Speaker 1: Previously on SNAFU.
Speaker 2: FBI record stolen from the media Pennsylvania office showed that
Speaker 2: one goal of the bureau was to spread that very
Speaker 2: impression among left wing organizations that there was an agent
Speaker 2: behind every male box.
Speaker 3: We just knew that Hoover was beside himself that this
Speaker 3: had happened. He dispatched two hundred agents to flood the
Speaker 3: Philadelphia area to find us.
Speaker 4: Who decided, We're not getting together as a group ever again.
Speaker 1: We really parted ways.
Speaker 5: I knew that the only way that they could find
Speaker 5: us was through somebody talk.
Speaker 6: It had been three and a half months since the
Speaker 6: media burglary, and the FBI's hunt for the burglars was
Speaker 6: going nowhere. They'd interviewed hundreds of suspects but failed to
Speaker 6: turn up anything useful. All the fingerprints they could identify
Speaker 6: from the crime scene turned out to belong to FBIA Jens.
Speaker 6: The g men even hired a quote unquote staple expert
Speaker 6: to examine the packets of stolen documents distributed by the burglars,
Speaker 6: but shockingly, his conclusion that at least five different types
Speaker 6: of staples had been used did not lead to a
Speaker 6: major breakthrough. The FBI was grasping at Staples. But all
Speaker 6: that changed on June twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one, three
Speaker 6: and a half months after the Media burglary. On that day,
Speaker 6: a contractor named Bob Hardy walked into an FBI office
Speaker 6: in Camden, New Jersey, just a stone's throw from Media, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 6: and handed the FBI exactly the break they'd been looking for.
Speaker 6: Hardy was fair haired, with a square jaw and big ears.
Speaker 6: He told the agents that he knew some people who
Speaker 6: were planning on burglarising the local draft board office in Camden.
Speaker 6: Here's Betty Medzger.
Speaker 3: He had just learned that some friends were planning on
Speaker 3: raiding a draft board, the Camden draft Board, and that
Speaker 3: he liked them and he would like to help protect
Speaker 3: him from doing that. But they thought the FBI ought
Speaker 3: to know that some people were thinking of this, and.
Speaker 1: Not just any random people.
Speaker 6: The leaders of wait for it, the Catholic Peace Movement. Suddenly,
Speaker 6: out of nowhere, the Medburg investigation had a promising lead
Speaker 6: that they hadn't found an ounce of evidence to prove it.
Speaker 6: The FBI had been assuming, literally since day one, that
Speaker 6: those dastardly pastors and parishioners in the Catholic Peace Movement
Speaker 6: were responsible for the media burglary.
Speaker 3: The FBI agents were thrilled, absolutely thrilled, because they just
Speaker 3: assumed that people in this group might be related to
Speaker 3: the media burglary, and so on the spot, he was
Speaker 3: hired as an informer.
Speaker 6: Hardy's FBI handlers instructed him to infiltrate the group planning
Speaker 6: the draft board raid and to do everything he could
Speaker 6: to keep the plot moving forward. Hoover monitored the situation closely,
Speaker 6: maybe even obsessively. He poured agents and resources into Camden,
Speaker 6: totally convinced that the media burglars were influential members of
Speaker 6: the Catholic Peace Movement. This was his chance to catch
Speaker 6: the people who'd embarrassed him red handed in the middle
Speaker 6: of another break in. Here's the thing, the Catholic Peace
Speaker 6: Movement and the citizens commissioned to investigate the FBI were
Speaker 6: not the same thing. Bill Davidon, architect of the media
Speaker 6: break in, had nothing to do with the Camden draft
Speaker 6: Board raid. In fact, he purposely excluded one of the
Speaker 6: Camden leaders from his plans in media because he knew
Speaker 6: the FBI was keeping close tabs on the guy. Hoover
Speaker 6: was taking a big swing based entirely on a hunch.
Speaker 6: But even a sumptuous, conniving, paranoid, racist, old broken clock
Speaker 6: is right twice a day, because, as it turns out,
Speaker 6: two of the media burglars were involved in Camden. And
Speaker 6: that's how Keith Forsyth and Bob Williamson fell right into
Speaker 6: the clutches of Jade Gar Hoover. I'm met Helms and
Speaker 6: this is Snaffo, A show about history's greatest screw ups.
Speaker 6: Season two medburg the story of a daring heist and
Speaker 6: the colossal FBI snaffoo. It exposed this week a failed raid,
Speaker 6: a triple cross, and the trial of the Camden twenty eight.
Speaker 1: In the wake of the media.
Speaker 6: Burglary, most of the participants laid John and Bonnie Rains
Speaker 6: swore off criminal activity for good. Judy Feinegeld left the
Speaker 6: East Coast all together and started a new life out west.
Speaker 6: But Bob Williamson wasn't quite ready to stop. Just a
Speaker 6: few months after the media action, he got a call
Speaker 6: from a friend telling him the usual suspects from the
Speaker 6: Catholic Peace Movement were planning a draft board raid in Camden,
Speaker 6: New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Bob wanted in.
Speaker 4: I said, Oh, Camden, that's my draft board. That was
Speaker 4: the draft board that I was registered in. I had
Speaker 4: gone to high school in Camden. I knew the city
Speaker 4: pretty well. There were large numbers of minority people and
Speaker 4: they were the ones that were getting drafted and sent
Speaker 4: to fight.
Speaker 6: Keith, fresh off his heroic pride barring of the media
Speaker 6: FBI office door, also got involved. He was determined to
Speaker 6: strike another blow against the war machine, even though he
Speaker 6: had some reservations about the size of the team.
Speaker 5: It just seemed like to me, there was like too
Speaker 5: many people, and an awful lot of brand new people
Speaker 5: that I wasn't quite sure exactly what they were doing.
Speaker 6: Keith had a point. The Camden crew was more than
Speaker 6: three times the size of the media group. There's a
Speaker 6: direct correlation between the number of people involved in your
Speaker 6: criminal plot and the chances of getting busted. In other words,
Speaker 6: there's a reason it was Oceans eleven and not Ocean's
Speaker 6: thirty eight ten.
