Speaker 1: Previously on SNAFU.
Speaker 2: We were looking for.
Speaker 3: We know, the documents proved for the first time that
Speaker 3: the FBI undertook a program to harris and destroy new
Speaker 3: left political organizations whose views.
Speaker 4: We were very aware that the FBI surveillance and intimidation
Speaker 4: were everywhere.
Speaker 3: There has never been a full public accounting of FBI
Speaker 3: domestic intelligence operations. Therefore, this committee has undertaken such an investigation.
Speaker 5: It was a big deal what we did, and we
Speaker 5: promised each other. We made promises and they were really
Speaker 5: hard to keep.
Speaker 1: Judy fine Gold had been part of the inside crew.
Speaker 1: On March eighth, nineteen seventy one, she'd personally removed FBI
Speaker 1: documents from the office at One Veteran Square. She and
Speaker 1: her accomplices then leaked some of those files to the public.
Speaker 1: In the weeks after, Judy was on edge, she was
Speaker 1: nineteen years old and everyone she knew was speculating about
Speaker 1: the burglary.
Speaker 5: This was a big thing and everybody was talking about it,
Speaker 5: and I didn't want to be around.
Speaker 1: Everyone was asking who did it. Everyone had a theory,
Speaker 1: and there were FBI agents everywhere hanging around, just waiting
Speaker 1: for someone to slip up.
Speaker 5: You know, That's what I would usually see in the
Speaker 5: early morning, was them sitting in the cars on the
Speaker 5: corner watching me.
Speaker 1: So Judy left. She had a life in Philadelphia and
Speaker 1: family on the East Coast, but she couldn't ignore her
Speaker 1: instincts to get out of town and go west.
Speaker 6: I committed a federal crime, so I wasn't taking any chances.
Speaker 6: I changed fining and started my underground life.
Speaker 1: Nobody, not her parents, not her friends, and none of
Speaker 1: the burglars knew what had happened to Judy fine Gold.
Speaker 1: She spent some time in New Mexico, eventually settling in Arizona.
Speaker 1: She made friends and found loving communities, but she still
Speaker 1: couldn't tell a soul who she was or what she'd
Speaker 1: done in March of nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 5: It's very lonely to carry a secret, and I think
Speaker 5: it got to the point where I just I buried
Speaker 5: it so deep I didn't even think about it.
Speaker 1: As far as she knew, the FBI could catch up
Speaker 1: with her at any moment and arrest her for treason,
Speaker 1: Hiding seemed like the surest way to stay safe.
Speaker 5: You get so used to living undercover that that becomes
Speaker 5: the norm.
Speaker 1: Still Judy couldn't help but check the news from time
Speaker 1: to time. She was deeply moved when she read about
Speaker 1: the church hearings, knowing they wouldn't have happened without her,
Speaker 1: But she couldn't celebrate with anyone, so she danced alone
Speaker 1: on a mountain side. As the years passed, Judy put
Speaker 1: down roots in the Southwest. All the while, the FBI
Speaker 1: never came knocking, but periodically Judy felt compelled to check
Speaker 1: in and see if anyone out there was still talking
Speaker 1: about Medburg.
Speaker 5: It would occur to me now and then, and then
Speaker 5: I would go to the library to see, Wow, I
Speaker 5: wonder what happened with that? And so I just went
Speaker 5: to the computer and looked up the website that I
Speaker 5: would look up to find out, you know, just to
Speaker 5: kind of check in with my past.
Speaker 1: For years, Judy always got the same two search results.
Speaker 1: One was about the Brandywine Peace Community's annual celebration of
Speaker 1: the burglary in Philadelphia. The other was a small story
Speaker 1: in a local paper. Until one day in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: more than forty years after she went on the run,
Speaker 1: Judy encountered a shocking headline, burglars go public.
Speaker 5: When I pulled it up. Instead, I got like ten
Speaker 5: page with ten articles a page or something about what
Speaker 5: they were calling the burglary, and that there was a book.
Speaker 1: A reporter named Betty Metzger had interviewed all of her
Speaker 1: fellow burglars on the record for an upcoming book.
Speaker 5: I was horrified. I mean, the earth actually moved under
Speaker 5: my feet, you know, I felt emotionally, I could hardly agree.
