In 1971, eight unlikely thieves uncovered the largest conspiracy in American history.

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Intro

It’s 10:30pm on March 8, 1971 in the small town of Media, Pennsylvania. Four well-dressed travelers arrive outside the County Courts building, with its apartments on the third and fourth floors. Perhaps they're returning home from a long trip.

But when they enter the building, they stop on the second floor and squeeze their way through a broken door into suite 203. These are not weary travelers. And this is not an apartment. They are burglars. This is an FBI office. And they’re here to steal documents.

The thieves aren’t communists or spies, though, either. They’re ordinary Americans — professors, social workers, college students and dropouts — who've long suspected that the FBI may be watching them and others for protesting government policy and the war in Vietnam (ch. 3). They’re here to find out whether their suspicions are true.

Within minutes, they leave the building, suitcases filled with every single document from inside the office except a handful of blank forms, and head to a nearby farm owned by a friend to begin analyzing their findings.

The next morning, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is enraged when he receives the news. He couldn’t know exactly what the burglars had now, but one thought fills him with a profound fear. They may have discovered COINTELPRO.

The Counterintelligence Program is Hoover’s magnum opus. Under its auspices for the last 15 years, his agents have infiltrated activist groups, blackmailed so-called “subversives,” and even attempted to drive civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King to suicide.

Hoover must catch the culprits, and they must evade his clutches, because they are about to accomplish something far more devastating than he could even imagine. Not only did they now hold hard evidence of COINTELPRO. They’ve set in motion a series events which will unravel vast conspiracies against the public spanning America’s clandestine services: plots involving the FBI, CIA, and NSA to not just surveil, propagandize, and intimidate, but to disappear, brainwash, and assassinate those who oppose the government.

This is their story.

Citation

This video draws heavily on the work of Washington Post journalist Betty Medsger who was the first to publish the Media papers in 1971 and 40 years later wrote the authoritative book, “The Burglary.” All citations for this video appear as footnotes in the closed captions.

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Now, back to the burglars.

Planning

The idea for the break-in came from Bill Davidon, a physics professor who'd spent the 1960s with Catholic peace activists, breaking into Army offices to steal the files needed to conscript American citizens to fight in Vietnam. After a few years, though, he and others began to suspect they were being watched by the FBI. Maybe they were just paranoid. But Davidon was a scientist. The only way to find out was to test the hypothesis. (A, ch. 2)

So in late 1970, he approached some like-minded associates with a simple question, “Will you help me break into an FBI office?” (A, ch. 1) Eight said yes: Keith Forsyth, Bonnie and John Raines, Bob Williamson, Judi Feingold, Ralph Daniel, Sara Shumer, and Peter Greene. At their first meeting that December, they dubbed themselves, “The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI.” (A, ch. 3)

In January 1971, they started planning the heist. Every night, team members headed to Media to case the area, while the rest convened in the Rainses' attic to refine their plans.

But as good as their intel on the office's exterior was, they were flying blind when it came to what lay within. How were files stored, how many desks and filing cabinets would they have to empty, what was the layout, how was it secured, and most importantly, was there an alarm system? They needed a man on the inside—or, perhaps, a woman (B).

Posing as a college student interested in learning about the Bureau, Bonnie Raines arranged to interview office director Tom Lewis (B).

She showed up early, blaming her bus, and while she waited, studied the office, noting two crucial details. It had no alarm, but the only practical entry point was its main door (B). A large filing cabinet, likely full of documents, blocked the second entrance. It was probably extremely difficult to move, and if knocked over would be incredibly loud.

Luckily, though, she also noted the model of the main door’s lock, and within weeks, Keith Forsyth honed his lock-picking technique in the Raines’s attic until he could crack the model in under 30 seconds (B).

By now, all the burglars lacked was the perfect opportunity for a break-in. They settled on March 8th, because that night was the fight of the century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. With luck, the residents above and building manager below the FBI office might be distracted by the fight on the radio. Everything was ready. (A, ch. 4)

Until, just days before the break-in, Peter Greene dropped out. He no longer wanted any part of their plot. He made no threat to go to the police, but the group was shaken. Still, it was too late to back out now. (A, ch. 1)

Burglary

By 7:30 pm on March 8th, everyone had arrived at the motel room just outside Media which was to be their command center for the night. Shortly thereafter, Keith Forsyth headed out to play his part and get the door open (A, Ch. 6).

Approaching the building, he feared the security guard at the nearby courthouse would notice him. In all their planning, the group had been unable to devise a way to stay out of his sight lines.

Their strategy instead was to hide in plain sight, so the team of hippies held their noses and acquired some fine Brooks Brothers suits from second-hand stores. Anxious as he was, this comforted Forsyth as he strolled toward the building. He later recalled, “You can do anything you want in the United States if you wear a suit and tie…especially if you’re white. That also helps” (A, Ch. 6).

