In March 1971 I was a junior in high school, fascinated with the idea that someone would break into a suburban Philadelphia office of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) solely to steal every document to which they could lay hands. I was worried about the draft, figured it had something to do with that, and wished something similar would happen with the draft records in Atlanta. This was the era just before we thought blowing up computers instead of demanding access to them was a good idea.
Better yet, the anonymous interlopers were never caught.
Best of all, the documents were distributed to US Senator George McGovern (D-South Dakota), US Representative Parren Mitchell (D-Maryland), and reporters at the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post. Mostly the singular work of Betty Medsger at the Post led to revelations about illegal surveillance, entrapment, and other operations against politically dissident domestic groups in the US.
Last week, five of the eight interlopers — no longer facing legal prosecution for their activities (the statute of limitations for any burglary charges would have expired in March 1976) — came forward to identify themselves:
- William Davidon
- Keith Forsyth
- Bonnie Raines
- John Raines
- Bob Williamson
In the summer of 1970, President Richard Nixon announced the US had invaded Cambodia and the US antiwar movement was absolutely livid. William Davidon, then a professor at Haverford College, formed a cohort of activists — the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI — to break into the Philadelphia FBI office.
Realizing that the Philadelphia FBI office had actual security, the group opted for the office in suburban Media, PA. Even then, the designated lock-picker for the group couldn’t pick the lock and used a crowbar instead. But they got what they were after: Every single file in the office. All 1,000 of them.
Betty Medsger, then writing for the Washington Post and one of the recipients of the files, broke the story two weeks after the break-in. Congressional investigations and oversight followed, apparently (but not really) reigning-in the FBI’s surveillance activities.
In an article for the Washington Post (in paper’s style section, no less), Medsger reports what drew her attention in the first of 14 files she received: “… FBI agents were encouraged to increase interviews with dissenters ‘for plenty of reasons, chief of which are it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.'” Paranoia was a primary goal of the FBI’s operations. Newsworthy? You bet.
And then there were the files documenting FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover‘s overt targeting of African Americans. “Every FBI agent was required to hire at least one informer to report to him regularly on the activities of black people,” writes Medsger. “In the District [Washington, DC], every agent was required to hire six informers for that purpose. On one campus in the Philadelphia area, Swarthmore College, every black student was under surveillance.”
Medsger identifies what turned out to be the most important document as a “… mere routing slip” marked COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO was an extensive FBI operation, launched in 1956, to surveil, infiltrate, and entrap dissident civil rights and other political organizations with the underlying purpose of sowing distrust and “neutralizing” them. A representative effort of COINTELPRO involved FBI activities that “… Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his closest associates interpreted at the time as a blackmail threat intended to persuade King to commit suicide,” recalls Medsger. Hoover eliminated the COINTELPRO code name (but not its activities) three weeks later.
The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI revelations and public outcry led to the creation of the Church Committee and some reform, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
Bonnie Bertram working with Retro Report, in collaboration with Mark Mazzetti writing for the New York Times, has produced an absolutely outstanding video of background information on the break-in including interviews with Forsyth, the Raines, and Medsger:
Bonnie Bertram’s Stealing J. Edgar Hoover’s Secrets (Retro Report, 7 January 2014).
Medsger reports that she wasn’t sure the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI documents weren’t an elaborate hoax until they were confirmed by the FBI. Attorney General John Mitchell repeatedly called Post editors Ben Bradlee and Ben Bagdikian and publisher Katharine Graham urging them not to publish Medsger’s work. Mitchell told them that disclosure of the files “… could endanger lives, disclose national defense information, and give aid to foreign governments,” according to Medsger. Sound familiar? Medsger reports she learned years later that Mitchell had “… neither read nor been briefed on the files…”
In light of the revelations surrounding the documents distributed to journalists by Edward Snowden — and the seeming consensus in most corporate media circles that Snowden is a traiter, Medsger’s recollection of the Post‘s decision to publish is timely and informative:
“The editors had convinced Graham that the responsibility to reveal this information far outweighed concern about how it became available to us. It was important for people to have access to the information — even if it were the fruit of a burglary — that the FBI engaged in practices that had never been reported, probably were unconstitutional, and were counter to the public’s understanding of Hoover and the FBI.”
Medsger reports that the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Senator McGovern, and Representative Mitchell all returned the stolen documents they received to the FBI and closes her article with a poignant observation:
“In the case of the Snowden files, it is not clear what action the public might demand that Congress take.
“It is clear, though, that twice in the past half-century, Americans have had to rely on burglars — not official oversight by Congress, the Justice Department or the White House — for crucial information about their intelligence agencies’ operations.”