Stimulated by little more than idle talk and unsubstantiated gos- sip, FBI surveillance of Chavez under the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter contin- ued over ten years, occupying the attention of dozens of FBlagents in California, a half-dozen other states, and even Mexico. When all related materials are added in—including parallel and cooperative investigations with other intelligence agencies—the FBI dossier on) “ Chavez runs to over 1,500 pages, with new documents being disi closed regularly. Outlining J. Edgar Hoover’s campaign to uncover communist infiltration and control the farmworker movement, the file emerges as...