Speaker 1: From his office, j Edgar Hoover has placed on the
Speaker 1: entire organization his own rigid code of service, integrity, and morality.
Speaker 1: In a way that is true a few organizations. J
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover is the FBI.
Speaker 2: By November of nineteen seventy, FBI Director j Edgar Hoover
Speaker 2: had been serving in his role for forty six years.
Speaker 2: He had amassed so much power in the halls of Washington,
Speaker 2: DC that he basically used Congress as an atm for
Speaker 2: the bureaus. And by that I mean his priorities. His
Speaker 2: annual budget hearings were little more than rubber stamp sessions
Speaker 2: when senators fell all over themselves heaping praise on his record.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen seventy hearing, testifying before two senators in
Speaker 2: a Capitol Hill conference room, he asked for an additional
Speaker 2: fourteen million dollars because of the growing menace of the
Speaker 2: New Left. He told the senators of an incipient plot
Speaker 2: on the part of an anarchist group called the East
Speaker 2: Coast Conspiracy to Save lives. This is a militant group
Speaker 2: of Catholic priests and nuns, he said, who have manifested
Speaker 2: opposition to the war in Vietnam by acts of violence
Speaker 2: against government agencies. The principal leaders of this group, he said,
Speaker 2: are Philip and Daniel Berrigan. Then he dropped a bomb.
Speaker 2: This group, he alleged, plans to blow up underground electrical
Speaker 2: conduits serving the Washington, DC area. The plotters are also,
Speaker 2: he closed, concocting a scheme to kidnap a highly placed
Speaker 2: government official. Hoover had arranged for reporters to wait outside
Speaker 2: the closed door testimony and immediately distributed copies of his report.
Speaker 2: It was the first time in FBI history that the
Speaker 2: director had publicly made unproven allegations against specific citizens that
Speaker 2: had not been charged. There comes a point in any
Speaker 2: protracted conflict, and each side starts to try and prove
Speaker 2: what they're capable of. Hoover had crossed the rubicon. He
Speaker 2: had declared war on the Catholic left. I'm Brendan Patrick Hughes.
Speaker 2: This is Divine Intervention, Chapter seven, The Fight of the Century.
Speaker 3: So anyways, I was housebound with using Chin.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile in Boston, Marianne, a divorced welfare mother of two,
Speaker 2: and Patrick, a Roman Catholic freaking priest. We're dealing with
Speaker 2: the fallout from having made out in front of the
Speaker 2: fire in his doomed Beacon Street apartment.
Speaker 4: You know the kind of whisker burn stuff you get.
Speaker 4: I thought I was bleeding on the way home in
Speaker 4: the car, I thought, oh my god, I think my
Speaker 4: chin's gone. This like oozing the chin.
Speaker 2: I can confirm this. US Irish guys have some very
Speaker 2: sharp stubble. I've seen some shit.
Speaker 3: I remember.
Speaker 4: The next night he came over to my apartment. I
Speaker 4: couldn't leave the house, of course, because of the oozing chin.
Speaker 4: And he was mortified because like, if I went to
Speaker 4: the community with this, I mean, you only get that
Speaker 4: from one situation.
Speaker 2: Right, Remember hickeys, the scandal of physical evidence. After two
Speaker 2: of your friends in high school hooked up over the weekend,
Speaker 2: turtlenecks on Mondays meant one thing, and one thing only
Speaker 2: when I was in school. Patrick spent the next day
Speaker 2: conducting his affairs like the Roman Catholic priest he still
Speaker 2: ostensibly was, and then drove his VW bus to Marianne's
Speaker 2: apartments in Dorchester.
Speaker 3: The next night, he came over around ten o'clock. The
Speaker 3: kids are in.
Speaker 4: Dead and.
Speaker 3: I opened the door and we just looked at each other.
Speaker 3: Neither of us could believe what had happened. But it
Speaker 3: was so.
Speaker 5: Total, like the giving over of ourselves to each other
Speaker 5: emotionally was so total, like having stepped over that line.
Speaker 2: We can't know what kind of conversation Patrick was having
Speaker 2: with himself about having broken his vow of celibacy. What
Speaker 2: we do know is that A he fell in love
Speaker 2: with Mary Anne and their affair continued, and B he
Speaker 2: also continued to perform his duties as a priest and
Speaker 2: made no announcement to the team the way Floyd did.
Speaker 6: But in terms of being in love with or something
Speaker 6: like that, he never spoke to me about that.
Speaker 7: You know, did you ever pick up on any vibe?
Speaker 6: I didn't. I did not, But I'm not that astute
Speaker 6: when it comes to some of those.
Speaker 8: Things, and I didn't know anything about.
Speaker 2: It Patrick's sister Joanne.
Speaker 8: But for him, he was still a practicing priest and
Speaker 8: he's dating, I suppose you might say, and really falling
Speaker 8: in love.
Speaker 3: You know, there was.
Speaker 8: Still that element, you see, that he wanted so much
Speaker 8: in his life that somehow the priesthood refused to allow.
Speaker 8: And yet when he saw it and felt it, he
Speaker 8: knew that that's what he wanted and needed to really
Speaker 8: fulfill himself and to be in this relationship, this partnership.
Speaker 8: It just was going to happen no matter what.
Speaker 2: If Patrick were in the market for a strong rationalization
Speaker 2: for his decision, he wouldn't have to look far. Strict
Speaker 2: celibacy for priests had only been around since eleven thirty
Speaker 2: nine AD, when the Church had grown tired of the
Speaker 2: widows of priests inheriting the land on which they had
Speaker 2: built their churches. So at the second latter in Council
Speaker 2: they eliminated the future existence of widows by decreeing priestly celibacy.
Speaker 2: Patrick might have told himself that the church's real concern
Speaker 2: with sex had more to do with real estate than
Speaker 2: anything holy or sacred, but the fact remained. He was
Speaker 2: now sailing and the part of the old world maps
Speaker 2: marked here be dragons.
Speaker 9: Patrick. We have to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Sarah Tosey back from New.
Speaker 9: Jersey, because you are afraid to love.
Speaker 3: I am alone.
Speaker 9: We schedule our days so that we can say to
Speaker 9: one another. I don't have time to know you, and
Speaker 9: we're all guilty.
Speaker 3: How can people be so hard?
Speaker 2: Sarah must have known things were different when she returned.
Speaker 2: The tricycles had come to depend on was now a bicycle.
Speaker 9: Romance and the revolution. Don't mix. See, there's no time
Speaker 9: in your life. There's no time for that in your life.
Speaker 2: And then when Marianne and Sarah's landlord on Florida Street
Speaker 2: saw their picture in the paper during the Kooming asylum,
Speaker 2: he showed up at their door and evicted them.
