Speaker 1: Okay, So, just so we're clear on the state of things,
Speaker 1: we now have a movement of well meaning and funny
Speaker 1: Catholic civilians trading blows with Federal Bureau Director j Edgar
Speaker 1: Hoover and basically in open rebellion against the United States government.
Speaker 1: His giant trial in Harrisburg that was happening based on
Speaker 1: brainstorming ideas the crew had mistakenly put to paper, had
Speaker 1: turned the nine month trial prep of the Harrisburg Seven
Speaker 1: into a cause celeb The Catholic.
Speaker 2: Left had been a pretty small, intimate homespun out that
Speaker 2: where everybody knew everybody, and all of a sudden you
Speaker 2: have all these big heavyweight lawyers and moneymakers and propaganda people.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden you tune around, there's Joan Baez
Speaker 2: singing at a fundraiser for you people.
Speaker 1: And money flooded into Central PA, including so called movement
Speaker 1: professionals such as Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, Bill Kunstler,
Speaker 1: and many others, the boldfaced names we still.
Speaker 3: Read about in books on the period.
Speaker 1: Benefit concerts were fundraising parties in every major city called
Speaker 1: cocktail conspiracies, attracted all the left leaning glitterati of a
Speaker 1: given town, Leonard and Felicia Bernstein threw a fundraiser in
Speaker 1: their Park Avenue apartment. The Harrisburg Defense Committee became so
Speaker 1: bloated and so hollywood that many insiders felt it could
Speaker 1: be the death of the movement, which was exactly Hoover's
Speaker 1: plan all along. If Harrisburg succeeded, shaky informants, grand jury,
Speaker 1: fishing expeditions, trumped up charges, and death by due process
Speaker 1: would be the government's playbook to crush the Left for
Speaker 1: generations to come. As Harrisburg lumbered on, it became clear
Speaker 1: to the movement rank and file that the only way
Speaker 1: to strike back at Hoover to protect dissent for future
Speaker 1: generations was to grab the brass ring. Throughout that spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy one, Cookie Ridolfi had been working with
Speaker 1: some local activists in Camden, New Jersey, over the river
Speaker 1: from Philadelphia, as they say, searched for just the right action.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I used to always say, there was the drama of Catonsville,
Speaker 4: there was the tragedy of Harrisburg, which was a totally
Speaker 4: bogus bolonnique charges, et cetera. And then there was the
Speaker 4: comedy of Camden.
Speaker 1: The Camden Locals had identified the downtown Federal Building to
Speaker 1: be the place where they would do something serious.
Speaker 3: The only problem was that it was a bit like
Speaker 3: Fort Knox.
Speaker 1: A post office on the first floor, an FBI field
Speaker 1: office on the second, courtrooms on the third, Army intelligence
Speaker 1: on the fourth, and all the draft records.
Speaker 3: For the entire city on the fifth.
Speaker 1: Cookie and John Peter Grady had shown them how to
Speaker 1: case and gotten them started, But the Camden Locals had
Speaker 1: unwittingly chosen the most ambitious and complex target of.
Speaker 3: Any raids to date.
Speaker 1: The Camden Locals centered around a parish priest off the
Speaker 1: boat from Ireland named Father Michael Doyle. Father Doyle and
Speaker 1: his crew began casing the Federal Building in earnest, studying
Speaker 1: the security guardar it's patterns from a darkened church portico
Speaker 1: across the street, but the building felt too impenetrable. Try
Speaker 1: as they might to learn the comings and goings of
Speaker 1: the place, none of them could figure out how the
Speaker 1: hell to get into it. Then one night, as Father
Speaker 1: Doyle approached the dinner meeting of the Camden Locals, he
Speaker 1: noticed a man in a suit following him, so he
Speaker 1: walked past the door of the house where the meeting
Speaker 1: was to be held, pulled out a piece of paper
Speaker 1: and began ripping it up. He then tossed the ripped
Speaker 1: up shreds into a dumpster and kept walking. When he
Speaker 1: looked back, the man in the suit was looking in
Speaker 1: the dumpster. That night, as they went out to surveil
Speaker 1: the building, they were all followed aggressively and conspicuously by
Speaker 1: multiple g men. Father Doyle and the Canden locals were
Speaker 1: so spooked they decided.
Speaker 3: To call off the action completely.
Speaker 1: The FBI was probably onto them and the building was impenetrable.
Speaker 1: Their hopes of red As erecting the movement were dashed.
Speaker 1: Hoover had won. But the next day one of the
Speaker 1: Camden locals went to hang out with a fellow parishioner
Speaker 1: of Father Doyle's, a contractor and handyman named Bob Hardy.
Speaker 1: He spilled his guts to Hardy about the abandoned raid,
Speaker 1: and Hardy consoled him, betting he could probably figure out
Speaker 1: a way into the building. Hardy was an ex marine,
Speaker 1: although as many ex marines will tell you, there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as an ex marine, and a Catholic convert
Speaker 1: brought into the church by Father Doyle. He'd worked as
Speaker 1: a longshoreman and wept as he unloaded GI caskets from Vietnam.
Speaker 1: After hearing about the abandoned raid, he joined up with
Speaker 1: the Camden locals on the spot. Bob Hardy was just
Speaker 1: what the Camden locals needed. Now they had a new
Speaker 1: lease on life. A few days later, Hardy and another
Speaker 1: activist paid a visit to the Camden Federal Building in
Speaker 1: broad daylight. First, with Bob Hardy taking the lead, they
Speaker 1: strode into the draft board on the fifth floor and
Speaker 1: they said they were working with a nearby prison and
Speaker 1: asked to check about the draft status of their detainees.
Speaker 1: That showed them where the one A files were kept. Next,
Speaker 1: they went down to the courtroom, where Hardy saw some
Speaker 1: workmen and said do you mind if some.
Speaker 3: Taxpayers have a look around.
Speaker 1: They studied the fire escape and the window alarms to
Speaker 1: their hearts content. Finally, they strode into the alley behind
Speaker 1: the building where some mailmen were eating their lunch. Hardy
Speaker 1: looked up at the fire escape and just blatantly said,
Speaker 1: say you've got a fire alarm on that ladder?
Speaker 3: Doja?
Speaker 1: And the mailman unalarmed said yep, it goes off when
Speaker 1: you pull it down. And just like that, they had
Speaker 1: gathered more intel in two hours than months of casing
Speaker 1: had yielded. The group's spirits were so lifted by Bob
Speaker 1: Hardy's brio they decided to do the raid after all.
