Burglars Who Broke Into FBI Break Their Silence

PHILADELPHIA — The perfect crime is far easier to pull off when nobody is watching.

So on a night nearly 43 years ago, while Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier bludgeoned each other over 15 rounds in a televised title bout viewed by millions around the world, burglars took a lock pick and a crowbar and broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation office in a suburb of Philadelphia, making off with nearly every document inside.

They were never caught, and the stolen documents that they mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters were the first trickle of what would become a flood of revelations about extensive spying and dirty-tricks operations by the F.B.I. against dissident groups.

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wormcast Wormtown, MA
Heroes. And a reminder to those who naively believe that the government can be trusted with the power to run a surveillance state. How quickly we forget Hoover and Nixon.

The burglary in Media, Pa., on March 8, 1971, is a historical echo today, as disclosures by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have cast another unflattering light on government spying and opened a national debate about the proper limits of government surveillance. The burglars had, until now, maintained a vow of silence about their roles in the operation. They were content in knowing that their actions had dealt the first significant blow to an institution that had amassed enormous power and prestige during J. Edgar Hoover’s lengthy tenure as director.

www.nytimes.com...

These ancient whistle blowers would be locked away today doing long stretches but hay they beat the system these were academics not the typical fight the power types with raised fist and bandannas, today they are grandmas and grandpas who walked out of the shadows..good read pls klik the link.

reply to post by Spider879


Great piece by the NY Times and rather nice to see the now elderly faces of the ones behind the reveal of COINTELPRO. I also love the fact that they brought that little piece of history up. Very cool. Thank you for spotting it.

Having lived through the times, and taken part in the anti war activities,....my hat is off to these people.
They are the epitomy of the real America.

I have to tip my hat to that bunch.

A radical move and a major thing to do for getting information out without hurting anyone. Classy way to do things, when extreme times come.

Sen. Frank Church died in a mysterious plane crash after taking on the CIA and FBI. The Media burglars were smart to let things lie for decades or they might have met a similar fate. Bu hey, finally we get some genuine heroes from the American public!
Even after all the years of protest Nixon expanded the war in to Cambodia setting off a chain of events that would take millions of lives. I don't blame them one bit for breaking in when they did. Somebody had to stop the madness.

Unfortunately, no citizen today can replicate anything like what they did. Security is too tight and penalties so draconian one would have to be on a suicide mission to even try. No matter how stinging the reprimand or severity of the laws passed to stop such invasions of privacy those in power can only seek more power.

We owe these brave citizens a debt that can never be fully calculated.
To them I can only offer my humble thanks.

Ha! They've come forward at a perfect time, and hopefully they've made their grandchildren and children very proud of them. Now they can go on radio and TV talk shows, someone can do a movie or major documentary, and J. Edgar Hoover can continue spinning oh so rapidly in his grave.

Everybody knows there is mass corruption going on, yet we shrug our shoulders.
We feel defeated and beaten. Do 'We The People' really have the power to change anything?

nugget1
Everybody knows there is mass corruption going on, yet we shrug our shoulders.
We feel defeated and beaten. Do 'We The People' really have the power to change anything?

Yes we do if Conservatives,Progressives and folks in the middle agree on just one thing to get money out of politics we can have our democracy back anyone up for a Constitutional amendment??..it won't solve all our problem but it would at least set us in the right direction.

reply to post by Spider879

These ancient whistle blowers would be locked away today doing long stretches but hay they beat the system these were academics not the typical fight the power types with raised fist and bandannas, today they are grandmas and grandpas who walked out of the shadows..good read pls klik the link.

They were not whistleblowers they were criminals and treasonous activists who should have been sentenced to life in prison.

/s

Oh wait, they did get caught? Yeah never mind, they are heroes.

History glorifying who makes it by without getting caught. The entire foundation of our society. Everyone is guilty, but only truly guilty if you're caught. Don't get caught is the moral of the story?

boncho
reply to post by Spider879

 

These ancient whistle blowers would be locked away today doing long stretches but hay they beat the system these were academics not the typical fight the power types with raised fist and bandannas, today they are grandmas and grandpas who walked out of the shadows..good read pls klik the link.

They were not whistleblowers they were criminals and treasonous activists who should have been sentenced to life in prison.

/s

Oh wait, they did get caught? Yeah never mind, they are heroes.

History glorifying who makes it by without getting caught. The entire foundation of our society. Everyone is guilty, but only truly guilty if you're caught. Don't get caught is the moral of the story?

Most whistle blowers are criminals like most resisters and civil rights protesters,heck the founding fathers were in the eyes of their British overlords were criminals.

