American Decades
Espionage Scandals
Increase in Vigilance.
One of Ronald Reagan's primary messages in the 1980 presidential election was that America had become soft on communism, and that as president he would renew the crusade against the Soviet Union and its communist allies. Four decades of the Cold War had resulted in massive spying campaigns on the part of each superpower against the other. Reagan renewed campaigns against espionage. Beginning as soon as he took office in 1981, the U.S, Justice Department and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) doubled the nation's counterintelligence forces, with a resultant increase in espionage cases prosecuted throughout the 1980s. In 1983 the government tried five such cases, and fourteen in 1984. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger dubbed 1985 "the year of the spy," when so many arrests for espionage were made that the Department of Justice could not offer reporters an accurate count. Indeed, extremely...
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1980's Law and Justice
