Speaker 1: Last time on SNAPOO pursuing.
Speaker 2: The executive order.
Speaker 3: The Director's Selective Service is going to establish tonight a
Speaker 3: random selection sequence or induction or nineteen.
Speaker 2: Seventy for Bill, dissent was at the heart of democracy.
Speaker 4: How complicated would it be to go into the office.
Speaker 2: If the FBI was spying on people?
Speaker 5: Records of what kinds of the surveillance or disruption?
Speaker 2: He's regarded it as a crime that needed to be solved.
Speaker 2: He just called John and me and asked us, if
Speaker 2: we want to come to a party.
Speaker 6: You got to do what you got to do. You know,
Speaker 6: you have to maintain your own personal integrity.
Speaker 1: That's Keith Forsyth succinctly stating his personal philosophy. When Keith
Speaker 1: entered cap College in Ohio in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, he says he wasn't very political. But just
Speaker 1: a year later, when Bill Davidan invited Keith to help
Speaker 1: him burglarize the FBI, Keith said, yes, So what changed? Well,
Speaker 1: it all started with a book and it.
Speaker 6: Was called Piece in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: It was a small paperback published by a pacifist Quaker organization.
Speaker 1: A guy in Keith's dorm loaned it to him, it
Speaker 1: told the history of the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese perspective.
Speaker 2: You know, we went.
Speaker 6: In there and tried to help the French maintain a
Speaker 6: colonial ownership of the Vietnam and enslayed the people there.
Speaker 6: When the French got tired, they got their ass. Kidd
Speaker 6: of the NBN threw we picked up when they left off.
Speaker 6: That book just blew me away. I mean, I can't
Speaker 6: the emotional power that of the effect that had on me.
Speaker 6: It was just really indescribles that was quoting.
Speaker 1: But already knew the American government's justification for the war
Speaker 1: that the Vietnamese people needed to be rescued from the
Speaker 1: ever expanding chokehold of communism. But through extensive research, he
Speaker 1: was learning a very different side of the story. Nothing
Speaker 1: he could find justified America's role in Vietnam. He even
Speaker 1: asked the State Department to make the case for the war,
Speaker 1: but their response was not convincing.
Speaker 6: And I still remember the phrase I was saying to myself,
Speaker 6: this can't be true. This is America. I remember we were.
Speaker 7: In the newsroom of the student newspaper or something, maybe
Speaker 7: a graphic some leafless for in a Cambodian invasion protests,
Speaker 7: and the news of Vatkan State came over the wire,
Speaker 7: and you know, we're.
Speaker 6: Just down a road from Kent State.
Speaker 1: Keith and his peers were horrified by Kent State, and
Speaker 1: he was even more shocked by what happened just two
Speaker 1: weeks later at Jackson State in Mississippi, where local police
Speaker 1: unleashed a barrage of gunfire on a dorm full of
Speaker 1: unarmed black students, killing two young men. Heith heard the
Speaker 1: police's official story, then he heard a tape of what
Speaker 1: actually happened.
Speaker 4: It was ten or.
Speaker 6: Twenty rifles and distals and shotguns all being fired, you
Speaker 6: know once.
Speaker 8: Anyway, the story.
Speaker 6: They circulated later that somebody shot at them and they
Speaker 6: shot back was obviously bullshit. It was just all a sudden,
Speaker 6: all this barrage and it sounded like a machine gun
Speaker 6: wire And.
Speaker 8: That was it for me.
Speaker 6: Was already man, it was already feeling and raised and betrayed,
Speaker 6: and after that it just multiplied.
Speaker 1: Keith had already dropped out of school to protest the
Speaker 1: war full time.
Speaker 6: I felt that Vietnam war was a horrendous moral outrage.
Speaker 6: It's no different than if you were walking down the
Speaker 6: street and you saw somebody walk up to a stranger
Speaker 6: and fill their brains out for no reason whatsoever. I mean,
Speaker 6: you would have a reaction to that.
