WEBVTT - 3. The Girl from Hartford 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:05.280 Last time on SNAPOO pursuing. 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:06.160 The executive order. 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:09.760 The Director's Selective Service is going to establish tonight a 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:15.840 random selection sequence or induction or nineteen. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:20.160 Seventy for Bill, dissent was at the heart of democracy. 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.919 How complicated would it be to go into the office. 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.600 If the FBI was spying on people? 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:32.400 Records of what kinds of the surveillance or disruption? 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:36.440 He's regarded it as a crime that needed to be solved. 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:40.080 He just called John and me and asked us, if 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:56.640 we want to come to a party. 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:50.559 You got to do what you got to do. You know, 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:53.239 you have to maintain your own personal integrity. 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:59.440 That's Keith Forsyth succinctly stating his personal philosophy. When Keith 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:01.920 entered cap College in Ohio in the fall of nineteen 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:05.800 sixty nine, he says he wasn't very political. But just 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:08.920 a year later, when Bill Davidan invited Keith to help 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:16.000 him burglarize the FBI, Keith said, yes, So what changed? Well, 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:18.440 it all started with a book and it. 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:21.720 Was called Piece in Vietnam. 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.440 It was a small paperback published by a pacifist Quaker organization. 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.720 A guy in Keith's dorm loaned it to him, it 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:32.360 told the history of the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese perspective. 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:34.120 You know, we went. 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.319 In there and tried to help the French maintain a 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:41.080 colonial ownership of the Vietnam and enslayed the people there. 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:44.000 When the French got tired, they got their ass. Kidd 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:47.199 of the NBN threw we picked up when they left off. 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.560 That book just blew me away. I mean, I can't 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:55.040 the emotional power that of the effect that had on me. 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:58.200 It was just really indescribles that was quoting. 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:02.920 But already knew the American government's justification for the war 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.040 that the Vietnamese people needed to be rescued from the 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:10.800 ever expanding chokehold of communism. But through extensive research, he 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.160 was learning a very different side of the story. Nothing 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:18.400 he could find justified America's role in Vietnam. He even 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:21.440 asked the State Department to make the case for the war, 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.400 but their response was not convincing. 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:27.680 And I still remember the phrase I was saying to myself, 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:32.200 this can't be true. This is America. I remember we were. 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:38.119 In the newsroom of the student newspaper or something, maybe 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:42.519 a graphic some leafless for in a Cambodian invasion protests, 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.600 and the news of Vatkan State came over the wire, 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:47.919 and you know, we're. 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:48.919 Just down a road from Kent State. 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.760 Keith and his peers were horrified by Kent State, and 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:57.120 he was even more shocked by what happened just two 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:01.040 weeks later at Jackson State in Mississippi, where local police 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:04.280 unleashed a barrage of gunfire on a dorm full of 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:08.920 unarmed black students, killing two young men. Heith heard the 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.360 police's official story, then he heard a tape of what 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:13.359 actually happened. 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:14.760 It was ten or. 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:18.120 Twenty rifles and distals and shotguns all being fired, you 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:18.680 know once. 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:21.280 Anyway, the story. 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:23.400 They circulated later that somebody shot at them and they 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:26.360 shot back was obviously bullshit. It was just all a sudden, 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:29.160 all this barrage and it sounded like a machine gun 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:32.360 wire And. 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:32.320 That was it for me. 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:40.240 Was already man, it was already feeling and raised and betrayed, 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:41.720 and after that it just multiplied. 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:46.080 Keith had already dropped out of school to protest the 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:47.000 war full time. 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:50.840 I felt that Vietnam war was a horrendous moral outrage. 