Speaker 5: I just could not believe it. I just walked around
Speaker 5: by myself.
Speaker 1: Judy spent the day in a haze. Later that evening,
Speaker 1: still feeling shocked and betrayed, she finally confided in a
Speaker 1: friend about what she'd done. She had kept the secret
Speaker 1: of the media burglary for forty three years, and now
Speaker 1: it was out. I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snappo,
Speaker 1: a show about him History's greatest screw ups. This is
Speaker 1: season two Medburg, the story of a daring heist and
Speaker 1: the colossal FBI snaffoo it exposed. Today, the fallout from
Speaker 1: the Church hearings, lessons learned and maybe forgotten, and finally,
Speaker 1: the enduring legacy of Medburg. When the Church Committee hearings
Speaker 1: concluded in nineteen seventy five, Jay Aggar Hoover's secret FBI
Speaker 1: was no longer a secret. After the hearings exposed the
Speaker 1: bureaus decades long abuses of power to a shocked and
Speaker 1: horrified American public. The only remaining question was okay, so now,
Speaker 1: what was anything actually going to change? US Attorney General
Speaker 1: Edward Levy certainly hoped, so he pushed the new FBI Director,
Speaker 1: Clarence Kelly, to clean up all the bullshit. This meant
Speaker 1: reassessing thousands and thousands of domestic intelligence cases, most of
Speaker 1: which had been opened under the auspices of co intel
Speaker 1: pro not arouse.
Speaker 7: Whatever committee says, come back up here with all those
Speaker 7: eight thousand cases and justify it.
Speaker 1: That's Neil Welch, the lead FBI agent in Philadelphia at
Speaker 1: the time. Welch was a veteran agent who knew cleaning
Speaker 1: up the house of Hoover would be a tall order.
Speaker 1: The agency's old guard, Hoover's loyal army, resisted any oversight.
Speaker 1: When congressional committees requested information, agents hid files or just
Speaker 1: fed them false information. And as pressure mounted on Kelly,
Speaker 1: the director apparently crumbled, and with Kelly gone, someone had
Speaker 1: to deal with the mess at FBI headquarters.
Speaker 7: This We're going to get the tough of zumb As reunify.
Speaker 5: No, are you making that up?
Speaker 2: At a sold together?
Speaker 7: Our first CLASSSLB and here, get that guy and call
Speaker 7: out we all he hates his stuff, Get him in there.
Speaker 1: That first class SOB was Neil Welch, the one speaking here.
Speaker 1: Welch had made a bit of a name for himself
Speaker 1: within the halls of the FBI. He once negotiated the
Speaker 1: surrender of a notorious killer holding five hostages for an hour.
Speaker 1: The man held a gun to Welch's chest. When a
Speaker 1: reporter asked how he managed to successfully negotiate the surrender,
Speaker 1: Welch replied very carefully. Instead of going after draft dodgers,
Speaker 1: activists and journalists, Welch went after you know, actual criminals.
Speaker 1: He investigated mobsters and corruption. He hated co intel pro tactics,
Speaker 1: and he kind of despised Hoover. The feeling was mutual. Apparently,
Speaker 1: Hoover once placed Welch on probation because Welch refused to
Speaker 1: let his agents participate in co intel pro In other words,
Speaker 1: Welch was the perfect de SOOB to clean up a
Speaker 1: post Hoover FBI Welch's task was to determine which of
Speaker 1: the thousands of FBI surveillance cases should stay open. The
Speaker 1: new Attorney General made it clear only cases that involved
Speaker 1: actual criminal conduct or presented evidence of clear and present
Speaker 1: danger should remain active. All others should be shut down immediately.
Speaker 7: These are cases that they're going on, and there in
Speaker 7: some dark, bingy corner in the domestic Intelligence section, they
Speaker 7: were carry oors from prehistoric times, really, and they were
Speaker 7: still once just started these kinds of things.
Speaker 2: They never saw.
Speaker 1: What Welch means is that if anyone had been identified
Speaker 1: as a person of interest for any reason as far
Speaker 1: back as the Cold War, the FBI was still actively
Speaker 1: surveilling them and maintaining files on them.
Speaker 2: But no more.
Speaker 7: I said to the field losses, can you justify this?
Speaker 7: Have they committed any criminal offenses? I gave him on
Speaker 7: the outline of what they had to do to qualify,
Speaker 7: and they just.
Speaker 1: Disappeared, one by one. Thousands of cases vanished practically overnight.
Speaker 1: Our old pal Carl Stern, who you may remember was
Speaker 1: the first one to get the real dirt on co
Speaker 1: Intel Pro, covered this astonishing development on NBC News.
Speaker 3: Kelly brought some real news to the Committee, announcing a
Speaker 3: ninety seven percent cutback in domestic security investigations. That's a
Speaker 3: cutback from more than twenty thousand active investigation.
Speaker 1: For the first time in decades, Jay Edgar Hoover's culture
Speaker 1: of fear, intimidation, and secrecy no longer defined the FBI.
Speaker 1: In the wake of the Church Committee hearings, new Director
Speaker 1: Clarence Kelly understood the old ways had to change. There
Speaker 1: would be no more threatening congressman with sex tapes or
Speaker 1: writing poison pen letters to ruin reputations. Moreover, it was
Speaker 1: time for the FBI to own up. On ABC News,
Speaker 1: Ted Copple reported on the new FBI director's historic apology.
Speaker 3: FBI Director Clarence Kelly today for the first time publicly
Speaker 3: apologized for past FBI and mis conduct.
Speaker 8: We are truly sorry, said Kelly, and.
Speaker 3: He added we recognize errors and have learned from them.
Speaker 1: Thanks Clarence. Better late than never, I guess, but let's
Speaker 1: be clear, serious damage had been done.
Speaker 9: One of the most damaging accomplishments of Hoover's FBI, ironically,
Speaker 9: was the destruction of the FBI's law enforcement capacity.
Speaker 1: This is Betty Medsker.
Speaker 9: Everything it did was outside of the law, whether you're
Speaker 9: talking about surveillance without cause, physically harming individuals, and even
Speaker 9: assisting in murdering dissidents, usually black people. The generation's long
Speaker 9: quest by Black Americans to claim basic rights was delayed
Speaker 9: for decades by an FBI director who cautioned every president
Speaker 9: he served under not to support African Americans in their
Speaker 9: efforts to obtain their rights, because he said those efforts
Speaker 9: were promoted by communists, and that was all that needed
Speaker 9: to be said to make a president refuse to support
Speaker 9: civil rights. Imagine what an enormous roadblock it was for
Speaker 9: the FBI director to say, don't touch these movements. They're dangerous,
Speaker 9: they're supported by communist.
Speaker 2: The harm it was done, the effect that that is
Speaker 2: still alive today.
Speaker 1: That's Omar Barber, a former Black panther you heard in
Speaker 1: the last episode.
Speaker 2: It simply was to criminize the whole black community, because
Speaker 2: it was a crimination of a people, a race of people,
Speaker 2: not just the organization that may be and represented those people.
Speaker 2: Cointelpro was a two of the ruling class to suppressed
Speaker 2: people who were aspiring to try to be free and
Speaker 2: try to find their freedom and liberation.
Speaker 1: Levy Welch and others also acknowledged that, in addition to
Speaker 1: being racist, creepy, invasive, and downright or Wellian, blanket surveillance
Speaker 1: didn't work.
Speaker 9: These mesthods are easy and often mindless, but they do
Speaker 9: not lead to greater safety. Instead, they lead to violations
Speaker 9: of basic civil rights of countless Americans. Levy's guidelines were
Speaker 9: good in that they could lead to to this kind
Speaker 9: of reform that made it impossible for informants to go
Speaker 9: after people without any intention of prosecution and only harm
Speaker 9: in mind.
Speaker 1: It seemed like people were actually learning some lessons from
Speaker 1: Cointel pro To Neil Welch, the most important lesson was clear,
Speaker 1: and the.
Speaker 7: Lessons is that the government can't be trusted to do this.
Speaker 7: It just proves that the government will be stupid and
Speaker 7: unresponsible in many instances.
Speaker 2: And how they gather that intelligence.
Speaker 8: They'll keep it going too long, It'll be a widespread
Speaker 8: net rather than a narrowly focused one. They won't use
Speaker 8: the least intrusive means, They'll use drag net procedures.
Speaker 7: This is a very sensitive area.
Speaker 4: I think the record.
Speaker 7: Proves that they cannot be relied upon to do it
Speaker 7: without independent monitoring.
Speaker 1: Some accountability.
Speaker 7: I shouldn't be surprising to anybody that.
Speaker 2: The FBI was doing those things.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you can almost guarantee that it all happened. Again,
Speaker 7: the intentions of the most honorable, proper people can go astray.
Speaker 1: The burglary led to a profound change at the FBI,
Speaker 1: something the burglars probably couldn't have even imagined when they
Speaker 1: first decided to break into that office. By the late seventies,
Speaker 1: they had reason to hope the abuses they'd uncovered would
Speaker 1: no longer be possible. The rule of law would finally
Speaker 1: apply to the FBI, But it wasn't long before there
Speaker 1: was new cause for concern.
Speaker 9: The concern about whether these guidelines could have lasting impact
Speaker 9: was verified as soon as Reagan became president.
Speaker 10: Recently, we've passed through a painful era in American history
Speaker 10: when it seemed that many of our proudest values and
Speaker 10: most important institutions were called into question.
Speaker 1: During his run for president in nineteen eighty, Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: vowed to undo Attorney General Levy's guidelines on surveillance that
Speaker 1: had come out of the church hearings.
Speaker 9: He had campaigned in part on his wish to unleash
Speaker 9: the FBI and as soon as he became president that
Speaker 9: started to happen.
Speaker 1: Reagan ordered his Attorney general to loosen controls. He lowered
Speaker 1: the bar for launching investigations, and he diminished the Attorney
Speaker 1: general's powers of oversight. What do you call it when
Speaker 1: you reform a reform? I guess a return to form. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that works. The FBI once again had an unnerving amount
Speaker 1: of power, and it would stay that way for decades.
Speaker 1: Then September eleventh, two thousand and one, our ability.
Speaker 11: To prevent another catastrophic attack on American soil would be
Speaker 11: more difficult, if not impossible, without the Patriot Act. It
Speaker 11: has been the key weapon used across America in successful
Speaker 11: counter terrorist operations.
Speaker 9: When we come to nine to eleven, we just see
Speaker 9: a very extreme version of that, where with the passage
Speaker 9: of the Patriot Act and the demand from the Attorney
Speaker 9: General and the President that you know, stop thinking in
Speaker 9: terms of prosecutions. Your goal now is to prevent another
Speaker 9: nine to eleven. And so the FBI went through this
Speaker 9: radical change again that you're not aiming to prosecute, you're
Speaker 9: aiming to prevent another major crime like nine to eleven
Speaker 9: against the American people.
Speaker 1: For the Bureau. Oh, it was a radical change in
Speaker 1: the moment, but also I returned to the old way
Speaker 1: of doing things once again.
Speaker 9: Racial profiling came back with a vengeance, and Muslims became
Speaker 9: what Black people had been under j Edgar Hoover, a danger.
Speaker 9: People were told that Muslims were danger to society.
Speaker 1: And something else came back with a vengeance, blanket surveillance.
Speaker 9: The FBI treated Muslims just as they had treated Black
Speaker 9: people all over the country with surveillance of mosque and
Speaker 9: surveillance of Arab American organizations and opera sting operations. What
Speaker 9: the FBI did and other intelligence agencies too, we.
Speaker 1: Must and did not.
Speaker 9: Lead to helpful information, and great harm was done as
Speaker 9: a result of that. As things went into high gear,
Speaker 9: they create a massive electronic haste acts and without the
Speaker 9: capacity to search those hast acts for information that might
Speaker 9: have been helpful, so that the surveillance was done of
Speaker 9: millions of Americans without the capacity to find out whether
Speaker 9: there was valuable information. I think that fear makes it
Speaker 9: possible for people to not care whether they're under surveillance
Speaker 9: or whether their basic rights are being trampled, and especially
Speaker 9: it makes it possible for them to not care about
Speaker 9: needless harm being done to others, if in fact that
Speaker 9: harm may help protect them Americans.
Speaker 1: If it was so incredibly easy the FBI to trample
Speaker 1: on fundamental American rights back in the days of rotary
Speaker 1: phones and eight track cassettes, then what about today? These days,
Speaker 1: surveillance technology that would have been unimaginable to hoover is everywhere,
Speaker 1: and governments, corporations, even individuals can use predictive algorithms, facial recognition,
Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of other frankly terrifying technologies to
Speaker 1: create staggeringly detailed profiles on all of us. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: Edward Snowden exposed that the NSA was gathering massive amounts
Speaker 1: of personal data on Americans without warrants. During the twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen election, a private firm called Cambridge Analytica acquired in
Speaker 1: depth data from tens of millions of Facebook users without
Speaker 1: their knowledge or consent, and used it to covertly manipulate
Speaker 1: public opinion. And during the Black Lives Matter protests in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, the New York City Police Department used facial
Speaker 1: recognition software to surveil and track down demonstrators back In
Speaker 1: the Hoover era, the FBI weaponized information they dug up
Speaker 1: on activists. Today, our own personal data can also be
Speaker 1: easily weaponized to intimidate, so misinformation, create deep fakes, even
Speaker 1: incite civil unrest. There's a lot more to be said
Speaker 1: about technology, surveillance and the need for oversight, which is
Speaker 1: why we went and recorded an entire bonus episode about it.
Speaker 1: You might remember Locke Johnson from our last episode. He
Speaker 1: was Frank Church's special assistant. He and I had a
Speaker 1: pretty good chat. Look for that bonus episode soon. For now,
Speaker 1: suffice to say, it's more important than ever to learn
Speaker 1: as much as we can from the story of Hoover, co,
Speaker 1: Intel pro and the courageous burglars of Media Pennsylvania.
Speaker 9: The most important thing is that the law enforcement agency
Speaker 9: should obey the law and not have as a motivation
Speaker 9: going after people because of their religious or their political beliefs.
Speaker 9: The opening page of the FBI's website announces we protect
Speaker 9: the American people and uphold the US Constitution throughout Jangar
Speaker 9: Hoover's half century as director of the Bureau. Too often
Speaker 9: since then, the Bureau has protected some types of people
Speaker 9: much more than its protected others. One of the lessons
Speaker 9: learned from revelations of that history were for transparency and accountability.
Speaker 9: That's essential for the FBI to continue to operate as
Speaker 9: it should. The Bureer should have a deep respect for
Speaker 9: the expression of dissent, a basic right that is crucial
Speaker 9: to keeping democracy alive.
Speaker 1: On March eighth, nineteen seventy six, the statute of limitations
Speaker 1: on the burglary expired. This would have been a great
Speaker 1: moment for the burglars to get together and pop some champagne,
Speaker 1: but none of them knew about it. For all they knew,
Speaker 1: the g men were still waiting behind the next mailbox
Speaker 1: to arrest them. Three days later, Special Agent Neil Welch
Speaker 1: filed a memo to FBI Director Clarence Kelly on the
Speaker 1: subject of Medburg. Quote, all logical investigation in this matter
Speaker 1: has been conducted, Welch wrote, accordingly, this case is being
Speaker 1: placed in a closed status, and that was it. After
Speaker 1: five years, Medburg was closed. The FBI was never even
Speaker 1: close to catching the burglar. At one point they had
Speaker 1: four hundred suspects. That group included all of our media
Speaker 1: burglars except Bonnie Rains. But after subsequent rounds of elimination
Speaker 1: based on interviews. Seven suspects remained and only one was
Speaker 1: an actual media burglar, Bob Williamson, and there was never
Speaker 1: enough evidence to charge any of them. The partial palm
Speaker 1: print found in the FBI office was never matched to
Speaker 1: Sarah Schumer. Investigators never found her. Glove agents had interviewed
Speaker 1: burglar number nine and placed him under twenty four hour surveillance,
Speaker 1: but they ultimately decided he knew nothing, and despite Bill
Speaker 1: Davidon's role as the unofficial spokesperson for the media burglars,
Speaker 1: he was cleared in nineteen seventy two, just a year
Speaker 1: in change after the burglary. The following headline appeared in
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Three Air Force jets are sabotaged
Speaker 1: at Willow Grove. It seemed on Memorial Day that the
Speaker 1: crew at Willow Grove Naval Air Station had discovered that
Speaker 1: three of its cargo planes had been rendered inoperable. Some
Speaker 1: no good nick had tampered with them just before they
Speaker 1: were scheduled to fly missiles over to Vietnam. On the
Speaker 1: exterior of one of the planes, someone had painted a
Speaker 1: peace symbol as well as the words bred not bombs
Speaker 1: in big red letters the vandals who took credit the
Speaker 1: Citizens Commission to Interdict War material. In another incident around
Speaker 1: the same time, reporters received envelopes full of bomb casings
Speaker 1: and caps. An accompanying letter was signed the Citizens Commission
Speaker 1: to Demilitarize Industry. Our old friend Bill Davidan, the mastermind
Speaker 1: of the original Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, was
Speaker 1: up to his usual tricks.
