ustxtxb_obs_2006_11_17_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

ormer campus police chief at UT-Austin on the left. An undated photo shows Allen Hamilton, The Spies of Texas Newfound files detail how UT-Austin police tracked the lives of Sixties dissidents BY THORNE DREYER -14 FEATURE “Even a paranoid can have enemies.” Henry Kissinger Alien Hamilton kept his files secret until his death in 2005, long after his retirement as campus police chief for the University of Texas at Austin. His son discovered them while cleaning out his father’s office. The boxes of documents and photos from the 1960s included records of the most horrific event in Chief Hamilton’s tenurethe August day in 1966 when Charles Whitman perched atop the UT Tower with a high-powered rifle, killing 15 and wounding 33. Graphic photos from the Whitman archives were made available to newspapers to mark the 40th anniversary of that bloody day. But Hamilton’s files also provide valuable links to the complex political and social currents that were washing over the campus four decades ago. These documentsmade public here for the first timetell the story of how the University of Texas spied on its nonconformist and dissident students. The recordscovering a period from approximately 1963 to 1970show the extensive efforts that campus police made to identify, watch, and follow students and faculty members whom it found suspicious. The files include more than 500 pages of department memos, some from student informers; lists of names of campus “dopers” and activists; and photocopies of newspaper articles and leaflets. Also included are over 250 surveillance photographs. The documents reveal that among the subjects campus police were monitoring at the time were Janis Joplin, Some notes are jotted on torn scraps of paper. Others are typed memoranda to the chief and reports from Hamilton to campus administrators. And there are names, lots of names, probably close to a thousand. Some typed, some scribbled, some photocopied from petitions and sign-in sheets collected at meetings and rallies. 6 THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 17, 2006