Speaker 1: Ou to do it anything?
Speaker 7: Do you think we need one more?
Speaker 1: All right, we'll get one more.
Speaker 6: But then again, this was a much more complex job
Speaker 6: than the media break in.
Speaker 4: In order to get up on the fire escape, you
Speaker 4: had to pull down this ladder and some kind of
Speaker 4: alarm on it, so we cut the wire to that.
Speaker 4: There were a couple of tools that we needed to
Speaker 4: be able to get into the building.
Speaker 6: And maybe that's why the team was so quick to
Speaker 6: welcome a friendly neighborhood contractor named Bob Hardy.
Speaker 4: And walkie Talkies was one of them.
Speaker 6: They were a little expensive, but Hardy you always managed
Speaker 6: to come up with the tools the team needed.
Speaker 4: And gave us the impression that he'd paid for it
Speaker 4: with his own money.
Speaker 6: Hardy's handiness and extensive tool collection apparently made up for
Speaker 6: his lack of anti war credentials.
Speaker 4: Bob Hardy was not a pacifist. There wasn't anything about
Speaker 4: him that seemed that way. So in that sense, he
Speaker 4: just didn't seem to fit.
Speaker 5: Somebody had to go out and make a grocery run,
Speaker 5: and somehow or other it ended up being me and
Speaker 5: Hardy in his van and he said, well, if there
Speaker 5: is a problem with the guard, I got something for you,
Speaker 5: and he said it's in the glove compartment. So I
Speaker 5: opened the glove compartment and there's a revolver in there,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, are you nuts? You think I'm going
Speaker 5: to shoot a minimum wage guard to keep from going
Speaker 5: to jail for breaking into a draft board. What the
Speaker 5: hell is wrong with you? And I really should have
Speaker 5: told everybody about that.
Speaker 6: What Geek didn't know was that the van radio was
Speaker 6: bugged and the entire conversation was being broadcast directly to
Speaker 6: the FBI.
Speaker 1: The Feds had.
Speaker 6: Been watching the entire operation like hawks. In their minds.
Speaker 6: This had to be the same group that embarrassed them
Speaker 6: in media just a few months earlier, and this time
Speaker 6: the FBI was going to catch them in the act.
Speaker 6: As Bob Keith and the others prepared to break into
Speaker 6: the federal building, at least eighty g men and dozens
Speaker 6: of other federal agents took up positions nearby. Many waited
Speaker 6: within the building itself, but others had to hide inside
Speaker 6: a local funeral home, spending the evening in eerie silence
Speaker 6: with corpses for company in Washington. Hoover was up all
Speaker 6: night with Attorney General John Mitchell monitoring the situation in Camden.
Speaker 6: Throughout the evening, they exchanged calls with President Nixon, who
Speaker 6: was following along closely from his house in Orange County, California.
Speaker 6: Forget I'll leaversus Frasier for the President and his highest
Speaker 6: law enforcement officials. This was the fight of the century.
Speaker 6: After a delay of roughly two hours, they forgot their
Speaker 6: ladder and had to go back for it. The burglars
Speaker 6: entered the Camden Federal Building, home of the Camden Draft Board.
Speaker 6: This was an enormous and well guarded office building, equipped
Speaker 6: with an alarm system, and located right in the middle
Speaker 6: of the city, precisely the kind of target build Davidon
Speaker 6: wouldn't have touched with a ten foot pole.
Speaker 4: It was on one of the top floors, eighth floor,
Speaker 4: something like that of that Federal building.
Speaker 6: Bob and a few others scaled the fire escape and
Speaker 6: disconnected the alarm using a glass cutter. They made a
Speaker 6: hole in the office window. Now that they were in
Speaker 6: the inside crew removed draft files and placed them in sacks,
Speaker 6: passing them out the window to Bob. For about two hours,
Speaker 6: they quietly went about their work. Then just after four
Speaker 6: point thirty in the morning, the Feds swooped in.
Speaker 4: And then I hear this guy yelled freeze. I look
Speaker 4: around and he's got a gun pointed at me.
Speaker 6: Keith was at a secondary location with a few other
Speaker 6: members of the team. As soon as he heard a
Speaker 6: car pull up outside, it all clicked. Bob Hardy had
Speaker 6: sold them out.
Speaker 5: I mean, I realized it as soon as I heard
Speaker 5: his tire screech. I'm like, I was right. I'm a
Speaker 5: dumb ass. I should have said something. They came through
Speaker 5: the doors, guns drawn and put us up against the wall.
Speaker 5: One of them had a shotgun, so he pushes my
Speaker 5: face back up against the wall with the business end
Speaker 5: of the shotgun, which really pissed me off.
Speaker 4: And the FBI agent. Everybody's in a good mood among
Speaker 4: the FBI agents.
Speaker 6: And even though the Feds have just gotten one over
Speaker 6: on him, Bob can't resist the opportunity to wipe the
Speaker 6: smiles off their faces.
Speaker 4: And they had a cheer that went like this, am
Speaker 4: I allowed to say four letter words, go for it, man, Okay?
Speaker 1: So I said what do we eat?
Speaker 4: And they all yelled back eagle me and I said
Speaker 4: what do they eat?
Speaker 1: And they said, shit, what do we what do they sure?
Speaker 6: What do we? They Soon a young Dan Rather was
Speaker 6: announcing the dramatic arrests on CBS. The FBI arrested twenty
Speaker 6: persons in Camden, New Jersey, early today and charged them
Speaker 6: with trying.
Speaker 1: To steal draft records from the federal building there.
Speaker 6: The following morning, Hoover took a victory lap. He and
Speaker 6: Attorney General John Mitchell held a triumphant press conference to
Speaker 6: announce the arrests. This was a highly unorthodox, one might
Speaker 6: even say, petty thing to do, but hey, Hoover was
Speaker 6: feling himself. The FBI was about to turn a huge
Speaker 6: embarrassment into a massive victory. Hoover even wrote a letter
Speaker 6: to Henry Kissinger bragging about his success. He just caught
Speaker 6: the media burglars. It was only a matter of time
Speaker 6: before one of them confessed.