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:53.160 It's no different than if you were walking down the 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.640 street and you saw somebody walk up to a stranger 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.200 and fill their brains out for no reason whatsoever. I mean, 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:00.840 you would have a reaction to that. 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:06.240 Heath headed for the epicenter of America's anti war movement, Philadelphia. 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:09.600 He got a job driving a cab, and he began 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:13.200 spending his nights with the local anti war movement burglarizing 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:17.599 draft boards. He became an expert in picking locks. He 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.160 actually got certified as a locksmith as part of his 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:24.599 training to burglarized draft boards. So by late nineteen seventy, 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:27.680 when Bill Davidon decided to break into the FBI. 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:33.240 He called me and asked me if I was interested 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.799 in going to a party, which was you know code. 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:40.520 It was the same called John and Bonnie Rains had received. 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:44.920 Bill was inviting Keith to join an action targeting the FBI, 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:47.920 and Keith didn't need much convincing. 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:53.000 When you're twenty years old, you do a lot of 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:56.360 things that you might think twice about later. I was 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:03.760 really really really really angry and really really really frustrated, 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:07.520 and I'm like, if we can up Deannie, let's do it. 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:16.360 I'm Ed Helms and this is Snaffo a show about 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:21.400 history's greatest screw ups. This is season two Medburg, the 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:25.760 story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI snaffo 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:30.839 it exposed this week how to break into the FBI. 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:47.839 Let's check back in with our professional heist consultant, Steven 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:51.839 Soderberg in the sort of typical heist film. 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:56.400 Each person has a specific skill set in a specific role, 0:05:57.040 --> 0:05:59.640 and it's fun to watch them perform that. 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.080 Keith Forsyth, who by the way, looked a little like 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.479 John Lennon in the early seventies, brought his aptitude for 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:07.240 lock picking. 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:10.159 It's really not hard and you can get through almost 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:14.560 any door twenty seconds if you, you know, are any good. 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:18.360 Also attending the party was Sarah Schumer, a professor and 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:22.680 colleague of Bill Davidan's. Sarah had been politically active since 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.479 the early days of the civil rights movement, so she 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.720 was no stranger to the inside of a jail cell. 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.640 You just assumed your phone was wiretapped, you know, if 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:37.200 you were an activist, you assumed you were followed one 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:37.920 way or another. 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:43.520 Ralph Daniel was a young graduate student in psychology. He 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.960 protested the war, but initially avoided anything illegal. He worried 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:52.240 getting arrested would interfere with his studies. Nevertheless, he apparently 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:56.040 drew the ire of a Philadelphia cop named Lieutenant Fenzil. 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:59.640 One day, Ralph was standing around not breaking the law 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.960 while some friends illegally chained themselves to the entrance of 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:04.000 a draft board. 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:07.719 Office, and Fencil I decided he arrested me, and he said, 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.120 I've seen you at too many demonstrations. I'm busting you 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:12.680 even though you're not chained. 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:18.000 So it's arguably Lieutenant Fenzil's fault that Ralph wound up 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:22.040 accessing his more rebellious, less law abiding side. 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:25.840 If rules seemed foolish, I typically would not follow them. 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:30.920 I was also twenty six. I still felt invincible the 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:32.600 way a lot of young people do. 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.040 And when Bill invited him to the party. 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:39.239 I said, sign me on. I didn't hesitate at all. 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.160 Next up Bob Williamson, a social worker steeped in the 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:46.800 non violent teachings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Bob 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:51.720 quickly realized that Philadelphia law enforcement was working against Philadelphians. 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:54.360 Nobody felt good when they saw a police car driveway. 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:57.480 They weren't providing any kind of a service to the community. 0:07:57.640 --> 0:07:59.560 It was like an occupying force. 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.240 So Bob dedicated his evenings to following cops with a camera, 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.080 policing the police. Eventually he fell in with the anti 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:10.320 war crowd and added draft board raids to his resume. 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.960 He also had a fondness for corny jokes that sort 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:15.720 of became something. 