ABSTRACT
The Espionage Act of 1917 was the second major antisedition law enacted by Congress—he first being the Sedition Act of 1798. A week after the United States entered the war April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information, headed by newspaperman George Edward Creel, which in short order waged an intensive public opinion campaign that favored the war effort at the expense of anything foreign and strongly influenced the enact-ment of the Espionage Act on June 17, 1917. The portion of the act defining espionage as an act of obtaining information relating to the national defense "to be used to the advantage of any foreign nation" was applied primarily to foreign-born, antiwar radicals, including Russians believed to support the Bolshevik Revolution and German Americans believed to be sympathetic to the kaiser.