Speaker 1: But Hardy told them if they were really going to
Speaker 1: do this right, they were going to need a lot
Speaker 1: more raiders. So the call went out up and down
Speaker 1: the East Coast, Come to Camden. It's going to be
Speaker 1: the most complicated, the largest and the greatest possible last
Speaker 1: stand we could ever possibly pull against the war and
Speaker 1: against Hoover. I'm Brendan Patrick Hughes, and this is Divine Intervention,
Speaker 1: Chapter eight.
Speaker 3: What do we eat? Eagle Meat?
Speaker 4: We did all the preliminary work for months, and then
Speaker 4: at some point, as the action got closer, people out
Speaker 4: of town would come in, and Tozy was one of
Speaker 4: those people.
Speaker 1: Sarah Toci and Paul Cooming arrived in late July. Paul
Speaker 1: had just come from covertly making omelets with Sarah's FBI
Speaker 1: brother in New Jersey, and.
Speaker 5: There were other people from all over the East Coast
Speaker 5: had come in to.
Speaker 1: Help out, including Bob Williamson, who had been an inside
Speaker 1: man on the media raid, but of course no one
Speaker 1: in Camden knew that.
Speaker 4: Bob Williamson, whose name at the time was weed X.
Speaker 1: We'll call Bob Williamson weed X from now on, partly
Speaker 1: because there were so many Bobs in this story, but
Speaker 1: mostly because that nickname kicks ass.
Speaker 6: My records if they were still in that Canada draft board,
Speaker 6: because that was my draft board.
Speaker 1: Just like Paul Cooming going after his draft file in
Speaker 1: Dorchester during the Boston eight. Weed X was well aware
Speaker 1: of a piece of paper in that building that held
Speaker 1: the key to his fate and he wanted it back.
Speaker 6: So they probably had a file on me and there somewhere.
Speaker 6: So I started helping with the casing it for Camden
Speaker 6: and just helping to put the action together.
Speaker 7: Wison called me up and said we want to go
Speaker 7: to a party.
Speaker 1: Weed X then called his media co conspirator, Keith Forsyth,
Speaker 1: the one who had picked the lock in the hallway,
Speaker 1: and brought him into the Camden fray.
Speaker 7: And I said I might yeah, So he invited me
Speaker 7: to meet the Camden twenty eight people.
Speaker 1: Of course, neither would ever speak of their role in
Speaker 1: the media burglary. Among themselves or with anyone else.
Speaker 5: John Peter Grady was there and the m mouster had
Speaker 5: come down.
Speaker 8: I understood that people chose it because it was such
Speaker 8: a poverty ridden community and because there were so many
Speaker 8: people being drafted from Camden.
Speaker 1: Camden had boomed with a Campbell soup factory up until
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, but over the sixties had been hit
Speaker 1: severely by layoffs and was now destitute, with blocks of
Speaker 1: derelic buildings and poor, young, underemployed men sitting like ducks
Speaker 1: for the draft. In July of nineteen seventy one, local
Speaker 1: Camden families had just welcomed home the one hundredth soldier's
Speaker 1: body from Vietnam. The raiders arrived from up and down
Speaker 1: the seaboard. A certain merriness about what they were doing
Speaker 1: had taken hold. Bob Hardy's entrance on the scene had
Speaker 1: instilled the new confidence, and the FBI tales had all
Speaker 1: but vanished.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of singing and continuing to be positive,
Speaker 4: regardless of how scary things could get for us, and
Speaker 4: there was just a lot of spirit.
Speaker 1: To get to Camden without her. Twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: FBI tail following her there and to avoid being subpoena
Speaker 1: as an unindicted co conspirator in the Harrisburg trial, Cookie
Speaker 1: had disguised herself in her brother's work uniform and escaped
Speaker 1: her mother's house in a heating oil truck. Now she
Speaker 1: was staying in Camden full time and had fallen in
Speaker 1: love with everyone involved.
Speaker 4: It would like pull you in because of the energy
Speaker 4: of the group in Camden. It was like that, and
Speaker 4: John Grady had a lot to do with it, because
Speaker 4: he was that kind of charismatic band.
Speaker 1: John Peter Grady we've heard his name, was the co
Speaker 1: chairman of the Catonsville Nine Defense Committee. He was the
Speaker 1: guy who ran Iron Mountain, the resistance book distributor in
Speaker 1: them Bronx, where Anne Walsh and many others first got
Speaker 1: involved with the raids. By many accounts, he was a
Speaker 1: larger than life figure. Men found him gregarious and a
Speaker 1: natural born leader. Women, from what I've been told, were
Speaker 1: reasonably more wary. After the Barrigins went to jail, he
Speaker 1: became the de facto leader of the movement and had
Speaker 1: evolved into one hell of a cat burglar. He was
Speaker 1: also the FBI's chief suspects, although wrongly so in the
Speaker 1: media Pennsylvania Field Office break in. As all the new
Speaker 1: raiders arrived, they discovered that this raid had a new
Speaker 1: man in charge who seemed to be buying to oust
Speaker 1: John Peter Grady. Bob Hardy, the local contractor who got
Speaker 1: the raid back on its feet.
Speaker 5: He was a handyman, and he worked with his hands
Speaker 5: for a lover.
Speaker 4: He knew a lot about tools.
Speaker 8: He was like a jack of all trades, comperenture with
Speaker 8: a wife and children who lived in town, who thought
Speaker 8: this was a great idea. His parish priest sort of
Speaker 8: drew him in.
Speaker 1: Already started supplying weekly groceries for the raiders who were
Speaker 1: in from out of town. When they needed tools, he
Speaker 1: would bring them. But he was a bit more of
Speaker 1: a civilian than his bohemian counterparts.
Speaker 6: I remember he introduced himself. I remember right away thinking
Speaker 6: this guy, I don't know what this guy's doing here.
Speaker 3: Weed X aka Bob Williamson.
Speaker 6: He was older, he was socially awkward. He did not
Speaker 6: look anything like any of the people that I had
Speaker 6: ever broken into a draft board with.
Speaker 3: But what Bob Hardy lacked in street cred he more
Speaker 3: than made up.
Speaker 8: For and know how he was always saying, oh, you
Speaker 8: need ropes, Oh, I have ropes on my troupy. Yeah,
Speaker 8: box cut is, you know, whatever, the little tools we
Speaker 8: needed for the thing. He was always there at the ready,
Speaker 8: and with.
Speaker 1: Bob in the mix, the Raiders decided to go big.
Speaker 1: Once inside the Federal Building, they would hit the draft board,
Speaker 1: the FBI Field Office, and the Office of Military Intelligence,
Speaker 1: which George Carlin liked to joke was an oxymorn like
Speaker 1: jumbo shrimp.