Speaker 4: I was in that room by myself, with handcuffed to
Speaker 4: the desk until about noon the next day.
Speaker 5: One of the FBI agents has a copy of I
Speaker 5: don't know Time or Newsweek or one of those.
Speaker 1: The cover story.
Speaker 5: The headliner on the cover story was America's prisons. How
Speaker 5: bad are they really? So the FBI agents going like
Speaker 5: this with the cover over like, pretending to read it,
Speaker 5: making sure we all see it, you know, I'm like, jeez,
Speaker 5: you guys are lame.
Speaker 6: Out of the group that came to be known as
Speaker 6: the Camden twenty eight Bob and Keith were the only
Speaker 6: ones with any knowledge of what happened in media.
Speaker 5: I wasn't worried because I knew Bob was going to talk,
Speaker 5: and I knew I wasn't going to talk, So you know,
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, send me to jail.
Speaker 6: Internal FBI memos, which Betty Medzger later unearthed, show that
Speaker 6: Hoover and his cronies were very pleased with the press
Speaker 6: coverage of the arrests, but increasingly concerned as the days
Speaker 6: wore on and nobody confessed to the media burglary hit
Speaker 6: him hard and turn the spotlight of public opinion against them.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: One of Hoover's deputies recommended in a memo, heavy pressure,
Speaker 6: he wrote, will likely serve as the means to obtain
Speaker 6: admissions regarding the FBI media burglary. That pressure came when
Speaker 6: the charges against the Camden twenty eight were announced seven
Speaker 6: felonies per person, meaning the possibility of decades in prison.
Speaker 4: Forty seven years would have been the maximum, And that
Speaker 4: was true for I think most of us in the
Speaker 4: twenty eight were facing forty seven. There were a few
Speaker 4: that were facing a little bit less.
Speaker 6: Eventually, the camped in twenty eight made bail and convened
Speaker 6: to strategize. They knew they had an easy way out
Speaker 6: plead guilty and they'd avoid the maximum sentence, maybe even
Speaker 6: avoid prison altogether. But as they conferred, they reached a
Speaker 6: surprising conclusion.
Speaker 4: We wanted to trial. By that time, we had time
Speaker 4: to get over the shock of the addressed and I was,
Speaker 4: for one, I was ready. I wanted to do it.
Speaker 5: I think it started with Father Doyle, and you know,
Speaker 5: he said that he thought that part of our witness
Speaker 5: against Vietnam was our willingness to suffer for our beliefs,
Speaker 5: and he thought it was important. The suffering was important,
Speaker 5: just like Jesus's suffering was important to him in religious terms,
Speaker 5: and so we should try to put the war on trial.
Speaker 5: That was also, you know, everybody agreed with that. That
Speaker 5: was unanimous.
Speaker 4: It was virtually inevitable that you are, we're going to
Speaker 4: get caught. That was not the end of the opportunity
Speaker 4: to further the cause of ending the war. That was
Speaker 4: another opportunity to persuade people that the war was wrong.
Speaker 6: They wanted a jury to hear their case, not just
Speaker 6: what they did, but why they did it.
Speaker 4: What we wanted was to persuade the jury that the
Speaker 4: war was wrong and that it had to be stopped,
Speaker 4: and that our action was an attempt to find a
Speaker 4: jury who would set us free and end the war.
Speaker 1: The Camden twenty eight was going to put the war
Speaker 1: on trial.
Speaker 4: Our idea was what's called jury nullification, where the jury says, yeah,
Speaker 4: you broke the law, but we think you did the
Speaker 4: right thing.
Speaker 6: Jury nullification means a jury can find a defendant not
Speaker 6: guilty even if they totally did the crime in question.
Speaker 6: The jury can rule that the law deserved to be broken.
Speaker 6: In other words, the morality of the situation trumps the legality.
Speaker 6: But jury nullification is a long shot, to say the least.
Speaker 6: It basically never happens. For this to work, the Camden
Speaker 6: twenty eight would need a hard break with traditional courtroom strategy.
Speaker 6: They'd have to connect with the jury on a human level.
Speaker 6: So contrary to what any reasonable defense attorney would advise,
Speaker 6: they decided they'd testify and explain in their own words
Speaker 6: why they broke the law. Some of them, Bob included,
Speaker 6: even chose to represent themselves in a typical criminal trial.
Speaker 1: This is a terrible idea because well, you're not a lawyer.
Speaker 6: But then again, this was not shaping up to be
Speaker 6: a typical criminal trial, and before it even began, there
Speaker 6: was one more tragic twist.
Speaker 8: Slowly began to realize that Bob Hardy, who had been
Speaker 8: working with us, had indeed been an informer.
Speaker 6: This is father Michael Doyle in an old interview. He
Speaker 6: was Bob Hardy's priest and one of the Camden twenty eight.
Speaker 8: I had known him for some years and his family,
Speaker 8: and I felt had been helpful to him, and indeed
Speaker 8: he to me.
Speaker 6: Father Doyle, an Irish immigrant, had recently guided Hardy through
Speaker 6: his conversion to Catholicism. After that, he'd been the one
Speaker 6: to invite Hardy into the group planning the Camden raid.
Speaker 8: So realizing that he had been the informer all along
Speaker 8: was hard for me, and I felt angry and upset
Speaker 8: and basically betrayed.
Speaker 6: A few weeks after the arrests, Bob Hardy was inside
Speaker 6: his house talking to a reporter. He told his son
Speaker 6: Billy to go play outside.
