Loving Bella Abzug is easy - unless you’re in the Central Intelligence Agency or Federal Bureau of Investigation. Then she was a dangerous leftist who needed to be monitored. Here are several reasons why she should be your nonproblematic fav, based on her FBI file and documents in CIA’s declassified archive.

A little known but extremely important part of the history of domestic surveillance by intelligence agencies is the CACTUS program. CACTUS was a highly classified channel used by agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to transmit information about “the New Left, Black Militants and related matters.” This channel was never disclosed in the Church Committee reports, even when the reports discuss information that was transmitted through CACTUS.

While the FBI file for Timothy Leary has several interesting pieces of information, what really stands out are some conspicuous - and revealing - absences.