Speaker 8: The building housed the FBI office, the IM Intelligence Office
Speaker 8: in the draft. It was in the courthouse, Federal Courthouse
Speaker 8: and Camden, so it was kind of like a you know, trifecta.
Speaker 1: So now it was time to get down to the
Speaker 1: business of mad cap heists for peace, starting with a
Speaker 1: new round of intense casing.
Speaker 7: There was a ton of people. I'd never seen that
Speaker 7: many people involved in one action.
Speaker 8: Before prep work. Let's look at the building. What time
Speaker 8: do the lights go on and off?
Speaker 4: What we would do is go out for hours at
Speaker 4: a time, and we would go out boy girl, so
Speaker 4: that we would look like the cops came. It would
Speaker 4: look like we were just making out. Me and Coombing
Speaker 4: would go or me and one of the priests would
Speaker 4: go and we would sit there.
Speaker 8: Is there a guard, Where does the guard walk? When's
Speaker 8: the pattern of the guard? How could we avoid the guard?
Speaker 4: Basically, what we would do is we would take notes
Speaker 4: about what was happening inside the building throughout the night.
Speaker 4: What we had to do is to figure out when
Speaker 4: would it be safest to go in.
Speaker 6: There was an apartment building that we used to go
Speaker 6: up to the roof of and we had a view
Speaker 6: of the Federal Building.
Speaker 4: So we'd have maybe two cars from two different sides
Speaker 4: of the building watching to see when lights went on
Speaker 4: and off.
Speaker 1: From Bob Hardy, they learned the guard had a special
Speaker 1: key that he would have to put in certain locks
Speaker 1: on the walls of the corridors at certain times of
Speaker 1: night for fire insurance, to prove there was someone patrolling
Speaker 1: the floor.
Speaker 4: And then after several weeks or a month or whatever,
Speaker 4: we knew there were patterns. We knew that the guard
Speaker 4: was in this part of the building at this time,
Speaker 4: at this part of the building in this time, and
Speaker 4: from that we chose our times to act.
Speaker 6: From there, we could see the back of the building
Speaker 6: where the fire escape was that led up to where
Speaker 6: the draft board was we were able to see all
Speaker 6: the floors of the building.
Speaker 1: The building was more complicated than any other raid had
Speaker 1: ever attempted to penetrate.
Speaker 7: I did a little bit of teaching of people how
Speaker 7: to pick locks and some stuff like that.
Speaker 6: And then somebody would make a big sort of poster
Speaker 6: board layout of analysis of all of the relevant information,
Speaker 6: sort of categorized by things like janitors or security guards.
Speaker 1: But with Hardy's know how, they hatched a plan that
Speaker 1: involved getting eight people up a ladder in twenty two seconds,
Speaker 1: and not just any ladder.
Speaker 6: Not a step ladder, but an extension ladder. Somebody decided
Speaker 6: that we needed to practice climbing this ladder, so the
Speaker 6: ladder was stuck up against I think it was maybe
Speaker 6: Bob Hardy's garage or something in an alley behind his house.
Speaker 1: Extension ladders will break your arm if you don't know
Speaker 1: what you're doing, especially with eight people carrying equipment, only
Speaker 1: having about two and three quarters seconds each to scale
Speaker 1: fourteen feet.
Speaker 6: And I can't imagine what the neighbors would have thought
Speaker 6: of it. But he's standing there with a stopwatch and
Speaker 6: timing us, you know, getting up the ladder onto the
Speaker 6: roof of his garage or whatever. I just thought it
Speaker 6: was hilarious that that was something we needed to practice.
Speaker 3: This was going to be incredibly intense.
Speaker 1: Cookie had always played a strategic, behind the scenes role
Speaker 1: in the action she planned with Grady, but for Camden,
Speaker 1: she decided she was going in. She would lead the
Speaker 1: raiders up the fire escape and be the one to
Speaker 1: cut the glass window.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was while I was processing all this information
Speaker 4: and thinking about people across the world personal way, think
Speaker 4: about Vietnamese families, just imagining what it must be like,
Speaker 4: and I started thinking them as my neighbors and people
Speaker 4: that I knew. And when I started personalizing it that way,
Speaker 4: it became more of an imperative to me to act.
Speaker 3: They began to take on their assignments for the raid.
Speaker 4: By that I was pretty committed to whatever what had
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 1: Some would be lookouts, some would be drivers, and some
Speaker 1: would be putting their head in the lion's mouth.
Speaker 4: I was excited, but I don't mean like in a
Speaker 4: happy way. I was just I was excited.
Speaker 1: A week before the raid, Bob Hardy insisted they do
Speaker 1: a dry run of the very complicated plan to penetrate
Speaker 1: the building on the night of the rehearsal. There were
Speaker 1: eight raiders who would go into the building. There were
Speaker 1: four lookouts stationed across the street, and there were eight drivers,
Speaker 1: all with synchronized watches, working in a complicated dance.
Speaker 5: Basically, you go with everybody you're going to use that night,
Speaker 5: everybody in sync at the exact time of night that
Speaker 5: you're going to try to break into the draft board.
Speaker 1: Bob Hardy's van then reversed into the alley behind the building.
Speaker 5: Off We even opened up the back of the thing
Speaker 5: and put the ladder up to see how it was
Speaker 5: going to fit. We had never actually done it before.
Speaker 1: The eight raiders had to get the ladder against the
Speaker 1: metal canopy atop a post office loading dogs.
Speaker 5: It was a docking area for trucks to back into
Speaker 5: the post office, and this was an awning that went
Speaker 5: out over It was a pretty sturdial awning that you
Speaker 5: could walk on and walked carefully and quietly.
Speaker 3: Because it made noise fourteen feet up, and.
Speaker 5: We knew that we could get up. We had already
Speaker 5: practiced growing up and down the ladder, so we knew
Speaker 5: we had to practice some more, but we knew that
Speaker 5: it was doable.
Speaker 1: On the night of the raid, they would skidter across
Speaker 1: the canopy to the fire escape.
Speaker 5: Then you brought a ladder with you and got up
Speaker 5: against the fire escape even another little bit. Because the
Speaker 5: fire escape was pulled down, an alarm was going to
Speaker 5: automatically go off. Bob Hardy had spotted that, told us
Speaker 5: about it, made sure that we weren't going to set
Speaker 5: off any alarms on the way.
Speaker 1: They would then climb the fire escape to the fifth floorrapy,
Speaker 1: where they would bypass the window alarms by cutting through
Speaker 1: the glass. On the night of the rehearsal, everything went
Speaker 1: according to plan.
Speaker 5: So it's just a drill practice doing all the steps
Speaker 5: and it all went pretty well.