Speaker 8: Billy, who was nine years old, went out and, having
Speaker 8: nothing better to do, climbed a tree. But he fell,
Speaker 8: and he fell on a fence and tragically was impaled
Speaker 8: on the fence and he was a wonderful boy and
Speaker 8: I knew him very well. I remember particularly going down
Speaker 8: to see him in Cooper Hospital and sitting in the
Speaker 8: waiting room was Bob Hardie and Michael Rymer, FBI agent
Speaker 8: who was the Hardy contact for the CAMT in twenty
Speaker 8: eight uh, and I remember the three of us sitting
Speaker 8: on a couch. Somehow my mind was uh twisting in
Speaker 8: some kind of unreality. There was only one thing that
Speaker 8: was real, and that was a child was dying. And
Speaker 8: I remember driving out of that hospital that day and
Speaker 8: and banging on my no the h in front of
Speaker 8: my car, and just time on to feel the the
Speaker 8: feel of of something that was there and real. And
Speaker 8: he died on the third of October nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 6: Father Doyle conducted the funeral mass at his church in Camden.
Speaker 8: It was an extraordinary funeral in the sense that the
Speaker 8: family was there, and the Camden twenty eight was there,
Speaker 8: and some of its more active supporters were there, all
Speaker 8: of them supporting Bob Hardy and sympathizing with the family
Speaker 8: and their tragedy.
Speaker 6: So even facing decades in prison from Hardy's betrayal, the
Speaker 6: Camden twenty eight showed up anyway to support Hardy in
Speaker 6: his darkest hour. Meanwhile, just across the aisle sat a
Speaker 6: crowd of clean cut federal agents, some of whom Hardy
Speaker 6: had never even seen before.
Speaker 8: It would be hard to believe that a host of
Speaker 8: FBI agents who really didn't know Bob Hardy were there
Speaker 8: out of genuine human sympathy. He just had the feeling
Speaker 8: they were there to make sure of their man that
Speaker 8: he held up for their agenda, which was to convict
Speaker 8: the Canon twenty eight for j Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 6: In the aftermath of the funeral, Hardy talked to his
Speaker 6: wife about the upcoming trial.
Speaker 4: I think he just had an attack of conscience and
Speaker 4: he I think was touched by Michael's christian like behavior.
Speaker 6: Hardy decided he had to tell the truth, the whole truth,
Speaker 6: that he hadn't just been an informant, but also a
Speaker 6: provocateur helping the FBI make the break in happen. Hardy
Speaker 6: was still going to testify, but not as a witness
Speaker 6: for the prosecution. He was going to testify as a
Speaker 6: witness for the Camden twenty eight. On February fifth, nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy three, the trial of the Camden twenty eight began,
Speaker 6: and the same federal building where they'd been arrested. Betty Medsger,
Speaker 6: the journalists who had published the contents of the files
Speaker 6: stolen from media, was assigned to cover it. The lead
Speaker 6: prosecutor was John Berry.
Speaker 7: My principal concern going in was that it was going
Speaker 7: to be the swactive Clow.
Speaker 3: Was it a frustrating situation?
Speaker 7: Not at all, Not at all. I really didn't care,
Speaker 7: because the one thing we had in this case was
Speaker 7: substantial abinism was not.
Speaker 6: On the surface. Barry's task looked pretty straightforward. After all,
Speaker 6: the defendants weren't even pretending they hadn't done the crime. Plus,
Speaker 6: the judge, the Honorable clarks And S. Fisher, was conservative,
Speaker 6: an Army veteran who had been appointed by Richard Dixon.
Speaker 6: In the defense's opening statement, Father Doyle asked the jury
Speaker 6: who had really gone too far, the military that had
Speaker 6: waged a brutal war in Vietnam for twelve years, or
Speaker 6: the civilians simply trying to end it. He painted a vivid,
Speaker 6: shocking picture of the brutality of war, referencing the violence,
Speaker 6: bombs and bodies torn apart. But then it was time
Speaker 6: for the prosecution to call its witnesses. John Berry asked
Speaker 6: a long line of FBI agents the same questions. Did
Speaker 6: you see people break into the office?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Did they destroy draft board files? Yep?
Speaker 6: Are the perpetrators in this room? You betcha, there's a
Speaker 6: couple dozen of them right there. Agent after agent testified
Speaker 6: to the same basic facts. This went on for weeks,
Speaker 6: so it must have been a nice break in the
Speaker 6: monotony whenever Bob Williamson got up to cross examine the
Speaker 6: very agents who'd arrested him. This was Bob's chance. He
Speaker 6: stood in front of the court holding copies of the
Speaker 6: stolen media files.
Speaker 4: We weren't allowed to admit those documents as evidence because
Speaker 4: it couldn't be established, you know, what their provenance was.
Speaker 6: But he could still use them as he questioned the
Speaker 6: FBI agents. We don't have an exact record of what
Speaker 6: he asked, but you can probably imagine what the questions were, like,
Speaker 6: why was the bureau spying on college kids? Why were
Speaker 6: they tapping the phones of the local black panther office. Oh,
Speaker 6: and why did the FBI want Americans to feel like
Speaker 6: there was quote an agent behind every mailbox?
Speaker 4: The jury was paying attention to the questions that I
Speaker 4: was asking, and they were noting that the FBI agents
Speaker 4: were claiming that they had never seen or heard of
Speaker 4: that anywhere. Those FBI agents must have been exposed to
Speaker 4: some mysterious agent that destroys memories because they couldn't recall anything.
Speaker 6: The point of this wasn't to force some kind of
Speaker 6: confession out of the FBI agents. The point was to
Speaker 6: undermine them by reminding the jury of the abuses of
Speaker 6: power described in the files. Abuses of power that violated
Speaker 6: the constitutional right of American citizens to protest a war
Speaker 6: they felt was unjust. So compared to what the FBI
Speaker 6: had done, how bad was it really to tear up
Speaker 6: some draft files?
Speaker 4: It made our whole case of what the FBI was
Speaker 4: up to, that they wanted to enhance the paranoia of
Speaker 4: the civil rights movement and the anti war movement.
Speaker 6: After more than two months of testimony from the prosecution's witnesses,
Speaker 6: it was time for the defense to call theirs.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: In order to really make their case, they were going
Speaker 6: to need Judge Fisher to agree to some unusual motions.
