Palmer served as Attorney General from March 5 , 1919 , until March 4 , 1921 . Before assuming office , he had opposed the American Protective League ( APL ) , an organization of private citizens that conducted numerous raids and surveillance activities aimed at those who failed to register for the draft and immigrants of German ancestry who were suspected of sympathies for Germany . One of Palmer 's first acts was to release 10,000 aliens of German ancestry who had been taken into government custody during World War I . He stopped accepting intelligence information gathered by the APL . Conversely , he refused to share information in his APL-provided files when Ohio Governor James M. Cox requested it . He called the APL materials " gossip , hearsay information , conclusions , and inferences " and added that " information of this character could not be used without danger of doing serious wrong to individuals who were probably innocent . " In March 1919 , when some in Congress and the press were urging him to reinstate the Justice Department 's wartime relationship with the APL , he told reporters that " its operation in any community constitutes a grave menace . " The Palmer Raids occurred in the larger context of the Red Scare , the term given to fear of and reaction against communist radicals in the U.S. in the years immediately following World War I. Strikes garnered national attention , race riots occurred in over 30 US cities , and two sets of bombings took place in April and June 1919 , including attacks on Palmer 's home
two sets of bombings
1919 United States anarchist bombings
A. Mitchell Palmer