Speaker 9: You kind of had to be there to believe it.
Speaker 9: Wake up to god, damn it, you're all evicted, goddamn kids.
Speaker 9: Goddamn mister Collins solo and attack on the front door.
Speaker 9: The sound of ripping and falling paper. This isn't happening.
Speaker 9: Goddamn goddamn outraged Chrissy, mister Collins, don't you rip down
Speaker 9: my mommy's door? Mama, where's my pone? Our sentiments exactly?
Speaker 9: Maybe we can move to the center.
Speaker 2: Unsettled and on the move once more, Sarah picked up
Speaker 2: her pieces and refocused her energy away from her disintegrating
Speaker 2: trio and towards ending this goddamn war. Her dream of
Speaker 2: what the Paula Center could have been in her life
Speaker 2: was ending, but her dream of being a revolutionary had
Speaker 2: only just begun. Sarah TOSI was now determined to take
Speaker 2: part in a draft rate. Jay Edgar Hoover's testimony before
Speaker 2: the Appropriations Committee was only the first punch of a
Speaker 2: one to two combination. The second punch came when his
Speaker 2: Department of Justice delivered a preliminary indictment of Catholic left
Speaker 2: movement leaders in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. FBI agents fanned out with
Speaker 2: subpoenas up and down the Eastern Seaboard, serving hundreds of
Speaker 2: activists like Anne Walsh, Paul Cooming, and Bob Kinnane. They
Speaker 2: arrested eight, including Ted Glick and Phil Berrigan, for conspiracy.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we were arrested, taken to the county jail.
Speaker 2: Telling them they were no longer fit to live in society,
Speaker 2: and scaring the shit out of them with threats of
Speaker 2: life in prison.
Speaker 11: Harrisburg were people charged with planning to kidnap Henry Kissinger
Speaker 11: and blow up the steam pipes under the Pentagon. This
Speaker 11: is Jim Carroll, which were ideas put forth in wild, irresponsible,
Speaker 11: somewhat mad brainstorming sessions of Catholic peacenicks sitting around the
Speaker 11: living room late at night having had a few, and
Speaker 11: there was in the crowd, an FBI plant, an informant,
Speaker 11: and one of the piece knicks was describing some of
Speaker 11: these sessions in letters to Philip Beregon, who was in prison,
Speaker 11: and the letters were intercepted by the government.
Speaker 2: Remember Boyd Douglas, the incarcerated man who helped plan the
Speaker 2: Flower City conspiracy with Ted Glick and spirited messages to
Speaker 2: phil Berrigan on the inside, Well, he was showing every
Speaker 2: one of those letters to the FBI.
Speaker 11: Those letters were the basis of the charges brought against
Speaker 11: eight people, including the Berrigans, charges of conspiracy to kidnap
Speaker 11: Henry Kissinger. They weren't going to kidnap Henry Kissinger. They
Speaker 11: were going to make a citizens arrest. That's the way
Speaker 11: they talked about it.
Speaker 2: Vover's indictment was an important experiment. He was looking for
Speaker 2: a new playbook for crushing descent in the US, and
Speaker 2: he felt like if this grand jury could drain the
Speaker 2: movement's resources in an endless court proceeding, he could all
Speaker 2: but immunize the government to unrest. And those in the
Speaker 2: movement now knew they had to respond, and they began
Speaker 2: trading blows with the most powerful man in Washington, DC.
Speaker 2: In Boston. Sarah's wish for a draft board to raid
Speaker 2: was granted when Paul Cooming returned triumphantly to the gang
Speaker 2: after only three weeks in jail following his sanctuary. Now
Speaker 2: on probation, he crashed once again with Marianne and Sarah
Speaker 2: in their new Dorchester digs on Bowden Street. And he
Speaker 2: was ready for more action, lunatic that he was.
Speaker 4: And there was some talk locally here about doing a
Speaker 4: smaller draft board, just making things happen so that they
Speaker 4: were constantly happening. So there was a plan to do
Speaker 4: the Summerville draft board.
Speaker 2: Sarah, Paul, Marianne and a few others planned a little
Speaker 2: action to keep the government off balance.
Speaker 11: Me.
Speaker 3: I think there was a fairly small group.
Speaker 7: I don't think there was more than eight of us
Speaker 7: or nine of us all together that we're doing it.
Speaker 2: They chose a draft board in Powderhouse Square Park, right
Speaker 2: next to Tufts University. It was the oldest stone building
Speaker 2: in Massachusetts, used by the British as a gunpowder magazine
Speaker 2: and the run up to the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I can remember casing it and saying, my god,
Speaker 7: I've never seen such a simple building. You know, it's
Speaker 7: just one floor. I mean, anybody can draw our three
Speaker 7: dimensional picture of it.
Speaker 2: Sarah, Paul and some of the others would sneak in
Speaker 2: through the first floor window in the back while Marianne
Speaker 2: sat in a parked car a block away acting as
Speaker 2: a lookout.
Speaker 4: I mean it would never go inside a draft board
Speaker 4: for fear of getting arrested and of what would happen
Speaker 4: to the kids.
Speaker 3: So I would support in many, many other ways.
Speaker 2: Marianne's job was to watch for passing police cars and
Speaker 2: alert the raiders she saw if anything.
Speaker 7: Happened, flashing her lights twice or something like that in
Speaker 7: the car if somebody was coming, you know, like a cop,
Speaker 7: cow was coming by or something.
Speaker 2: They were lest we forget the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
Speaker 4: So I was in a car, I had my walkie talkie,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden I picked up some wine,
Speaker 4: some radio Cebe channel, and this couple are having Cebe
Speaker 4: Channel sex.
Speaker 8: She stap there.
Speaker 5: I didn't dare shut it off because I well, I
Speaker 5: didn't know what would happen if I ever had a use.
Speaker 2: Well, Marianne became more and more engrossed in a steamy
Speaker 2: dialogue on her radio. Sarah and Paul in black painted
Speaker 2: sneakers and hockey team flashlights, broke into the powder house.
Speaker 4: They got in through some windows in the back and
Speaker 4: they went right to the files, got all the files.
Speaker 4: I mean, they were in and out and no time
Speaker 4: at all, and it was done.
Speaker 2: Back in Dorchester, Sarah and Marianne took their cue from
Speaker 2: Paul's Newhaven action and mailed back the one A file
Speaker 2: to the draftees until they ran out of postage.
Speaker 4: And then we went to Miles Standish Park and had
Speaker 4: a bonfire.
Speaker 3: With the rest of them.
