: a determined citizens' movement to rein in the state. She details the efforts of a group of unheralded heroes who battled to reinvigorate judicial, legislative, and civic oversight of the executive branch in order to curtail and prevent future abuses by government agencies. Working closely with allies in Congress, they challenged state power, instituted open government policies, and protected individual privacy rights. Scott has assembled a cast of characters with compelling stories: Russ Wiggins of the Washington Post, who organized a citizens' campaign for government transparency; Representative John Moss, who called attention to government censorship; ACLU Director Aryeh Neier, who created a legal strategy for judicial oversight of executive branch security measures; Senator Sam Ervin, a civil libertarian who demanded greater oversight of the executive branch; and Morton Halperin, a former NSC staff member, who called attention to the gross constitutional violations of the nation's top security agencies. Rejecting the agendas and methods of both the radical left and the antigovernment right, these progressive reformers sought to bring the American state in line with democratic practice --

Assigning source

Provided by Publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

352.235097309046

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography