"The Triumph of Fear is a history of the rise and expansion of surveillance and related political repression in the United States from the 1890s to 1961. Anarchist movements and especially the assassination of President McKinley spurred the expansion of nascent federal surveillance capabilities, but persistent exaggerations of threats in times of peace and war exponentially increased the size and scope of unlawful government surveillance and political repression, which has continued to the present. Drawing on declassified government documents and other primary sources, many analyzed for the first time, Patrick Eddington offers surprising new revelations about the depths of government surveillance programs and abuses of power. Eddington's analysis makes clear that the driving force behind these developments was fear on the part of the executive branch, members of Congress, and those on the federal bench. Fear that challenges to existing political, economic, or social paradigms would alter the country in ways that would disempower those who benefitted from the status quo. From Theodore Roosevelt's misuse of the Secret Service to spy on his political opponents to Dwight Eisenhower's approval of FBI subversion operations, Eddington pinpoints the critical junctures that have jeopardized American civil liberties"--