Speaker 1: But Bob Hardy didn't like how it went.
Speaker 5: Bob Hardy was very upset afterwards.
Speaker 1: Emotions were starting to flare. What they were trying to
Speaker 1: do had never been done before, and Hardy's demand for
Speaker 1: precision felt a little unattainable. But despite Bob's hang ups,
Speaker 1: the raid was now set for the following Saturday night.
Speaker 1: Just a few days before the night of the raid,
Speaker 1: during a traffic stop in downtown Camden, two police officers
Speaker 1: beat a Puerto Rican resident who would later die from,
Speaker 1: according to the autopsy, a blow to the groin. The
Speaker 1: following night, Camden's Puerto Rican community entered into open rebellion.
Speaker 1: Fires were set throughout downtown. More than fifty injuries were reported,
Speaker 1: and additional state troopers were called in to supplement Camden's
Speaker 1: police force.
Speaker 8: There were riots happening in Campden the weekend of the action.
Speaker 4: Because about a week before the action, Camden police killed
Speaker 4: a Puerto Rican kit motorists.
Speaker 1: From the apartment they used as their headquarters, just two
Speaker 1: blocks from the Camden building. The Raiders watched in horror
Speaker 1: as the city burned.
Speaker 4: There was looting, and I can remember we were standing
Speaker 4: in the window at the window looking across the street
Speaker 4: and seeing these kids running in and out of these stores,
Speaker 4: breaking windows, running out, running in getting stuff, slathering themselves
Speaker 4: with vasoline, which I later learned they did that because
Speaker 4: of the cops that grabbed them. They would slip out.
Speaker 4: It was like one of those things ago. This have
Speaker 4: to remember this, This is like a dream. Am I
Speaker 4: really watching this? And this is in television? And the
Speaker 4: streets were just insane, and there were cops everywhere.
Speaker 1: Not only were the cops everywhere, but the mayor had
Speaker 1: imposed a curfew here.
Speaker 4: We are trying to do an action in mild Ale.
Speaker 7: This just a few days from the planned date of
Speaker 7: the action. Somebody had to go out and get groceries
Speaker 7: because we were you know, twenty eight people eat a
Speaker 7: lot of food, and so Bob Hardy volunteered, I'll go.
Speaker 1: Keith Forsyth and Bob Hardy climbed into Bob's van and
Speaker 1: headed out to the grocery store. Hardy seemed to be
Speaker 1: having second thoughts.
Speaker 7: So Hardy says to me, what do you think you
Speaker 7: think this is really I think it's really going to go.
Speaker 7: There's an awful lot of police on the streets and stuff.
Speaker 7: And I said, yeah, but you know, not so much
Speaker 7: in this neighborhood, you know, right where the draft board is.
Speaker 7: And he was like, it has to go no matter what.
Speaker 4: He said.
Speaker 7: You know what about the guard. You know, I'm like,
Speaker 7: what about the guard? We know what his routine is.
Speaker 7: Just have to be you know, avoid him and be
Speaker 7: quiet inside. And he goes, well, I got something, you know,
Speaker 7: in case the guard is a problem, open the glocal apartment.
Speaker 7: I opened the glocal apartment. There's a snubnosed revolver in there.
Speaker 7: And I'm like, are you out of your fucking mind?
Speaker 7: If you think I'm going to carry a gun in
Speaker 7: and shoot a minimum wage security guard, there's something wrong
Speaker 7: with you. And I told Bob Williamson, I said, you know,
Speaker 7: I think this guy Hardy's a cop.
Speaker 1: Bob Williamson aka Weed ex, Keith's fellow media conspirator, assured
Speaker 1: him that things were just very tense as a result
Speaker 1: of the rioting and they could probably trust Hardy. Besides,
Speaker 1: he was a member of Father Doyle's parish and really
Speaker 1: good friends with some of the local raiders.
Speaker 7: He says, you know, you always get nervous on the
Speaker 7: night of the action.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: I'm like, well, you know that's true. I do get nervous,
Speaker 7: and I let it go.
Speaker 1: But Bob Hardy gave a lot of people the feeling
Speaker 1: of a linebacker reluctantly having to be in Romeo and
Speaker 1: Juliet for college credit.
Speaker 4: He was an ex marine, you know, and he shows
Speaker 4: up and he's this really big, light hair full of himself.
Speaker 4: You know, every word he spoke had importance. Talk to
Speaker 4: Lee and she'll tell you, you know, we were They're
Speaker 4: not crazy about this guy at all.
Speaker 8: He asked us if we thought we should have a
Speaker 8: gun at the Camden draft Wood action. And it was
Speaker 8: like a gun.
Speaker 5: And I met the very first night I met Bob Hardy.
Speaker 1: Although Paul the man with the largest heart in the universe,
Speaker 1: felt otherwise, and.
Speaker 5: I liked him like that right off the bat. I
Speaker 5: really liked him, this great guy.
Speaker 1: Saturday night arrived, they gathered around several tables for a
Speaker 1: final dinner, and thirteen men all happened to sit at
Speaker 1: one long table. They joked that it was the last
Speaker 1: supper and wondered who might be Judas they had a
Speaker 1: big decision to make the curfew and the riots had
Speaker 1: police and stadies prowling the streets, the Canden Raiders had
Speaker 1: a hard look.
Speaker 3: At one another and they decided to go for it.
Speaker 5: Despite the fact that there was tear gas in the
Speaker 5: street and everything. They went right through it.
Speaker 3: Go time.
Speaker 4: We all loaded into Bob Party's van. It was a
Speaker 4: big white sort of box van.
Speaker 1: The eight Raiders climbed inside a little Winnebago with their
Speaker 1: ladder and two just like they practiced. But I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're thinking eight people climbing a ladder in the middle
Speaker 1: of downtown Canden would be conspicuous anytime of day, right,
Speaker 1: so I have.
Speaker 4: To I'll show you this. I feel it this way.
Speaker 4: You can see in this drawing that this is Cooper Street,
Speaker 4: Main Drag. The post office is here.
Speaker 1: So Cookie showed me the ingenious way. The raiders made
Speaker 1: sure they could remain inconspicuous.
Speaker 4: This was a one way street.
Speaker 1: The Canden Federal Building, known as the Post Office and Courthouse,
Speaker 1: was at four to Oho one Market Street, on the
Speaker 1: north side of the street facing south, with Fourth Street
Speaker 1: running down its west side. They drove up Fourth Street
Speaker 1: to the loading dock behind the building, and.
Speaker 4: We had to block traffic from being able to go
Speaker 4: in any place where they could see us because we
Speaker 4: were down. I'll make this quigly line be the alley.
