The Burglary

by Betty Medsger

  There were a few problems with this idea. The only members of Congress Sullivan wanted to target were African Americans and liberal whites. If word got out that they had contacted only those people, Sullivan theorized, the FBI might be accused of regarding such members as prone to having contact with wanted criminals. FBI officials discussed eliminating that weakness in the proposed scheme by including a few white southern conservatives in the group. When it proved impossible to come up with an embarrassment-proof way of executing the plan, the idea was quickly shelved as unworkable.

  An updated summary of the MEDBURG investigation, dated the next day, Tuesday, March 23, indicates that copies of stolen documents received the previous day from the two members of Congress were being examined by the FBI laboratory. The summary also noted, “If approved [by the director], letter will be forwarded to deputy attorney general to determine if any legal action can be taken to prohibit disclosure of contents of documents. It being noted [Congressman] Mitchell has made several statements to the press alluding to contents and has admitted possessing Xerox copies of serials.”

  DISCUSSION of that new effort to prevent the stolen documents from becoming public must have taken place at FBI headquarters about the same time I arrived at the Washington Post newsroom that Tuesday, March 23, a little before 10 a.m. and picked up my mail. I had been off the previous day. That meant my mailbox was overflowing even more than usual with news releases. If it had not been for the interesting return address—“Liberty Publications, Media, PA”—I might have placed the envelope in a stack of mail to be opened later. But the return address caught my attention. I knew something, but I couldn’t remember what, had happened in Media recently. Even I, who had left the Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia at the end of 1969 to join the Washington Post and continued to have a deep interest in news from Philadelphia, had not thought much about the burglary when I read the very short wire service story the Post ran shortly after the break-in. In the envelope were fourteen documents and a cover letter that looked like a mundane form letter, a somewhat faded copy of a copy. But the letterhead signaled it might not be mundane:

  THE CITIZENS’ COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE THE FBI

  I had not heard of the commission. Its letter began “Dear friend” and continued:

  Enclosed you will find copies of certain files from the Media, Pennsylvania, office of the FBI which were removed by our commission for public scrutiny. We are making these copies available to you and to several other persons in public life because we feel that you have shown concern and courage as regards issues which are, in part, documented in the enclosed materials.

  You will also find a statement which our commission prepared at the time of this action which may help interpret our decision to you and others. Please feel free to make copies of any or all of this material and disseminate it (or not) according to your own judgment.

  About a week after you receive this material, our commission will publicly announce this mailing together with the names of those to whom we have sent it. We will, of course, make perfectly clear in our announcement that our actions were entirely our own decision and responsibility. Your degree of public association or disassociation with our commission is entirely a matter of your own choice.

  Sincerely,

  The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI

  Unaccustomed as I was to receiving stolen FBI documents from either known or anonymous sources, I started to read the documents with excitement but also with caution, the latter because I wasn’t sure if they were authentic. It had not occurred to me when I read the story about the burglary two weeks earlier that files might have been stolen and sent to journalists—any journalists, let alone me.

  The first document I read after I read the cover letter was the one that encouraged agents 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.”

  At first, I wondered if that document might be a joke, a bad one. Enhance paranoia? An FBI agent behind every mailbox? I realized that questions had been raised in the past year about the possible clandestine reach of the FBI into the antiwar movement, but I found it hard to believe the FBI would have paranoia as a stated goal. It seemed even more unlikely the bureau would reduce such goals to writing and place them in a file.

  The document continued, “In addition, some will be overcome by the overwhelming personalities of the contacting agent and volunteer to tell all—perhaps on a continuing basis.” From what I had heard from various sources who had been interviewed by FBI agents, the agent who wrote this document seemed to have either a sense of humor or an exaggerated view of the impression FBI agents made on the people they interviewed.

  It was clear that if the FBI had paranoia as a goal of its intelligence operations, it was significant news. Assuming the document was authentic, here was evidence that the federal government, through Hoover’s FBI, was not simply spying. When William Rehnquist, the assistant attorney general, testified two weeks earlier before a Senate committee, he said surveillance by government intelligence agencies at that time did not create a “chilling effect.” But here was an FBI document that, if authentic, provided evidence that the FBI went far beyond creating a chilling effect. The FBI, as a stated policy, wanted to freeze dissent.

