◆ SpookStack

being linked by a perpetrator or all-encompassing conspiracy. Along with greater use of Agents for undercover work by the late 1970s, these provisions helped the FBI develop cases that, in the 1980s, put almost all the major traditional crime family heads in prison. . A national -tragedy produced another expansion of FBI - jurisdiction. When President Kennedy was assassinated, the crime Was a local homicide; no federal law addressed the murder of a President. Nevertheless, President Lyndon B. Johnson tasked the Bureau with conducting the investigation. Congress then passed a new law to ensure that any such act in the future would be a federal crime. THE VIETNAM WAR ERA President Kennedy's assassination introduced the violent espect of the era known as the "Sixties." This period, which actually lasted into the mid-1970s, was characterized by idealisn, but also by increased urban crime and a propensity for some groups to resort to violence in challenging the "establishment." Most Americans objecting to involvesient in Vietnam or to other policies wrote to Congress or carried peace signs in orderly Gemonstrations. Nevertheless, in 1970 alone, an estimated 3,000 bombings and 50,000 bomb threats occurred in the United States. Opposition to the war in Vietnan brought together numerous anti-establishment Groups and gave them a common coal, The convergence of ‘crime, violence, civil rights issues, and potential national security issues ensured that the FEI played a significant role during this troubled period. Presidents Johnson and Nixon and Director Koover shared with many Americans a perception of the potential dangers to this country from some who opposed its policies in Vietnam. As Koover observed in a 1966 PTA Maaezine article, the United States wes confronted with "a new style in conspiracy-~conspiracy that is extremely subtle and devious and hence difficult to understand...a conspiracy reflected by questionable mocds and attitudes, ky unrestrained individualism, by nonconformisn in Gress and spesch, “even by obscene language, rather than by formal membership in specific organizations." The New Left movement's "romance with violence" involved, among others, four young men living in Madison, Wisconsin. Antiwar sentiment was widespread at the University of Wisconsin (UW), where two of them were students. During the very early morning of August 24, 1970, the four used a powerful homemade bomb to blow uD Sterling Hall, which housed the Army Math Research Center at UK. 13