The Burglary

by Betty Medsger

  In Washington, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, a man who followed strict routines, probably dined out, as usual, at a favorite restaurant that evening with Clyde Tolson, his longtime close companion and the second highest official in the bureau. After dinner, the director probably was driven home as he routinely was to his redbrick northwest Washington home on 30th Place NW, where, until just a decade earlier, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson had been his neighbors. Tonight, after opening the back door so his two beloved dogs, the Cairn terriers G-Boy and Cindy, could return to the house, he probably locked the door and set the alarm system FBI workers had installed years earlier. As Hoover retired to his bedroom, passing a large bronze bust of himself at the top of the stairs, he could go to bed that evening warmed by the thought that in the public’s mind he was still the hero he had set out to become many years ago. He could fall asleep feeling protected from vandals and by politicians in Washington, unaware that elsewhere, in a sleepy Pennsylvania town, burglars had just intruded in his world in ways he never would have thought possible.

  7

  Escape to the Farm

  ON THEIR WAY to the farm, the burglars were relieved that the burglary was over. But they were worried about what could still happen that night. It was difficult to believe that at some point at least one of them had not inadvertently made a mistake that would lead to the discovery of one or more of them a few hours later, or perhaps now as they drove away from Media. Did people see them leave, burdened with heavy suitcases? Did anyone see suitcases being transferred from one car to another? Did someone follow one or more of the cars?

  From Media, they drove northwest, each car taking a different route. Davidon thought it was important for them not to follow one another along the same route so that the arrest of burglars in one car would be less likely to lead to the arrest of those in other cars. He gave each driver a map and marked detailed directions for each one on how to get to the farmhouse from wherever they transferred files from one car to another.

  Beginning now, Davidon advised, it should become standard procedure for the burglars to protect one another by not doing anything together—except hiding at the farm to read and analyze stolen files. He told them the trip to the farm would take about an hour. They drove along narrow, twisting suburban streets and then lonely dark country roads to get to their destination, a small farmhouse on the well-concealed grounds of Fellowship Farm. It was not far from Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a once thriving old mill town that provided steel for, among other massive projects, the building of the Golden Gate Bridge. Davidon thought this small house at Fellowship Farm, a Quaker conference center somewhat remote from Philadelphia and surrounded by woods, would be an ideal place to hide with stolen FBI files. Quakers from the Philadelphia area often held retreats on these grounds, and for many years the farm had spawned a commitment to social activism and to nonviolent resistance among thousands of people who attended retreats there. A very young Martin Luther King had once visited during a crucial time in his life to deepen his study of nonviolence. Tonight and for the next ten days, the burglars’ presence there would give new meaning to the word “retreat” in relation to Fellowship Farm.

  The drivers remember looking in their rearview mirrors more than usual that night. Each time headlights appeared in the rear distance, some of them remember, their stomachs tightened. Then they would feel relief as a car passed and sped ahead, with no apparent interest in stopping them and no sign it was a police car.

  When John and Bonnie Raines arrived at the farmhouse, two other burglars had not yet arrived. After more than an hour of waiting, the six burglars at the house grew concerned about the missing burglars. They had felt somewhat elated when they first arrived at the house. But they put that feeling on hold when it seemed possible that two members of the group might be missing. Maybe their initial sense that at last they could be reasonably sure they had not been seen and had not been followed had been premature.

  Every headlight they saw far away through leafless winter trees held their attention. Every car they saw in the distance that didn’t turn down the road that led to the house produced a letdown. By an hour after the Raineses arrived, the six burglars felt certain that the missing burglars must have been arrested. If so, this could mean that all of them would be arrested soon. Or it might mean they would have to wait until the next day to find out what had happened. As time passed, they became convinced—as they had been just hours earlier when they heard Forsyth’s dilemma—that all the likely possibilities were bad.

  Finally, a car turned down the road and drove toward the house. By that time, they were so on edge that they assumed the approaching car might be police officers or FBI agents. To their great relief, it was the missing burglars. They had made a wrong turn and gotten lost. In the dark countryside, in those pre-GPS and pre–cell phone days, it was difficult to find their way back to the route Davidon had marked on their map.

  At last, all of the burglars and all of the stolen documents were together. With everyone now present and safe, tensions finally melted. “There was a sense of excitement and accomplishment that the burglary was over, and that no one had been arrested,” Davidon remembers. Faces that had been taut and tense just minutes earlier were now relaxed. Cool and somewhat emotionally detached from each other during their months of planning, now they hugged one another. Someone opened bags of sandwiches and bottles of beer. One of them opened a thermos of hot coffee, another a bag of apples. Someone had brought milk. It was a burglars’ feast. With drinks of choice in hand, they stood around the table in the modest house and toasted one another and a job that seemed to have been done well.