The gambit seemed to work, and Forsyth entered the building unaccosted. Yet now a new fear haunted him. If a building resident caught him trying to pick the lock to an FBI office, it wouldn't matter what he was wearing.

Hoping the fight of the century lived up to the hype, he reassured himself that he knew this model of lock like the back of his hand. He should be in in less than 30 seconds.

Except…this was not the lock Forsyth was expecting. The one he knew was there, but there was now a new, second, far more secure one too. And he simply couldn’t pick it (A, ch. 6).

He gave up and returned to the motel with the bad news. The group was shattered, but Davidon remained calm. What about the second door, the one blocked by the filing cabinet? He turned to Bonnie Raines, who'd written it off as impossible when she cased the office. Knowing it was their only option, she said it would be risky, but it could be done (A, ch. 6).

With renewed determination, Forsyth returned to the office, easily picked the lock on the second door, then quickly found it wouldn’t budge. So he went to his car and grabbed a long metal bar. Back in the building, he positioned, laid on the floor directly in front of the stairs, and began to push as hard as he could (A, ch. 6).

It was a vulnerable position. If a building resident stepped outside for some air or a drink, they’d trip right over Forsyth.

But after a few tense minutes, he felt the door budge. A bit later, and he was able to squeeze inside, nudge the filing cabinet a bit further out of the way, and depart. A thirty second mission had instead taken hours. But his job was done. (A, ch. 6)

A short time later, four team members arrived with suitcases in hand. In their second-hand suits they looked just like travelers returning from a long trip. After squeezing into the office, with little light and in complete silence, they emptied the contents of every desk drawer and filing cabinet in the office into their suitcases. The only documents left behind were a stack of blank procedural forms (A, ch. 6).

Then, when all was done, they picked up an FBI office phone — ironically, one of the few lines in America they could expect wasn't wiretapped — and called the motel. All they said was, “okay,” and hung up (A, ch. 6).

A few minutes later, they exited the County Courts building, their suitcases nearly bursting, placed them in the trunks of the getaway cars, got inside, and left for the farmhouse. (A, ch. 6)

Analysis

For nearly an hour, The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI drove along dark, winding, country roads (A, Ch. 7). They were giddy about their success, but shadowed by worry. What if all they found were a bunch of pointless bureaucratic materials? Or what if the FBI was the crime-fighting organization Hoover claimed? What if they really were just paranoid all this time?

But they needn't have worried. Within an hour of arriving at the farm and digging into the documents, someone shouted, “take a look at this!” The file, from FBI headquarters, was a set of detailed instructions on the investigation of activists, encouraging agents to “enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and…get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.” (A ch. 7)

As if that wasn’t enough, they kept finding more and more. The office had been surveilling the bank records of a civil rights activist, the membership of Black student groups, even a call from one activist to another, talking about when her baby was due (A, Ch. 7, 10, 12).

Proof. This was proof: that they weren’t crazy, that the FBI was at war with the American people, watching their every move, and endeavoring to suppress free speech. Even without realizing what COINTELPRO was, they had enough proof in their hands. But this discovery could still be all for nothing, if the commission failed to share it with the public.

To do that, Davidon and John Raines took a massive risk. They brought piles of the stolen files to the universities where they each worked and copied them over the weekend when campus was quiet (A, ch. 9). Afterwards, they needed to dispatch them anonymously and deliver them into friendly, brave hands.

Whoever received these files would have to face down J. Edgar Hoover, a man who'd spent the last 46 years building a spying and blackmailing machine which had made him the most powerful man in America. And he was not happy.

Investigation

In fact, when Hoover heard the news, witness and biographer accounts describe him as either “apoplectic” or “enraged” (A, ch. 8). In his decades as chief, as the FBI’s only director to date, nothing like this had ever happened. Now he was in a desperate race to ensure “COINTELPRO” stayed a secret.

Fortunately for Hoover, the FBI had a head start. Thanks to decades of illegal surveillance the bureau had enormous files on activists around the country (A, Ch. 14). Before long, they zeroed in on not just one member of the plot but three. Immediately, Hoover fixated on the “mystery woman” who'd visited the office in January to meet with Tom Lewis (A, Ch. 8). After being castigated by Hoover for failing to get the woman’s name, Lewis and the other Media agents worked with a sketch artist to produce this drawing. It wasn't perfect, but the right person would have no trouble connecting it to Bonnie Raines (A, Ch. 8).

And though they didn't know it, their next suspect was the perfect man to make such a connection. Combing their files, they fixated on one Peter Greene, the man who'd dropped out of the operation at the final hour. He ran with the right crowds, and the FBI had seen him at plenty of protests. They were soon watching his every move (A, Ch. 8).