Speaker 1: Heath headed for the epicenter of America's anti war movement, Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: He got a job driving a cab, and he began
Speaker 1: spending his nights with the local anti war movement burglarizing
Speaker 1: draft boards. He became an expert in picking locks. He
Speaker 1: actually got certified as a locksmith as part of his
Speaker 1: training to burglarized draft boards. So by late nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: when Bill Davidon decided to break into the FBI.
Speaker 9: He called me and asked me if I was interested
Speaker 9: in going to a party, which was you know code.
Speaker 1: It was the same called John and Bonnie Rains had received.
Speaker 1: Bill was inviting Keith to join an action targeting the FBI,
Speaker 1: and Keith didn't need much convincing.
Speaker 9: When you're twenty years old, you do a lot of
Speaker 9: things that you might think twice about later. I was
Speaker 9: really really really really angry and really really really frustrated,
Speaker 9: and I'm like, if we can up Deannie, let's do it.
Speaker 1: I'm Ed Helms and this is Snaffo a show about
Speaker 1: history's greatest screw ups. This is season two Medburg, the
Speaker 1: story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI snaffo
Speaker 1: it exposed this week how to break into the FBI.
Speaker 1: Let's check back in with our professional heist consultant, Steven
Speaker 1: Soderberg in the sort of typical heist film.
Speaker 6: Each person has a specific skill set in a specific role,
Speaker 6: and it's fun to watch them perform that.
Speaker 1: Keith Forsyth, who by the way, looked a little like
Speaker 1: John Lennon in the early seventies, brought his aptitude for
Speaker 1: lock picking.
Speaker 9: It's really not hard and you can get through almost
Speaker 9: any door twenty seconds if you, you know, are any good.
Speaker 1: Also attending the party was Sarah Schumer, a professor and
Speaker 1: colleague of Bill Davidan's. Sarah had been politically active since
Speaker 1: the early days of the civil rights movement, so she
Speaker 1: was no stranger to the inside of a jail cell.
Speaker 10: You just assumed your phone was wiretapped, you know, if
Speaker 10: you were an activist, you assumed you were followed one
Speaker 10: way or another.
Speaker 1: Ralph Daniel was a young graduate student in psychology. He
Speaker 1: protested the war, but initially avoided anything illegal. He worried
Speaker 1: getting arrested would interfere with his studies. Nevertheless, he apparently
Speaker 1: drew the ire of a Philadelphia cop named Lieutenant Fenzil.
Speaker 1: One day, Ralph was standing around not breaking the law
Speaker 1: while some friends illegally chained themselves to the entrance of
Speaker 1: a draft board.
Speaker 11: Office, and Fencil I decided he arrested me, and he said,
Speaker 11: I've seen you at too many demonstrations. I'm busting you
Speaker 11: even though you're not chained.
Speaker 1: So it's arguably Lieutenant Fenzil's fault that Ralph wound up
Speaker 1: accessing his more rebellious, less law abiding side.
Speaker 11: If rules seemed foolish, I typically would not follow them.
Speaker 11: I was also twenty six. I still felt invincible the
Speaker 11: way a lot of young people do.
Speaker 1: And when Bill invited him to the party.
Speaker 11: I said, sign me on. I didn't hesitate at all.
Speaker 1: Next up Bob Williamson, a social worker steeped in the
Speaker 1: non violent teachings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Bob
Speaker 1: quickly realized that Philadelphia law enforcement was working against Philadelphians.
Speaker 12: Nobody felt good when they saw a police car driveway.
Speaker 12: They weren't providing any kind of a service to the community.
Speaker 12: It was like an occupying force.
Speaker 1: So Bob dedicated his evenings to following cops with a camera,
Speaker 1: policing the police. Eventually he fell in with the anti
Speaker 1: war crowd and added draft board raids to his resume.
Speaker 1: He also had a fondness for corny jokes that sort
Speaker 1: of became something.
Speaker 12: I was known for having an inappropriate sense of humor.
Speaker 12: At the worst time.