Asktheanimals
Sen. Frank Church died in a mysterious plane crash after taking on the CIA and FBI. The Media burglars were smart to let things lie for decades or they might have met a similar fate. Bu hey, finally we get some genuine heroes from the American public!
Even after all the years of protest Nixon expanded the war in to Cambodia setting off a chain of events that would take millions of lives. I don't blame them one bit for breaking in when they did. Somebody had to stop the madness.

Unfortunately, no citizen today can replicate anything like what they did. Security is too tight and penalties so draconian one would have to be on a suicide mission to even try. No matter how stinging the reprimand or severity of the laws passed to stop such invasions of privacy those in power can only seek more power.

We owe these brave citizens a debt that can never be fully calculated.
To them I can only offer my humble thanks.

Security isn't that tight. You're not going to get documents with a crowbar anymore, but people like Manning, Snowden, and even Assange prove that things can and are brought to light.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
Sen. Frank Church died in a mysterious plane crash after taking on the CIA and FBI.

Huh? Church died of pancreatic cancer on 4-7-84 at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, age 59.

Though plenty of other pols DID die in mysterious plane crashes: Cong Hale Boggs, Sen Paul Wellstone, Gov Mel Carnahan, John F. Kennedy Jr. Maybe you're thinking of one of them.

www.democracynow.org...[/url]

The ringleader was a guy named Bill Davidon, professor at Haverford College.

According to the source cited above, he met with Henry Kissinger at the White House two days before. Kissinger was convinced to meet with him and two other peace activists by the actions of a street protestor named Brian McDonald who conducted a lengthy hunger strike in front of the White House. If you can believe it, actress Shirley MaClaine was the one who encouraged Kissinger to meet with the peaceniks. Even more incredibly, Davidon had been accused by the FBI the previous January of being involved in a conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger and to bomb tunnels under federal buildings in Washington.

Which was apparently a good thing, because being an unindicted conspirator in that case kept him from being questioned by the FBI, since he was suspect #1, having boasted of his involvement in the break-in in a front page article in the Delaware County Daily Times five days later. (The Justice Department's reasoning was they didn't want to confuse him with other charges while he was answering questions about the Kissinger kidnapping caper.)

"BETTY MEDSGER: Yes, and that relates to the case that I was just talking about. The FBI was prepared to go after Bill Davidon very, very seriously. And the Justice—when the Justice Department found out about this, they put out an order that he should not be questioned—no questioning of Bill Davidon—which was quite amazing, given his situation and the fact that he was the leader of the group. And that went into effect. And for the entire length of the investigation, Bill was never questioned by the FBI."

Amazing? I would call it in-credible, meaning, simply not believable. So it does sound like these burglars were given a "pass" by the powers that be. I am wondering if the covert operators set the whole thing up?

I wonder what the names of the three burglars* are that didn't come forward: Hunt, Sturgis, or McCord, maybe?
*(There were eight in all involved in the plot. Only five allowed themselves to be identified 42 years later.)

-----------------------

No one in the media contacted by the group wanted to touch the stolen docs, until the crusading editor Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post convinced publisher Katherine Graham to run with the story--on the front page. It's deja vu all over again!

If you look at the timeline of this curious break-in, it could have been the first act that led directly to Watergate.


3-8-71 Media, PA break in. Cointelpro exposed by WashPo.

4-5-71 - House Majority Leader Hale Boggs(D. LA) rails against illegal activities by the FBI and Hoover, including the bugging of Congressmen. Boggs calls for Hoover's dismissal during House speech.

4-23-71 Boggs again calls For Hoover Ouster

4-28-71
COINTELPRO was officially terminated by Hoover . Hoover suddenly gets cold feet about doing any more Black-Bag jobs for the White House

June, 1971
www.theatlantic.com...
"By mid-June of 1971, the White House had already been threatened with exposure of its wiretapping by J. Edgar Hoover, who understood only too well—and let the President and his advisers know he understood—that national security had little to do with the twenty-one months of wiretapping.

7-24-71 White House plumbers unit formed to find out who has been leaking info to the press on sensitive materials\

6-17-72 Watergate burglars arrested



www.npr.org...
On Hoover's relationship with President Nixon:
"It was deep. It was based on mutual respect and dependency. And then it broke down during the last year and a half of Hoover's life — around the time that Nixon turns on the White House tapes and starts bugging himself. Nixon wants his enemies destroyed — all of them. Hoover is no longer willing to do his dirty work for him — his black bag jobs, his breaking and entering, his bugging. Nixon becomes increasingly frustrated with this and he sets up his own bucket shop — the plumbers. Six weeks after Hoover dies, they get caught breaking into the Watergate."