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Template:Multiple issues Douglas M. Charles (born 1971) is associate professor of history at The Pennsylvania State University, Greater Allegheny campus (a.k.a., Penn State Greater Allegheny ) in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. He is a specialist in modern American history --- in the fields of political, intelligence, foreign relations, and gay & lesbian history --- and is the author of numerous articles on the history of the FBI and American intelligence. He is also the author of the book The FBI's Obscene File: J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau's Crusade against Smut (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012) and J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists: FBI Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State, 1939-1945 (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2007). ISBN 978-0-8142-1061-1 J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists examines the FBI's surveillance of President Roosevelt's "isolationist" foreign policy critics prior to and during the Second World War as well as the bureau's liaison with British intelligence. It illustrates that the FBI began widespread intelligence investigations, as opposed to criminal ones, dating from 1936 and began to serve as the White House's intelligence arm not with the onset of the Cold War but prior to the Second World War both offering it political intelligence reports as well as responding to requests for information. Given this fact, Charles has described the period as the "domestic security state," an important developmental stepping stone to the larger national security state after the war. Thereafter, this type of political surveillance activity, and resultant civil liberties abuses, vis-a-vis the White House would increase over subsequent decades.
Charles was educated at The Pennsylvania State University, earning a B.A. in history in 1995. He then took an M.A. in 1997 at Marquette University where he studied with the prominent FBI historian Athan Theoharis. Undertaking doctoral work in the United Kingdom, Charles took his Ph.D. in history at the University of Edinburgh in 2002 studying with Professor Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, noted historian of American intelligence, and Professor David A. T. Stafford, historian of British intelligence and its operations in the United States during the Second World War.
Charles previously taught as a tutor of history at the University of Edinburgh, a visiting professor at Marietta College in Ohio, and as a lecturer in history at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.
Charles's research interests focus primarily on the history of the FBI, but especially its political surveillance activities, interest in obscenity, and monitoring of gays and lesbians.
Published works[]
Books[]
- The FBI's Obscene File: J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau's Crusade against Smut (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012)
- J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists: FBI Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State, 1939-1945 (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2007).
op-eds[]
- “What We Can Learn from Hamilton and Another “Bail Out,” Published online with History News Network, 13 October 2008. [1]
- “Is It Really Wise to Expand the FBI's Investigative Techniques?” Published online with History News Network, 29 September 2008. [2]
- “Was Gonzales’s Historical Defense of [NSA] Eavesdropping Convincing?” Published online with History News Network, 20 February 2006. [3]
Articles[]
- "From Subversion to Obscenity: The FBI’s Investigations of the Early Homophile Movement in the United States, 1953-58," forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Sexuality 19:2 (May 2010).
- “‘Before the Colonel Arrived’: Hoover, Donovan, Roosevelt, and the Origins of American Central Intelligence,” Intelligence and National Security 20 (Summer 2005): 225-237.
- “Informing FDR: FBI Political Surveillance and the Isolationist–Interventionist Foreign Policy Debate, 1939-1945,” Diplomatic History 24 (Spring 2000): 211-232.
–published afterwards in Walter Hixson, ed., The American Experience in World War II: Isolationists and Internationalists, the Battle over Interventions, vol. 2 (New York: Routledge, 2002).
- “FBI Political Surveillance and the Charles Lindbergh Investigation, 1939-1944,” The Historian 59 (Summer 1997): 831-847, with John P. Rossi.
–published afterwards in Walter Hixson, ed., The American Experience in World War II: Isolationists and Internationalists, the Battle over Interventions, vol. 2 (New York: Routledge, 2002).
- “Franklin D. Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, and FBI Political Surveillance,” USA Today: The Magazine of the American Scene 128 (September 1999): 74-76.
- “American, British, and Canadian Intelligence Links: A Critical Annotated Bibliography,” Intelligence and National Security 15 (Summer 2000): 259-269.
–reprinted in David Stafford and Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, eds., American-British-Canadian Intelligence Relations, 1939-2000 (London and Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass, 2000).