Speaker 1: Bill recruited Bob, and Bob recruited Judy fine Gold. Judy
Speaker 1: was a military counselor at the American Friends Service Committee,
Speaker 1: the same Quaker organization whose book about Vietnam changed Keith's life.
Speaker 10: I was basically living my truth as pure as you
Speaker 10: can live life, and I would go to work as
Speaker 10: a military counselor trying to get people out of the
Speaker 10: military that didn't want to be there anymore.
Speaker 1: Legally, she was just nineteen, but she'd been actively protesting
Speaker 1: the war since age twelve, literally growing up in the movement.
Speaker 10: I just felt like I was living in the heart
Speaker 10: of the dragon and it was just my job to
Speaker 10: stop the fire, and this seemed like a way to
Speaker 10: do it.
Speaker 1: Bill approached two other people who we can't name. One
Speaker 1: turned him down. The other said, yes, but we'll just
Speaker 1: have to call him Burglar number nine.
Speaker 13: Beno.
Speaker 1: Remember that it's going to be important later, But for now,
Speaker 1: Bill had his team. Some were married with children, while
Speaker 1: some were practically still children themselves. Some had years of
Speaker 1: experience conducting illegal anti war actions like draft board raides.
Speaker 1: Others were taking that step for the first time. Some
Speaker 1: of them were immediately identifiable as hippies I'm looking at you,
Speaker 1: Keith and Bob, while others were clean cut professionals. But
Speaker 1: despite these differences, they had a lot in common. They
Speaker 1: hated the war, they cherished free speech. They knew they
Speaker 1: could trust Bill Davidan, and they did not trust ja
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 13: What a friend we have in whover freedom has no
Speaker 13: true or for is your thinking left us? He will
Speaker 13: get you in the.
Speaker 1: That's folk singer Tom Paxton singing an ode to Hoover
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. Obviously, he's joking about his admiration for Hoover,
Speaker 1: but the thing about that song is most of mainstream
Speaker 1: America probably agreed with it. Unironically at the time. Hoover
Speaker 1: spent decades cultivating his in the FBI's image, and it worked.
Speaker 1: He was your friend. But more than that, he was
Speaker 1: your protector.
Speaker 5: We are playing disaster if we do not soon take
Speaker 5: some positive action against the growing maldetary nation in this land.
Speaker 1: It is that's Jay Edgar himself, striking a note he'd
Speaker 1: play his entire career. America is on the verge of catastrophe,
Speaker 1: and law and order conservatism is the only thing holding
Speaker 1: us back from the brink.
Speaker 14: He was a serious bureaucrat. He was a heavily anti
Speaker 14: communist conservative.
Speaker 1: That's doctor Daniel Chard, a professor of history at Western
Speaker 1: Washington University. Hoover was born in eighteen ninety five, the
Speaker 1: son of a government pencil pusher.
Speaker 15: And came of age in Jim Crow, Washington, DC and
Speaker 15: of what was then just the dominant cultural values of
Speaker 15: white male authority.
Speaker 1: It's truly impossible to overstate how much this guy loved authority,
Speaker 1: and of course he loved America, or at least his
Speaker 1: version of it. As a kid, Hoover rewrote the classic
Speaker 1: story of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. You know,
Speaker 1: I cannot tell a lie, but in Little j Edgar's version,
Speaker 1: Washington's cousin Ike was responsible for axing the tree. I mean,
Speaker 1: the point of that story isn't about chopping down a tree.
Speaker 1: It's about being honest when it matters. But Hoover wasn't
Speaker 1: concerned about honesty. He preferred his own story, where the
Speaker 1: founder of our country was simply faultless. In the first place,
Speaker 1: he didn't.
Speaker 4: Like the Left. He held racist views.
Speaker 14: He was in a racist fraternity at George Washington University.
Speaker 1: Dan's not just tossing that word around casually. Hoover's fraternity
Speaker 1: had some very close ties to the KKK at the time,
Speaker 1: as in a lot of guys were members of both.