Speaker 1: They had timed the stoplights at the four intersections surrounding
Speaker 1: the building and realized they had at best the length
Speaker 1: of one stoplight to set up the ladder twenty two seconds,
Speaker 1: but they needed insurance.
Speaker 4: The plan was that there would be cars situated in
Speaker 4: various parts around the building, so we had a car
Speaker 4: come up stop.
Speaker 3: Here to buy some time.
Speaker 1: The eight drivers, including Sarah Tosi, Leanne Mosha, Keith Forsythe
Speaker 1: and Bob Hardy would simultaneously pretend to break down in
Speaker 1: the four surrounding intersections.
Speaker 5: All the cars blocked the streets so that the truck
Speaker 5: that's carrying the eight of us that are going to
Speaker 5: go inside the building has enough time to back right
Speaker 5: up to the platform in the post office.
Speaker 4: And then we had people get out of the car
Speaker 4: and lift the hood of the car that act like
Speaker 4: they had car trouble, but it blocked the whole street
Speaker 4: so no one could go up the street, so no
Speaker 4: one could turn into that street like the police. And
Speaker 4: we had another car somewhere else doing the same thing.
Speaker 3: This was at a time when cars broke down a lot.
Speaker 5: We got the streets all blocked off and they had.
Speaker 3: A system of lookouts all on walkie talkies.
Speaker 4: There's a house down the street where we had people
Speaker 4: with a walkie talkie and.
Speaker 3: A church across the street with an entrance.
Speaker 4: With a little chapel kind of top on. It got
Speaker 4: a chapel, I think it called it the parapet or no,
Speaker 4: not a parapet. That was the portico, yeah, portico.
Speaker 3: Four lookouts watched the building security guard.
Speaker 4: From the portico, and then we pulled into the back
Speaker 4: of the post office and we jumped out of the van.
Speaker 4: We had a ladder with us. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 4: it was there that we borrowed mail bags. So we
Speaker 4: get on the platform. We put the ladder up to
Speaker 4: that story. We scurry up the ladder. We pulled the
Speaker 4: ladder up with us, and then we go up the
Speaker 4: fire escape.
Speaker 1: Cookie had learned how to use a glass cutter and
Speaker 1: practiced on several windows. They climbed up the fire escape
Speaker 1: to the parapet on the roof. She taped up the glass,
Speaker 1: cut a hole, hammered it out and opened the window,
Speaker 1: just like in Mission Impossible, and they all leapt down
Speaker 1: four feet onto the carridor floor.
Speaker 4: We cut the glass and opened the window and we
Speaker 4: went in.
Speaker 3: They were in.
Speaker 4: So you're in a large office space. There's files, there's desks,
Speaker 4: it's a big open space. We're working there. We're in
Speaker 4: there at least an hour and a half or two hours.
Speaker 4: I don't remember how long.
Speaker 1: They used Bob's industrial grade bolt cutters to get into
Speaker 1: the padlocked filing cabinets.
Speaker 4: We had divided up the draft board into one A
Speaker 4: files in different categories, but the one I files were
Speaker 4: priority files because those were the kids ready to be drafted,
Speaker 4: but ready to be sent to war. And we had
Speaker 4: to shakecase the room so we knew where the files were,
Speaker 4: and we had little pen flashlights because it was we
Speaker 4: had to keep the room dark. I had been mine
Speaker 4: in my mouth and I was doing my little thing
Speaker 4: and pulling out the files and packing the bags.
Speaker 1: It was an incredibly hot and humid night, so some
Speaker 1: of the raiders went out onto the roof parapet to work,
Speaker 1: but they had to crouch that they wouldn't be spotted
Speaker 1: by curfew helicopters.
Speaker 5: I was on walkie talkie and my handle was called little.
Speaker 1: Man Little Big Man. Paul Cooming was stationed on the
Speaker 1: parapet as a lookout.
Speaker 5: Most of the people were inside of the draft board
Speaker 5: filling sacks paper or tearing up flow cards, or making
Speaker 5: sure they got everything and putting in the mail sacks.
Speaker 1: Paul's specific job was to make sure the security guard
Speaker 1: never came to the fifth floor.
Speaker 5: He never circulated through the building at night. His last
Speaker 5: trip was before we ever entered the building. So my
Speaker 5: response was trained to be God is coming, I see
Speaker 5: your guard's coming. And I also had a rope tied
Speaker 5: to me, and I was supposed to pull the rope
Speaker 5: in case the walkie talking didn't work, that the person
Speaker 5: on the other end of the rope would get yanked
Speaker 5: at the waist, and he'd realized that they should sit down.
Speaker 5: The idea was that they would sit on the floor
Speaker 5: and wait to be arrested by this one guy rather
Speaker 5: than try to scamper and get out quick.
Speaker 1: Just after four am, the raiders decided to skip the
Speaker 1: FBI office and the Army intelligence since sunrise was imminent.
Speaker 5: Someone on the ground pass how are you proceeding? And
Speaker 5: I asked the people in the board and they said
Speaker 5: they would be done in a few minutes, so they
Speaker 5: were going to need to be picked up and such
Speaker 5: a time.
Speaker 1: At four point thirty, the drivers were two blocks away
Speaker 1: at the headquarters, getting ready to take their places.
Speaker 8: I was in the command central with a few other people,
Speaker 8: including Bob.
Speaker 3: Hardy Leanne Mosha, who said, I think.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna go out and pick up some cheese steaks sandwiches.
Speaker 8: He said.
Speaker 1: As Bob Hardy went out for celebratory cheese steaks, the
Speaker 1: raiders in the draft board started throwing stuffed mail bags
Speaker 1: from the parapet down to a second floor landing.
Speaker 4: So sometime we're there for a while and I hear
Speaker 4: we hear footsteps, and then I hear, really faintly, I
Speaker 4: hear FBI raid and I look and I think I
Speaker 4: think it's Bob Williamson. And I'm like, that is not funny, Bob.
Speaker 5: And just then as that I think I'm over, I
Speaker 5: turned around and I looked at him as it wasn't
Speaker 5: just the guard, it was four people coming up that
Speaker 5: staircase to arrest me.
Speaker 4: But moments later, I start to see the silhouettes of
Speaker 4: men coming in the windows. We could just see the
Speaker 4: silhouettes of these bodies and they're opening windows in their claes.
Speaker 4: I'm in the windows, so.
Speaker 5: I'm yelling the guard is coming, The guard is coming,
Speaker 5: into a walkie talkie as I pull away from the
Speaker 5: window and not comprehending that why is there more than
Speaker 5: one guard?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 1: At that moment at the apartment headquarters, the front and
Speaker 1: back doors were kicked in simultaneously and federal agents rushed in.
