Mont Wesley Swearingen (May 20, 1927

Steubenville, Ohio Steubenville is a city in and the county seat of Jefferson County, Ohio, United States. Located along the Ohio River 33 miles west of Pittsburgh, it had a population of 18,161 at the 2020 census. The city's name is derived from Fort Steuben, a ...

- November 13, 2019

Hemet Hemet is a city in the San Jacinto Valley in Riverside County, California. It covers a total area of , about half of the valley, which it shares with the neighboring city of San Jacinto. The population was 89,833 at the 2020 census. The foundi ...

, California) was an

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

Special Agent from 1951 to 1977. He wrote two books drawn from his experience: ''FBI Secrets'' (1995), and ''To Kill a President''(2008), an examination of the

John F. Kennedy assassination John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was in the vehicle wi ...

Biography

Born in Steubenville, Ohio, Swearingen served in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

from 1945 to 1946. After the war, he used the GI Bill to study at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, where he graduated. He joined the FBI. He began his career conducting black bag jobs on Communists in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

.
- In

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, he spent years doing serious criminal investigations, which had been his goal in joining the FBI. But Director

J. Edgar Hoover John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation � ...

had become fixated on the threat in the 1950s and 1960s that he believed was posed by civil rights groups: first because of links to American communists. posed by such groups as the Black Panther Party. and the Weathermen. Assigned to the Los Angeles FBI field office, Swearingen burglarized the Tucson Five and their lawyers during the FBI's efforts to prosecute them, but no incriminating evidence was found. The Tucson Five were exonerated. After 25 years with the FBI, Swearingen retired in 1977. Swearingen was interviewed in the documentary films '' All Power to the People!''(1997), which explored issues related to the Black Panthers, and ''

The U.S. vs. John Lennon ''The U.S. vs. John Lennon'' is a documentary film about Lennon's transformation from member of the Beatles to anti-war activist opposing the reelection of Richard Nixon as president in 1972. The film also details the attempts by the Nixon admini ...

''. He died in

Hemet, California Hemet is a city in the San Jacinto Valley in Riverside County, California. It covers a total area of , about half of the valley, which it shares with the neighboring city of San Jacinto. The population was 89,833 at the 2020 census. The foundi ...

on November 13, 2019.

Publications

''FBI Secrets: An Agent’s Exposé''.
Boston: South End Press, 1995. / . *''To Kill a President: Finally—an Ex-FBI Agent Rips Aside the Veil of Secrecy that Killed JFK''. BookSurge Publishing, 2008. / .(self-published)

References

1927 births 2019 deaths American male writers Federal Bureau of Investigation agents People from Steubenville, Ohio {{US-writer-stub