Speaker 1: Like the Klan, they were still mourning the loss of
Speaker 1: the Civil War. Its members deeply revered Confederate General Robert E. Lee,
Speaker 1: whom the fraternity referred to as quote the last gentle
Speaker 1: night to pay for college plus fraternity dues. A young
Speaker 1: Jay Edgar took a job at the Library of Congress.
Speaker 1: There he began a lifelong love affair with organization and
Speaker 1: meticulous filing systems. A racist with a passion for file keeping,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to get stuck talking to that guy
Speaker 1: at a party.
Speaker 5: There is nothing mysterious about the meadow which the Federal
Speaker 5: Bureau of Investigation is working formula is a simple one.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, cool, okay.
Speaker 5: Intensive training, casually investigated, Okay, highly efficient pressure they oh okay.
Speaker 5: Plus rigid requirements in regard to conduct intelligence and integrity.
Speaker 1: Listen, I'm just going to go. I'm going to get
Speaker 1: a drink.
Speaker 5: I'll be a special agents. Must be a good marksman. Yeah,
Speaker 5: have the courage to shoot it out with the most
Speaker 5: venomous of public. And you must know how to take fingerprints,
Speaker 5: what to do with the math. Hey, must know that
Speaker 5: no clue.
Speaker 1: Sorry, sorry to cut you off. I just have to
Speaker 1: I just have to go somewhere else now. Somehow, Hoover
Speaker 1: managed to graduate law school without ever taking a class
Speaker 1: in constitutional law. That's like graduating from medical school without
Speaker 1: ever taking a class on bones. The Justice Department didn't
Speaker 1: seem to mind. They hired him anyway. Before long, he
Speaker 1: was rising through the ranks.
Speaker 4: And was involved in what were called the Palmer Raids
Speaker 4: or the.
Speaker 14: First National Red Scare, going after the radical labor movement
Speaker 14: after World War One.
Speaker 1: Hoover was only twenty four years old, and here he
Speaker 1: was engineering the roundups and arrests of communists, socialists, anarchists,
Speaker 1: black political organizers, and anyone who was suspected of being
Speaker 1: any of the above. They were detained without due process,
Speaker 1: and some were even tortured, all under Hoover's supervision. The
Speaker 1: Palmer Raids, as they came to be known, should have
Speaker 1: earned him a reputation for excessive brutality and violating the Constitution,
Speaker 1: but apparently Hoover's superiors liked what they saw. Just shy
Speaker 1: of his thirtieth birthday, the Justice Department named j. Edgar
Speaker 1: Hoover the new head of its Bureau of Instigation. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, Hoover's g men put the gangster machine
Speaker 1: gun Kelly in prison for life and gunned down Public
Speaker 1: Enemy number one, John Dillinger. Fun fact, Hoover kept Dillinger's
Speaker 1: glasses and death mask in a display case outside his office,
Speaker 1: and if that wasn't creepy enough, he invited agents in
Speaker 1: training to come and make their own castings of the
Speaker 1: death mask. Catching gangsters earned Hoover the appreciation of the
Speaker 1: public and presidents alike. He expanded the bureau's reach, modernized
Speaker 1: its approach to investigations, and hired thousands of new agents.
Speaker 1: He was also particularly keen to pluck new hires out
Speaker 1: of the same KKK adjacent fraternity of which he'd been
Speaker 1: a member. Many of those men formed the foundation of
Speaker 1: Hoover's new intelligence gathering juggernaut.
Speaker 14: The changes the name in the thirties to the FBI
Speaker 14: rather than just Bureau of Investigation. He build it up
Speaker 14: as a very powerful organization with a lot of autonomy
Speaker 14: from congressional oversight or executive oversight.
Speaker 1: During the Red Scare of the forties and fifties, Hoover
Speaker 1: did pretty much exactly what you'd expect him to do,
Speaker 1: funneled information on suspected commies to Joe McCarthy and the
Speaker 1: House on American Activities Committee. But even after the Red
Speaker 1: Scare died down.
Speaker 3: Mister Hoover, some people are saying today that communism is
Speaker 3: no longer a danger to our country.
Speaker 4: What is your opinion about that?
