The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI
Alfred A. Knopf (2014)
Review by Stephen Bergstein
The whistleblower remains America’s biggest hero. Politicians and bureaucrats do not want their secrets revealed, and whistleblowers often risk their careers in exposing misconduct and illegal activity. Sometimes the act of whistle-blowing itself is illegal. In 1971, eight activists burglarized an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania to confirm suspicions that the agency was spying on and disrupting the anti-war movement. The break-in was obviously unlawful. It also exposed the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO surveillance program, which sought to destroy the social and political movements that challenged the American status quo at home and abroad, including the Vietnam War, which was raging without end. The Media break-in was among the gutsiest acts of civil disobedience in American history. And prior to the publication of The Burglary, the identity of these activists was a mystery. They come forward in this book, 43 years after setting off an FBI manhunt in the search to retrieve the stolen records and contain the damage to J. Edgar Hoover’s agency, which until then had near universal respect among Americans.
COINTELPRO was short for Counter-Intelligence Program, a far-reaching and secret FBI program in which the agency spied on and disrupted, among other groups, anti-war activists, advocates for racial justice, the American Indian movement and left-wing activists, including the Socialist Workers Party. The program lasted from 1956 through 1971, though the U.S. government has employed other programs before and after COINTELPRO to disrupt and spy on law-abiding activists who challenged the status quo. Not only did COINTELPRO harass and surveil activists, but the FBI extended its unlawful campaign against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., subjecting him to threats and blackmail. In 1969, as part of a COINTELPRO operation, two Black Panther Party activists, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were shot and killed by law enforcement while they lay sleeping. One COINTELPRO document from 1967 captures the essence of the program: “The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder. The activities of all such groups of intelligence interest to the Bureau must be followed on a continuous basis so we will be in a position to promptly take advantage of all opportunities for counterintelligence and inspire action in instances where circumstances warrant. The pernicious background of such groups, their duplicity, and devious maneuvers must be exposed to public scrutiny where such publicity will have a neutralizing effect. Efforts of the various groups to consolidate their forces or to recruit new or youthful adherents must be frustrated. No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups and where possible an effort should be made to capitalize upon existing conflicts between competing black nationalist organizations. When an opportunity is apparent to disrupt or neutralize black nationalist, hate-type organizations through the cooperation of established local news media contacts or through such contact with sources available to the Seat of Government, in every instance careful attention must be given to the proposal to insure the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited through the publicity and not merely publicized. Consideration should be given to techniques to preclude violence-prone or rabble-rouser leaders of hate groups from spreading their publicity or through various mass communications media.”
Betty Medsger was a reporter for the Washington Post who wrote about the COINTELPRO disclosures in 1971. She returns to this story in this book, with cooperation from seven of the burglars, who no longer fear prosecution and remain proud of their achievement. (The eighth burglar shed her anonymity in October 2014, after the book was published). This book is timely: a documentary about the break-in, “1971,” was released in April 2014 to positive reviews. The most dramatic whistleblowers, from Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, to Edward Snowden, who revealed widespread NSA phone surveillance, have taken the greatest risks by exposing the National Security State. But it is hard to overstate how courageous and even reckless the Media burglary was. At least Ellsberg and Snowden had access to the documents. Imagine breaking into an FBI office to steal confidential memos. The burglars had much to lose. The ringleader, William Davidon, was a physics professor at a local college. John and Bonnie Raines were a young married couple whose small children were “a vivid reminder of the serious implications to be faced if the burglary failed,” Medsger writes. Bob Williamson was a state social worker. In order to pull it off, the Media 8 planned ahead. They told no one about their plans, and spent weeks in the Raines’s attic mapping out a strategy. One burglar, Keith Forsyth, perfected his lock-picking skills. The attic itself was a war room, with a map of the community on the wall along with a diagram of the FBI office. The burglars cased the FBI’s offices by noting traffic and pedestrian patterns to devise the right time to enter the building, which also housed other offices and apartments. Posing as a college student who wanted to interview FBI agents for an assignment, Bonnie Raines entered the FBI offices under a false identity to scope out the office layout, discovering that the office had no alarm system. The Media 8 chose March 8, 1971 as the burglary date, the same night as the much-anticipated Ali-Frazier boxing match, when most people would be inside watching the fight on TV and not on the streets as potential witnesses to the burglary.
The burglary was a success, but even the careful planning did not anticipate problems. On the night of the break-in, the lock could not be picked. As the other burglars fretted in a nearby motel room, Forsyth called them to suggest the burglary might have to be called off. After Forsyth returned to the motel to further consult with his conspirators, Bonnie Raines said that another door was barricaded on the inside by a large cabinet. The Media 8 decided to proceed with the burglary, and Forsyth returned to the FBI office at 10:30 PM, just as the Ali-Frazier fight began. He picked the lock on the second door and popped out another lock with a crowbar before slowly pushing open the door with the heavy cabinet behind it, worried that the cabinet might topple and cause a loud crash that would prompt a police call.
After Forsyth was able to open the door, the other burglars left the motel and headed for the FBI office. They entered the office wearing business suits and carrying suitcases. In the dark, they forced open file cabinets and drawers and stole nearly every piece of paper in the office, not even aware if they had captured the surveillance documents that prompted the burglary in the first place. The getaway car took them to a farmhouse one hour away. As Medsger writes, “Within an hour of opening the suitcases they had stuffed with FBI files, they knew their risk was not in vain. They found a document that would shock even hardened Washington observers.” Imagine what the FBI agents in Media thought when they learned that the office had been burglarized and all the files taken. And imagine how the imperious and paranoid J. Edgar Hoover reacted when he learned that the world would soon know the bureau’s darkest secrets.
The FBI launched an intense manhunt for the burglars, who had photocopied the incriminating documents and sent them to newspapers and public officials, exposing the FBI as a political police force that had essentially made it illegal to oppose the war and to promote social justice. Having surreptitiously entered the office as a college student, Bonnie Raines was a prime suspect. Hoover demanded that his agents “find me that woman.” The FBI even got Xerox to try to identify which photocopier had been used to copy the documents (a Xerox maintenance person actually came to John Raines’ office to remove a copier drum that had left distinctive marks on the copies). The search was unsuccessful. Despite some close calls (FBI agents made it inside the Raines household at one point, and a would-be burglar who backed out of the plan nearly turned in the others), the burglars remained anonymous and were never caught.
Had the FBI found the burglars, they would have gone to jail for years. But while the Media 8 were never apprehended, they lived in constant fear of arrest. One burglar, Susan Smith, suffered years of anxiety that she might have removed her gloves during the burglary and left fingerprints behind. As the burglars were anti-war activists, the FBI knew enough to question them (and their family members) about the burglary. The agents could not make any arrests. The COINTELPRO burglary became legendary, but the burglars themselves went on their lives with this explosive secret.
Revelations about COINTELPRO permanently affected the public’s view of the FBI. Hoover had been one of the most admired public officials in America, and federal agents were the “good guys.” By the mid-1970s, after the public learned about other FBI and CIA abuses and lawlessness, the country entered a new period of public skepticism about government, a positive development. Congress held hearings to investigate the FBI, and the agency scaled back its surveillance, though, Medsger notes, it did not disappear entirely. We now take for granted that the government spies on its citizens and often disregards constitutional liberties, but that public awareness was not commonplace 40 years ago. We can thank the Media 8 for risking it all in exposing COINTELPRO, and Betty Medsger for documenting the affair in this excellent book.
Z
Stephen Bergstein is a civil rights lawyer in upstate New York.