Speaker 12: I think not just the media, but I think a
Speaker 12: lot of these kinds of actions were important to me
Speaker 12: in just building that that sense that the struggle isn't futile.
Speaker 1: Bill david On never stopped acting out against the war.
Speaker 1: He wanted the public to know that despite the government's power,
Speaker 1: Goliath was vulnerable to david especially if a lot of
Speaker 1: David's banded together. His activist spirit stayed with him until
Speaker 1: he passed away in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 12: I think this was this quote of cameu of.
Speaker 13: To keep alive the living society within Michelle of the
Speaker 13: dying On when you sort of generally feel that not
Speaker 13: only in the case of the prosecution of the Vietnam War,
Speaker 13: but other things are involved forces that are so huge
Speaker 13: in comparison to what we can actually influence, how do
Speaker 13: you keep alive? And the struggle to influence them media, No,
Speaker 13: I think we accomplished more than we had reason to
Speaker 13: expect to go into a small field office.
Speaker 1: The following year, Betty finally published her book, The Burglary,
Speaker 1: The Discovery of j Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI. Every living
Speaker 1: member of the burglary crew spoke to Betty except Judy.
Speaker 1: Neither Betty nor the other burglars could figure out what
Speaker 1: had happened to her. When Judy read that her accomplices
Speaker 1: had come forward and confessed to the burglary, she was
Speaker 1: stunned and hurt.
Speaker 5: We promised each other. That was the devastation, we promised
Speaker 5: each other.
Speaker 1: It took a while for her to forgive the others
Speaker 1: and come to grips with the story getting out.
Speaker 5: You get so used to living undercover that that becomes
Speaker 5: the norm.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 5: I can tell you that I still carry trauma with me.
Speaker 5: I mean, I just kept going, That's all I mean,
Speaker 5: that's all we're doing. We just keep going. You go
Speaker 5: through experiences you don't think you're going to live through,
Speaker 5: and you live through them. So you have to figure
Speaker 5: out how to keep going. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I can't think of anything to regret.
Speaker 1: As Judy recovered, she reconnected with her past life for
Speaker 1: the first time. She met up with Keith in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and she reunited with Bob, who was just one stayed
Speaker 1: over in New Mexico. It felt like no time had passed.
Speaker 5: It all like three years was like forty three minutes.
Speaker 1: Bob fell in love with New Mexico around the time
Speaker 1: of the Camden trial, and after the acquittal he moved
Speaker 1: there for good. I was not interested in being an activist.
Speaker 1: I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do
Speaker 1: with the rest of my life. Today, Bob's feelings about
Speaker 1: the burglary are complicated. On the one hand, he felt
Speaker 1: his actions had sown distrust, maybe even and contributed to
Speaker 1: the paranoia the FBI had set out to foster in
Speaker 1: the first place.
Speaker 14: On the other hand, I feel privileged to have been
Speaker 14: a part of it, because I know it was significant.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't ever presume.
Speaker 14: To tell a generation of people that this is some
Speaker 14: kind of model for how they should behave I have
Speaker 14: two granddaughters.
Speaker 1: My granddaughters know my story.
Speaker 14: They think it's kind of cool.
Speaker 15: You know, the last time we needed to change the
Speaker 15: key on my front door, I did it myself.
Speaker 1: Keith forsythe stayed busy. He ended up suing the Attorney
Speaker 1: General over Medburgh.
