A Life Amid Spies

Former State Department official and human rights advocate Roberta Cohen recalls her brushes with U.S. and foreign intelligence agents through the decades

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This is the first episode in a series. Ms. Cohen was a deputy assistant secretary for human rights in the Carter administration.

Author’s note: If you choose a career in international human rights, expect the intelligence community to show up at your doorstep. Sometimes their agents will wine and dine you if they think you could serve their interests. Other times, they will intimidate and harm you if they think you could be a threat. Usually they are indifferent to the consequences of their actions. These are my stories.

Was I A Card-Carrying Communist?

In the mid-1970s, in New York, I received a letter from the FBI informing me I was a member of the Communist Party. Accompanying the letter was a 60-page file revealing that for more than 10 years I had been followed, my phone had been tapped, and FBI agents had hounded me. The names of informants were blacked out.

The trouble with the file was that the FBI had been following around a Roberta Cohn.