Finally, the FBI began hunting their most crucial lead: a second mystery woman. Bonnie Raines's visit to the Media office had been essential. The FBI knew that. But she had deftly concealed her identity. Unfortunately for the burglars, she wasn't the only team member to visit the Media office. A couple weeks earlier, Sara Shumer had made a careless mistake. She made a brief visit to the office and asked if an agent might visit a university class she was teaching. Shumer was, in fact, a university teacher. Even worse, she gave the office her real name. There was nowhere to hide. Within days, she got a call from the FBI asking for an interview. Agents described her response as “uncooperative and evasive” (A, Ch. 9).

With that, Hoover's suspicion only intensified. He didn't care if she didn't want to do an interview, and he commanded his agents to pay her a surprise visit. When they showed up at her office, Shumer nearly panicked. She shook as they told her they knew she’d been at the office in January. She must have done something horribly wrong, she thought. Perhaps she’d taken off her gloves during the burglary, leaving behind a fatal fingerprint (A, Ch. 9).

Yet the truth was that she hadn’t. The agents were bluffing. Luckily Shumer kept her head and threatened to record the conversation. To her surprise, the agents walked away. Nobody knew better than they how incriminating a taped conversation could be. But the FBI wasn’t just going to leave her alone. As the days passed, she received calls from family and friends, all telling her the FBI had questioned them, asking whether or not she might be involved in the burglary (A, Ch. 9).

In the meantime, the sketch of Bonnie Raines began making the rounds, and agents were watching Peter Greene's every move. The law was bearing down on the Citizens’ Commission. If they were going to get the documents out, they had no time to lose.

Publication

Luckily, all this time Davidon and John Raines had been furiously copying and distributing the files to a handful of recipients they considered likely allies in the fight against Hoover. Among these were Senator George McGovern and Representative Parren J. Mitchell. Each had long track records opposing the Vietnam War and Hoover's unchecked power (A, Ch. 10).

Yet the commission's hopes for these legislators were in vain. When they received the files, both McGovern and Mitchell went public with the news but disavowed the burglary, refused to disclose the files' contents to anyone but the FBI, and claimed that the proper path to checking the bureau lay within legal means (A, Ch. 10). Hoover was winning. It was disappointing, but the commission had long since come to expect cowardice in Washington.

Their last and greatest hopes lay with the free press.

One of their best bets was Jack Nelson, a top investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times. Nelson had developed a reputation as a thorn in the FBI’s side, which is exactly why he never said a word about the Media files. Because Hoover already had a man in the LA times mail-room, and when the files arrived, they were intercepted and sent to the bureau. Jack Nelson never even knew. The same thing happened at the New York Times (A, Ch. 10). Hoover was two steps ahead.

But on March 23rd, something happened that Hoover did not intend, and a package was picked up by the unlikeliest of reporters: Betty Medsger. Only vaguely aware of the Media break-in, the documents she found in her mailbox shocked her (C).

Unable to verify their authenticity, she went to her superiors, thinking they'd know what to do. In fact, they did, because just minutes earlier Attorney General John Mitchell had called the Post to warn that they might receive stolen FBI documents and that publishing them would threaten national security. That was, of course, a lie, and the government had just accidentally confirmed the veracity of Medsger's documents (C).

The next day, every Post subscriber woke up to read the day’s front page. Right there was the story: “Stolen Documents Describe FBI Surveillance Activities” (A, Ch. 10).

The commission had done it, and the response was perfect. The press and the American public—long trusting of Hoover and the bureau—quickly turned and began seriously asking questions. TIME magazine, long laudatory of the FBI's crime-fighting valor, ran an article describing the bureau as “a secretive, enormously powerful Government agency under dictatorial rule, operating on its own, answerable to no authority except the judgments—or whims—of one man” (A, Ch. 15).

And that man was more furious than ever. But Hoover had one hope left. Though this press was bad, to draw out the story, the burglars only mailed Medsger a few files before drip-feeding her more pages over time. Hoover just had to find the culprits before they unmasked COINTELPRO.

Closing In

His agents were still hunting for the mystery woman, still watching Sara Shumer and Peter Greene, but a waiting game was not what they needed. They needed a breakthrough, and they got one thanks to their mailroom spies and Senator McGovern. Because now they had copies of the documents made by Davidon and John Raines. Now, they hadn't been stupid. There we no fingerprints—at least, none of theirs. But what they didn't realize was that every Xerox machine has a unique fingerprint too (A, Ch. 9).

So Hoover leaned on Xerox to help. The company quickly complied and determined that two Xerox 660 machines were used. In turn, Xerox employees began arriving at every 660 customer's address for a...technical checkup (A, Ch. 11).