Speaker 3: I think the Communism is as serious amens to the
Speaker 3: United States as it ever was, if not more so,
Speaker 3: because today you have in charge of the Communist Party
Speaker 3: a hard core, fanatical group of members who are dedicated
Speaker 3: to the overthrow of our government by FOSSEM and violence.
Speaker 1: As the head of a federal agency, Hoover had to
Speaker 1: go to Congress once a year to review his department's budget,
Speaker 1: But unlike his peers, Hoover's hearings always happened in closed session,
Speaker 1: no public, no press. Every year he'd give a version
Speaker 1: of the same spiel.
Speaker 16: You thought those rads were scary in nineteen seventy, boy,
Speaker 16: let me tell you what they got planned for seventy one, and.
Speaker 1: Every year Congress bought it, increasing the FBI's budget. Hoover
Speaker 1: had learned to game the system. No one in America's
Speaker 1: history held onto a high ranking position like Hoover's for
Speaker 1: as long as he did. When he first got the job,
Speaker 1: Calvin freaking Coolidge was president, and Hoover stayed in his
Speaker 1: role through eight presidencies. He watched sixteen attorneys general come
Speaker 1: and go. They all had the authority to fire him,
Speaker 1: and some came pretty close, but none of them did.
Speaker 1: It's probably not a coincidence that Hoover was also collecting
Speaker 1: dirt on public officials for decades. Suffice to say, Hoover
Speaker 1: clung to his job like an angry barnacle.
Speaker 4: His office had two layers.
Speaker 14: He had a full office and then an interior office
Speaker 14: within that, and he had what was called the official
Speaker 14: and confidential files that were so secret he kept them
Speaker 14: in there. It was known that he had intelligence files
Speaker 14: on different congressmen.
Speaker 4: He knew who John F. Kennedy was sleeping with, and
Speaker 4: stuff like that.
Speaker 1: On one level, this was probably pretty childish, a chance
Speaker 1: to giggle at a senator's secret sexual proclivities, but really
Speaker 1: showing off his collection of secrets served as a veiled threat.
Speaker 1: You think that's embarrassing, well, just to imagine what I've
Speaker 1: gone on you you you you threats of blackmail. Notwithstanding,
Speaker 1: Hoover really should have been forced out in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five when he reached what was the government's mandatory retirement
Speaker 1: age of seventy. But despite being famously well endowed, google
Speaker 1: it if you don't know what I'm talking about, Lyndon
Speaker 1: Johnson lacked the balls to enforce that rule, so instead
Speaker 1: he did this.
Speaker 8: The nation cannot afford to LUGI, and therefore I have
Speaker 8: just now signed an executive order exempting you from compulsory
Speaker 8: TIMA for an indefinite period of time.
Speaker 1: Hoover outlasted LBJ and was still in office when Nixon
Speaker 1: took over. By that point, his penchant for blackmail was
Speaker 1: something of an open secret, but overall his propaganda had
Speaker 1: paid off. He was a conservative crime fighting hero, and
Speaker 1: even if they didn't revere the guy, most Americans just
Speaker 1: trusted him. He certainly had some strange obsessions. Here's a
Speaker 1: direct quote from a memo Hoover wrote regarding new hires.
Speaker 16: I recently saw a photograph of a favorably recommended clerical applicant.
Speaker 16: This photograph reflected long sign burns and long hair in
Speaker 16: the back, and two full on the sides. Please, when
Speaker 16: interviewing applicants, be alert for long hairs, beards, mustaches, pear
Speaker 16: shaped heads, truck drivers, etc.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means, but now I'm
Speaker 1: kind of worried. Honey, do I have a pear shaped head? Oh?
Speaker 1: Thank god? Today. Some of Hoover's idiosyncrasies just sound goofy.
Speaker 1: But to the men of Hoover's FBI, his word was gospel,
Speaker 1: partially because Hoover's FBI tended to hire guys like Hoover,
Speaker 1: meaning they were all guys and they were all white.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty two, Attorney General Robert Kennedy publicly called
Speaker 1: Hoover out over this. In response, Hoover promoted his black
Speaker 1: chauffeur to the role of special agent. Of course, that
Speaker 1: special agent kept driving Hoover's car.
