Burning Bridges

How Far Will Those in Government Go to Protect Their Power and Squash Radical Voices?

 

Soon to be a major motion picture.  Based on declassified FBI documents, including secret documents from J. Edgar Hoover's vault and never-before-published National Archives documents, Burning Bridges is the first detailed account of the twenty-year legal campaign waged by government lawyers and policymakers, in secret conjunction with private enterprise, to deport labor leader Harry Bridges.

 

Set in the middle decades of the twentieth century during the Cold War, this is a story of bribery, perjury, and wiretaps; of secret FBI investigations, witness intimidation, and secret deals; and of assassination attempts, overzealous government prosecutors, and larger-than-life defense lawyers risking prison defending their clients.

 

Three-quarters of a century on, the legacy of the Harry Bridges trials still haunts America’s legal system and is critical to assess because Americans today again confront aggressive prosecutorial and police action and a modern surveillance state with the greatest threat of government intrusions into civil liberties since Bridges' era.