Speaker 15: I sued John Mitchell Forsyth v. Mitchell for illegally recording
Speaker 15: my conversation without a search warrant.
Speaker 1: Keith's case went all the way to the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: and he won, but it left him underwhelmed.
Speaker 15: The court said that we were right, but nothing's going
Speaker 15: to happen to anybody at the Justice Department.
Speaker 1: So after Camden, Keith Forsyth put away his lock picking
Speaker 1: tools for good. He stayed in the Philadelphia area, got
Speaker 1: married and raised two sons. Today, Keith plays guitar and
Speaker 1: a few jazz bands, one called the jazz Heads populated
Speaker 1: with other seventy year olds, but they're looking for a
Speaker 1: new name after losing a founding member. I suggested the
Speaker 1: hip replacements.
Speaker 16: So I had a party this weekend and one of
Speaker 16: my friends said referred to us as amateur burglars, and
Speaker 16: I said we weren't amateur.
Speaker 5: I said, we were really were studied how to do it.
Speaker 1: After his days as a well, let's call him a
Speaker 1: pro burglar, Ralph still kept his past under wraps. In
Speaker 1: Betty's book, he went by the pseudonym Ron Durst, but
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one Ralph Daniel came clean and admitted
Speaker 1: his role in the burglary.
Speaker 16: I certainly hope that the example that we set will
Speaker 16: encourage other people to take calculated risks for the things
Speaker 16: that they think are really important, and that there are
Speaker 16: things people won't take risks and perhaps make themselves uncomfortable
Speaker 16: in the service of something that they believe is really valuable.
Speaker 16: I think that it's a really good lesson in the
Speaker 16: value of civil disobedience for the benefit of people.
Speaker 17: The nation, our culture, political participation, and genuine and healthy
Speaker 17: democracy goes way beyond something like voting.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, Sarah Schumer had risked her life
Speaker 1: during the Freedom Summer in Mississippi, but she calls the
Speaker 1: act of resistance in media the most difficult, not because
Speaker 1: of the night of the burglary itself, but the years after.
Speaker 1: Sarah was never able to remember where she left that
Speaker 1: glove or convince herself that she hadn't left fingerprints in
Speaker 1: the FBI office, and she's been looking over her shoulder
Speaker 1: ever since. When Betty approached her about doing the book,
Speaker 1: Sarah agreed to tell her story, but only under a pseudonym.
Speaker 1: This podcast is the first time she's speaking under her
Speaker 1: own name. Our producer, Sarah Joyner asked her how it felt.
Speaker 4: I wonder what it means to you now to be
Speaker 4: able to say, yes, I am Sarah Schumer, and I
Speaker 4: did that.
Speaker 17: Who knows may turn on that I shouldn't be doing this,
Speaker 17: shouldn't be using my name.
Speaker 1: Turns out, committing a major federal crime has life altering
Speaker 1: consequence winces even if you don't get caught. After the burglary,
Speaker 1: Bonnie Rains had recurring nightmares of the FBI surrounding her
Speaker 1: house because the personal toll was so heavy. Bonnie and
Speaker 1: John swore off illegal acts of resistance. They viewed the
Speaker 1: burglary as an aberration in an otherwise normal, law abiding life,
Speaker 1: but they never lost their sense of urgency about injustice.
Speaker 1: Bonnie and John hid in plain sight as parents then grandparents.
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, when Betty's book revealed their secret for
Speaker 1: the first time, they appeared on the front page of
Speaker 1: the New York Times, John, looking solemn and professorial Bonnie
Speaker 1: beaming with pride and a grand kid on either side
Speaker 1: of them, both looking at screens. John Rains, Bonnie's partner
Speaker 1: in crime, passed away in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: Regular people can confront the abuse of power that that
Speaker 4: really could happened.
Speaker 5: You can't just be a passive citizen.
Speaker 4: I was convinced about that, and what it meant was
Speaker 4: that I was determined that as my life evolved, I
Speaker 4: was going to find ways to continue to be vigilant.
Speaker 4: And there have been a lot of reasons to do
Speaker 4: that in our history.
Speaker 2: Okay, so.
Speaker 4: I'm going to ninety five from here, and then basically
Speaker 4: we're going to West Front Street, right Veterans Square.