Speaker 1: As Paul's voice continued screaming over the walkie talkie.
Speaker 5: I got saying the guard's coming, The guards coming, The
Speaker 5: Guard's coming, because I didn't know what else to say.
Speaker 3: But Paul's contact was dealing with his own shit.
Speaker 5: He was cursing at me on the walkie hockey, saying, Paul,
Speaker 5: shut up, we know what we know. The guards here.
Speaker 1: At this time, Sarah, Leanne and Keith were about to
Speaker 1: leave to block the intersections.
Speaker 7: I heard all those tires squealing in the parking lot
Speaker 7: at three in the morning or whenever. It was like. Instantly,
Speaker 7: I said to the other people in the room. I
Speaker 7: looked up and said, we're busted.
Speaker 8: FBI agents with the jackets, with FBI in the back, guns,
Speaker 8: big guns drawn. Put your hands up, it's the FBI.
Speaker 5: It's a it's a eight.
Speaker 8: And every window in this little rectory was lit up
Speaker 8: by these guys rushing in the doorways, the windows up
Speaker 8: against the wall. Spread your legs. It was terrifying.
Speaker 7: One of them had a shotgun, and I remember the
Speaker 7: shotgun very firmly, because they lined us up against the wall.
Speaker 7: And I turned around and made some kind of a joke.
Speaker 7: I make a lot of smart ass remarks, and the
Speaker 7: guy with the shotgun pushed my face back up against
Speaker 7: the wall with the business end of the shotting. They
Speaker 7: knew who all these people were. I mean there were
Speaker 7: twenty eight people. Twenty seven of them were pacifist, half
Speaker 7: of them were priests. For God's sake.
Speaker 1: Two blocks away, Paul stood on the parapet of the
Speaker 1: Federal building, frozen in fear.
Speaker 5: I turned around and I saw the whole building was
Speaker 5: lit up, and I said, no, wonder the guards coming.
Speaker 5: They turned the lights on.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, all of the lights in the
Speaker 1: building came on, and the front of the building was
Speaker 1: doused in floodlights.
Speaker 5: Every place we had lookouts through they were there, and
Speaker 5: they just automatically at the same time on one signal,
Speaker 5: arrested everybody.
Speaker 1: Eighty wingtipped federal agents started popping up in every place.
Speaker 1: A raider had been stationed, the portico, the apartment, the
Speaker 1: driver's parking spots, the draft board.
Speaker 3: The FBI had the drop on them the whole time,
Speaker 3: and the jig was.
Speaker 1: Up wearing baseball caps and dark blue windbreakers with FBI
Speaker 1: and big white letters across their backs. The agents flooded
Speaker 1: into the room through doors and windows.
Speaker 4: It was like an out of body experience. They had
Speaker 4: guns drawn on us. Guns. I mean, we were known
Speaker 4: for being non violent. They had guns drawn on us
Speaker 4: were surrounded by agents and they're grabbing hold of us.
Speaker 4: Bob good was out on the parapet loading bags and
Speaker 4: they threw him into the window. Cooming is dragged into
Speaker 4: the room because he'd been grabbed over the other side
Speaker 4: of the building. He's dragged into the room and they're
Speaker 4: pretty abusive to him.
Speaker 1: Paul Koming was the last one found in his hiding
Speaker 1: place out on the parapet.
Speaker 5: And they took me handcuffing behind my back, bent me over,
Speaker 5: held me by the handcuffs and ran me the distance
Speaker 5: of that flat roof to the edge of the roof
Speaker 5: as if they're going to throw me off, then pulled
Speaker 5: me back the last second, just to scare the shit
Speaker 5: out of me.
Speaker 1: They brought Paul Coombing into the draft board, smashed him
Speaker 1: into the filing cabinets a few times, then threw him
Speaker 1: down on his stomach next to Cookie. Then bursting through
Speaker 1: the doors came the government's chief prosecutor from the Harrisburg trial,
Speaker 1: Guy Goodwin. Goodwin had become the head of Hoover's new
Speaker 1: Left squad, whose job it was to take down the
Speaker 1: Catholic left.
Speaker 4: And Guy Goodwin has a radio in his hand, and
Speaker 4: he's talking to someone and he's walked around the room
Speaker 4: and he's counting us one, two, three, four, five, sixty seven. Okay,
Speaker 4: we got them all. We got them all. And I
Speaker 4: kept thinking to myself, this is I cannot believe this
Speaker 4: is happening. It's like when you know you're seeing something
Speaker 4: that you can't believe you're seeing you in a way
Speaker 4: where I wasn't really afraid. All I kept thinking was
Speaker 4: I have got to remember this to tell my friends,
Speaker 4: because it was so unbelievable what I was looking at.
Speaker 4: The whole room and all the people and all the
Speaker 4: pushing around.
Speaker 5: They knocked people down and jumped on their backs with
Speaker 5: their knees. Fola Doyle was knocked to the ground and
Speaker 5: he was handcoffed behind his back, and then the guy
Speaker 5: pounced on him.
Speaker 4: And so these two agents grab a hold of me,
Speaker 4: and they're grabbing each one of us the same way
Speaker 4: like they went to FBI school, right. So the idea
Speaker 4: is you throw the person on the ground, you put
Speaker 4: your knee into their lower back, you pull their hands up,
Speaker 4: and you handcoff them. So that's happening all around me.
Speaker 4: My two guys come, they throw me on the ground
Speaker 4: and they're my bands are behind my back, and one
Speaker 4: the agent says, give me the cuffs, and the other
Speaker 4: one says, I thought you brought them.
Speaker 1: The raiders later described the agents as being right out
Speaker 1: of the academy, with baby faces and shaking guns. Television
Speaker 1: would have you think the FBI does raids like this
Speaker 1: every week. But it makes me wonder if they are
Speaker 1: actually pretty rare.
Speaker 4: So the boss comes along, the supervisor. His name is
Speaker 4: Agent Snodgrass. I'll never forget. So Snodgrass comes along and
Speaker 4: he goes, what's happening over here, and he goes, well,
Speaker 4: I thought he had the cops, and he thought he
Speaker 4: had the puffs, and they're explaining to their boss, and
Speaker 4: he says, tire up with their belt. So they pull
Speaker 4: my belt off and I didn't even get handcuffs that
Speaker 4: first time.
Speaker 1: As things settled down, Guy Goodwin took center stage.
Speaker 4: So meantime, Guy Goodwin is walking around the room and
Speaker 4: he's saying things to people to let them know he
Speaker 4: knows who they are. So when he got to me,
Speaker 4: he said, hey, cookie, how you do it? Is your
Speaker 4: brother still playing the drums? My brother played the drums.