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.280 I was known for having an inappropriate sense of humor. 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:21.160 At the worst time. 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:26.560 Bill recruited Bob, and Bob recruited Judy fine Gold. Judy 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.120 was a military counselor at the American Friends Service Committee, 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.320 the same Quaker organization whose book about Vietnam changed Keith's life. 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:39.040 I was basically living my truth as pure as you 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:42.800 can live life, and I would go to work as 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:45.600 a military counselor trying to get people out of the 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:47.840 military that didn't want to be there anymore. 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:52.119 Legally, she was just nineteen, but she'd been actively protesting 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:56.040 the war since age twelve, literally growing up in the movement. 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:58.280 I just felt like I was living in the heart 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:00.520 of the dragon and it was just my job to 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.760 stop the fire, and this seemed like a way to 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:04.200 do it. 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:10.760 Bill approached two other people who we can't name. One 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:14.200 turned him down. The other said, yes, but we'll just 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:19.160 have to call him Burglar number nine. 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:20.320 Beno. 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.920 Remember that it's going to be important later, But for now, 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.960 Bill had his team. Some were married with children, while 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:32.960 some were practically still children themselves. Some had years of 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:36.679 experience conducting illegal anti war actions like draft board raides. 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.400 Others were taking that step for the first time. Some 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.840 of them were immediately identifiable as hippies I'm looking at you, 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:48.080 Keith and Bob, while others were clean cut professionals. But 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.200 despite these differences, they had a lot in common. They 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:55.720 hated the war, they cherished free speech. They knew they 0:09:55.760 --> 0:10:00.000 could trust Bill Davidan, and they did not trust ja 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:00.600 Edgar Hoover. 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:10.480 What a friend we have in whover freedom has no 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:22.679 true or for is your thinking left us? He will 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:24.120 get you in the. 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:31.080 That's folk singer Tom Paxton singing an ode to Hoover 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:35.120 in nineteen seventy. Obviously, he's joking about his admiration for Hoover, 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:37.960 but the thing about that song is most of mainstream 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:42.640 America probably agreed with it. Unironically at the time. Hoover 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:46.680 spent decades cultivating his in the FBI's image, and it worked. 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.200 He was your friend. But more than that, he was 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:51.000 your protector. 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:56.040 We are playing disaster if we do not soon take 0:10:56.120 --> 0:11:01.720 some positive action against the growing maldetary nation in this land. 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.760 It is that's Jay Edgar himself, striking a note he'd 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:11.080 play his entire career. America is on the verge of catastrophe, 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.400 and law and order conservatism is the only thing holding 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:15.640 us back from the brink. 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:20.160 He was a serious bureaucrat. He was a heavily anti 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:21.920 communist conservative. 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.480 That's doctor Daniel Chard, a professor of history at Western 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:29.320 Washington University. Hoover was born in eighteen ninety five, the 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:31.479 son of a government pencil pusher. 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.960 And came of age in Jim Crow, Washington, DC and 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:40.160 of what was then just the dominant cultural values of 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:41.599 white male authority. 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:46.520 It's truly impossible to overstate how much this guy loved authority, 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:49.920 and of course he loved America, or at least his 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:52.960 version of it. As a kid, Hoover rewrote the classic 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.440 story of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. You know, 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:00.000 I cannot tell a lie, but in Little j Edgar's version, 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:04.160 Washington's cousin Ike was responsible for axing the tree. I mean, 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:06.840 the point of that story isn't about chopping down a tree. 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.080 It's about being honest when it matters. But Hoover wasn't 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.360 concerned about honesty. He preferred his own story, where the 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:16.560 founder of our country was simply faultless. In the first place, 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:17.560 he didn't. 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:19.280 Like the Left. He held racist views. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:23.720 He was in a racist fraternity at George Washington University. 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:28.160 Dan's not just tossing that word around casually. Hoover's fraternity 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.000 had some very close ties to the KKK at the time, 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:34.400 as in a lot of guys were members of both. 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:38.040 Like the Klan, they were still mourning the loss of 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:42.760 the Civil War. Its members deeply revered Confederate General Robert E. Lee, 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:46.840 whom the fraternity referred to as quote the last gentle 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:53.880 night to pay for college plus fraternity dues. A young 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.560 Jay Edgar took a job at the Library of Congress. 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:00.720 There he began a lifelong love affair with organization and 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:05.360 meticulous filing systems. A racist with a passion for file keeping, 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:07.640 I wouldn't want to get stuck talking to that guy 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:08.960 at a party. 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:12.520 There is nothing mysterious about the meadow which the Federal 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:16.240 Bureau of Investigation is working formula is a simple one. 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:18.240 Oh wow, cool, okay. 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:24.000 Intensive training, casually investigated, Okay, highly efficient pressure they oh okay. 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.000 Plus rigid requirements in regard to conduct intelligence and integrity. 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:30.160 Listen, I'm just going to go. I'm going to get 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:30.720 a drink. 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.400 I'll be a special agents. Must be a good marksman. Yeah, 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:36.600 have the courage to shoot it out with the most 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:39.920 venomous of public. And you must know how to take fingerprints, 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:42.360 what to do with the math. Hey, must know that 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:42.920 no clue. 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:44.560 Sorry, sorry to cut you off. I just have to 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:52.679 I just have to go somewhere else now. Somehow, Hoover 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:56.000 managed to graduate law school without ever taking a class 0:13:56.040 --> 0:14:00.760 in constitutional law. That's like graduating from medical school without 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:06.319 ever taking a class on bones. The Justice Department didn't 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:09.760 seem to mind. They hired him anyway. Before long, he 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:11.679 was rising through the ranks. 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.000 And was involved in what were called the Palmer Raids 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:14.280 or the. 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.760 First National Red Scare, going after the radical labor movement 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:19.800 after World War One. 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:22.520 Hoover was only twenty four years old, and here he 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:27.520 was engineering the roundups and arrests of communists, socialists, anarchists, 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:31.880 black political organizers, and anyone who was suspected of being 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.560 any of the above. They were detained without due process, 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:40.560 and some were even tortured, all under Hoover's supervision. The 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:43.280 Palmer Raids, as they came to be known, should have 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:47.800 earned him a reputation for excessive brutality and violating the Constitution, 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:53.480 but apparently Hoover's superiors liked what they saw. Just shy 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:57.160 of his thirtieth birthday, the Justice Department named j. Edgar 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:03.680 Hoover the new head of its Bureau of Instigation. In 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:06.640 the nineteen thirties, Hoover's g men put the gangster machine 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:09.760 gun Kelly in prison for life and gunned down Public 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:14.560 Enemy number one, John Dillinger. Fun fact, Hoover kept Dillinger's 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:19.560 glasses and death mask in a display case outside his office, 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:22.840 and if that wasn't creepy enough, he invited agents in 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:25.720 training to come and make their own castings of the 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:31.720 death mask. Catching gangsters earned Hoover the appreciation of the 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:36.400 public and presidents alike. He expanded the bureau's reach, modernized 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:40.160 its approach to investigations, and hired thousands of new agents. 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.120 He was also particularly keen to pluck new hires out 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:47.840 of the same KKK adjacent fraternity of which he'd been 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:51.400 a member. Many of those men formed the foundation of 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:53.960 Hoover's new intelligence gathering juggernaut. 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:57.800 The changes the name in the thirties to the FBI 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:00.720 rather than just Bureau of Investigation. He build it up 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:04.560 as a very powerful organization with a lot of autonomy 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:10.200 from congressional oversight or executive oversight. 