  They had come this far. They felt uncertain about the future, even about the next day, but they were happy to celebrate what had happened so far. There were smiles all around and then some more hugs. They felt secure and protected inside the little house. They had no idea whether they were actually safe, but they felt safe, and they cherished that feeling. “I remember that feeling of being safe,” says Bonnie Raines. “We were a little giddy. We felt happy, very happy that we had done it. It looked like we had gotten away with it.”

  Their celebration was brief. Adrenaline was flowing. They could hardly wait to open the suitcases and see what they had stolen. They yearned to find out if they now had in their possession any significant files. Forsyth remembers being especially eager to read the files. For him, this was the most compelling aspect of the entire operation—discovering whether they had found anything important that would put the FBI on notice—not only that the bureau had been burglarized but that the American people could not be fooled forever. He desperately hoped there was valuable evidence in those suitcases.

  All of the burglars stayed at the farm that first night. None of them slept. There was more than enough adrenaline to fuel them through the night. They opened the suitcases, removed the stolen files, and placed them in stacks on the dining table, coffee table, kitchen counters, chairs, and the floor—any flat surface available.

  With the burglary behind them, in the wee hours of the morning they embraced the next—and what they hoped would be the most substantive—phase of their project. They embarked on the work that would determine the meaning of what had been done in the name of the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. Each of them took a portion of the files and settled into work at the table, counter, living room chair, or on the floor. They were very quiet, totally absorbed, as they started this phase of their work, the post-burglary analysis. They welcomed this task with a deep sense of responsibility and dedication. Now that the essential but dirty work of burglary was over, it was as though they were indeed the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, appointed not, as they were, by themselves, but by the president of the United States and tasked by him to do the work they had assigned themselves:

  The house on the grounds of Fellowship Farm, a small Quaker conference center about forty miles northwest of Philadelphia, where for ten days after the burglary the g
roup analyzed the stolen files and prepared them for distribution. (Photo by Betty Medsger)

  Research and analyze, to the fullest extent possible through these documents, whether there is evidence that J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI are destroying dissent.

  They had anticipated this moment and developed a plan. Confident they would find files of serious interest, Davidon guided them now. As they read the documents, they would sort them in categories—organized crime, other crime, political spying, draft board resistance. Depending on what they would find, new categories could be added. All files would initially be read by at least two burglars, who together would decide the importance of each document and how to categorize it.

  The files, they agreed, would stay at the farm. Davidon and John Raines had been the key planners of this phase. They intended, after all documents had been read, to count the documents in each category and write an overall analysis to be released to the public, in addition to releasing copies of files. They would destroy some types of documents, such as criminal cases unrelated to politics or the military draft. They did not want to hinder the FBI’s investigations of crimes it should be investigating. They agreed to be especially cautious about not revealing information about organized crime cases. They accidentally threw away a couple documents they later wished they had kept. For instance, they regretted that they destroyed a document from FBI headquarters that outlined detailed instructions on how agents should celebrate J. Edgar Hoover’s birthday each year. Though it was not meant to be humorous, it was. They realized later that the document provided a glimpse of the needy ego of the director that led him, supported by those closest to him, to create the cult of personality that, it was learned later, permeated the bureau.

  They didn’t have to wait long to learn whether they had found anything of value. Within the first hour, one of them broke the silence with a sudden shout: “Look at this!” They all gathered around and together read the document that prompted the shout. It was advice to FBI agents, the outcome of a meeting at FBI headquarters a few months earlier of agents who specialized in investigating activists. Agents were advised, in a newsletter prepared for such agents, to “enhance the paranoia … and … get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”

  It took their breath away.

  After the burglars’ initial reaction, they read the document again to make sure they had read it right the first time: “enhance the paranoia … an FBI agent behind every mailbox.” They were as stunned as millions of Americans would be two weeks later.

  Despite having spent so much effort planning and executing the burglary in order to search for evidence of whether the FBI was suppressing dissent, when the burglars read that document they found it difficult to believe they had discovered a file so raw, cruel, and clear. Ron Durst remembers being surprised that official statements about the goals of spying—rather than only reports on specific spying—were in the files. Susan Smith said years later that when they read that document she realized that when it became public countless people who had been ridiculed for believing the FBI was spying on activists would read it and want to say, “Hey, Mom, everybody, I’m not mentally ill! They really are after me, you, lots of people.” Two weeks later, people read that document on front pages and expressed shock and anger that the FBI was, by plan and assignment, creating paranoia.

  In that first hour, they had found this powerful evidence that the bureau suppressed dissent—not an isolated specific example of suppression, many of which would be found later, but a statement of an overall philosophy about the atmosphere of suppression the bureau wanted to create.