Speaker 1: Goodwin knew their nicknames. He knew the names of their families,
Speaker 1: and he made it clear that to the government this
Speaker 1: was personal, but nowhere near as personal as it would
Speaker 1: be for Sarah Toci.
Speaker 4: Her brother was FBI. He arrested some of the people
Speaker 4: he was on this arrest. When she was arrested, the
Speaker 4: guy said, they're your Toazy's little sister.
Speaker 1: This was supposed to be the raid that would prove
Speaker 1: Descent could never be crushed by Hoover's wing tipped goons. Instead,
Speaker 1: they all lay dejected on the floor, knees in their backs.
Speaker 4: At some point, I hear a sort of croaky voice
Speaker 4: say in it's sort of almost a whisper, what do
Speaker 4: we eat? Do you know the story?
Speaker 1: But then weed X did something totally bananas.
Speaker 4: This comes from what we were rehearsing. We were rehearsing
Speaker 4: going up and down the ladder and Paul Cooman's High
Speaker 4: school when they had games, they had this thing where
Speaker 4: some people would say what do we eat? And people
Speaker 4: would say, eagle meat, What do we eat? Egle meat?
Speaker 4: What do they eat?
Speaker 3: Shit?
Speaker 4: So I hear, I hear somebody in the room say
Speaker 4: what do we eat? And I'm like, no. The rest
Speaker 4: of us are of cough out eagle meat. And then
Speaker 4: he says, where a stronger voice, what do we eat?
Speaker 4: And we say eagle meat, and he says, what do
Speaker 4: they eat? We say shit. The bosses in the FBA
Speaker 4: agents who are bosses in the room are like, furious.
Speaker 4: You can't say that, do Ke be quiet? I'm just
Speaker 4: trying to yell at us. And then I looked to
Speaker 4: the left and the door opens and they're dragging Paul
Speaker 4: out of the room. And I felt so bad for Paul.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what to say to help him. So
Speaker 4: I said, don't worry Paul. We've got him on the run.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: They were defeated. Hoover had struck a decisive blow, and
Speaker 1: yet they still chanted. They eat shit right in the
Speaker 1: FBI's face. After the arrest, the raiders were then hauled downstairs,
Speaker 1: separated and interrogated.
Speaker 4: So they take us down into these rooms and they
Speaker 4: have each one of us in a separate room and
Speaker 4: they start, you know, interrogating us, just like how did
Speaker 4: a TV show? And I didn't know that the people
Speaker 4: outside have been arrested.
Speaker 8: It was an endless time to me, Leanne. They were
Speaker 8: frisking us and I was put into a vehicle with
Speaker 8: two FBI agents in the front seat. I was in
Speaker 8: the backseat, and then we started driving around town and
Speaker 8: they were saying, you know, it was stereotypical good cock,
Speaker 8: bad cock. One guy was really mean, the other guy
Speaker 8: was very nice, and I'm sure they were both Irish,
Speaker 8: Catholic FBI agents, and they were saying things like, you know,
Speaker 8: your friend John Grady spilled the beans. We've got everybody's
Speaker 8: name and address.
Speaker 3: Now, oldest trick in the book.
Speaker 1: Cookie's interrogation was endless.
Speaker 4: At some point, some agent comes in and says, John
Speaker 4: Grady just spilled the beans. Spilled the beans. Really.
Speaker 1: After Cookie's interrogator told her that John Grady had spilled
Speaker 1: the beans, she burst out laughing, and then so did
Speaker 1: he because they both knew how ridiculous it was.
Speaker 4: Well, I didn't believe John would have made a statement.
Speaker 4: Second of all, spill the beans? What movie? What did
Speaker 4: that come from?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: It was also nuts.
Speaker 8: I didn't tell them my name. I never answered any
Speaker 8: question they asked me. I just kept silent for a
Speaker 8: few hours as we drove around town. And it was
Speaker 8: the middle of the night, and then it was sort
Speaker 8: of pre dawn and as we drove in and out
Speaker 8: of Camden, I would see another car and realized it
Speaker 8: was one of my friends, like in the back seat
Speaker 8: of another and I would try and raise my manacle
Speaker 8: of hands up the wave notes. I stopped doing that.
Speaker 4: I look out the window and I see a mob
Speaker 4: of people out there, and TV trucks and all this
Speaker 4: press and people in the streets, mobs of people. And
Speaker 4: I say to the agent, what's going on, because I
Speaker 4: think it's related to Riot's going on. So I go,
Speaker 4: what happened? What's going on? He says, Oh, they're here
Speaker 4: for you.
Speaker 1: It was now Sunday morning, August twenty second, nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: Jay Edgar Hoover held a joint press conference with AG
Speaker 1: John Mitchell in which he announced he had broken the
Speaker 1: back of the Catholic left. Eventually, the raiders were all
Speaker 1: corraled together in the bowels of the building to await arraignment.
Speaker 4: Eventually they take us all down and put us in
Speaker 4: this big room together, the men and women together, and
Speaker 4: I remember we started singing the Rising of the Moon,
Speaker 4: and they yelled at us.
Speaker 1: And it was there that they realized someone was missing.
Speaker 5: At that time, we realized there was only one person
Speaker 5: missing from the arrest scene.
Speaker 8: I don't know at what point it became apparent that
Speaker 8: he was the only one who wasn't arrested.
Speaker 6: I think somebody said where's Hardy.
Speaker 8: And then we're like, ah, okay, it's Bob Hardy.
Speaker 3: Bob Hardy.
Speaker 1: When the local Camden Raider had gone to Bob Hardy
Speaker 1: after the initial plans for the action had fallen apart,
Speaker 1: Hardy had assured him he could help make it happen.
Speaker 1: But then he immediately went to the FBI field office.
Speaker 8: But immediately he came to one or two meetings and
Speaker 8: decided this didn't sit right with him, so he went
Speaker 8: immediately to the FBI and they said, great.
Speaker 4: Hang in there.
Speaker 9: And he thought that the Catholic Cleft was using Mike Doyle.
Speaker 1: Anne Walsh, who was busy fighting her contempt of court
Speaker 1: charge in Harrisburg and therefore wasn't a part of the
Speaker 1: Camden crew.
Speaker 9: So he went to the FBI to say the Catholic
Speaker 9: Cleft was dragging his front and the FBI said, we'll
Speaker 9: protect your friend and you if you work with us.
Speaker 1: The FBI agent encouraged him to join the group and
Speaker 1: told him they'd reimburse him for any expenses. This was
Speaker 1: just the break the FBI needed after the humiliation of
Speaker 1: media had enraged one J.