  I continued to read. As I did, the six colleagues with whom I shared a small office off the Post’s main newsroom arrived one by one at their desks to start the workday. We were a somewhat motley crew of reporters with different specialties—science, medicine, education, and religion—crammed into a room not much larger than a walk-in closet in a large Georgetown house. Playing with the names of our specialties one day, managing editor Howard Simons had named our group SMERSH—for “science, medicine, education, religion and all that shit.” I was one of the two religion reporters in SMERSH, though my reporting on religion in recent years, both at the Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia and at the Washington Post, often included coverage of education, the antiwar movement, and trials that were related to both religion and the antiwar movement. Since the previous November, I had covered developments in the case against the Berrigan brothers and others after J. Edgar Hoover made his sensational accusations against them at a hearing in November 1970. I also had written about the summer 1970 wedding of a former nun and former priest that was attended by more plainclothes FBI agents than invited guests. The wingtip shoes were the tip-off. But those assignments did not prepare me to easily believe what I was now reading.

  Most mornings, I greeted each of my colleagues when they arrived. Not today. I was totally absorbed, hunched over the documents and not noticing what was happening around me. Every document told a story about FBI power that was unknown to anyone outside the FBI. One signed by Hoover, on November 4, 1970, had two subject headings—“Black Student Groups on College Campuses” and “Racial Matters.” It was the first of numerous sets of stolen documents I would receive over the next two months that revealed Hoover’s preoccupation with surveillance of black people and students, especially black students:

  Effective immediately, all BSUs [Black Student Unions] and similar organizations organized to project the demands of black students, which are not presently under investigation, are to be subjects of discreet, preliminary inquiries, limited to established sources and carefully conducted to avoid criticism, to determine the size, aims, purposes, activities, leadership, key activists in each group to determine background and if their activities warrant active investigation.…Each office submit by airtel to reach Bureau by 12/4/70, a list of BSUs and similar groups by name and school which are or will be subjects of preliminary inquiries.

  All higher education institutions, including two-year colleges, throughout the country were to be included in this plan to monitor black students and black student organizations. “In connection with this program we must develop network of discreet q
uality sources in a position to furnish required information. Bear in mind that absence of information regarding these groups in any area might be the fault of inadequate source coverage and efforts should be undertaken immediately to improve this coverage.”

  Hoover conveyed a sense of urgency about the need to monitor black students:

  Initiate inquiries immediately. I cannot overemphasize the importance of expeditious, thorough, and discreet handling of these cases. The violence, destruction, confrontation and disruptions on campuses make it mandatory that we utilize to its capacity our intelligence-gathering capacity.

  Increased campus disorders involving black students pose a definite threat to the Nation’s stability and security and indicate need for increase in both quality and quantity of intelligence information on Black student Unions and similar groups which are targeted for influence and control by violence-prone Black Panther Party and other extremists.

  It was clear from the documents that black students were regarded as potentially violent and therefore as appropriate subjects to be watched and to have their actions recorded in FBI files. The details in another document provided evidence that the Philadelphia FBI office had followed up on Hoover’s instructions swiftly and comprehensively. Less than a month after Hoover’s directive, in a December 2, 1970, memo, Philadelphia SAC Jamieson listed thirteen private and public campuses in the Philadelphia area where the bureau already had established informants, as “per instructions” of the director. “Investigations are being opened or reopened.” The Philadelphia field office added private high schools to the list and established informants in them. Another document reported that every black student at Swarthmore College was under surveillance.

  One of the files revealed that on some campuses the bureau had a network of informers—called informants in FBI parlance—who provided reports to the bureau about the activities of professors and students. They included switchboard operators, letter carriers, the postmaster, campus security officers, the local police chief, and some college administrators.

  In other evidence of the bureau’s recently increased emphasis on campus investigations, in a September 16, 1970, memo, supervising FBI agents throughout the country were informed that the director had approved hiring security informers aged eighteen to twenty-one. “We have been blocked off,” it noted, “from this critical age group in the past. Let us take advantage of this opportunity.”

  The bureau’s easy access to personal records was evident in the stolen files. The private records of Muhammad Kenyatta, the leader of a national black rights organization based in Philadelphia, were collected without regard for whether they were related to any potential criminal activity. An agent reported in one file that detailed confidential data on Kenyatta and his wife, Mary—phone records, checking account records—had been given to agents without subpoenas. The information was provided by sources with the agreement that if the bureau ever had an official need to use the information in a court proceeding, it would be sought again—at that time with the legally required subpoena and as though the FBI had not already illegally received the information. Documents released later by the burglars provided additional information about these cozy relationships, including ones between the FBI and employers and with government employment agencies. It appeared that whatever information the FBI wanted, it was given, without regard to privacy restrictions. Banks, credit card agencies, employers, landlords, law enforcement agencies, and military recruiters all opened their confidential files and their mouths when the FBI appeared.

