The American Protective League was an American organization of private citizens that worked with federal law enforcement agencies during the World War I era to identify suspected German sympathizers and to counteract the activities of radicals, anarchists, anti-war activists, and left-wing labor and political organizations.
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Formed in 1917 by A.M. Briggs, a wealthy Chicago advertising executive, at its zenith the APL claimed 250,000 dues-paying members in 600 cities of the United States.[1] Authorized to operate by the U.S. Attorney General Thomas Gregory, the APL assisted the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation (BOI), the precursor to the FBI. It quickly established its national headquarters in Washington, D.C.[2]
A private organization, the APL nevertheless had a semi-official status. It was officially approved by the Attorney General, who authorized the APL to carry on its letterhead the words "Organized with the Approval and Operating under the Direction of the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation."[1] Its assistance was welcomed by the Bureau of Investigation, which had only 219 field agents in 1915, none of whom had direct statutory authorization to carry weapons or to make general arrests.[3] In the field, BOI agents worked with and gathered information for the United States Attorneys. Direction came from the Attorney General or the Bureau chief.[3] Thus the author of a letter to the New York Times claimed membership in the APL and described it as "a volunteer unpaid auxiliary of the Department of Justice" in which he and his colleagues "have been acting upon cases assigned by the Department of Justice, Military Intelligence, State Department, Civil Service, Provost Marshall General, etc."[4]
APL members sometimes wore badges suggesting a quasi-official status: "American Protective League – Secret Service." The Attorney General boosted of the manpower they provided: "I have today several hundred thousand private citizens...assisting the heavily overworked Federal authorities in keeping an eye on disloyal individuals and making reports of disloyal utterances."[5]
In a letter to A.M. Briggs, the Justice Department told the APL that it was not only "of great importance prior to our entering the war, it became of vastly greater importance after that step had been taken." The Government had been receiving complaints of disloyalty and enemy activities, and while the Federal Bureau of Investigation was doing its best to contain the situation, the letter continued, the Protective League served as an auxiliary force to put a stop to corruption within the borders of the United States.[6]
During World War I, the APL was joined by many similar "secret societies" and groups formed by civilians to fight against foreign infiltration and sabotage. The "Anti Yellow Dog League" was a similar organization composed of school boys over the age of ten, who sought out disloyal members of American society. Such leagues and societies branched across the nation.[7]
President Woodrow Wilson knew of the APL's activities and wrote to Attorney General Thomas Gregory indicating his concern: "It would be dangerous to have such an organization operating in the United States, and I wonder if there is any way in which we could stop it?" He took no action against them.[8]
The APL also worked with the army's Military Intelligence Division (MID), the government's dominant investigatory agency in this period.[9] When the relationship between the APL and the MID became public early in 1919, the revelations embarrassed Secretary of the Army Newton D. Baker and tried to end his department's use of volunteer spies. [10]
Teams of APL members conducted numerous raids and surveillance activities aimed at those who failed to register for the draft and at immigrants of German ancestry who were suspected of sympathies for Germany.[11] Washington often lost control over field operations, to the point that agents and U.S. Attorneys, assisted by cadres of volunteers from the APL and other similar patriotic auxiliaries, pursued suspects of disloyalty on their own initiative and in their own manner.[3] They were known to have "spotted violators of food and gasoline regulations, rounded up draft evaders in New York, disrupted Socialist meetings in Cleveland, broke strikes, [and] threatened union men with immediate induction into the army."[12] In the most extraordinary cooperative action, thousands of APL members joined authorities in New York City for three days of checking registration cards, resulting in more than 75,000 arrests though fewer than 400 proved to be guilty of anything more than failing to carry their cards.[13] APL agents, many of them female, worked undercover in factories and attended union meetings in hope of uncovering saboteurs and other enemies of the war effort.[14]
APL members were accused of acting as vigilantes, allegedly violating the civil liberties of American citizens, including so-called "anti-slacker raids" designed to round up men who had not registered for the draft. The APL was also accused of illegally detaining citizens associated with anarchist, labor, and pacifist movements.[15]
In 1918, APL documents showed that 10% of its efforts (the largest of any category) were focused on disrupting the activities of the IWW or "Wobblies", an anti-war union movement with ties to radical anarchists.[1] Some IWW members had been involved in violent labor disputes and bomb plots against U.S. businessmen and government officials. In turn, the IWW alleged that APL members burgled, vandalized, and harassed IWW members and their offices. President Woodrow Wilson, despite misgivings about their methods, deferred to the judgment of Attorney General Thomas Gregory and chose not to take any action to curtail their activities.
After the Armistice, Attorney General Gregory credited the APL with the defeat of German spies and propaganda. He explained that his Department still required the organization's services as enemy nations sought to weaken American resolve during the peace negotiations, especially as newly democratic Germany sought kindlier treatment than its predecessor government might have expected.[16]
A. Mitchell Palmer succeeded Gregory as Attorney General on March 5, 1919. Before assuming office, he had opposed the APL activities. One of Palmer's first acts was to release 10,000 aliens of German ancestry who had been taken into government custody during World War I. He stopped accepting intelligence information gathered by the APL.[17] Conversely, he refused to share information in his APL-provided files when Ohio Governor James M. Cox requested it. He called the APL materials "gossip, hearsay information, conclusions, and inferences" and added that "information of this character could not be used without danger of doing serious wrong to individuals who were probably innocent."[18] In March 1919, when some in Congress and the press were urging him to reinstate the Justice Department's wartime relationship with the APL, he told reporters that "its operation in any community constitutes a grave menace."[19]
A few months after the signing of the Armistice ending World War I, the League officially disbanded, even as its members insisted they could serve as they had earlier in wartime against America's post-war enemies, "these bomb fiends, Bolsheviki, IWW's and other fiends."[20] The publication of the organization's story as The Web: A Revelation of Patriotism was an attempt to revive its fortunes as well. That volume by Emerson Hough, an author of western novels, called for a program of "selective immigration, deportation of un-Americans, and denaturalization of 'disloyal' citizens and anarchists." It said: "We must purify the source of America's population and keep it pure."[21] On June 3, 1919, the Washington Post called for the revival of the APL to fight anarchists.[22]
The APL nevertheless survived as a series of local organizations under other names, such as the Patriotic American League (Chicago) and the Loyalty League (Cleveland).[23] New Jersey members served as investigators for New York's Lusk Committee investigating and hounding radicals and political dissenters.[24] APL members continued to provide information and manpower of the Department of Justice, notably during the Palmer raids of January 1920 In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan recruited members from the Southern branches of the APL.[25] For years following the war, J. Edgar Hoover's General Intelligence Unit within the Justice Department drew on the APL for information about radicals.[26]
   | John Taylor Gatto - American Protective League Article - The American Protective League - John Taylor Gatto |
| | Repression Against the IWW - The IWW Shattered | Industrial Workers of the World |
| | Photograph of badge carried by the APL - American Protective League |
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