Speaker 1: I guess you remember the address fairly well, well, I
Speaker 1: think so. Last fall, our producer Stephen Wood took a
Speaker 1: little field trip to the scene of the crime Bonnie
Speaker 1: sat shotgun.
Speaker 5: Turn right after Wells Fargo Bank on the right onto
Speaker 5: South Orange Street. I see the courthouse right there, Wells
Speaker 5: Fargo Bank. This is the main drags return turn right
Speaker 5: onto West Front Street. Then you will arrive at your destination.
Speaker 5: There's Keith.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: You are, right, ma'am, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4: No, I'm meeting somebody, thanks a lot, Thank you, so
Speaker 4: fancy meeting you here.
Speaker 5: Stevens looking for a parking place.
Speaker 9: Good, good, good, trying to stay upright.
Speaker 15: Yeah, it's a good goal. Who had ever thought it
Speaker 15: would come to this?
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: The State of Pennsylvania commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the
Speaker 1: burglary with the unveiling of an historical marker that sits
Speaker 1: just outside the building where it all went down.
Speaker 4: I mean, the building looks exactly the same.
Speaker 15: I don't see any any new construction or you know,
Speaker 15: anything torn down. I don't think the courthouse has changed
Speaker 15: at all.
Speaker 4: No, and there are law offices now in the space
Speaker 4: was the FBI off upstairs?
Speaker 5: If you can that, because.
Speaker 15: I won't swear it's the same carpets for.
Speaker 7: Fifty years, though.
Speaker 15: I don't think I'd be surprised, but you could be
Speaker 15: right now, maybe it's a very durable carpet.
Speaker 1: Fifty two years ago, the Media burglar has just walked
Speaker 1: through the front doors of one veteran Square in Media, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: without anyone stopping them. They walked out carrying bulging suitcases,
Speaker 1: not knowing that their actions were about to change the
Speaker 1: country they loved democracy enough that they felt a sense
Speaker 1: of duty to protect it. They valued their fellow citizens'
Speaker 1: freedom so much that they risked their own.
Speaker 9: The eight Burglars, what they did was just enormously important
Speaker 9: in opening people's eyes. It's important to realize that even
Speaker 9: when movements are successful, even when great success happens and
Speaker 9: reforms come out of them, that it's very likely that
Speaker 9: there's also going to be defeat, not far behind success.
Speaker 9: But even more important, we should understand that must keep
Speaker 9: going back and trying to defeat those forces that suppress democracy,
Speaker 9: and that this is something that never ends.
Speaker 1: Still, it shouldn't have been that goddamn easy for them
Speaker 1: to just walk into the office of the greatest law
Speaker 1: enforcement agency in the land and steal its secrets. As
Speaker 1: it turns out fifty two years later, Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a little harder for Bonnie and Keith help you guys. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are you familiar with the history of this building, Ben,
Speaker 1: I mean I read here.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm not a master in the history.
Speaker 1: We're doing a documentary about the event that's commemorated on
Speaker 1: that historical marker, so we were hoping to actually get it.
Speaker 1: But thank you, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Maybe into the office where happened.
Speaker 1: We've been there before, probably should have brought those laws picks.
Speaker 1: Snafoo is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
Speaker 1: season of Snafoo is based on the book The Burglary
Speaker 1: The Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by
Speaker 1: Betty Metzger. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Speaker 1: Mike Valbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chugg, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger.
Speaker 1: Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Producer
Speaker 1: is Stephen Wood. This episode was written by Albert Chen,
Speaker 1: Sarah Joyner, and Stephen Wood, with additional writing and story
Speaker 1: editing from Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Tory Smith is
Speaker 1: our associate producer. Nevin Calla Poly is our production assistant.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
Speaker 1: Sensitivity consult from Oloa Kemi Ala de Sui, editing, sound
Speaker 1: design and original music by Ben Chubg, Engineering and technical
Speaker 1: direction by Nick Dooley. Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia
Speaker 1: Canny and Jimma Castelli. Foley theme music by Dan Rosatto.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and Ben Rizak.
Speaker 1: Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use
Speaker 1: some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens
Speaker 1: Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy Finegold,
Speaker 1: Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Rains, John Rains, Sarah Schumer, and Bob Williamson.