Here is an interesting article about Operation TIPS; the first time it was implemented.
best quote: "If I had my way, I would take [the radicals] out in the yard every morning and shoot them, and the next day would have a trial to see whether they were guilty."
DEJA VU
By CYNTHIA CROSSEN
October 2, 2002
Early TIPS Corps Did More Harm Than Good
"It is possible for us to gain access to any house, on the grounds of checking their gas and electric service," boasted a Wichita, Kansas, member of the American Protective League in 1918.
The league was the Operation TIPS of the early 20th century -- a corps of ordinary citizens, bankers, lawyers, judges, accountants, teachers and utility workers, who volunteered to keep an eye on their colleagues and neighbors and report suspicious behavior to the Justice Department.
However, unlike today's volunteers for TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System), league members could pay 75 cents for a badge that said, "Auxiliary to the U.S. Department of Justice."
At its peak -- 1917 to 1919 -- the league claimed roughly 250,000 members in at least 600 cities. Its members were mainly successful men, many too old or infirm to serve in the army but too young to do nothing for their embattled country. "The work of the American Protective League came nearer to satisfying that pent-up feeling than anything short of going 'over the top,' " noted one Los Angeles league member.
The league was the brainchild of a Chicago ad executive named Alfred Briggs, who desperately wanted to do something for the war effort. He proposed forming a secret and tightly controlled organization of patriots who would help the government eradicate the web of German spies and sympathizers infiltrating every corner of American life.
When World War I ended, the league turned its attention to Bolsheviks, anarchists and labor leaders. Along the way, its dragnet expanded to include pacifists, critics of the war, draft evaders and people who listened to Beethoven or ate sauerkraut. By the time the league disbanded, its members had reported well over one million "subversives."
Of those people, some of whom spent weeks in prison, incommunicado and with no official charges leveled against them, not a single one was convicted of espionage. Some were deported for immigration violations. But most of the league's reports turned out to be "spite work and tittle-tattle," as one New York newspaper put it, making it hard to distinguish the wheat from "the chaff of pure malice." Many tips were "petticoat cases" -- men acting suspiciously because they were having affairs.
Although league members were only supposed to file reports, some found ways to punish the unpatriotic. Commenting on a malevolent rumor that American nurses were returning from overseas duty pregnant, the league's house publication, Spy Glass, suggested, "Social ostracism and physical violence, perhaps, should supplement the legal penalties for repeating such a yarn."
Most Americans, frightened by the toll World War I was taking on their country, wanted their house cleaned. As A. Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's attorney general in 1919, said, "I was shouted at from every editorial sanctum in America from sea to sea. I was preached upon from every pulpit; I was urged -- I could feel it dinned into my ears -- to do something and do it now, do it quick, and do it in a way that would bring results."
The press was similarly acquiescent. "There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over infringement of liberty in the face of the Bolshevik menace," editorialized the Washington Post. Scolded the New York Herald, "Let there be no mawkish sentimentality about these rascals, no prattling of the sacred right of free speech from parlor socialists and others of that ilk."
But as with any organization of righteous volunteers, some league members became rogue cops. "One league member was ranging through the back country of North Carolina dressed in an old Texas Ranger uniform, carrying a high-powered Winchester and an automatic 'resembling a cannon,' " recounts Joan M. Jensen in her history of the league, "The Price of Vigilance." In Cincinnati in 1918, an angry mob of "prominent businessmen" rousted five men suspected of having German sympathies from their homes. The men were given a choice: salute the flag or be hanged.
Volunteer spy-catching was just one way innocent people in 1920 were hurt in the name of fighting a war. That year, Albert P. Langtry, then America's secretary of state, declared, "If I had my way, I would take [the radicals] out in the yard every morning and shoot them, and the next day would have a trial to see whether they were guilty."
After the war, the league was disbanded and its files destroyed -- officially. It was years before the volunteers dropped the habit of informing on their neighbors.
best quote: "If I had my way, I would take [the radicals] out in the yard every morning and shoot them, and the next day would have a trial to see whether they were guilty."
DEJA VU
By CYNTHIA CROSSEN
October 2, 2002
Early TIPS Corps Did More Harm Than Good
"It is possible for us to gain access to any house, on the grounds of checking their gas and electric service," boasted a Wichita, Kansas, member of the American Protective League in 1918.
The league was the Operation TIPS of the early 20th century -- a corps of ordinary citizens, bankers, lawyers, judges, accountants, teachers and utility workers, who volunteered to keep an eye on their colleagues and neighbors and report suspicious behavior to the Justice Department.
However, unlike today's volunteers for TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System), league members could pay 75 cents for a badge that said, "Auxiliary to the U.S. Department of Justice."
At its peak -- 1917 to 1919 -- the league claimed roughly 250,000 members in at least 600 cities. Its members were mainly successful men, many too old or infirm to serve in the army but too young to do nothing for their embattled country. "The work of the American Protective League came nearer to satisfying that pent-up feeling than anything short of going 'over the top,' " noted one Los Angeles league member.
The league was the brainchild of a Chicago ad executive named Alfred Briggs, who desperately wanted to do something for the war effort. He proposed forming a secret and tightly controlled organization of patriots who would help the government eradicate the web of German spies and sympathizers infiltrating every corner of American life.
When World War I ended, the league turned its attention to Bolsheviks, anarchists and labor leaders. Along the way, its dragnet expanded to include pacifists, critics of the war, draft evaders and people who listened to Beethoven or ate sauerkraut. By the time the league disbanded, its members had reported well over one million "subversives."
Of those people, some of whom spent weeks in prison, incommunicado and with no official charges leveled against them, not a single one was convicted of espionage. Some were deported for immigration violations. But most of the league's reports turned out to be "spite work and tittle-tattle," as one New York newspaper put it, making it hard to distinguish the wheat from "the chaff of pure malice." Many tips were "petticoat cases" -- men acting suspiciously because they were having affairs.
Although league members were only supposed to file reports, some found ways to punish the unpatriotic. Commenting on a malevolent rumor that American nurses were returning from overseas duty pregnant, the league's house publication, Spy Glass, suggested, "Social ostracism and physical violence, perhaps, should supplement the legal penalties for repeating such a yarn."
Most Americans, frightened by the toll World War I was taking on their country, wanted their house cleaned. As A. Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's attorney general in 1919, said, "I was shouted at from every editorial sanctum in America from sea to sea. I was preached upon from every pulpit; I was urged -- I could feel it dinned into my ears -- to do something and do it now, do it quick, and do it in a way that would bring results."
The press was similarly acquiescent. "There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over infringement of liberty in the face of the Bolshevik menace," editorialized the Washington Post. Scolded the New York Herald, "Let there be no mawkish sentimentality about these rascals, no prattling of the sacred right of free speech from parlor socialists and others of that ilk."
But as with any organization of righteous volunteers, some league members became rogue cops. "One league member was ranging through the back country of North Carolina dressed in an old Texas Ranger uniform, carrying a high-powered Winchester and an automatic 'resembling a cannon,' " recounts Joan M. Jensen in her history of the league, "The Price of Vigilance." In Cincinnati in 1918, an angry mob of "prominent businessmen" rousted five men suspected of having German sympathies from their homes. The men were given a choice: salute the flag or be hanged.
Volunteer spy-catching was just one way innocent people in 1920 were hurt in the name of fighting a war. That year, Albert P. Langtry, then America's secretary of state, declared, "If I had my way, I would take [the radicals] out in the yard every morning and shoot them, and the next day would have a trial to see whether they were guilty."
After the war, the league was disbanded and its files destroyed -- officially. It was years before the volunteers dropped the habit of informing on their neighbors.
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