Speaker 3: Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 9: He was furious, he was out of his mind. Somebody
Speaker 9: violated the FBI and he wanted to bring the Catholic
Speaker 9: Left to its knees.
Speaker 4: In March, the FBI gade happened and allD the FBI
Speaker 4: files went out, and they knew it was the Catholic Left.
Speaker 4: And when they got the word from Bob Hardy that
Speaker 4: he was working with a group, they thought, oh, here
Speaker 4: we go, bingo, bingo, We're going to get them all.
Speaker 4: That's why it became such a big action. Why was
Speaker 4: so highly publicized.
Speaker 1: There was a rumor that the night of the raid,
Speaker 1: the FBI men had held a pregame celebration at a
Speaker 1: nearby hotel, complete with wives and girlfriends. While the raiders
Speaker 1: were setting up their lookouts, the FBI was stationing floodlights
Speaker 1: and photographers.
Speaker 4: And there's pictures of us going up the fire escape,
Speaker 4: so you must have seen those, right. FBI were taking
Speaker 4: pictures of us from across the street.
Speaker 1: Hardy was operating kind of like Halliburton in the oughts
Speaker 1: with a blank check from the federal government.
Speaker 8: So he was always saying, oh you need ropes, Oh,
Speaker 8: I have ropes in my truck. I mean, the FBI
Speaker 8: was supplying equipment, box cut is, you know, whatever, the
Speaker 8: little tools we needed for the thing. He was always
Speaker 8: there at the ready with stuff which he was getting
Speaker 8: from the FBI, and he was being paid.
Speaker 9: So every time they ran into a flaw in the
Speaker 9: post office building, the FBI solved that flaw by getting
Speaker 9: the saws, the equipment, the ladders and stuff like that,
Speaker 9: and nobody suspected. They just thought it was like good luck.
Speaker 1: That's why Bob Hardy, this square nobody but Paul seemed
Speaker 1: to like, would keep hanging around with these kids. Why
Speaker 1: he'd conveniently left for cheese steaks in the middle of
Speaker 1: the biggest heist of the decade. Why he'd seemed pissed
Speaker 1: off during the successful dry run of the operation, and
Speaker 1: come to.
Speaker 5: Find out, he was upset because he had been told
Speaker 5: that we were going to be arrested. During the dry.
Speaker 1: Run, Hardy had made the FBI promise that his four
Speaker 1: friends in the action, including Father Doyle, would not be arrested.
Speaker 1: He'd carefully arranged for them to not be at the
Speaker 1: dry Run rehearsal, but then the FBI didn't move in and.
Speaker 5: His friends, who were the four people from his parish
Speaker 5: in Camden, they wouldn't go to jail, and the FBI
Speaker 5: went back on their word. They were going to arrest
Speaker 5: us at the dry Run, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: And on the night of the raid, the FBI had
Speaker 1: let them continue their action for over two hours so
Speaker 1: they would keep racking up charges. At the quickie arraignment
Speaker 1: that Sunday, which was held in the courtroom literally downstairs
Speaker 1: from the draft board they had raided only twelve hours earlier,
Speaker 1: Guy Goodwin portrayed the raiders as terrorists to a sympathetic
Speaker 1: judge who let the bail climb up to six hundred
Speaker 1: and five thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: John Peter had the highest amount on him. Started out
Speaker 5: one hundred thousand dollars on his head alone. My bail
Speaker 5: is seventy five thousand. This is in seventy one Now
Speaker 5: nobody had that kind of money.
Speaker 1: One by one they were brought out of the building
Speaker 1: to be transferred to jail.
Speaker 7: The FBI early today caught an anti war group in
Speaker 7: the actors. It was trying to steal records from the
Speaker 7: draft board in Camden, New Jersey.
Speaker 4: Twenty persons were arrested, including two calfs, the priests, and.
Speaker 3: A Protestant minutal.
Speaker 1: As they were led out of the building into squad cars,
Speaker 1: loal news reporters filled the.
Speaker 5: Streets, maps, charts, radios, transceivers, mockups of Federal Building windows,
Speaker 5: glass cutting.
Speaker 3: Tools, and according to the FBI.
Speaker 5: They were being taught how to pick locks exactly like
Speaker 5: the ones in the Federal Building.
Speaker 1: A crowd of civilians gathered and cheered them on. And
Speaker 1: this is one of the most remarkable moments for me
Speaker 1: in this whole saga. I've been alive a long time,
Speaker 1: and I have never heard of the general public cheering
Speaker 1: someone during their perk wlock. And unlike their FBI counterparts,
Speaker 1: the Canden twenty eight were all smiles as they came
Speaker 1: out of the building, cheering back and flashing handcuffed peace signs.
Speaker 4: They walk me out to the front of the steps
Speaker 4: of the building and I walk out and all of
Speaker 4: a sudden people see me and they start screaming sha,
Speaker 4: cheering me.
Speaker 1: But the Camden twenty eight caught dead to rights. We're
Speaker 1: facing a maximum sentence of forty seven years in prison.
Speaker 3: On the next intervention.
Speaker 6: We all knew that sooner or later we would get
Speaker 6: caught breaking into a draft board. Successfully was only part
Speaker 6: of the point. The other part of the point would
Speaker 6: be to use the opportunity of our inevitable trial to
Speaker 6: try to persuade a jury and hopefully an audience in
Speaker 6: the courtroom, that what we did was not a crime.
Speaker 1: Divine Intervention is a production of iHeart Podcasts. It's produced
Speaker 1: by Wonder Media Network. It was created and written by me,
Speaker 1: your host, Brendan Patrick Hughes. Our fiendishly adept producers our
Speaker 1: Carmen Borca Correo, Abby Delk, Palomo Moreno, Jimenez, Grace Lynch,
Speaker 1: and myself. Our editor is Woman About Town Grace Lynch
Speaker 1: for Wonder Media Network. Our executive producers are Emily Rutterer
Speaker 1: and Jenny Kaplan. For iHeart pod Casts, our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Christina Everett. This episode was developed using archival material
Speaker 1: from the Anthony Giacchino Canden twenty eight Motion picture collection
Speaker 1: at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. You can check out
Speaker 1: Anthony Giacchino's documentary The Candon twenty eight for more information
Speaker 1: on this slice of history. Our theme and end credit
Speaker 1: music was composed and performed by actual rockstar Tanya Donnelly
Speaker 1: and mastered by rockstar masterer Ben Aerons. This is Brendan
Speaker 1: Patrick Hughes. Thank you for listening to Divine Intervention.