NBC television reporter Carl Stern, whose lawsuit led to a judicial decision requiring the FBI in 1973 to reveal what COINTELPRO operations were, cannot be thanked enough for his persistence when the bureau and the Department of Justice were determined in the early 1970s to keep Hoover’s secret operations sealed off from the public forever. Stern has been a valuable source during my research. So has Seth Rosenfeld, author of the 2012 book The Subversives. Despite the FBI spending more than half a million dollars in court efforts to prevent Rosenfeld from gaining access to crucial FBI files, he persisted and in the end meticulously documented the decades-long campaign by Hoover to damage administrators, professors, students, and academic programs at the University of California, especially on the Berkeley campus.
Several FBI officials and agents have also been very helpful. Key among them is Neil Welch. Somehow Welch managed to defy Hoover and keep his job as SAC (special agent in charge) in several cities. He not only refused to let agents he supervised participate in COINTELPRO operations, but he also conducted investigations of organized crime even as Hoover refused to acknowledge that it existed. In interviews for this book, Welch provided unique insights and information about Hoover and the FBI, the nature of intelligence operations in general, and his reaction to the Media burglary.
Frank McLaughlin, an agent at the Media office at the time of the burglary, provided detailed firsthand information about the scene at the Media office the morning after the burglary. Other agents, who have chosen not to be named, provided important information that supplements what I gleaned from the official record of the investigation. Former FBI counterterrorism agent Mike German, now a senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union on national security, immigration, and privacy, provided valuable insights about the FBI in recent years.
Like most people who have written about Hoover and the FBI, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the late senator Frank Church, the chair of the Senate committee known as the Church Committee, and other members of that committee who, in a largely nonpartisan approach in the mid-1970s, conducted the first investigation of intelligence agencies. The substantial record of those hearings is crucial to understanding the FBI and also to understanding the enormous impact of the Media burglary. I am grateful to the Church Committee’s chief counsel, Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., now chief counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, for his insights about the committee’s findings and recommendations.
Excellent sources on contemporary surveillance policies and practices have included the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Security Archives, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, and the work of these and other journalists: Dana Priest, William Arkin, Ellen Nakashima, and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post; Charlie Savage, Eric Lichtblau, and James Risen of the New York Times; Philip Shenon, formerly of the New York Times; Jane Mayer of the New Yorker; Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian; and Laura Poitras, documentary filmmaker.
Interviews with Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit poet and antiwar activist, and other participants in the Catholic peace movement have deepened my understanding of the nonviolent resistance philosophy that was at the heart of the Media burglars’ activism. I am particularly grateful to Camden defendant Bob Good.
Thanks to foundations that provided support for initial research, transcription of interviews, and the purchase of the record of the FBI investigation of the burglary: the J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation, the Freedom Forum, and the Fund for Constitutional Government. Thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation for a fellowship at its Bellagio Center. Special thanks to the patient transcribers of hundreds of hours of interviews: Gary Barker, Zachary Barton, Pam McDaniel, Wes Kirkey, Valerie O’Riordan, and Karen Racanelli. Through the Center for Investigative Reporting, the late Angus Mackenzie provided helpful advice.
Countless friends, family members, and colleagues have been supportive as I wrote this book. Special thanks to Anthony Giacchino, producer-director of the documentary film The Camden 28; the late Derrick Bell, law professor; the late Howard Zinn, historian; the late Anthony Lewis, New York Times columnist; the late Arthur Hagadus, bookstore proprietor; the late James Carey, professor of journalism; Larry Gara, historian; and Victor Navasky, former editor of The Nation and historian of Cold War intelligence practices. I also owe deep thanks to Philadelphia lawyer David Kairys; to Daniel Ellsberg, who made the Pentagon Papers public three months after the Media burglary; and to numerous friends, especially Maya Reiner, Joerg Weber, Diana and Hisham Matar, Susan and Albert Wells, Edna Lee, Paul van Zyl, Zoia Horn, Bill and Kari Hoover, Dean Galloway, Nancy McDermid, and Raul Ramirez.
I am especially grateful to my Brooklyn connection, Max van Zyl. He is responsible for my introduction to a great editor and publisher. It was through the network of friends Max established in second grade at his Brooklyn school that I had the pleasure and good fortune of meeting and receiving wise counsel from Robert Gottlieb, editor extraordinaire. After reading a summary of The Burglary, he said, “I know the perfect editor for you and for this story: Vicky Wilson.” He was right. Thanks, Max. Thanks, Bob. I am deeply grateful for Gottlieb’s advice and for the wise editing, overall vision, and enthusiasm of Victoria Wilson, senior vice president and editor at Alfred A. Knopf. I also am grateful for the support and expert skills of other people at Knopf who contributed significantly to bringing The Burglary to fruition: Katherine Hourigan, vice president and managing editor; Romeo Enriquez, production manager; Victoria Pearson, production editor; Roland Ottewell, copy editor; and Ms. Wilson’s assistants, Charlotte Crowe and Audrey Silverman.
