Abuse of Power: How Cold War Surveillance and Secrecy Policy Shaped the Response to 9/11 (Temple University Press), by Athan G. Theoharis

Perhaps no one has investigated the FBI more thoroughly than Marquette University history professor Athan Theoharis, who pursued Freedom of Information Act document requests over many decades to assemble a partial record of the agency's secrets. In Abuse of Power, Theoharis argues that the Patriot Act and other responses to 9/11 continued practices dating from Franklin Roosevelt's authorization of covert surveillance of Nazi and Soviet sympathizers in the 1930s. Marshaling a persuasive battery of evidence, Theoharis disputes Bush administration claims that the FBI was hamstrung before 9/11; the bureau already commanded full legal authority to monitor domestic and international communications. Aside from the potentially chilling effect of too much secrecy in high places, Theoharis insists the FBI's elaborate counterintelligence schemes during World War II, the Cold War and the War on Terror netted few results, masked the bureau's shortcomings and allowed it to spy on lawful organizations. After 9/11, the FBI kept tabs on the Catholic Worker Movement, Quakers and Greenpeace, none of them affiliated with Al Qaeda.