They kept the secret for 43 years. “They” were eight, ordinary citizens whose dismay and outrage over the Vietnam War — and their suspicions that the FBI was spying on and actively engaged in trying to disrupt and discredit non-violent critics of the war –- led them to break into a small FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania on the evening of March 8, 1971 and steal the files that were kept there. The activists, who called themselves “The Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI,” hoped the documents would prove their allegations. What they found that night astonished even them.
The burglars, who were never caught, mailed copies of some of the stolen material to reporters at several prominent newspapers, including Betty Medsger at The Washington Post. Only the Post, under publisher Katharine Graham and editor Ben Bradlee, had the courage to run them –- at which point The New York Times and other news organizations followed suit. The Citizens Commission released the rest of the files over the next several months. It turned out the antiwar movement was not FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover’s only target. For years his agents also had been infiltrating, intimidating and undermining the activities of civil rights leaders, black student organizations, women’s rights groups and anybody else Hoover considered a domestic security threat.
The story of the break-in, the individuals who pulled it off, and the fallout from the information contained in the files is told in the riveting documentary “1971,” directed by Johanna Hamilton. It was made with the participation of five of the eight burglars; the other three wished to preserve their anonymity (the original group consisted of nine people, one of whom dropped out during the planning stage).
The five who appear in the film had confirmed their identities in January 2014, three months before the publication of Betty Medsger’s book about the break-in, “The Burglary: the Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.” (Readers of The New York Times may remember opening the January 7, 2014 edition of the paper to find a photograph of a handsome couple in their late-70s, sitting on a couch, looking into the camera, two of their grandchildren beside them. The headline read: “Burglars Who Took on F.B.I. Abandon Shadows.”)
The couple in the picture were John and Bonnie Raines. John taught religion at Temple University; Bonnie specialized in childhood education. They were the parents of three small children. The Raines had been approached by Bill Davidon, the mastermind and de facto leader of the Citizens Commission –- the one who came up with the plan and recruited the other members. A physics professor at Haverford College, Davidon shared the Raines’ passionate commitment to nonviolence. Keith Forsyth was a part-time cab driver and full-time antiwar activist. He took a correspondence course in locksmithing and picked the lock at the F.B.I. office. Bob Williamson was a social worker. Both Keith and Bob later joined the Camden 28, another antiwar group that attempted to raid a draft board in Camden, New Jersey. The 28 were caught, tried and acquitted.
“1971” consists of interviews with four of the former burglars, who describe what motivated them, their extensive preparations for the break-in, and its aftermath. Davidon died in 2013, but filmmaker Hamilton obtained extensive footage of him from his family, as well as archival footage and soundbites from various news sources. (The names of the other three Media, Pennsylvania burglars will probably never be known.) Scenes from 1970, when the group was formed, and 1971, when the burglary took place, are re-enacted by actors, but the real participants narrate their own stories.
The revelations about the FBI’s covert and illegal operations caused an uproar in Congress that was exacerbated two months later when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. A year after that, a two-bit break-in at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C. led to the resignation of a United States president. Only after all of that did the Church Committee hearings –- officially titled the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities –- finally get underway.
But it all started with the Media, Pennsylvania burglary, one of the great Who-done-its in American history. In the year 2015 it is difficult to believe that there was ever a time when Americans felt they could trust their government — and impossible to believe that such a day will ever return.