Speaker 6: The defense was planning to call a number of people
Speaker 6: who technically had nothing at all to do with the
Speaker 6: Camden case. They weren't really there to testify about Camden.
Speaker 6: They were there to testify about Vietnam. This is from
Speaker 6: a private letter which Bob wrote to Judge Fisher two
Speaker 6: months into the trial.
Speaker 4: All of us need courage. Now you the defendants, the prosecutors,
Speaker 4: the jury, but perhaps right now you do most of all.
Speaker 6: He framed the trial and the judge's role in it,
Speaker 6: as a matter of personal courage. He told the judge
Speaker 6: that he was undertaking a fast, a tactic he'd learned
Speaker 6: from Gandhi. But Bob's fast wasn't a public spectacle. It
Speaker 6: was intended as a personal message to the judge, a
Speaker 6: demonstration of courage which he hoped the judge would reciprocate.
Speaker 4: I would not have undertaken this if I did not
Speaker 4: believe that you are capable of demonstrating this kind of courage.
Speaker 4: I will continue to fast until my sisters and brothers
Speaker 4: and I are free.
Speaker 6: Bob says the judge checked in with him frequently throughout
Speaker 6: the trial, that he seemed genuinely concerned for his well being,
Speaker 6: and while will never really know exactly what the judge
Speaker 6: was thinking, his actions were encouraging to Bob and the
Speaker 6: Camden twenty eight.
Speaker 3: As the case moved forward, he started ruling more in
Speaker 3: favor of them, and as it turned out, he started
Speaker 3: reading books about the Vietnam War who became genuinely interested
Speaker 3: in what was happening.
Speaker 6: It helped that the defendants presented themselves as respectable, conscientious citizens.
Speaker 6: If the judge had been expecting a rabble of pot smoking,
Speaker 6: foul mouthed hippies, what he got instead was a group
Speaker 6: of normal people expressing reasonable, principled opposition to the Vietnam War.
Speaker 6: Even John Barry, whose job was to put the Camden
Speaker 6: twenty eight in prison, seems to have liked them on
Speaker 6: a personal level.
Speaker 5: Mays, people were.
Speaker 7: Very hard to really dislike. I think that carry rot
Speaker 7: away from century.
Speaker 1: But Barry had a job to do.
Speaker 6: He needed to convict the Camden twenty eight, and the
Speaker 6: federal government needed him to prove the link between Camden
Speaker 6: and the media burglary. Soon he'd have his chance. It
Speaker 6: came when Bob Williamson called himself to the stand. He
Speaker 6: wanted to tell the jury his story, but his decision
Speaker 6: to do this came with enormous risk.
Speaker 4: We all knew that this would at least potentially open
Speaker 4: the door for the prosecution to start asking me, as
Speaker 4: they had with other defendants who had taken the stand,
Speaker 4: asked questions about my a prior involvement in other illegal activities.
Speaker 6: Bob told his story how Gandhi and Martin Luther King
Speaker 6: Junior had inspired him to work with the poor and
Speaker 6: to oppose all forms of violence. It was inspiring stuff.
Speaker 6: But then, of course came the cross examination, and John
Speaker 6: Barry wasn't interested in Gandhi, he was interested in media.
Speaker 4: So John Barry started immediately in asking me questions about
Speaker 4: other actions. And I said, I'm not gonna I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna talk about that. I'm not gonna help you prosecute
Speaker 4: my friends. So then all the lawyers are standing up,
Speaker 4: you know, trying to get the judge's attention.
Speaker 6: Was At this point, Judge Fisher had every right to
Speaker 6: tell Bob answer the question or you'll be held in
Speaker 6: contempt of court. If he did, Bob would have three choices.
Speaker 6: He could tell the truth, he could commit perjury, or
Speaker 6: he could refuse to answer and spend the rest of
Speaker 6: the trial in jail. But Judge Fisher didn't do that. Instead,
Speaker 6: he addressed John Barry, and the.
Speaker 4: Judge just looks at the prosecutor John Barry and says,
Speaker 4: mister Barry, it's clear he's not going to answer the question.
Speaker 6: Move on.
Speaker 1: Bob was off the hook, at least for now.
Speaker 6: Soon it was time for the other Bob, Bob Hardy,
Speaker 6: the handyman turned criminal turned FBI informant, turned tool supplier
Speaker 6: turned witness for the defense. Initially, the camp in twenty
Speaker 6: eight had considered an entrapment defense, arguing that the government
Speaker 6: had essentially baited them into their crime. The problem with
Speaker 6: that was, of course, they hadn't needed much baiting. They
Speaker 6: totally wanted to commit this crime, and.
Speaker 4: Trapman would not have applied in our case because none
Speaker 4: of us were reluctant to break into that draft board.
Speaker 4: But certainly they did everything they could to make sure
Speaker 4: that that action, you know, happened.
Speaker 6: Nevertheless, the government had done just about everything in its
Speaker 6: power to make sure the Camden twenty eight broke the law.
Speaker 6: In fact, there had been two occasions when the team
Speaker 6: had seriously considered calling it off until Bob Hardy came
Speaker 6: through with the tools they needed to keep going. Hardy
Speaker 6: had also given them crucial advice like teaching them how
Speaker 6: to use a glass cutter. That glass cutter and other
Speaker 6: tools that Hardy supplied had all been entered as evidence,
Speaker 6: so the Camden twenty eight brought them into the courtroom
Speaker 6: to prove that the FBI had been instrumental to the
Speaker 6: break in. One by one, Defense attorney David Carris picked
Speaker 6: up the tools and asked Hardy where they came from.
Speaker 4: They made a pile of all of the stuff that
Speaker 4: the government had paid for that we used in the
Speaker 4: brake in, and then another pile of the stuff that
Speaker 4: we had brought.
Speaker 6: To our own one pair of bolt cutters, FBI pile,
Speaker 6: one hammer FBI, one roll duct tape. Well, actually that
Speaker 6: came from Hardy's personal toolbox, but the walkie talkies the
Speaker 6: team used during the break in those had been supplied
Speaker 6: by the FBI.
