Tackwood,L. The Glass House Tapes. 1973

Tackwood, Louis E. and the Citizens Research and Investigation Committee. The Glass House Tapes. New York: Avon Books, 1973. 284 pages.

In 1971, some New Left activists in Los Angeles were approached by Louis Tackwood, who wanted to confess about the work he had been doing for the Criminal Conspiracy Section of the LAPD. "Those are the mad dogs who set up Angela, the Panthers -- all the militants. They've got a room on the eighth floor of the Glass House with files and pictures of all radicals -- brothers, brown militants and white boys, too. It's a top secret place where they keep information on everyone. You even need a special pass to get in. They got files on people all over the country. CCS is a super-police agency."

This semi-thriller chronicles the efforts by the ad-hoc citizens committee to debrief Tackwood into a tape recorder over the next two years, confirm his story, and publicize it. They did an excellent job; this remains a classic glimpse into the pre-Watergate police-state atmosphere that was all too real for the New Left the morning after the sixties. From Red Squads to state agencies, and from the FBI's COINTELPRO to domestic surveillance by the CIA and military, it was as close to fascism as we've come since the McCarthy days. In 1978 I was working with another Citizens Commission on Police Repression on the issue of LAPD's intelligence division. I consider this book to be credible, even if Tackwood's prose is slightly overstated. -- D.Brandt
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