Speaker 2: Miles Standish, the British Navy captain who once said war
Speaker 2: is a terrible trade, but when the cause is just
Speaker 2: the smell of gunpowder is sweet.
Speaker 4: So as we're driving, we're all in the car and
Speaker 4: we have all the files in the trunk.
Speaker 12: And Joe and I were in the back seat, Chrissy,
Speaker 12: Marianne's daughter, Call and my mom were in the front seat,
Speaker 12: and in the trunk which was in the front, they.
Speaker 2: Had a beetle.
Speaker 12: Of course, there were draft cards that had been stolen.
Speaker 4: And we're driving to burn the files and these car
Speaker 4: pull us over.
Speaker 3: Every heart in the whole car just stopped.
Speaker 12: I think my mom drank a sip. She had like
Speaker 12: a coke, a can of something, and they thought it
Speaker 12: was beer or something and pulled us over. And it wasn't.
Speaker 3: The cops that we were drinking, and that's why they
Speaker 3: pulled us over.
Speaker 2: If that cop inspected the vehicle. Given Hoover's declared war
Speaker 2: on the Catholic left in the recent timing of the
Speaker 2: Harrisburg indictment, they would go away for a long time.
Speaker 2: But the gods smiled that night and the cop let
Speaker 2: them go with a warning.
Speaker 3: We drove away just oh my god.
Speaker 12: I just remember being anxious a lot like that something
Speaker 12: was going to happen, like people were getting arrested, like
Speaker 12: people were going to jail, and my mom was doing stuff.
Speaker 3: That might get hurt.
Speaker 12: Like I was like, wait, they can just come and
Speaker 12: take the people that you love out of your house.
Speaker 3: It made me very anxious.
Speaker 2: Deeply spooked. Sarah, Paul, Marianne, and the kids continued to
Speaker 2: mile Standish Park, where, despite their pounding hearts, the burning
Speaker 2: one a files smelled sweet. Sarah, after the Somerville raid,
Speaker 2: decided she could no longer linger in Boston as Patrick
Speaker 2: and mary Anne fell deeper in love.
Speaker 9: What are we saying goodbye to to a phase, to Patrick,
Speaker 9: to our mission at the center, to what there's a
Speaker 9: piece of me I don't give away the wayfaring stranger
Speaker 9: part that doesn't want to say we, that won't fall
Speaker 9: off any cliffs.
Speaker 3: That is alone.
Speaker 2: Sarah soon left Boston. She left Marianne to her secret
Speaker 2: affair with Patrick, and Patrick to his devolving mess at
Speaker 2: the Paulit Center. She brought Paul coming home with her
Speaker 2: to New Jersey, where her father lay dying from cancer.
Speaker 7: I had gone to Sarah's house with her when her
Speaker 7: father was very ill with cancer. The night were there,
Speaker 7: her father died during that night that we happened to
Speaker 7: be there, so I stayed around for the funeral, and
Speaker 7: siblings all came back to the house.
Speaker 2: The war between the Catholic Left and the FBI was
Speaker 2: complicated for Sarah Tosi in particular. As LeeAnne Mosha tells us, you.
Speaker 13: Know, Sarah Tosi's brother was an FBI agent, and most
Speaker 13: of the FBI agents were Irish Catholic.
Speaker 9: I'm still reacting from seeing my brother. It is so strange.
Speaker 9: I barely know him now. We get along, but that
Speaker 9: is all I want so badly to talk to him,
Speaker 9: my brother, not to his job, but the person.
Speaker 2: She wrote letters back to Marianne and Patrick from Jersey.
Speaker 9: I think my FBI brother is coming to visit next week.
Speaker 9: I'm dying to find out what he knows about Barrigan,
Speaker 9: but I don't think he'll tell me. I'm trying to
Speaker 9: think of something vaguely safe to talk about.
Speaker 3: I haven't thought of anything yet.
Speaker 2: This cultural divide among siblings was very common in households
Speaker 2: at the time, with older siblings born before World War
Speaker 2: Two baffled by their crazy younger sisters and brothers.
Speaker 9: Last time he was here, he threw my friends out
Speaker 9: of the house and said they were a disgrace.
Speaker 3: To the family. Wonder if I'm next. And it was
Speaker 3: what cleaved the generations.
Speaker 4: Siblings three or five years older than you were completely
Speaker 4: on the other side of the divide, so your parents
Speaker 4: and siblings would be here and those of us who
Speaker 4: had actually been caught up and part of this, what
Speaker 4: we were experiencing is an incredible awakening and liberation and
Speaker 4: understanding or over here, and there could have been one
Speaker 4: hundred years, a century could have passed as between us.
Speaker 2: So Sarah, the newly minted draft board raider and her
Speaker 2: FBI brother are navigating their differences, and here was her guest,
Speaker 2: Paul cooming very much a person of interest with the FBI,
Speaker 2: sharing a roof with a g.
Speaker 7: Man and her brother came back. I'm realizing that he
Speaker 7: doesn't know who I am, at least I believe he
Speaker 7: doesn't know. So it was a little bit uneasy. But
Speaker 7: got up one morning and he was cooking breakfast for everybody.
Speaker 7: So I pitched in and I said, here, I'll help.
Speaker 7: So he taught me how to make omelets and nice
Speaker 7: and neat. We hit it off great and talked and
Speaker 7: joked as we served breakfast to everybody.
Speaker 3: The FBI were everywhere.
Speaker 2: At this point, Hoover's FBI had surrounded the Catholic left.
Speaker 14: So yes, the FBI kept tabs on me and so
Speaker 14: many other people.
Speaker 13: I kept a record, and I think I still have
Speaker 13: a piece of paper with all the people who told
Speaker 13: me that they were visited by the FBI because they
Speaker 13: were in my you know, my paper address book.
Speaker 4: I started to be followed very heavily by the FBI,
Speaker 4: and we knew it, but you kind of don't believe it.
Speaker 3: In a certain way.
Speaker 10: I assume that my telephones were tapped. See what here,
Speaker 10: somebody saying something in the background. Actually, when you're talking
Speaker 10: on the phone.
Speaker 7: They encouraged people to believe in their own paranoia. So
Speaker 7: they encouraged people to believe that there was an FBI
Speaker 7: agent lurking somewhere in the background everywhere.
Speaker 15: Now I'm being watched closely. I mean, I have FBI
Speaker 15: around me all the time. They've become to my house,
Speaker 15: my mother's house.
Speaker 10: Every week.
Speaker 2: If you were in the movement, FBI agents would follow
Speaker 2: you wherever you went and make sure you knew it.
Speaker 2: They would visit your parents twice a week, sometimes for
Speaker 2: a year at a time. They would conspicuously dig through
Speaker 2: the trash of your parents' neighbors to create a sense
Speaker 2: of scandal. The FBI even followed Marianne's sister in law's
Speaker 2: brother in case they could get any information out of him.
