US internal security policy with a British accent: the influence of decolonisation on FBI activities

ABSTRACT The article dwells on the development of views of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the process of decolonization. Certain cases and relations with other counterintelligence agencies are used to see the shaping by the American counterintelligence of their own unique approach to the decay of the colonial system. At the same time, work in the same areas and, often, against the same organizations, the FBI gradually borrowed in direct or indirect ways many of the methods of their British counterparties. The article makes a conclusion on the change of the FBI’s perspective on the problem of decolonization and gives a justified view of the COINTELPRO program as the quintessence of borrowing of the British experience by the American federal agents.