Speaker 4: I think they bought a ladder so that we could
Speaker 4: practice ladder climbing, which cracked me up. They thought we
Speaker 4: needed to practice out of climb a ladder.
Speaker 1: When the crew needed a portable drill.
Speaker 6: One FBI agent had actually gone to his own house,
Speaker 6: gotten his own drill and given it to Hardy. It
Speaker 6: was starting to look like the FBI had been the
Speaker 6: driving force behind the whole operation.
Speaker 4: The government's pile was way bigger.
Speaker 1: It was a nice visual point.
Speaker 6: The defendants pile ultimately consisted of just four things, two
Speaker 6: drill bits, a quote small flat piece of metal, and
Speaker 6: a single can of V eight juice. I have to
Speaker 6: assume that they threw that in there for comedic effect.
Speaker 6: Next to that, in the middle of the courtroom for
Speaker 6: all to see, was the proverbial mountain of evidence that
Speaker 6: the FBI had facilitated a federal crime.
Speaker 1: In a trial this.
Speaker 6: Long, you have to do something to break the monotony.
Speaker 6: The Camden twenty eight often began the morning by asking
Speaker 6: to commemorate some unusual event or anniversary.
Speaker 1: With a moment of silence.
Speaker 6: On March eighth, nineteen seventy three, they asked the judge
Speaker 6: if they could begin the day by observing the second
Speaker 6: anniversary of the media burglary.
Speaker 7: I said, you are you know I must respectfully persist
Speaker 7: on this wise, I said, somehow seems to me to
Speaker 7: be totally inappropriate for a federal court to be commemorating
Speaker 7: the anniversary of an unsolved federal crime. So I judge
Speaker 7: looked at me, and he goes strike much recon and
Speaker 7: the defense glad like, yeah, you flying won.
Speaker 6: One thing was clear, things were happening in this courtroom
Speaker 6: that don't usually happen in courtrooms.
Speaker 7: A woman who was testifying, and basically she said, well,
Speaker 7: I can't express I can't express my views and words
Speaker 7: that have to do with music, and he allows for
Speaker 7: playing this good plot for about ten minutes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that one might have been a little overboard, putting
Speaker 6: aside the occasional guitar player. Other unconventional witnesses were much
Speaker 6: more substantive. A psychiatric specialist testified about the effects of
Speaker 6: war on the people experiencing at firsthand. The defense also
Speaker 6: called Major Clement Saint Martin, a former draft board administrator,
Speaker 6: which may seem like an odd choice, but he'd.
Speaker 4: Actually seen enough to realize that the system was racist
Speaker 4: because he could see the people getting drafted were poor
Speaker 4: and of color, and disproportionate to the you know, their
Speaker 4: percentage of the population, wildly disproportioned in some cases.
Speaker 1: And so he quit.
Speaker 4: Somebody asked him, you know what he thought of people
Speaker 4: breaking into draft ws. He says, if they do it again,
Speaker 4: I think I might join him.
Speaker 6: Another witness for the defense was Tron Hongtoyet, a woman
Speaker 6: who had emigrated from Vietnam. She took the stand and
Speaker 6: described life in her homeland before the American invasion and after.
Speaker 6: In the name of liberty, she told a silent court room,
Speaker 6: you have destroyed my country. Then came the defensive star witness,
Speaker 6: Howard zen Zen hadn't yet written his famous People's History
Speaker 6: of the United States, but he had helped publish the
Speaker 6: Pentagon Papers, newly leaked documents which showed the American government's
Speaker 6: true rationale for the war. That made him the perfect
Speaker 6: person to explain to a Camden, New Jersey jury that
Speaker 6: the US war machine was guilty and the Camden twenty
Speaker 6: eight were innocent.
Speaker 4: So he went into a lot of significant detail and
Speaker 4: just hammered home the point that while the government was
Speaker 4: telling our government was telling us, the American people, that
Speaker 4: this war was being fought to fight communism and to
Speaker 4: keep Vietnam Southeast Asia free, the actual motivation for the
Speaker 4: war and the reason why it was being continued at
Speaker 4: such great cost, had to do with the natural resources
Speaker 4: of the region, primarily tin, rubber, and oil.
Speaker 6: By this point, the Vietnam Wars toll was staggering. More
Speaker 6: than fifty eight thousand Americans had lost their lives between
Speaker 6: the armies of the North and the South. A million
Speaker 6: Vietnamese soldiers had died. We'll never know exactly how many
Speaker 6: pavillions were killed, but by nineteen seventy three the total
Speaker 6: was almost certainly higher than one million. In Zen's mind,
Speaker 6: there was no doubt millions of lives had been cut
Speaker 6: short and a nation burned for the sake of tin,
Speaker 6: rubber and oil.
Speaker 4: And he kept saying that over and over again, tin
Speaker 4: rubber and oil. It made a big impact on the jury.
Speaker 6: Betty Good, mother of one of the defendants, was in
Speaker 6: the audience that day, even though she didn't approve of
Speaker 6: what the Camden twenty eight had done. Missus Good had
Speaker 6: lost her younger son, Paul, when he was killed in
Speaker 6: action on June nineteenth, nineteen sixty seven. He was three
Speaker 6: months shy of his twentieth birthday.
Speaker 4: She went out into the hallway and the other women
Speaker 4: were there supporting her shoes, just bawling her eyes out
Speaker 4: because it had just dawned on her that the government
Speaker 4: had been lying to her too about why we were there,
Speaker 4: and she just felt so betrayed.
Speaker 1: She lost a son over tin, rubber and oil.
Speaker 6: Zinn's testimony concluded on a Friday. Over the weekend, missus
Speaker 6: Good asked her son if she could testify. She didn't
Speaker 6: tell him what she planned to say, so on Monday,
Speaker 6: her son called her to the stand and simply asked
Speaker 6: her about her life. Missus Good described herself as a conservative,
Speaker 6: someone who'd supported the war even after it claimed the
Speaker 6: life of her son, but that had finally changed. The
Speaker 6: following is an excerpt from Betty Good's testimony at the
Speaker 6: Camden trial, read by Betty Metzger.