A mountain of thanks to Johanna Hamilton. Johanna, Max’s mother, has been a great colleague as we have worked collaboratively on our independent projects—her documentary film, 1971, and my book—to tell the story of the Media burglary and its impact. We have had a creative, dynamic, and mutually supportive working relationship. After many years of working alone on this story, it has been wonderful to have a partner who shares my commitment to telling it in ways both of us hope will stimulate public discourse about the need for intelligence agencies to be accountable to the public and about the need for citizens to assume responsibility for their government’s actions.
I am profoundly indebted to the late Katharine Graham who, as publisher of the Washington Post, decided to publish stories about the stolen Media files despite the company lawyer’s recommendation that they not be published. It was the first of the many times she would be confronted with a demand from the Nixon administration that she suppress a story.
I also am thankful for the gift of silence I experienced as I wrote in libraries in Mystic and Stonington, Connecticut, and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I am especially grateful for that grand and beautiful temple of silence and thinking, the Rose Reading Room at the main branch of the New York Public Library. My laptop and I have had many productive days there in that sea of hundreds of silent readers and writers. Whoever you are, reading room companions, thanks for the inspiration.
My deepest personal thanks go to the person who has been my partner in all things as I wrote this book—my wonderful husband, John T. Racanelli. He has been an enthusiastic supporter ever since I returned from that trip to Philadelphia and greeted him at the airport with “You won’t believe this! I met two of the Media burglars!” The journey to completion of this project has been his, too. He has been a wise and loving companion throughout the journey. No words can adequately express my gratitude for the support he has given.
Notes
All information attributed to Media burglars, unless otherwise indicated, is from multiple interviews conducted by the writer over two decades with seven of the eight burglars.
All information about the FBI’s investigation of the Media burglary, unless otherwise indicated, is based on the 33,698-page official record of the burglary by the FBI, which was requested by the author under the federa
l Freedom of Information Act. Known as MEDBURG, the case was closed on March 11, 1976, and has remained unsolved.
Selected reports from the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate (known as the Church Committee), April 1976, can be found at: http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/pdfs94th/94intelligence_activities_VI.pdf.
1. IN THE ABSENCE OF OVERSIGHT
1 had resigned in 1966: “Nicholas Katzenbach, 90, Dies; Policy Maker at ’60s Turning Points,” New York Times, May 9, 2012.
2 “ruled the FBI”: Katzenbach, Some of It Was Fun, 184.
3 “There was no man”: Ibid., 185.
4 Katzenbach believed: Katzenbach testimony before Church Committee, December 3, 1975.
5 “is almost impossible”: Ibid.
6 “How did they know”: Author interview with former FBI agent Mike German.
7 Contrary to the official: Ungar, FBI, 283.
8 “has operated on”: Halperin, Berman, Borosage, and Marwick, The Lawless State, 131.
9 Mark Felt: Felt, The FBI Pyramid, 98–99. Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, 92.
10 Ironically, the burglary: Author interview with retired Media FBI agent.
11 The writers of every: The authors of the following books have noted the significance of the 1971 Media burglary:
Blackstock, COINTELPRO, 17, 38–39.
Burnham, Above the Law, 250–51.
Campbell, Senator Sam Ervin, 272.
Churchill and Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers, xi, 4, 332, 347.
Cowan et al., State Secrets, 107–217.
Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here, 35–36, 67, 88, 110, 181, 194, 201.
Davis, Assault on the Left, 8–14, 207, 215.
———, Spying on America, 1, 6, 14, 181.
Davis and Kelley, Kelley, 158, 175.
Denenberg, The True, 2–3, 184–85.
Donner, The Age of Surveillance, 108, 157–59, 167, 169, 178, 179, 181.
Feldman, Manufacturing Hysteria, 292–95.
Felt, The FBI Pyramid, 87–99.
Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, 84–85, 87–92.
Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, 674–76, 713.
Gillers and Watters, eds., Investigating the FBI, 79, 196, 203, 239, 241, 242, 243–44, 245, 246, 255, 259–60, 265, 267, 268, 269, 271, 277, 279, 281, 286, 332, 344, 351, 352, 355, 356, 357, 441, 443.
Goodman, Static, 46–61.
Graff, The Threat Matrix, 62–63.
Greenberg, The Dangers of Dissent, 74.
Halperin et al., The Lawless State, 92, 130.
Holland, Leak, 13.
Keller, The Liberals and J. Edgar Hoover, 115–16, 149–53, 194–95.
Kessler, The Bureau, 156.
———, The FBI, 15.
Moynihan, Secrecy, 34.
Neier, Dossier, 146, 151, 154, 156.
