The Kurt Lewin–Goodwin Watson FBI/CIA files

Abstract

FBI files on Kurt Lewin, founder of this journal, and his close colleague Goodwin Watson, reveal inter alia the investigation of Lewin postmortem by the FBI/CIA, and FBI surveillance of Watson while he was a proponent of corporate T-groups, a precursor to present day team development. Sixty years on from Human Relations' launch, and Lewin's premature death, the files enrich understandings of Lewin's, and Watson's, lives and work. The socio-political structures-in-process they evidence also support the idea of the T-group as a knowing political tactic, apparently emancipatory, yet immunized from (proto-)Cold War inquisition by its very focus on the here-and-now.

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