DESC: Spying on America explores all five COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counterintelligence Program) operations, chronicling the period when the FBI monitored--and in many cases disrupted--virtually our entire social and political protest movement. From 1956 until COINTELPRO's exposure in 1971, the FBI expanded its domestic surveillance programs and increasingly employed questionable, even unlawful, methods. Davis demonstrates how the system of checks and balances, designed to prevent such occurrences, was simply not functioning--until an illegal act uncovered the secret activities.