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:13.560 During the Red Scare of the forties and fifties, Hoover 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:16.480 did pretty much exactly what you'd expect him to do, 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.920 funneled information on suspected commies to Joe McCarthy and the 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.520 House on American Activities Committee. But even after the Red 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:25.960 Scare died down. 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.920 Mister Hoover, some people are saying today that communism is 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.080 no longer a danger to our country. 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:33.720 What is your opinion about that? 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:36.720 I think the Communism is as serious amens to the 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:38.720 United States as it ever was, if not more so, 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.240 because today you have in charge of the Communist Party 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:46.160 a hard core, fanatical group of members who are dedicated 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:48.560 to the overthrow of our government by FOSSEM and violence. 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:00.040 As the head of a federal agency, Hoover had to 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:03.120 go to Congress once a year to review his department's budget, 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:08.120 But unlike his peers, Hoover's hearings always happened in closed session, 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:12.040 no public, no press. Every year he'd give a version 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:13.000 of the same spiel. 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:17.320 You thought those rads were scary in nineteen seventy, boy, 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:21.160 let me tell you what they got planned for seventy one, and. 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:25.920 Every year Congress bought it, increasing the FBI's budget. Hoover 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:28.960 had learned to game the system. No one in America's 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:31.959 history held onto a high ranking position like Hoover's for 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:35.320 as long as he did. When he first got the job, 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:40.040 Calvin freaking Coolidge was president, and Hoover stayed in his 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:45.320 role through eight presidencies. He watched sixteen attorneys general come 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.160 and go. They all had the authority to fire him, 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:51.639 and some came pretty close, but none of them did. 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.520 It's probably not a coincidence that Hoover was also collecting 0:17:55.600 --> 0:18:00.320 dirt on public officials for decades. Suffice to say, Hoover 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:03.280 clung to his job like an angry barnacle. 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:09.360 His office had two layers. 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:12.959 He had a full office and then an interior office 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.080 within that, and he had what was called the official 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.359 and confidential files that were so secret he kept them 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:22.040 in there. It was known that he had intelligence files 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:24.080 on different congressmen. 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:26.320 He knew who John F. Kennedy was sleeping with, and 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:27.040 stuff like that. 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.680 On one level, this was probably pretty childish, a chance 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:34.679 to giggle at a senator's secret sexual proclivities, but really 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.560 showing off his collection of secrets served as a veiled threat. 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:43.120 You think that's embarrassing, well, just to imagine what I've 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:50.159 gone on you you you you threats of blackmail. Notwithstanding, 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:52.959 Hoover really should have been forced out in nineteen sixty 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:56.200 five when he reached what was the government's mandatory retirement 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:00.960 age of seventy. But despite being famously well endowed, google 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:03.040 it if you don't know what I'm talking about, Lyndon 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:07.120 Johnson lacked the balls to enforce that rule, so instead 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:08.240 he did this. 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:11.359 The nation cannot afford to LUGI, and therefore I have 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:16.080 just now signed an executive order exempting you from compulsory 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:19.000 TIMA for an indefinite period of time. 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.800 Hoover outlasted LBJ and was still in office when Nixon 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:27.240 took over. By that point, his penchant for blackmail was 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:31.080 something of an open secret, but overall his propaganda had 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.679 paid off. He was a conservative crime fighting hero, and 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:37.879 even if they didn't revere the guy, most Americans just 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:43.399 trusted him. He certainly had some strange obsessions. Here's a 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:46.640 direct quote from a memo Hoover wrote regarding new hires. 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:50.800 I recently saw a photograph of a favorably recommended clerical applicant. 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:54.639 This photograph reflected long sign burns and long hair in 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.920 the back, and two full on the sides. Please, when 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:02.000 interviewing applicants, be alert for long hairs, beards, mustaches, pear 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:03.960 shaped heads, truck drivers, etc. 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:07.160 I don't even know what that means, but now I'm 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:13.800 kind of worried. Honey, do I have a pear shaped head? Oh? 