Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows

The New York Times ^ | 07 Jan 2014 | MARK MAZZETTI

[Theoria]

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.

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.

“When you talked to people outside the movement about what the F.B.I. was doing, nobody wanted to believe it,” said one of the burglars, Keith Forsyth, who is finally going public about his involvement. “There was only one way to convince people that it was true, and that was to get it in their handwriting.”

[hecticskeptic]

Based on the reporting in the story, they were specifically looking for what they found.

I'm not sure where in the story that is made clear and it certainly isn't clear that they had any evidence to support a belief that the building contained anything of what they actually found. I think this is all it says.... The burglary was the idea of William C. Davidon, a professor of physics at Haverford College and a fixture of antiwar protests in Philadelphia, a city that by the early 1970s had become a white-hot center of the peace movement. Mr. Davidon was frustrated that years of organized demonstrations seemed to have had little impact. I think that they were just on a fishing expedition and lucked out. As such, if they had of found nothing they would be reviled as politically minded hippie thugs. But because they got lucky and found something, they are heros? There's something wrong with that logic....

[WayneS]

They called themselves “The Citizen’s Committee to Investigate the FBI”. Their goal was to investigate the actions of the FBI.

They broke in to an FBI office looking for documents related to FBI spying on US citizens.

I repeat: They were specifically looking for what they found.

The fact that they found what they were looking for is not evidence that they were on a “fishing expedition and got lucky”.

If the FBI or NSA had done something similar, it would be described as a successful counter-intelligence operation.

[WayneS]

MLK did receive such a letter. It was sent anonymously, so there is no irrefutable evidence that it came from the FBI, although they were (and are) the prime suspect since the letter was accompanied by audio tapes made by the FBI as part of their surveillance of King.

The letter did not explicitly demand that Rev. King commit suicide. It was an insulting litany of his “crimes” and misdeeds, and it closes with something along the lines of “there is only one way out for you” (which MLK himself, and many others, interpret as encouraging him to kill himself).

There are photographs of the letter posted out there on the web in various places.

[expat1000]

Interesting. Thanks. Naturally it didn’t work!

[hecticskeptic]

They called themselves “The Citizen’s Committee to Investigate the FBI”. When did they do this? Was this before or after the break-in? From the article, it appears that it was likely after the break-in when they knew that they actually had something they wanted to send to various news sources and so they created a suitable name. What evidence is that there to the contrary?

Their goal was to investigate the actions of the FBI. It is true that this is what they now state that their goal was all along. There is no evidence in this article to confirm that this was the goal of the group from the outset of their initial formation.

They broke in to an FBI office looking for documents related to FBI spying on US citizens.Unless other documents support this contention, it has to be regarded as an assumption. There is a wide variety of other reasons that they might have had for breaking in to the FBI office.

They were specifically looking for what they found.Maybe… or they were on a fishing expedition and would take anything they found.

The fact that they found what they were looking for is not evidence that they were on a “fishing expedition and got lucky”.It’s also not evidence that they weren’t on a fishing trip and got lucky.