“The FBI has no politics”: COMINFIL radio-TV and the suppression of dissent

Abstract In the second half of the 1940s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation initiated an investigation of the broadcasting industry that had far-reaching consequences for the future of television. This investigation, COMINFIL Radio-TV (short for Communist Infiltration of Radio-TV) provided justification and resources for the Bureau’s surveillance of progressives and efforts to attack and undermine progressive reforms in the postwar era. This article shows how the Bureau used the threat of communist infiltration to infiltrate trade unions, broadcast networks, and progressive organizations. In doing so, this article begins to address a crucial gap in Cold War media historiography—the Bureau’s interventions into broadcasting at a particularly critical moment in the development of television—by documenting government suppression of dissent and censorship.