Until eventually, one day in April, John Raines was sitting in his office when he heard a Xerox employee enter and announce that he’d be switching out the copy drum from the very machine Raines had used. There was nothing he could do but warn Bill Davidon of the situation. Davidon, always fast on his feet, simply defaced his printer’s copy drum to distort the machine's signature (A, Ch. 11).

As John Raines awaited the worst, Peter Greene showed up at his house with a grim message. He was thinking of turning the Commission in, because he feared they’d endangered national security by releasing the documents. Attempting to remain calm, John and Bonnie responded by telling him—truthfully—that not a single document pertained to national security. It was all domestic surveillance. After two days discussing the matter at their house, Greene left without telling them what he planned to do next (A, Ch. 12).

Then, just a few weeks later, in early May, John Raines’s worst fear came true, when two federal agents showed up at his house. They wanted to talk about the break-in. But John deflected, claiming that he’d read all of the news about the bureau. He refused to talk with men who spied on fellow Americans (A, Ch. 12).

Eventually, the agents gave up and turned to leave. They just had one more question. They asked him point-blank, “Were you involved in the Media break-in?” But John stuck to his guns, refused to dignify their questions with an answer, and shut the door in their face. They left with one thing in their pockets—the sketch of Bonnie Raines. They never thought to ask to speak with John's wife (A, Ch. 12).

Conclusion

As time went on, the FBI never came back: not to John and Bonnie, not to Bill Davidon or Sara Shumer or Keith Forsyth, not to any of the burglars. Peter Greene stayed silent. All the bureau’s leads slowly evaporated, and the Xerox analysis fizzled out. We only learned some of the commissioners’ names when they came forward in 2014.

Because they evaded Hoover, the Commission eventually did send Medsger the documents mentioning “COINTELPRO” (A, Ch. 15). However, they only mentioned the program in passing, and so did Medsger's reporting.

In turn, Hoover believed he had averted catastrophe. COINTELPRO remained a mystery. The bureau's reputation had suffered, but plenty of people were willing to look past some surveillance of hippies and black Americans.

But not everyone stopped asking questions. In the spring of 1972, NBC reporter Carl Stern was at a Senate committee office when an open folder on a desk caught his eye. The top page was one of the Media files, with one strange word written on it: COINTELPRO. Something about it didn't sit right, but when he began asking around, nobody had a clue what it meant (A, Ch. 18).

To find out, Stern sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act, requesting documents that explained COINTELPRO (A, Ch. 18).

Stern’s timing couldn’t have been better. After founding the FBI and building it for decades into his own unaccountable fiefdom, the tyrant J. Edgar Hoover died on May 2nd, 1972 (A, Ch. 15). Without him, the bureau was vulnerable.

At first, Stern's suit would yield only four pages, but within a few years, America learned how the FBI hadn't just attempted to drive Martin Luther King Jr. to suicide by blackmail. They learned how Hoover orchestrated the assassination of Black activist Fred Hampton, how the NSA surveilled vast swathes of private communications, how the CIA experimented on humans with psychedelics attempting to develop mind control techniques, assassinated foreign leaders, and developed strange and terrible weapons (A, Ch. 18).

The details on those operations and how all that was ultimately revealed is a story for another day—so make sure to subscribe—but one thing is certain. None of it could have been possible without those eight brave men and women, ordinary citizens who stuck their necks out to stand up for every American's rights. And for that reason, I'd like to leave you with their words, from a statement released the day after the break-in.

We have taken this action because:

We believe that a law and order which depends on intimidation and repression to secure obedience can have but one name, and that name is tyranny;

We believe that democracy can survive only in an order of justice, of an open society and public trust;

We believe that citizens have the right to scrutinize and control their own government and its agencies…

As long as great economic and political power remains concentrated in the hands of small cliques not subject to democratic scrutiny and control, then repression, intimidation and entrapment are to be expected. We do not believe that this destruction of democratic society results simply from the evilness, egotism or senility of some leaders. Rather, this destruction is the result of certain undemocratic social, economic and political institutions…

In doing this, we know full well the legal jeopardy in which we place ourselves. We feel most keenly our responsibilities to those who daily depend upon us, and whom we put in jeopardy by our own jeoplardy. But under present circumstances, this seems to us our best way of loving and serving them, and, in fact, all the people of this land. (A, Ch. 7)

If you think that message is important, consider supporting stories that matter to democracy by joining our Patreon, grabbing some merch, or by patronizing this video's sponsor, Aura. Thanks for watching.

Sources

A. Betty Medsger, The Burglary, (Penguin Random House, 2014).

B. Bonnie Raines, “I Broke Into an FBI Office and Took Every Document. Here’s Why,” ACLU Texas, 15 January 2014.

C. Betty Medsger, “Remembering an earlier time when a theft unmasked government surveillance,” in The Washington Post, 10 January 2014.