Speaker 2: Hoover's testimony to the Appropriations Committee had granted him a
Speaker 2: thousand new agents whose sole job was to crush descent,
Speaker 2: which it could be argued, is a bit undemocratic. But
Speaker 2: the resistance was about to deal a very decisive blow
Speaker 2: to j Edgar Hoover himself.
Speaker 7: I can't tell you anything about it, because I'm still
Speaker 7: of the mind that I don't know who did it,
Speaker 7: and I can't tell you that I did it or
Speaker 7: didn't do it, So I can't tell you anything about
Speaker 7: that break in. That was an agreement made a long
Speaker 7: time ago that I haven't officially heard it. It has been
Speaker 7: called off so agreement not to say, not even to
Speaker 7: whether that you didn't participate, because to say you didn't participate,
Speaker 7: then they'd have a smaller group of people to look
Speaker 7: at and be able to find them easier.
Speaker 6: And I have.
Speaker 7: Never been told officially otherwise, so I stick to that story.
Speaker 7: It was a great action.
Speaker 2: I recorded this interview with Paul Cooming in August of
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine. And for those of you keeping
Speaker 2: score at home, yes, this show has been in production
Speaker 2: for a very long time. Media Pennsylvania media action subroup
Speaker 2: called Media Pennsylvania.
Speaker 16: That Media rate Media Pennsylvania.
Speaker 17: The Media Pennsylvania experience was a really interesting Media.
Speaker 14: Pennsylvania, very dramatic breaking in Media Pennsylvania.
Speaker 17: Oh, it's always been a secret. I have a little
Speaker 17: suspicion who did it, you know, It was always like
Speaker 17: nobody say anything.
Speaker 2: But then in twenty thirteen, Betty Medsger of The Washington
Speaker 2: posted a book about this particular action in Media Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Her book finally revealed the identities of the people who
Speaker 2: pulled off the craziest break in perhaps in American history.
Speaker 2: Media Pennsylvania was where the resistance broke into an FBI office.
Speaker 18: And here's where the Catholic left does its counter attack
Speaker 18: on the FBI.
Speaker 2: Historian Charles M.
Speaker 18: Konez, now, they're getting to a point where they're suppressing
Speaker 18: dissent before it happens. That's the beginning of the end,
Speaker 18: not beyond the war. That's the beginning of the end
Speaker 18: of democracy in this country. That's what authoritatian redictatorial powers do.
Speaker 18: It's the first thing they do is they crushed descent.
Speaker 18: Then they can do whatever the hell they want. That's
Speaker 18: where the idea of we got a counter attack against
Speaker 18: the FBI.
Speaker 2: With Hoover loaded for bear, it was the movement's turn
Speaker 2: to give him a decisive poke.
Speaker 19: Everybody who was active in the movement knew that the
Speaker 19: FBI was trying to intimidate, suppress, and spy on the movement.
Speaker 2: This is Keith forsythe.
Speaker 19: They weren't out there trying to put the mafia in jail.
Speaker 19: They were spending their time hassling movement people. It wasn't
Speaker 19: the kind of thing that the person on the street
Speaker 19: necessarily was aware of, but everybody who was active not.
Speaker 2: Keith was radicalized against the government's suppression of dissent when
Speaker 2: he heard an audio recording of the massacre at Jackson State,
Speaker 2: an HBCU, where police opened fire on protesters, killing two students.
Speaker 2: He dropped out of college to devote himself full time
Speaker 2: to opposing the war in Vietnam. He was driving a
Speaker 2: cab in Philly when he got a phone call from
Speaker 2: a prominent fellow activist and professor.
Speaker 19: He called me up on the phone and said, you
Speaker 19: want to go to a party, which was code for
Speaker 19: do you want to be involved in an action? And
Speaker 19: I said, yeah, I'm always up for a party. We
Speaker 19: made an appointment to meet someplace to talk, and if
Speaker 19: you went for a walk in the woods, that made
Speaker 19: it really hard for them to record you.
Speaker 2: When they met, the professor shared his dismay over Hoover's
Speaker 2: undemocratic crushing of dissent and asked Keith if he'd consider
Speaker 2: breaking into an FBI office to prove Hoover's wrongdoing.
Speaker 19: If we can get evidence of this and publicize it
Speaker 19: through the newspapers, you know that's going to back them off,
Speaker 19: at least to some extent.
Speaker 2: In Flower City, ted Glick and his crew had hoped
Speaker 2: to just vandalize the FBI office that happened to be
Speaker 2: next to the draft board, But in this case they
Speaker 2: were specifically targeting an FBI office and most importantly, planning
Speaker 2: to steal all the files inside top secret documents that
Speaker 2: would mean a lot more to the government than the
Speaker 2: addresses of would be inductees.
Speaker 19: This was going to be different. For one thing, the
Speaker 19: risks were a lot higher. Potential jail time we assumed
Speaker 19: was going to be much greater when you're breaking into
Speaker 19: a draft board. At least in those days, you didn't
Speaker 19: have any expectation. A nobody's going to be in there,
Speaker 19: and b if they are in there, they're not going
Speaker 19: to be armed. But with the FBI, they're definitely always armed,
Speaker 19: and we're going to try to find a time when
Speaker 19: we're not in there. But suppose we make a mistake.
Speaker 2: And they called themselves the Citizens Commission to investigate the FBI.
Speaker 19: Now we knew that if we were successful, they would
Speaker 19: really put on the heat, so we had to be
Speaker 19: very careful about not inviting anybody who had loose lips.
Speaker 2: The FBI Field office in downtown Media was on the
Speaker 2: second floor of a mixed use building at one Veterans Square.
Speaker 2: It had office spaces on the first two floors and
Speaker 2: two floors of apartments above. The first thing Keith Forsyth
Speaker 2: did was a walk by of the FBI office door.
Speaker 2: He went to Goodwill to buy a cheap suit so
Speaker 2: his hippie clothes didn't make him conspicuous. Then he casually
Speaker 2: strolled down the second floor corridor past the bureau office.
Speaker 19: My verdict was, it doesn't get any better than this
Speaker 19: because you walk into the building off the street, there's
Speaker 19: no restrictions. The doors are open all the time because
Speaker 19: there's people living in the building. You walk up to
Speaker 19: the second floor, take a left, and there's the front
Speaker 19: door to the FBI office.
Speaker 2: One look at the lock on the door, and Keith
Speaker 2: knew it was possible, and.
Speaker 19: They got one lock on the door. That's the same
Speaker 19: as the lock on my front door. It'll take me
Speaker 19: two minutes to get through that door. That's how it
Speaker 19: looked at that.