Nelson and Ostrow, The FBI and the Berrigans, 187–88, 191, 211.
O’Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans, 217–18, 220–21, 285, 288.
———, “Racial Matters,” 346–47, 351.
Powers, Broken, 287.
———, Secrecy and Power, 464–67.
Price, Threatening Anthropology, 17.
Rosenfeld, Subversives, 414, 491, 492, 639n.
Saxbe, I’ve Seen the Elephant, p. 191
Stone, Perilous Times, 494–96.
Sullivan, The Bureau, 151–52.
Summers, Official and Confidential, 393.
Swearingen, FBI Secrets, i.
Theoharis, Abuse of Power, 141.
———, The FBI and American Democracy, 137.
———, Spying on Americans, 148–50, 273n52.
Theoharis and Cox, The Boss, 425n, 426.
Ungar, FBI, 136–40, 268, 484–92.
Weiner, Enemies, 293.
Welch and Marston, Inside Hoover’s FBI, 165–66.
Wise, The American Police State, 281.
The FBI website provides this description of the burglary and its impact in “A Brief History of the Philadelphia Division,” http://www.fbi.gov/philadelphia/about-us/history/history:
The Philadelphia Division faced significant challenges in the early 1970s when it had to deal with the burglary of one of its resident agencies in 1971 and the changing national political climate after the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 1972 and the emerging Watergate scandal.
The burglary of the resident agency had taken place on the night of March 8, 1971. 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 [writer’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.
12 “The Media documents”: Ungar, FBI, 485.
13 “In one fell swoop”: Holland, Leak, 13.
14 “Hoover’s power”: Powers, Broken, 287.
2. CHOOSING BURGLARY
1 He traveled to Vietnam: Peter Monaghan, “The Year That Started the 60s,” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 5, 2012. In 1965, the year before Davidon went to Vietnam, the war had escalated significantly: American troop numbers had leaped from 23,000 to 184,000 and round-the-clock bombing had begun. The intensification of the war motivated Davidon to see the impact of the war firsthand.
2 Like other reports: R. W. Apple Jr., “Vietnamese Seize Six U.S. Pacifists and Expel Them,” New York Times, April 21, 1966.
3 “the most significant”: Lyons, The People of This Generation, 144–66.
4 But at the Vatican: Carroll, An American Requiem, 75–76. Polner and O’Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 112, 118–19, 142–43, 169.
5 In 1963: Polner and O’Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 136.
6 Pope Paul VI: Carroll, The American Requiem, 155–60. Polner and O’Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 137.
7 Spellman had always: Carroll, The American Requiem, 164–69.
8 Standing before troops: Polner and O’Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 137.
9 Spellman’s role: Carroll, The American Requiem, 164.
10 Despite the fiercely: Polner and O’Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 107, 109, 125–26, 156, 210.
11 As the Catholic: Ibid., 129, 131, 172.
12 Spellman’s authoritarian: Carroll, An American Requiem, 173–74. Polner and O’Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 111–41.
13 Nine of them: Polner and O’Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 12, 192–94, 212, 331–32.
14 He sent the letter: Berrigan, America Is Hard to Find, 92–98.
15 In November 1969: Henry Kamm, “Vietnamese Say G.I.’s Slew 567 in Town,” New York Times, November 17, 1969.
16 American officials: William Carlsen and Mark Simon, “Hard Line Helped Him Win, Flexibility Helped Him Stay / Ability to Compromise Replaced His Tough Stance Against UC Student Protests,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2004.
17 Three members: Linda Charlton, “Search Widens for 2 Women in Townhouse Blast,” New York Times, March 30, 1970.
18 President Nixon announced: “Cambodian Incursion Address,” April 30, 1970, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Richard%20Nixon%20-%20Cambodian%20Incursion%20Address.pdf.
19 By the end: Taylor Owen, “Bombs over Cambodia,” taylorowen.com, September 19, 2006. Owen, research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia School of Journalism, provided this analysis from Air Force data on all American bombing of Indochina between 1964 and 1975 that was declassified and released by President Bill Clinton in 2000 when he became the first U.S. president to visit Vietnam since the war ended.
20 Two days after: Ohio Politics, 80–81.
21 A d
ay later: John Kifner, “4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops: 8 Hurt as Shooting Follows Reported Sniping at Rally,” New York Times, May 4, 1970. Robert D. McFadden, “37 College Chiefs Urge Nixon Move for Prompt Peace,” New York Times, May 5, 1970. Martin Nolan, “What the Nation Learned at Kent State in 1970,” Boston Globe, May 3, 2000.
22 A few days later: Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience, 85.
23 Nixon, at the urging: Jack Rosenthal, “President’s Panel Warns Split on Youth Perils U.S.; Asks Him to Foster Unity: Near–Civil War Feared Unless Division of Society Is Ended,” New York Times, September 27, 1970.
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