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:20.080 Thank god? Today. Some of Hoover's idiosyncrasies just sound goofy. 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:23.800 But to the men of Hoover's FBI, his word was gospel, 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:27.720 partially because Hoover's FBI tended to hire guys like Hoover, 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:32.359 meaning they were all guys and they were all white. 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.640 In nineteen sixty two, Attorney General Robert Kennedy publicly called 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:40.720 Hoover out over this. In response, Hoover promoted his black 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.960 chauffeur to the role of special agent. Of course, that 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:46.960 special agent kept driving Hoover's car. 0:20:47.720 --> 0:20:50.800 They're all white men exclusively. There's a lot of World 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:55.200 War Two veterans in the FBI. They're pretty conservative. The 0:20:55.280 --> 0:21:01.639 FBI recruited heavily among Catholics. They saw Catholics as people 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:06.720 who were kind of a cultured into being part of 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:10.160 an institution with a hierarchy that they would like listen 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:10.879 to authority. 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:14.760 By nineteen seventy, the FBI could be fairly described as 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.480 an army of many Hoovers, straight laced, serious minded white 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:21.560 men who tucked in their shirts, avoided sideburns like the plague, 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.359 loved God, hated communism, and had some sort of weird 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:31.359 thing against truck drivers. Apparently, the FBI's official motto was fidelity, bravery, 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:37.800 and integrity. Get it. Those are wonderful words with wonderful meaning. 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:41.879 But as the years passed, Hoover increasingly conducted activities that 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:49.040 did not mesh with those ideals. Back in those days, 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:52.000 tapping someone's phone involved placing a physical tap on the 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:55.680 actual phone lines. This meant if somebody was tapping your phone, 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:57.960 you might hear a telltelle noise. 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:01.080 You got on the phoney you heard quickly, but you know, 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:02.320 you knew. 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:02.960 Something was off. 0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:06.440 So even if they couldn't prove it, Tom Paxton and 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:09.800 others just kind of knew it was their pal j 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:11.280 Edgar on the line. 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:20.480 Does your telephone sound Puney, is some stranger standing by 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:27.320 standing by? Do not bother your revel. 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:29.000 Man. 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:33.640 Take it to the fv. 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:54.800 H up in Philadelphia. Bonnie Rains, her husband John, and 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:58.520 seven others had said yes when a quiet physicist named 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:03.399 Bill Davidon invited him to his quote unquote party. Despite 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:06.080 the fact that most of them hadn't met before Bill's party, 0:23:06.520 --> 0:23:10.680 they quickly bonded over their shared goal to expose FBI 0:23:10.840 --> 0:23:15.680 surveillance from the outset. The nine would be burglars agreed 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:18.760 that they would never tell another living soul what they 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:22.120 were about to do, and they also agreed on a name. 0:23:23.640 --> 0:23:26.480 The citizens commissioned to investigate the FBI. 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:32.800 We knew we had to identify ourselves in a particular 0:23:32.960 --> 0:23:35.960 kind of way. So it flipped the whole idea of 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:39.480 a commission that investigates this and a commission that investigates 0:23:39.520 --> 0:23:44.000 that to our responsibility to investigate the FBI. 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:47.600 It might have been a tad grandiose or sarcastic, like 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:50.480 referring to your cat as the acting director of vomiting 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:53.359 on the sofa cushion, but the name also pointed to 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:56.120 one of the core beliefs that all nine members shared. 0:23:56.840 --> 0:24:00.520 If the government wasn't going to hold itself accountable, duty 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:05.920 would have to fall to the citizens. Next step, pick 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:08.160 the target. I know we. 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:12.000 Discussed the possibility of doing the Philadelphia FBI office because 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:15.320 I went down and cased it in the daytime. If 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:19.119 the sign in books for the building still exists, my 0:24:19.280 --> 0:24:24.040 alias is in there. Probably Bill Travis, I'm guessing, was 0:24:24.080 --> 0:24:24.560 probably it. 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:29.960 The Philadelphia FBI office was an impenetrable citadel smack dab 0:24:30.000 --> 0:24:33.000 in the center of downtown Philly, a stone's throw from 0:24:33.000 --> 0:24:35.560 City Hall, in just a few minutes from police headquarters. 0:24:35.920 --> 0:24:40.200 This office was not an ideal target. So Bill david 0:24:40.280 --> 0:24:42.080 On and his crew looked elsewhere. 0:24:42.920 --> 0:24:45.439 Well, he said, I opened up the phone book, and 0:24:45.480 --> 0:24:50.520 there's an FBI office in Media, which is practically next 0:24:50.520 --> 0:24:54.240 door to Haverford where he lived, a little office in Media, 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:58.520 and so maybe we could think about the feasibility of that. 0:25:02.680 --> 0:25:05.760 As far as unthinkable heists went, the FBI office in 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:11.760