Speaker 2: Point, so a group of nine Raiders, handpicked by the
Speaker 2: professor for their discretion, began meeting regularly.
Speaker 19: I'm going to say probably at least a couple months,
Speaker 19: because we would meet periodically, you know, to go over
Speaker 19: maps and talk about casing observations.
Speaker 2: Keith Forsyth took a correspondence course on locksmithing and spent
Speaker 2: those months practicing and getting his time down so that
Speaker 2: when he picked the lock in a public hallway he
Speaker 2: could do it quickly. Then, to get a sense of
Speaker 2: the inside of the FBI office, the Raiders posed as
Speaker 2: a Swarthmore student writing an article about opportunities for women
Speaker 2: in the bureau. She went into the office and interviewed
Speaker 2: an agent, writing notes with gloves on and clocking the environment.
Speaker 2: No locks on the filing cabinets, no alarms on the
Speaker 2: doors or windows. As she was leaving, she pretended to
Speaker 2: be confused about the exit and stumbled deeper into the office,
Speaker 2: catching a glimpse of its alcove spaces plan in place.
Speaker 2: The Raiders chose the night of March eighth, nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: one because that was the night of the boxing match
Speaker 2: between Joe Fraser and Muhammad Ali, a fight that had
Speaker 2: basically become a referendum on the Vietnam War in popular culture,
Speaker 2: dubbed the Fight of the Century. Literally everyone in the
Speaker 2: world would be tuning in and no one would notice
Speaker 2: a group of business people entering the building at one
Speaker 2: Veteran Square in Media, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 19: You know, I got a haircut. I was wearing a
Speaker 19: white shirt and a tie, and a sport coat and
Speaker 19: a trench coat and some nice leather driving gloves, so
Speaker 19: I wouldn't leave any fingerprints.
Speaker 2: On fight night, they staged themselves at a nearby holiday inn.
Speaker 10: Somebody rented a motel room, and that's where that's where
Speaker 10: he stayed. Sort of all met together and then came
Speaker 10: and went as our assignments dictated.
Speaker 2: That's Bob Williamson. Like Keith Forsyth, Bob had also dropped
Speaker 2: out of college to oppose the war full time. He
Speaker 2: was known back then to his friends as weed X.
Speaker 2: Bob had already done some raids with Paul Cooming and
Speaker 2: Anne Walsh. He joined them in a draft board raid
Speaker 2: in Delaware, where, just like in Philly, they hid in
Speaker 2: janitor's closets. Bob was a card.
Speaker 10: I felt nervous, so I figured everybody else might feel
Speaker 10: nervous too. So I decided that I was going to
Speaker 10: tell a.
Speaker 2: Joke and tonight he was part of the inside team
Speaker 2: that would go in and retrieve the files.
Speaker 10: Keith goes in first because he's got to get the
Speaker 10: door open.
Speaker 2: Keith walked into the building with his lock picking tools
Speaker 2: and a crowbar up his sleeve.
Speaker 19: And I go into the building. I go up to
Speaker 19: the door. I go over to the lock and just
Speaker 19: about had a heart attack because there was a second
Speaker 19: lock added to the door that hadn't been there two
Speaker 19: weeks earlier. It was not a standard lock, it was
Speaker 19: a high security lock.
Speaker 2: It was one of those circular keyholes like on a
Speaker 2: Kryptonite bike lock.
Speaker 19: So I'm like, what the hell has going on here?
Speaker 19: All of a sudden, on the night of the action,
Speaker 19: there's a brand new lock on the front door, and
Speaker 19: I'm trying to figure out how this happened. Is this
Speaker 19: a coincidence, which generally I don't believe in. Is there
Speaker 19: some kind of a leak and they knew we were coming?
Speaker 19: But if they knew we were coming, why would they
Speaker 19: put a lock on the door. Why wouldn't they just
Speaker 19: put twenty agents inside? And wait for us to come inside.
Speaker 19: Nothing made sense.
Speaker 2: Keith went back to the holiday inn with bad news
Speaker 2: for the crew.
Speaker 19: Said I can't pick this lock tonight.
Speaker 10: He held it together and just had the presence of mind
Speaker 10: to say, Okay, I'm gonna need to talk to people
Speaker 10: and see what planned he's going to because plant ain't
Speaker 10: gonna work.
Speaker 19: And so people were saying, well, like what can we
Speaker 19: do to salvage it? And somebody said what about the
Speaker 19: second door?
Speaker 2: When the other raider had gone into the office incognito
Speaker 2: as a Swarthmore student, she had noticed a second door
Speaker 2: to the corridor was blocked with a massive filing cabinet.
Speaker 19: And I'm like, oh yeah, the second door. Sure enough,
Speaker 19: there was just one standard lock on that.
Speaker 10: And i gotta say, man, I take my hat off.
Speaker 10: He has stones.
Speaker 19: So I picked that in no time. But then there
Speaker 19: was a dead bolt on the other side. So meanwhile,
Speaker 19: I'm hearing the building manager underneath me listening to the radio.
Speaker 19: He's like, his living room is right underneath me. So
Speaker 19: I'm like, how much noise can I make before he
Speaker 19: hears me? So figured, well, we'll find out.
Speaker 2: He could hear the building supervisor's radio downstairs and he
Speaker 2: waited for a swell of crowd sounds during the fight.
Speaker 19: So I put the pride bar in there and broke
Speaker 19: the dead bolt off and tried to do it as
Speaker 19: fast as possible so it didn't like make a creaking sound,
Speaker 19: It just went bang. And so now I could open
Speaker 19: the door a whole inch. And then and there was
Speaker 19: a giant filing cabinet full of papers up against the
Speaker 19: door behind that, so I had to move that out
Speaker 19: of the way. And the office floor was carpeted, and
Speaker 19: this giant thing was super top heavy, so if he
Speaker 19: started to push the doorknob just started to tip it.
Speaker 19: The building manager was directly below us the room, right
Speaker 19: underneath where I was, so I couldn't drop that thing down.
Speaker 19: So I went back to the car, got the jackpost
Speaker 19: out of the trunk, stuffed it up underneath my trench
Speaker 19: coat so you couldn't see it, walk back into the
Speaker 19: building using the Pride boy, I finally got the door
Speaker 19: open enough that I could at least get the tip
Speaker 19: of the jackpost in there, and then started slowly moving
Speaker 19: that file cabinet a fraction of an inch at a time.
Speaker 2: And don't forget Keith was doing all this in a
Speaker 2: public hallway in an apartment building.
