Seth Rosenfeld

Seth Rosenfeld is an independent investigative journalist and author of the New York Times best-seller, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. He began the research that would lead to Subversives in 1981, as a journalism student at UC Berkeley writing for the campus newspaper. The work would become a three-decade Freedom of Information Act odyssey, with five lawsuits under the FOIA in a precedent-setting legal fight; and that the federal courts would order the FBI to release some 300,000 pages and pay his pro-bono attorneys’ fees of more than $1 million.

Rosenfeld’s FOIA lawsuits not only revealed what the courts called unlawful FBI operations at one of the nation’s preeminent public universities but strengthened the public’s right to know: they produced a series of decisions reversing exaggerated FBI claims that records must be kept secret; directing the bureau to make more thorough searches for records; and requiring it to waive processing fees in the public interest.

Rosenfeld pursued this FOIA project separately from his work of 25 years as a staff reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner, where he received the George Polk Award and other national awards. Published in 2012 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Subversives is a cautionary tale about the dangers of secrecy and power, revealing how J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI tried to silence the 1964 Free Speech Movement, fire UC President Clark Kerr because bureau officials disagreed with his campus policies, and gave Ronald Reagan personal and political favors. The New York Times Book Review called Subversives “electrifying,” NPR’s On the Media cited its “stunning revelations,” and the Christian Science Monitor called it “crucial history.” Rosenfeld lives in San Francisco and is continuing his FOIA work.