author
Dan Smoot
1913–2003
A former FBI agent who became a prominent conservative commentator, he built a loyal audience with his newsletter and broadcasts during the height of Cold War politics. His work is closely tied to anti-communist activism and the sharp-edged debates of mid-20th-century America.
1 Audiobook
The Invisible Government
by Dan Smoot
About the author
Born in 1913 and known professionally as Dan Smoot, Howard Drummond Smoot was an American writer, broadcaster, and political activist. Before becoming a public commentator, he worked as an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an experience that helped shape the strongly anti-communist views that later defined his public career.
He is best remembered for The Dan Smoot Report, a weekly newsletter and radio program published from the 1950s into the early 1970s. In it, he warned readers about what he saw as communist influence in American government and society, becoming a recognizable voice in conservative media of the era.
Smoot died in 2003. Today, he is mainly remembered as part of the postwar conservative movement and for the way his reporting and commentary reflected the anxieties and political arguments of the Cold War years.