Speaker 19: I'm laying down on my back on the floor of
Speaker 19: the hallway with my legs braced against one side of
Speaker 19: the hall a hall pulling on this four foot steel
Speaker 19: pole with two hands, but nobody came into the hallway.
Speaker 19: Finally got it open enough I could squeeze in so that,
Speaker 19: you know, it would be easy for people to get
Speaker 19: in and out. And then I taped the lock, you know,
Speaker 19: put a piece of tape over the latch so wouldn't relatch.
Speaker 19: Pushed the door to and left, and went out and
Speaker 19: called the motel room and told them that it was
Speaker 19: a go, that it was ready for the inside team.
Speaker 10: I was the flashlight guy that night. It was all
Speaker 10: taped up with electrical tape except for a pinhole in
Speaker 10: the center.
Speaker 2: Bob Williamson and three others pulled up to the building
Speaker 2: and their business attire and filed in carrying empty suitcases.
Speaker 2: They pushed the second door open and shimmy past the
Speaker 2: filing cabinet, turned.
Speaker 10: The flashlight on to shine it on the file drawer
Speaker 10: so that they could see what they were looking at.
Speaker 10: But other than that, there were no lights in the office.
Speaker 10: While we were working. Everybody goes to their file, or
Speaker 10: isn't They just started opening them and going through them.
Speaker 10: I think most of the files that were in there
Speaker 10: were files that we glanced at quickly and thought we
Speaker 10: should take so as quickly as we could, we just
Speaker 10: loaded the suitcases up and got out of there. I
Speaker 10: don't think we were in there for more than twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: Keith was parked outside waiting for the inside team to
Speaker 2: file out of the building.
Speaker 19: And they come out carrying these suitcases and load them
Speaker 19: into the back of the car.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. The County courthouse also sits on
Speaker 2: Veteran Square, just like the office building. And there was
Speaker 2: a security guard pacing in front of the courthouse.
Speaker 19: And the security guard in the County Courthouse is standing
Speaker 19: there watching us through the glass door.
Speaker 2: On his watch. Four business people filed into the building
Speaker 2: carrying four suitcases and filed out twenty minutes later.
Speaker 19: We didn't stand out, you know, we're a bunch of
Speaker 19: white people wearing suits in downtown media across from the courthouse.
Speaker 19: And then what could be more.
Speaker 2: Normal sweating bullets. They drove the files to a remote
Speaker 2: farmhouse owned by sympathetic Quakers, they popped champagne and got
Speaker 2: to work sorting the resistance had hit back at Hoover's FBI.
Speaker 10: I think the total number of documents that came out
Speaker 10: of that burglary was about a thousand documents.
Speaker 19: The first thing we did was to sort everything into
Speaker 19: two piles, the political pile and the criminal pile. Very
Speaker 19: roughly speaking, the piles were of the same size. So basically,
Speaker 19: from that sample, you could say the FBI was spending
Speaker 19: half of their time spying on Americans who weren't doing
Speaker 19: anything illegal and trying to prevent them from speaking out.
Speaker 2: And it really didn't take them long to find some
Speaker 2: seriously fudged up shizz, like the FBI harassing a boy
Speaker 2: Scout troop in Oregon for becoming pen pals with some
Speaker 2: Russian kids, or agents keeping tabs on black student unions
Speaker 2: on college campuses across the United States, or an FBI
Speaker 2: agent starting rumors of infidelity about an activist couple and
Speaker 2: successfully breaking them up, or the FBI intending to enhance
Speaker 2: paranoia and activist groups and encouraging the sense that there
Speaker 2: was an agent behind every mailbox. But the piece de
Speaker 2: resistance was the revelation of Hoover's co Intel Pro.
Speaker 14: These people made off with huge amounts of documents, FBI documents.
Speaker 14: It was an amazing you might say, a bit of revenge.
Speaker 2: Historian Howard Zinn.
Speaker 14: The FBI had been collecting information on Americans. You know,
Speaker 14: now information was being collected about the FBI, and now
Speaker 14: what the FBI was up to was revealed. And what
Speaker 14: was revealed was that the FBI had broken the law.
Speaker 14: They were revealing a secret program of the government of
Speaker 14: the FBI called co intel pro the counter intelligence. This program,
Speaker 14: which involved break ins into people's homes and offices, secret
Speaker 14: letters sent to members of the anti war movement, though
Speaker 14: supposedly anonymous, letters trying to stir up conflict among different
Speaker 14: parts of the anti war movement.
Speaker 2: The Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI then did something
Speaker 2: rather ingenious. They took their stolen documents and placed them
Speaker 2: in pre addressed envelopes. Then they put those envelopes inside
Speaker 2: of larger envelopes and mailed them to accomplices around the country.
Speaker 2: That way, when the pre addressed documents finally arrived in
Speaker 2: the hands of intended congressmen and press outlets, they appeared
Speaker 2: postmarked from around the country. Several Congressmen immediately turned the
Speaker 2: files back over to the FBI. The New York Times
Speaker 2: and the LA Times immediately did so as well, but
Speaker 2: The Washington Post decided it was too important. The FBI
Speaker 2: was conducting illegal surveillance of American citizens based on their
Speaker 2: political opinion, and as turn of the century Supreme Court
Speaker 2: Justice Lewis Brandeis once said, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Speaker 2: The co Intel propapers, as they came to be called,
Speaker 2: created a massive scandal for the previously revered Federal Bureau
Speaker 2: and its director.
Speaker 14: The FBI had sent a letter, sort anonymous letter to
Speaker 14: Martin Luther King suggesting that he commits suicide. These papers
Speaker 14: that were stolen from the FBI in the break in, well,
Speaker 14: they became published very great embarrashment to the FBI. If
Speaker 14: I think by the had the romantic idea of how
Speaker 14: smart the FBI is, they learned differently.
Speaker 7: JF. Hoover was pretty insulted that some of us somehow
Speaker 7: got it away with that and released it to the press.
Speaker 2: The papers also confirmed to the Catholic anti war movement that,
Speaker 2: just as they'd suspected, the FBI was trying to perpetuate
Speaker 2: a kind of psychological warfare to discourage ordinary citizens from
Speaker 2: proto testing the war.
Speaker 7: But that they encouraged that paranoia, and that they had infarmas,
Speaker 7: and that the farmers encouraged that kind of paranoia to
Speaker 7: think that there, you know, the wire the phones were
Speaker 7: tapped all over the place, and some were some were.
Speaker 17: They were programmed to think that they could like intimidate us.
Speaker 17: Bob Kanaane, they just look at an ordinary citizens who
Speaker 17: objected to the government, you know, and it was really
Speaker 17: very disappointing.
Speaker 19: God, they were a mean loss the media.