  When I finished reading the documents, I went to the main newsroom to tell the national desk what I had received. I didn’t realize I was answering a question that had just been asked. Another editor on the national desk, Mary Lou Beatty, had just talked with Ken Clawson, then the Post’s reporter who covered the Department of Justice, a beat that included the FBI. At bureau headquarters the previous day, Clawson had learned about Senator McGovern and Representative Mitchell receiving and turning over copies of the stolen documents to the FBI. I approached the national desk right after he had called from the department press room to ask if anyone at the Post had received the documents. I promptly called Clawson and described what I had received.

  Less than an hour later, a spokesperson in Hoover’s office was unintentionally very helpful with our most critical need. On the basis of my description, Clawson confirmed that the documents were authentic and were the same ones McGovern and Mitchell had received. Officials were eager to confirm the documents were authentic because they wanted to convince Post officials that stories about the files would be dangerous and should not be published.

  A short time later, the attorney general, John Mitchell, called Post editors—and did so at least twice again later that afternoon—to urge them not to publish stories about the contents of the documents. He first called the national editor, Ben Bagdikian, and then executive editor Ben Bradlee. Mitchell, who in 1975 would become the first attorney general to be convicted of a crime and serve time in prison—for approving funding of another historic burglary, the 1972 burglary of Democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington—insisted that disclosure of the contents of the files from the Media FBI office would endanger national security and reveal national defense secrets. He made the same claims in a final call that day to publisher Katharine Graham.

  Apparently assuming the Post was about to publish a story about the files, late that afternoon Mitchell issued a public statement urging anyone with copies of the stolen FBI files not to circulate or publish them. His statement received widespread coverage that evening, beginning at 6:45, when it was distributed by the wire services:

  Attorney General John N. Mitchell warned Tuesday that disclosure of information in files stolen from an FBI office in Media, PA, could endanger the lives of some federal agents and the security of the United States.

  He urged anyone with copies of the records to neither circulate them further nor publish them.

  The attorney general issued a statement after copies of the stolen FBI intelligence files were given anonymously to Sen. George S. McGovern, D-S.D., and Rep. Parren Mitchell, D-MD. Both congressmen returned the files to the Justice Department and condemned those who committed the act.

  “Disclosure of this information could endanger the lives or cause other serious harm to persons engaged in investigative activities on behalf of the United States. Disclosure of national defense information could injure the United States and give aid to foreign governments whose interests might be inimical to those of the United States,” the attorney general said.

  The attorney general noted that copies of the stolen records “apparently” had been circulated to some members of congress and some members of the press.

  In his statement, the attorney general said, “The Department of Justice is investigating the recent burglary of FBI records at its office at Media, PA. It appears likely that these records included information which would disclose the identity of confidential investigative sources and information related to the national defense.…The department urgently requests that those who have received copies of the material not to further circulate it or publish it.”

  Actually, when the attorney general issued his strong plea, he did not know if his claims were true. He had neither read the documents nor been briefed on them.

  A memo Mitchell sent to Hoover the day he tried to stop stories about the stolen files suggests the attorney general did not even know until that day that an FBI office had been burglarized—despite the fact that the burglary had preoccupied FBI officials since the day it occurred two weeks earlier. Either in an effort to conceal the burglary even from Hoover’s superior, the attorney general, or as a result of the bureau’s single-minded, frenzied effort to find the burglars and prevent the documents from becoming public, FBI officials had not informed high Department of Justice officials that the burglary had occurred two weeks earlier. They had conferred with lower-level department o
fficials in an effort to get support for seeking a judicial order to criminalize possessing or publishing the files but had not informed high-level officials. In the attorney general’s memo to Hoover, he wrote, “According to press reports, numerous FBI documents were stolen in the burglary of the Media, PA, FBI office.…I would appreciate your advising me with all possible speed with respect to the nature and content of the documents you have identified as missing.”

  The highest-ranking assistant attorney general, Robert C. Mardian, called FBI associate director William Sullivan that evening after Mitchell had released his public statement and advised Sullivan he “was speaking for the Attorney General, who wanted, in addition to the stolen documents, a justification for information and activities of the FBI insofar as selected documents were concerned, which if published, could be damaging.” It was a strange situation. Hoover had instructed his aides and all FBI officials in the field to make no comment to journalists about the burglary. Now he apparently was relying on the attorney general to comment, but neither Hoover nor his aides had informed Mitchell about the burglary.

  In an angry memo sent to Hoover the day after the first Washington Post story on the files was published, Mardian—who, as head of the Internal Security Division of the Department of Justice, was the department official who would supervise plans for prosecuting whatever case might be developed against the burglars—in so many words accused Hoover of having been duplicitous about his communication with department officials about the burglary: