The Burglary

by Betty Medsger

  Without naming it, Hoover had described about-to-be-created COINTELPRO to the president and his cabinet. Apparently no official blinked as he laid out his strategy. According to minutes of the meeting and an interview years later with Attorney General Herbert Brownell, who was present, when Hoover finished reciting his litany of the illegal activities the FBI would use, the room fell silent. The president was silent, Brownell recalled, but he seemed to nod in approval.

  That was the beginning of COINTELPRO, the worst of Hoover’s secret operations. Inside the bureau, two months later on May 18, 1956, he gave orders for the first COINTELPRO operation, the one against the Communist Party, to begin. At first, it was focused on communists. And then it expanded. Eventually, by the mid- to late 1960s, the operations were so diversified that anyone or any organization Hoover disapproved of could become the object of these special operations.

  Hoover’s presentation at that National Security Council meeting is believed to be the only time he informed a president, attorney general, or any other officials of any presidential administration about the secret illegal operations he conducted. He may have taken their silence as permanent approval of such operations, just as he assumed he could bank on President Franklin Roosevelt’s approval of going after subversives as permanent approval for doing so.

  By well before that day, March 8, 1956, the secret FBI already was entrenched. Hoover had concluded it was all right for him to use against American dissenters tactics of espionage normally reserved for use against foreign enemies—without regard for the legality of his approach or for the legal protection of Americans’ dissent required by the Constitution. The secret FBI would expand considerably with the addition of each COINTELPRO operation from 1956 through the late 1960s.

  WHATEVER THE REASON for the failure to question Hoover prior to his appointment, beginning then, in 1924, the pattern was set that would persist for a half century: Very few questions were asked of J. Edgar Hoover. No questions—therefore, no oversight—became the pattern as of the day Hoover was appointed acting director of the bureau. That frightening, damaging silence—the absence of questions—continued all the way to the next important March 8 in Hoover’s life, the one in 1971, when files were stolen from the Media FBI office. After a half century of no questions, finally, when evidence from those files reached the public, it became imperative that questions be asked. That was precisely what William Davidon had thought: that if evidence could be found that the FBI was suppressing dissent, the public would demand that questions be asked and the suppression stopped.

  By now, more than forty years after the burglary that revealed Hoover’s secret FBI, the profound impact of the fateful appointment of Hoover has been well established, thanks to the Media files, congressional investigations, and journalists and scholars who have written articles and books and made documentary films based on bureau files released in response to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. Together these many works have created a mosaic that can be assumed to be a fairly complete account of the actions of the person who served longer in government than any other public official and who exercised enormous power.

  Gradually, it was revealed that the director had had a profoundly negative impact in some of the most important parts of American life. A few key examples:

  • The generations-long quest by black Americans to claim their most basic rights as citizens was delayed by an FBI director who cautioned successive presidents against supporting their efforts. He insisted that demands for equality were inspired by communists and, as such, should be ignored. He placed massive numbers of black people under surveillance for years and conducted campaigns designed to destroy black leaders.

  • The range of permissible political discourse was severely narrowed by an FBI director who assumed it was his responsibility to suppress the expression of ideas and the political campaigns of candidates he opposed, especially third-party candidates, and who kept secret files on the personal lives of politicians and other prominent persons with an eye to retaining his power through the blackmail potential of those files.

  • The FBI director’s dominant role behind the scenes in the various anticommunist hearings and loyalty investigations that took place in Washington and throughout the country ruined the careers and often the personal lives of thousands of Americans because of accusations, often false, from FBI informers that the people who stood accused were communists or associated with communists. The accused could not defend themselves against faceless accusers. Americans’ capacity to understand communism was impaired by the atmosphere he played a key role in creating—an atmosphere in which communism was perceived as an evil religion that should be hated, feared, and shunned rather than as a powerful international movement that, like other strong ideologies, should be studied and comprehended in order to understand it rather than simply fear it. Debate and true understanding of the political forces at play during those years were paralyzed.

  • The competence of the FBI itself was diminished by having as its director someone who saw himself and the bureau as beyond the law. The demand for obedience inside the bureau—in regard to matters small, important, and silly, such as prescribing precisely how agents should celebrate the director’s birthday—created a stultifying atmosphere in which form mattered more than substance and independent thinking was discouraged. After his death and the investigations of the bureau, the capacity of the FBI to transform itself was hampered by the lingering impact of such leadership.

  • The evolution of American culture was constrained by having as the director of the FBI a person who seldom read or traveled but who assumed the role of arbiter of ideas and values, usually from a hostile anti-intellectual stance. He showed contempt for nearly every major writer and artist by maintaining ongoing secret files based on the bureau’s secret monitoring of them.

  In light of everything that has become known about Hoover and about the ruthless secret FBI he created, and in light of Americans’ likely strong desire never again to permit themselves to adore, tolerate, or permit a public official to exert such profound power over them, either secretly or openly, perhaps this question still needs to be explored in order not to repeat the past:

  How was it possible in a democratic society for an official to deceive the American public and many of its officials and to pervert the basic principles of democracy and an open society with such egregious secret policies and actions for nearly a half century without constraints?

  Stone’s failure to examine young Hoover was a significant factor. So was the continued refusal of officials throughout the forty-eight years he was director to ask questions about his operations.

  QUESTIONS WERE finally asked in the mid-1970s.

  As Congress and the American public headed then toward an unprecedented action—a careful examination of the secret FBI, as well as other intelligence agencies, something new was taking place. Despite, or perhaps because, the country felt the turmoil of a president recently resigning in disgrace and a nasty war finally winding down, people seemed to be willing to shed something Americans had not been without for many years, if ever—fear.

  Davidon, the leader of the Media burglars, thought his generation, the World War II generation, had, in addition to becoming regarded as the “Greatest Generation,” moved the country toward becoming a generation of sheep, people willing to trust their leaders without question. The joint conservative/liberal empowerment of J. Edgar Hoover after World War II without any oversight seemed to be the embodiment of Davidon’s point. As William W. Keller, the international security scholar, put it, a “habit of mind” persisted that was “constantly reinforced by J. Edgar Hoover and his allies.” It told us that communists had infiltrated the civil rights and antiwar movements and were about to take over the country. Fear that that was true made those and other movements automatically suspect, and slowed down every movement for equality and justice. “Blind faith and trust in the integrity of the agency,” said Keller, “tended
to reinforce general ignorance of internal security operations.” Americans didn’t ask questions about such matters. They were willing to assume those leaders knew what was best for the country and to let the leaders of these agencies do whatever they wanted.

  As the congressional investigation of the FBI got under way in 1975, Americans grasped that first opportunity to ask questions, to hear evidence, and to judge whether the FBI, without oversight, had done any harm to Americans, especially to their right to dissent. The answer, from diverse corners, was a resounding yes.

  In practice, the FBI has moved in and out of the reforms put in place in the 1970s. On its website today it acknowledges the positive impact the Media burglary had on the bureau:

  A radical group called “Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI” broke into the office in Media and stole a wide array of domestic security documents that had not been properly secured. Some [author’s note: actually, only one] of the documents mentioned “COINTELPRO,” or Counterintelligence Programs—a series of programs aimed to disrupt some of the more radical groups of the 1950s and 1960s. The leaking of those documents to the news media and politicians and the subsequent criticism, both inside and outside the Bureau, led to a significant reevaluation of FBI domestic security policy.

  James Kirkpatrick Davis, the author of two books on Hoover’s FBI and the writer who assisted Hoover’s successor, retired FBI director Kelley, in writing a book on his experiences in the FBI, thinks the circumstances that led to reform in the bureau were remarkable. “In a most extraordinary paradox,” he wrote, the only act that stopped wrongdoing by the FBI “was an illegal act—the Media office burglary.”

  ANOTHER QUESTION COMES to mind—this one about the people who first opened the door to the secret FBI and made it possible for public officials, scholars, journalists—indeed, any American—to ask questions about FBI policies and operations and get answers. Despite all that’s been written here about the previously unknown Media burglars and the significant impact of their historic act of resistance, a question about them still lingers:

  How was it possible for those eight people to be willing to take such great risks in order to search for evidence of whether dissent was being destroyed by J. Edgar Hoover?

  They are modest in their explanations. When the question is asked, they often make it sound simple, as though it was just something that needed to be done, like yelling “Stop!” to someone who is about to step into traffic. But actually most of them thought long and hard about this. They considered the sacrifice. Some of the parents in the group cried many nights about what the impact might be on their children if they were arrested and sentenced to prison terms. One of them lived alone and thought of the painful loneliness she might experience in the aftermath—alone and “wanted” by the FBI for exposing the FBI.

  Still, they did it.

  David Kairys has some insights about them. A professor at Temple University School of Law and a defense lawyer at the Camden 28 trial, he’s known some of the burglars since before the burglary. In fact, two of them approached him at the time—one shortly before the break-in, the other shortly after—and asked if he would be willing to be their lawyer if they were arrested. He said yes, of course. As the weeks, months, then years went by and he never got a call, he hoped they would be safe forever.

  As he kept their secret over the years, he often thought about them. He thought about what kind of people they were, and he wondered from time to time what it took to be that brave. “On the surface,” he says, “they just look like everybody else and act like everybody else. But they came to such a deep commitment.” He’s certain that if he had been invited to participate, he would have refused. “Just too much to risk,” he says more than forty years later. “I probably would have thought about it. I might have been tempted. I would have decided not to do it.”

  They were needed, says Kairys, thinking of the burglars and of that era. “There are certain points in history where a society goes so wrong, and there are certain people who will say, ‘I won’t stand for that.…I will risk career, life, limb, family, freedom.…And I will take this risk, and I will go and do it.’

  “And it certainly is not something that’s over,” says Kairys. People “are going to be called upon again.”

  Acknowledgments

  I owe thanks to many people. My deepest gratitude goes to the Media burglars. In 1971, they trusted me when, as anonymous sources, they sent copies of the stolen FBI files to me at the Washington Post. Now, more than forty years later, they have trusted me to reveal that they were the Media burglars, a secret they had planned never to make known. I am grateful for their enduring trust and for this opportunity to tell the story of what they did and the impact of their act of resistance.

  I discovered them quite accidentally. It happened over dinner one evening at the home of Bonnie and John Raines. Between meetings in Missouri and Massachusetts, I gave myself the gift of a long weekend in Philadelphia. It was the first time I had been to Philadelphia in many years. I filled the weekend visiting people I had known when I was a reporter at the Evening Bulletin in the late 1960s.

  I spent the first evening with the Raineses. Though we were not close friends when I lived in Philadelphia, they were people I liked and respected and looked forward to seeing again. When I arrived that evening, the three of us immediately launched into telling one another about the last decade of our lives. During dinner, their youngest child, Mary, then a teenager, joined us for a few minutes. John Raines introduced me to her with words that startled me: “Mary, this is Betty Medsger. We want you to know Betty, because many years ago, when your dad and mother had information about the FBI we wanted the American people to have, we gave it to Betty.”

  Another glass of wine, please. I was stunned. I could tell from Mary’s pleasant but unmoved expression that the comment meant nothing to her. As she talked with her parents, my mind was racing. Maybe I misunderstood. How could John and Bonnie, this lovely suburban couple with four children, a station wagon, and a big friendly black dog named Jezebel, possibly have carried out a burglary, especially that burglary? I wanted to shout questions, but I restrained myself.

  I had thought about the burglary often. In my journalism ethics classes at San Francisco State University, where I was then teaching, my students and I discussed the ethical issues involved when a journalist receives stolen secret files. In those classes, I enjoyed gradually moving the discussion from hypothetical cases to my real case as I told them about the time I received stolen FBI files. Some students expressed surprise that the Media burglars never had been found by the FBI. Actually, I too was surprised that they had eluded the FBI. Students asked if I had any suspicions about who they were. No idea whatsoever, I honestly answered.

  Nice as Mary obviously was, I could hardly wait until she left the dining room that evening. After she did, I asked, with quite a bit of incredulity, “Are you saying you were Media burglars?” With wide glowing smiles, Bonnie and John said they were. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Later they said they did not plan to tell me their secret that night. John just happened to blurt it out to Mary. Needless to say, I am enormously grateful for that accidental comment.

  We talked for hours, my questions and their answers tumbling out. They seemed to enjoy finally talking to someone about the secrets they had shared up to then only with each other, with their oldest child, Lindsley, and, at the time of the burglary, with family members they had asked to raise their children if they were arrested and imprisoned. They answered my questions with tales that brought to mind Keystone Cops one moment and brave nonviolent resistance fighters the next. They moved me to laughter and to tears as they described the night of March 8, 1971, Bonnie casing inside the office two weeks before the burglary, the close calls right after the burglary, the years of being afraid they would be caught, and then the deep joy later of knowing it had all been worthwhile.

  I could not stop thinking about what they told me. A few w
eeks later, I wrote to the Raineses and told them I thought it was important that the full story of their historic act of resistance and its profound impact be told. I told them I wanted to write a book and asked them if they would agree to reveal themselves publicly as Media burglars and help me find the other burglars. They liked the plan. Eventually, seven of the eight burglars were found. All agreed to participate, and five agreed to be publicly identified.

  As I have researched the impact of the burglary, I have been grateful for the Freedom of Information Act and the access it made possible. Thanks for that crucial tool that empowers citizens goes to Congress members John Moss, Democrat from California; William W. Moorhead, Democrat from Pennsylvania; and Frank Horton, Republican from New York. For twelve years, Moss led the campaign in Congress to pass the first FOIA in 1966. Two presidents, Eisenhower and Johnson, strongly opposed him. For his effort, he earned an FBI file from J. Edgar Hoover, who thought a law that mandated access to files was anathema. In 1974, Moorhead and Horton led the successful effort to strengthen the original FOIA.

  Thanks to the FOIA, it was possible for me to receive the 33,698-page official record of the FBI’s investigation of the Media burglary, provided by the bureau in response to my FOIA request. It has been an invaluable resource. Because of greater access to bureau files after the strengthening of FOIA in 1974, many articles and books based on previously unavailable FBI files have been written and now form a substantial, and still growing, record of the history of the bureau. I am particularly indebted to Sanford Ungar, whose 1975 book FBI: An Uncensored Look Behind the Walls stands to this day as one of the richest accounts of how the FBI operated under J. Edgar Hoover. The many books and articles by Athan Theoharis, the historian who has written most extensively about the FBI, significantly deepened my knowledge of the bureau. The discoveries and insights of Hoover biographers Curt Gentry, Richard Gid Powers, and Kenneth D. Ackerman have also been invaluable. Some of the most impressive books about COINTELPRO, Hoover’s aggressive and illegal dirty tricks operations, were written by James Kirkpatrick Davis, who wrote two books on the subject and also assisted Hoover’s successor, Clarence Kelley, in writing his memoir on his years as director during the years of attempted reform at the bureau. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall’s published collection of COINTELPRO files was a valuable resource, as was Nelson Blackstock’s collection. I am grateful to other writers who have contributed substantially to the growing body of evidence on particular aspects of Hoover’s impact on society, including during the Cold War and in regard to racial issues. These scholars include William W. Keller, Kenneth O’Reilly, Robert Justin Goldstein, and David J. Garrow. Thanks for advice from Mike Ravnitsky, a leading expert on the federal Freedom of Information Act. The writings of the late Frank Donner, esteemed intelligence scholar, also enlightened me. I regret not being able to tell him I discovered he was a suspect in the Media burglary and that J. Edgar Hoover twice asked agents to break into his office, and they refused to do so. He would have appreciated the ironies.