In compelling narrative style, this book offers the first hard look at the motives and activities of this uniquely powerful state agency, which used loyalty as a weapon to protect the existing socioeconomic order against a rising tide of radicalism on the home front.

April 1917: The governor of Minnesota put the State Capitol in St. Paul under heavy military guard. Newspapers filled their columns with rumors of terrorist activities. Then the United States declared war on Germany. In the midst of patriotic hysteria, the state legislature passed a bill establishing the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety to "do . . . all acts and things necessary" to defend the state from its enemies.