Speaker 3: And I still, even until last Friday, I still tried
Speaker 3: to hang on to the theory that my boy died
Speaker 3: for his country. I realized, you know, it was pretty
Speaker 3: stupid of us. It was pretty stupid of us just
Speaker 3: wallow all that business about America being over in South
Speaker 3: Vietnam to save it from the Communist I really feel guilty.
Speaker 3: I feel guilty that we have satisfide and let them
Speaker 3: take our boys. Mister Zinn said it so beautifully when
Speaker 3: he said that they were kidnapped literally and taken ten
Speaker 3: thousand miles away from home. Why should these lives be
Speaker 3: cut down for tin rubber and oil.
Speaker 6: To his credit, John Barry decided there was really no
Speaker 6: benefit in the prosecution cross examining missus Good. She returned
Speaker 6: to the gallery. It was time for closing arguments. In
Speaker 6: his closing statement, Bob Williamson asked the jury what had
Speaker 6: more significance pieces of paper torn up in a draft
Speaker 6: board office or the bodies of soldiers and civilians torn
Speaker 6: to pieces and the countless families torn apart by the
Speaker 6: Vietnam War. And what was more offensive the Camden twenty
Speaker 6: eight's nonviolent crime or the government's tireless work behind the
Speaker 6: scenes to make it happen. In other words, Bob was
Speaker 6: simply asking whose motives offend you more hours or theirs.
Speaker 6: Judge Fisher told the jurors that if they decided there
Speaker 6: had been a quote intolerable degree of overreaching government participation,
Speaker 6: they could find the defendants not guilty. The trial had
Speaker 6: already lasted over one hundred days by the time the
Speaker 6: jury began its deliberations.
Speaker 4: Probably more than anything else numb, you know, because it
Speaker 4: had been such an exhausting experience. The jury was out
Speaker 4: deliberating for I think two three days seemed like it
Speaker 4: took forever. Nobody else wanted to say, Hey, I think
Speaker 4: they're going to find us not guilty. I didn't say
Speaker 4: it either, but I know that I felt hopeful. And
Speaker 4: then we get a phone call to go to the
Speaker 4: courtroom because the jury had reached a verdict.
Speaker 3: It was on a rainy Sunday afternoon. The word went
Speaker 3: out through a telephone tree that a verdict was about
Speaker 3: to come in, and so we all started driving to
Speaker 3: the Camden Courthouse. The courthouse was starting to fill up
Speaker 3: by the time I got there, and certainly all the
Speaker 3: defendants had arrived. Some of them had their children there,
Speaker 3: and the children were walking along the railings. I'm talking
Speaker 3: about very small children.
Speaker 6: As we waited, two hundred supporters of the Camden twenty
Speaker 6: eight packed the courtroom. Every seat was taken. People even
Speaker 6: stood shoulder to shoulder along the perimeter of the room.
Speaker 6: Judge Fisher entered and addressed the audience.
Speaker 3: He was concerned. He was concerned how the audience might react.
Speaker 3: He saw how big it was, and he said, we
Speaker 3: have to go through a lot of defendants and ask
Speaker 3: the jury foreman about each one on each count.
Speaker 6: Judge Fisher asked that there'd be no interruptions or outbursts.
Speaker 6: As the verdicts were read, he called the jurors in.
Speaker 6: They took their seats.
Speaker 3: They'd looked very, very tired, and so he called on
Speaker 3: the jury foreman and said, do you have verdicts? And
Speaker 3: he said he did.
Speaker 6: The accused sat shoulder to shoulder at long tables near
Speaker 6: the front of the room. They were two floors below
Speaker 6: the very draft board offices they had raided.
Speaker 1: Twenty one months earlier.
Speaker 4: So of course we're all very nervous in everything, but
Speaker 4: of course the adrenaline was just going crazy in my body.
Speaker 3: The judge began alphabetically with defendant Terry Buccaloo, and he
Speaker 3: asked the jury foreman what the verdict was on count
Speaker 3: one for Terry Bucaloo, and he said, not guilty.
Speaker 1: There was this sort of.
Speaker 3: Stunned feeling, and then the judge went through each of
Speaker 3: the of the counts and ask him the same question,
Speaker 3: and each time the jury foreman said, uh, not guilty.
Speaker 4: There was a kind of a murmur in the courtroom,
Speaker 4: and the judge says, to the four person, do you
Speaker 4: have any other verdicts on any of the other defendants
Speaker 4: that are different? On any of these counts. Foreman said no,
Speaker 4: your honor. So at that point it was bedlam.
Speaker 3: First, it was like people were sort of gasping, almost.
Speaker 3: The defendants were looking at each other in these at
Speaker 3: first puzzled ways, and then very happy, very grateful prase,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, and they started embracing each other. And the
Speaker 3: people in the in the audience were also stunned, and
Speaker 3: they started singing Amazing Grace, and it was a little
Speaker 3: difficult for them because many of them the tears were
Speaker 3: streaming down their faces as they were trying to sing.
Speaker 1: It just sounded beautiful.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was just it was just such the
Speaker 4: the perfect thought of, the perfect way to show our
Speaker 4: appreciation for what had just happened.
Speaker 3: The judge was smiling as he left the room. I
Speaker 3: was standing right behind the prosecutors, and then I realized
Speaker 3: that the Chief Prosecutor, John Barry, had walked from his
Speaker 3: position at the prosecutor's table over to the defendants. Everybody
Speaker 3: had that look of and what do I do on
Speaker 3: their faces, and he put out his hand to one
Speaker 3: of them, and as he shook hands, the handshake turned
Speaker 3: into an embrace of the defendant, and then he just
Speaker 3: kept moving from defendant to defendant, and then he walked
Speaker 3: back to his seat, and he turned around and he
Speaker 3: said to me, it ended the way it should have ended.