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania raid would lead to the first congressional investigation of
Speaker 2: US intelligence agencies in United States history.
Speaker 15: Hoover was apoplectic for the first time cookie these anti
Speaker 15: war people who he always you know, was after we
Speaker 15: had the most popular support.
Speaker 2: Now Hoover was now more motivated than ever to grind
Speaker 2: the Catholic left into dust under the heel of his
Speaker 2: wing tipped shoe. The raiders in media, Bob Williamson, Keith Forsyth,
Speaker 2: and six of the Americans agreed to never speak of
Speaker 2: it again.
Speaker 10: We had agreed because of the efforts that the FBI
Speaker 10: was making to try and find out who had done
Speaker 10: it that we just wouldn't. We wouldn't meet again as
Speaker 10: a group.
Speaker 2: And they remained anonymous for over forty years.
Speaker 18: After media the Harrisburg trial came crashing in or at
Speaker 18: least all the pre trial stuff.
Speaker 2: Hoover was now out for blood. The following month, in
Speaker 2: April of nineteen seventy one, Paul Cooming, Cookie Ridolphe, and
Speaker 2: Anne Walsh were among one hundred witnesses subpoenaed to appear
Speaker 2: before Hoover's grand jury in Harrisburg, the one that initially
Speaker 2: was set up to investigate the bombing of the steam
Speaker 2: tunnels and Kissinger's would be citizens' arrest, but since those
Speaker 2: were weak cases to begin with, based merely on brainstorming sessions,
Speaker 2: in the wake of media the grand jury hearing had
Speaker 2: evolved into what many movement lawyers felt was a fishing expedition.
Speaker 2: The government was hoping that subpoena testimony would yield some
Speaker 2: more offenses and defendants would be caught up in a
Speaker 2: giant dragnet that would spell the end of the movement
Speaker 2: and maybe all movements.
Speaker 16: They really wanted to send us to prison. It was
Speaker 16: becoming too much of a popular movement. Too many people
Speaker 16: were doing this, so they took one hundred people. They
Speaker 16: called one hundred people to a grand jury in Harrisburg.
Speaker 15: I had been subpeded to the grand jury for the
Speaker 15: Harrisburg case.
Speaker 2: Cookie the indictment came.
Speaker 15: Out naming those I think it was eight people of Harrisburg.
Speaker 15: Eight and then there was a list of other people
Speaker 15: who they considered unindicted co conspirators.
Speaker 2: The first witness called was Paul Koming. Paul, Smiling, refused
Speaker 2: to testify. Instead, he passed around a statement in which
Speaker 2: he vowed non cooperation with any branch of the US
Speaker 2: government prior to a war crimes tribunal holding it accountable
Speaker 2: for its inhumane use of power to crush the population
Speaker 2: of Vietnam. The government then offered Paul immunity, and he
Speaker 2: still refused, so they promptly indicted him with criminal contempt.
Speaker 2: When Anne Walsh was called, she sat in the courtroom
Speaker 2: during a recess and pulled out four photographs from her
Speaker 2: pocketbook and stared at them. The pictures were of North
Speaker 2: Vietnamese civilians killed in Hanoi by American bombers. Then she
Speaker 2: stood up marched over to the chief prosecutor of the
Speaker 2: DOJ held the photos up to his face and said,
Speaker 2: this is what the movement is all about. One of
Speaker 2: the pictures was of a twenty eight year old pregnant
Speaker 2: woman sprawled on the ground. She said, this woman is
Speaker 2: the same age I am, only she is dead. Her
Speaker 2: eyes filled up as she continued. She said, I want
Speaker 2: to talk to you as a human being, one human
Speaker 2: being to another. Anne and the prosecutor were two of
Speaker 2: the only people in the courtroom during this recess. Finally,
Speaker 2: the chief prosecutor responded saying, I don't have any special
Speaker 2: insights into the problems of the war, of the ghetto
Speaker 2: of the country, but we have laws and we have
Speaker 2: to uphold them, and we have to keep dissent in
Speaker 2: legal limits. Finally, he said to her, you hold the
Speaker 2: key to the jail. All you have to do is testify,
Speaker 2: to tell the truth. She shook her head. I can't,
Speaker 2: she said, my conscience won't allow me. Shortly after this exchange,
Speaker 2: it was Anne's turn to take the stand, and.
Speaker 16: They showed us pictures of virtually are really good friends
Speaker 16: and saying do you know this person? And you had
Speaker 16: to keep saying I refuse to answer this on the
Speaker 16: grounds that it may incriminate me, which made you look
Speaker 16: like a coward or something. It put you in a
Speaker 16: really weird position.
Speaker 2: Hoover's DOJ had dragged one hundred witnesses to Central PA
Speaker 2: and the hopes that just one would crack.
Speaker 16: But a one hundred people did not break set. They
Speaker 16: refused to betray their friends.
Speaker 2: Everyone, and I mean everyone in the whole Catholic left
Speaker 2: pled the fifth without talking to each other beforehand, because
Speaker 2: Catholics can be kind of like a pail of fish hooks.
Speaker 2: You can't pick up one without it being in a
Speaker 2: tangled mess with a bunch of others. With this crowd
Speaker 2: of do gooders and hell raisers, the DOJ was going
Speaker 2: to have its hands full. The government, however, was not
Speaker 2: quite done with Anne Walsh.
Speaker 16: And out of the hundred, they chose a fifty five
Speaker 16: year old non named sister Joe Ziegan, who was president
Speaker 16: of Marymount College, and me to say, if you don't
Speaker 16: tell us, we're going to send you to jail for
Speaker 16: an inja term in time.
Speaker 3: So you know that's what I was prepared to do.
Speaker 16: Anyway, it sounded very much like the convent in some ways,
Speaker 16: you know, like a red brick building was grass, isolated,
Speaker 16: boring in some ways, you know.
Speaker 2: And started living out her days as if she was
Speaker 2: on borrowed time.
Speaker 16: So I kept going to lunch, and my last lunch
Speaker 16: was always like a tune or fish sandwich in a
Speaker 16: vanilla frapp. Every time I was in court, I was ready.
Speaker 16: I had given my clothes away, my only possessions.
Speaker 3: I said goodbye.
Speaker 2: I said goodbye.
Speaker 16: I mean a million times I said goodbye to people
Speaker 16: because I thought I was okay now that I had
Speaker 16: to go pay the dues right here.
Speaker 2: An Walsh's lawyer launched an appeal, which started winding its
Speaker 2: way through the legal system. While the threat of arrest
Speaker 2: hung over her head like a sword of Damocles. And
Speaker 2: as prison gets you thinking long term, Ann began to
Speaker 2: wonder about the rest of her life, and her thoughts
Speaker 2: landed on her old father, confessor from the convent, Bob
Speaker 2: Canane from the Milwaukee fourteen.
