Petrelis Files

FBI File: 
Alexander Cockburn = 'Revolutionary Marxist'

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, via the National Archives, has released the rather boring 17-page file on the late radical journalist Alexander Cockburn in response to my Freedom of Information Act request. The full file is posted here.

Honestly, I expected the feds to have gathered more intelligence on Cockburn over the decades and found what's been released quite skimpy.

I think Cockburn, pictured, would be proud to be described as a revolutionary Marxist by the FBI and its counterpart in the United Kingdom, the MI-5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5) agency, which shared information with the FBI. From the file:

Cockburn has been a leading figure of the "New Left", a group of revolutionary Marxist academics centered round the "New Left Review", since 1966.

Although closely associated with members of Trotskyist and Communist groups, he is not known to have been either a Trotiskyist or a Communist himself, and is probably best described as a Revolutionary Marxist.

The existence of the Cockburn file means media critic Jack Shafer won't need to borrow Splenda from me to help him swallow his keyboard!

The surveillance state back in the 1970s, when the Cockburn file was created, has only expanded since then and continues to grow under Barack Obama.