Speaker 3: I certainly don't think that any prosecutor in any anti
Speaker 3: war trial, and perhaps any case that I've ever known of,
Speaker 3: has said such a thing.
Speaker 4: I had to go to the bathroom, and so I
Speaker 4: went into the men's room, and there was like four stalls,
Speaker 4: and three of them were occupied, and one in the
Speaker 4: center was open. So I went to that one, and
Speaker 4: on either side of me was an FBI agent, And
Speaker 4: after we all finished our business, they both shook my
Speaker 4: hand and congratulated me and wished me luck.
Speaker 6: The defendants started to gather in the halls outside the courtroom,
Speaker 6: where they were welcomed by singing supporters and a throng
Speaker 6: of TV cameras.
Speaker 2: This was the scene in the courthouse lobby minutes after
Speaker 2: the not guilty verdicts were announced. More than one hundred
Speaker 2: relatives and friends were present as the defendant's two year
Speaker 2: ordeal ended.
Speaker 6: Betty Good, who had lost one son in Vietnam and
Speaker 6: had another son amongst the Camden twenty eight, couldn't believe
Speaker 6: the outcome.
Speaker 1: She was practically giddy with relief. I thought it would
Speaker 1: be a hung jury.
Speaker 3: But I didn't know any of the people accept my
Speaker 3: son and know the most beautiful.
Speaker 1: People in the world.
Speaker 3: I had to go back and convert my husband, not
Speaker 3: only my husband, but might family.
Speaker 6: But a husband's a good fellow.
Speaker 1: But you know he was, so he was who's afraid
Speaker 1: to come today?
Speaker 3: Because he was afraid, you know, that verdict would be bad,
Speaker 3: so he didn't come.
Speaker 6: It was clear to anyone watching this wasn't just a
Speaker 6: victory for the Camden twenty eight. It was a victory
Speaker 6: for every American who had fought to end the war
Speaker 6: in Vietnam.
Speaker 8: We did it.
Speaker 1: After five years.
Speaker 6: We finally made sense to them.
Speaker 2: We've been having a guilty, guilty, guilty for five years
Speaker 2: for proposing this war, and we finally got not guilty.
Speaker 1: The people understood.
Speaker 5: I was surprised, pleasantly, but still surprised. It was Sue
Speaker 5: was really intense. This group of twelve regular people were
Speaker 5: saying that we were right and the government was wrong.
Speaker 5: Far as I knew, none of these people had ever
Speaker 5: participated even you know, they hadn't even written a letter
Speaker 5: to the editor against Vietnam, let alone done anything else,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, damn, we are getting somewhere. It was
Speaker 5: a great victory for the movement.
Speaker 3: I remember turning around and seeing John and Vonnie Rains
Speaker 3: and they were all smiles and they were just very,
Speaker 3: very happy. There were some tears on their faces.
Speaker 6: John Rains would later say that at that very moment
Speaker 6: he decided he needed to go on a diet. He
Speaker 6: wanted to look good in a suit in case he
Speaker 6: was eventually arrested for the media burglary and went to trial,
Speaker 6: because the Camden verdict gave him hope that a potential
Speaker 6: trial might not send him straight to prison, but rather
Speaker 6: give him a platform to tell the world that his
Speaker 6: cause had been just and that the FBI's was not.
Speaker 6: The Camden twenty eight were free, and it wasn't just
Speaker 6: a victory for the defendants. It was also a massive
Speaker 6: embarrassment for the FBI. When the trial began, the bureau
Speaker 6: thought not only was this a slam dunk, but it
Speaker 6: would also be an end to the media saga, a
Speaker 6: satisfying conclusion where the g men put a whole bunch
Speaker 6: of bad guys behind bars, just like they did on
Speaker 6: that corny FBI TV show. Instead, the cracks originally exposed
Speaker 6: in the media, burglary had only split wider and the
Speaker 6: story still wasn't over.
Speaker 1: The whole damn dam was about to burst.
Speaker 6: Next week on SNAFU and flipping through the pages, I
Speaker 6: noticed one.
Speaker 1: It said Cohen Telpro new List.
Speaker 2: As for the records at FBI headquarters, they were put
Speaker 2: in a special file called the.
Speaker 1: Do not file.
Speaker 3: Subsequently, we learned to find a lot of those people
Speaker 3: where in fact not only agent Provoca tools but undercover officers.
Speaker 5: It's a very sad spectacle and that's just you know,
Speaker 5: one of probably two Salzaners.
Speaker 1: So cases like throughout the country.
Speaker 8: There has never been a full public accounting of FBI
Speaker 8: domestic intelligence operations. Therefore, this committee has undertaken such an investigation.
Speaker 6: Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and
Speaker 6: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
Speaker 6: season of Snaffoo is based on the book of the Burglary,
Speaker 6: The Discovery of j Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by
Speaker 6: Betty Metzger.
Speaker 1: It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan.
Speaker 6: Papelka, Mike Walbo, Whitney, Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and
Speaker 6: Betty Metzger. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martine.
Speaker 6: Producer is Stephen Wood. This episode was written by Albert Chen,
Speaker 6: Sarah Joyner and Stephen Wood, with the dish writing and
Speaker 6: story editing from Melissa Martino and Ed Helms. Tory Smith
Speaker 6: is our associate producer. Nevin Callapoly is our production assistant.
Speaker 6: Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
Speaker 6: Sensitivity consult from Olowa Kemi, Ala de Suiy, editing, sound
Speaker 6: design and original music by Ben Chugg, Engineering and technical
Speaker 6: direction by Nick Dooley. Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia
Speaker 6: Canny and Jimma Castelli Foley. Theme music by Dan Rosatto.
Speaker 6: Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Rizak.
Speaker 6: Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use
Speaker 6: some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy one. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens
Speaker 6: Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy Finegold,
Speaker 6: Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Rains, John Rains, Sarah Schumer and Bob
Speaker 6: Williamson
Speaker 2: Co