Speaker 3: So at the time Bob was just coming back from Milwaukee.
Speaker 16: Weren't you or you just back? Are you just back
Speaker 16: from prison? It's the most sweetly embarrassing.
Speaker 3: Tale thing to tell.
Speaker 16: Once we started working together, because I really really attracted
Speaker 16: to him and thought it was like really possible that.
Speaker 19: He might like me back.
Speaker 2: A mutual friend who lived with Bob on a commune
Speaker 2: outside Boston pulled Anne aside one day and.
Speaker 16: She said, of course, Bob Kane's in love with you.
Speaker 16: You know, he talks about you all the time. So
Speaker 16: I said, well, I think I'm going to write a letter. Okay,
Speaker 16: now all our friends are friends in common now, so
Speaker 16: that if he doesn't love.
Speaker 3: Me back, I'm going to be like a fool.
Speaker 16: So I'm going to have to move to some English
Speaker 16: speaking island because I won't be here to be able
Speaker 16: to be in his company.
Speaker 3: I'll feel like a fool. So I wrote the letter.
Speaker 2: But this was a complicated thing for Ann to do.
Speaker 2: The future in the past or all at war inside
Speaker 2: a progressive Catholic's heart.
Speaker 16: But I was a traditional to the core girl, right,
Speaker 16: and a girl didn't say you do you want to date?
Speaker 16: Let alone?
Speaker 3: Do you want to spend the rest of your life
Speaker 3: with me?
Speaker 16: Because I got a big, wicked crush on you, So
Speaker 16: it was like, really, Chancy.
Speaker 17: It pushed me, I must say, to make a decision
Speaker 17: that point. I mean I had thought about it. If
Speaker 17: I hadn't really kind of made a decise. So I
Speaker 17: sat down for a good afternoon and just thought about it,
Speaker 17: thought about what it would mean, everything decided, Yeah, I
Speaker 17: think I'd go along with that.
Speaker 2: But we're talking about a priest and a next nun.
Speaker 2: So when it came to romance, they're both kind of rookies.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 16: And it was like a little tough going because we
Speaker 16: didn't eat that now how to do relationships like, we
Speaker 16: didn't have a big dating history.
Speaker 2: Perhaps Anne was doomed to prison, but she and Bob
Speaker 2: were in love and headed into an uncertain future together.
Speaker 2: Jim Carroll was among many people who traveled to Harrisburg
Speaker 2: during this time. He went to support Anne Walsh, whom
Speaker 2: he worked with at BU, and to participate in some demonstrations.
Speaker 11: The Harrisburg trial was an occasion of great celebrations of
Speaker 11: resistance and many many people showing up in Harrisburg to
Speaker 11: protest the government intrusions against the peace movement.
Speaker 2: Jim's father was a general in the Air Force and
Speaker 2: his brother was in the FBI, so he also carried
Speaker 2: the extra burden of scandalizing his family with his anti
Speaker 2: war activities.
Speaker 11: And I was in a crowd at one point and
Speaker 11: this foul smelling vagrant fellow sidled up to me and
Speaker 11: he whispered, I won't tell on you if you don't
Speaker 11: tell on me. And it was my brother who's there undercover,
Speaker 11: watching all of us, and he didn't tell on me,
Speaker 11: and I didn't tell on him until years later.
Speaker 2: Of course, Sarah Tosi had a fed brother, Jim Carroll
Speaker 2: had a fed brother. You'd be forgiven for mistaking this
Speaker 2: for one big Catholic planet of lawbreakers and lawmen driving
Speaker 2: each other crazy. And now Hoover was about to make
Speaker 2: good on his wish to publicly destroy the Catholic Left.
Speaker 2: Despite the uncooperative witnesses, the Harrisburg Grand Jury delivered a
Speaker 2: new superseding indictment of seven movement leaders, including Phil Berrigan.
Speaker 2: A massive trial was scheduled for the following February. A
Speaker 2: giant mobilization and defense committee would soon begin, which would
Speaker 2: inevitably drain the movement of all of its resources and energy.
Speaker 2: Hoover had zeroed in on exactly how to crush unrest.
Speaker 2: This would be the movement's waterloo. The Catholic Left, as
Speaker 2: they knew it was dead.
Speaker 7: Until the call came from Believe Cookie Ridolphie she said,
Speaker 7: look at we're doing on board down here in Camaden,
Speaker 7: New Jersey, and we need some help.
Speaker 2: Hoover hadn't counted on the indomitable spirit of the Catholic resistance,
Speaker 2: A big pail of fish hooks with a lot of sticktuitiveness.
Speaker 7: And I said, sure, I can do it. And she
Speaker 7: asked if we could bring any other out. So Sarahtosi
Speaker 7: was there.
Speaker 6: We drove down and.
Speaker 2: Hidden in an East Coast federal building was a draft board,
Speaker 2: an FBI office, and an office of military intelligence. Camden,
Speaker 2: New Jersey, just over the bridge from Philly, was a
Speaker 2: perfect place for a showdown with j Edgar Hoover, Paul Cooming,
Speaker 2: Sarah Toosi, Cookie Radolphie, Leeann Mosha, Keith Forsyth, Bob Williamson,
Speaker 2: and about twenty two others would descend on Camden for
Speaker 2: the biggest raid they would ever attempt to pull. But
Speaker 2: this time they were walking into a trap. They had
Speaker 2: a plant.
Speaker 10: You know about this, don't you.
Speaker 13: He came to one or two meetings and decided this
Speaker 13: didn't sit right with him, so he went immediately to
Speaker 13: the FBI to tell us what we were doing, and
Speaker 13: they said, great.
Speaker 2: Hang in there. Divine Intervention is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: It's produced by Wonder Media Network and it was created
Speaker 2: and written by me, your host, Brendan Patrick Hughes. Our
Speaker 2: outlandishly nimble producers are Carmen Borca Correo, Abby Delk, Palomo Moreno, Jimenez,
Speaker 2: Grace Lynch, and myself. Our editor is the inestimable Grace Lynch.
Speaker 2: Scoring production from Adrian Bain for Wonder Media Network. Our
Speaker 2: executive producers are Emily Rudder and Jenny Kaplan for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The late Sarah Tosi
Speaker 2: was voiced by Carly Pope. Our theme and end credit
Speaker 2: music was composed and performed by Perfect Human Tanya Donnelly
Speaker 2: and mastered by the also perfect Ben Aarons. This is
Speaker 2: Brendan Patrick Hughes. Thank you for listening to Divine Intervention.