  In that moment, when the burglars discovered that damning evidence that the FBI was not what Hoover had long claimed it was—that creating paranoia among Americans was part of this law enforcement agency’s mission—they knew that whatever would happen to them as a result of what they had done this night—arrest, trial, time in prison—the risk had been worthwhile. They were amazed that from the piles of files that surrounded them in the house they had found such a document, little more than an hour after arriving at the farm and opening their suitcases. It rewarded and motivated them through the long days and nights of little sleep ahead. They knew they had in their possession very important information Americans needed to know. They would find many important documents as they read the files, but this document would become emblematic of the burglary. People would remember the “paranoia” file years later when the Media burglary was mentioned.

  That brief document spelled out the essence of what Davidon had feared was at the core of FBI practice—a policy about political spying that was the antithesis of what a law enforcement agency should be in a democratic society. The need for evidence had motivated him to propose this extreme means of citizen investigation: the burglary of an FBI office in the absence of oversight of the FBI by any government official or agency. Now it was clear he had been right. In that little house in the woods, in the middle of a Quaker retreat that had nurtured nonviolent political action, the eight burglars now held in their hands the first evidence that, except for fear, cowardice, and apathy, could have been unearthed by federal officials or journalists many years earlier.

  THE BURGLARS READ FBI files all night that first night at the farmhouse. They were consumed by what they read. Every once in a while, one of them would gasp in surprise and yell, “Listen to this.” They would gather around that person and read the newest discovery. They despaired about much of what they found. They felt like someone who has been suffering from a disease doctors have been unable to diagnose for years. Then one day a doctor accurately identifies the disease. The diagnosis is terrible, but the patient needs to know it in order to try to find a cure. They hoped a cure would be found for the serious problems the files revealed. It was unclear if oversight of the FBI, always dormant, if not dead, could come alive. Assuming they were not arrested and the files were not confiscated, they hoped they were now on their way to making public evidence that would cause the nation’s leaders to recognize the need to establish oversight.

  As they read, at times they were sad. At other times they were angry or amazed. They also were occasionally amused, even when they read the “mailbox” document, which included this statement:

  “Some will be overcome by the overwhelming personalities of the contacting agent and volunteer to tell all—perhaps on a continuing basis.” The burglars had attended many antiwar rallies and demonstrations and often observed FBI agents and informers writing notes and taking photographs. Some, if not all, of the group knew people who had been interviewed by FBI agents. Not once had any of them heard any of those people say they were “overcome by the overwhelming personalities” of the agents.

  As of this point, these amateur burglars had succeeded in ways the most famous burglars of the century—the men who a little more than a year later would botch the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate in Washington in June 1972—would have envied. Each of those five burglars and their two leaders were well trained in the skills of burglary by their former employers, the FBI and the CIA. As former CIA agent Howard Hunt helped plan the Watergate burglary from his White House office, he called the CIA and, according to a CIA file on the conversation, asked a contact at the agency “if he had a retiree or resignee who was accomplished at picking locks.” The agency recommended someone and sent his résumé, with lock-picking expertise cited. Even with training by lock pickers from the CIA, none of the Watergate burglars turned out to be as skilled as Forsyth.

  BY THE TIME the Media burglars forced themselves to stop reading the morning after the burglary, at about 5 a.m., they felt a deep satisfaction from knowing already that their act of resistance should have a significant impact. Most of them drove home and then to their jobs in the city. Davidon had advised everyone to act as normal as possible, especially now during the immediate aftermath. For instance, he planned to be at his campus office, as he always was on Tuesday mornings, s
o no one, if interviewed later by an investigator or reporter, would be able to say, “Come to think of it, he wasn’t there that Tuesday, like he usually is.”

  Durst stayed at the farmhouse with the documents. As a graduate student who worked part-time, he had a flexible schedule. Because of that, he volunteered to stay at the farm and protect the documents twenty-four hours a day until they had been analyzed, copied, and prepared for public distribution. The other burglars lived and worked in the city every day and then drove to the farm after work to carry out their file review duties for several hours each evening.

  As they prepared to leave the house that first morning, some of them wanted to take care of what they considered unfinished business. At about five o’clock, between two pages of files, Davidon noticed a very small piece of paper with a series of handwritten numbers on it. He asked inside crew members if they had seen a safe in the office. They confirmed there was a safe with a combination lock. They had tried to open it but failed. Davidon felt sure the number he found must be the combination code. It tempted him. He remembers thinking that it “seemed such a shame to have this information and not use it.”

  He decided he would go to the FBI office on his way home and open the safe. He and Durst became preoccupied with what might be in it. They thought it was probably where agents put their most important, most explosive documents. It would be so easy to get inside, he thought. Thanks to Forsyth, of course, the door was unlocked.

  At first, the brash idea seemed irresistible, but as he reconsidered it, he thought some of the residents in the building might leave early for work about the time he would arrive. His wiser self prevailed. He was tired and realized he could not trust his reflexes after a sleepless night and the pressures of the last twenty-four hours. He decided not to go to the office. Whatever was in the safe would have to remain undiscovered. Given what was in it, that was a fortunate decision.