Speaker 14: They're all white men exclusively. There's a lot of World
Speaker 14: War Two veterans in the FBI. They're pretty conservative. The
Speaker 14: FBI recruited heavily among Catholics. They saw Catholics as people
Speaker 14: who were kind of a cultured into being part of
Speaker 14: an institution with a hierarchy that they would like listen
Speaker 14: to authority.
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy, the FBI could be fairly described as
Speaker 1: an army of many Hoovers, straight laced, serious minded white
Speaker 1: men who tucked in their shirts, avoided sideburns like the plague,
Speaker 1: loved God, hated communism, and had some sort of weird
Speaker 1: thing against truck drivers. Apparently, the FBI's official motto was fidelity, bravery,
Speaker 1: and integrity. Get it. Those are wonderful words with wonderful meaning.
Speaker 1: But as the years passed, Hoover increasingly conducted activities that
Speaker 1: did not mesh with those ideals. Back in those days,
Speaker 1: tapping someone's phone involved placing a physical tap on the
Speaker 1: actual phone lines. This meant if somebody was tapping your phone,
Speaker 1: you might hear a telltelle noise.
Speaker 2: You got on the phoney you heard quickly, but you know,
Speaker 2: you knew.
Speaker 4: Something was off.
Speaker 1: So even if they couldn't prove it, Tom Paxton and
Speaker 1: others just kind of knew it was their pal j
Speaker 1: Edgar on the line.
Speaker 13: Does your telephone sound Puney, is some stranger standing by
Speaker 13: standing by? Do not bother your revel.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 5: Take it to the fv.
Speaker 1: H up in Philadelphia. Bonnie Rains, her husband John, and
Speaker 1: seven others had said yes when a quiet physicist named
Speaker 1: Bill Davidon invited him to his quote unquote party. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact that most of them hadn't met before Bill's party,
Speaker 1: they quickly bonded over their shared goal to expose FBI
Speaker 1: surveillance from the outset. The nine would be burglars agreed
Speaker 1: that they would never tell another living soul what they
Speaker 1: were about to do, and they also agreed on a name.
Speaker 1: The citizens commissioned to investigate the FBI.
Speaker 2: We knew we had to identify ourselves in a particular
Speaker 2: kind of way. So it flipped the whole idea of
Speaker 2: a commission that investigates this and a commission that investigates
Speaker 2: that to our responsibility to investigate the FBI.
Speaker 1: It might have been a tad grandiose or sarcastic, like
Speaker 1: referring to your cat as the acting director of vomiting
Speaker 1: on the sofa cushion, but the name also pointed to
Speaker 1: one of the core beliefs that all nine members shared.
Speaker 1: If the government wasn't going to hold itself accountable, duty
Speaker 1: would have to fall to the citizens. Next step, pick
Speaker 1: the target. I know we.
Speaker 9: Discussed the possibility of doing the Philadelphia FBI office because
Speaker 9: I went down and cased it in the daytime. If
Speaker 9: the sign in books for the building still exists, my
Speaker 9: alias is in there. Probably Bill Travis, I'm guessing, was
Speaker 9: probably it.
Speaker 1: The Philadelphia FBI office was an impenetrable citadel smack dab
Speaker 1: in the center of downtown Philly, a stone's throw from
Speaker 1: City Hall, in just a few minutes from police headquarters.
Speaker 1: This office was not an ideal target. So Bill david
Speaker 1: On and his crew looked elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Well, he said, I opened up the phone book, and
Speaker 2: there's an FBI office in Media, which is practically next
Speaker 2: door to Haverford where he lived, a little office in Media,
Speaker 2: and so maybe we could think about the feasibility of that.
Speaker 1: As far as unthinkable heists went, the FBI office in
Speaker 1: the bedroom community of Media, Pennsylvania seemed less unthinkable. Here's
Speaker 1: Bob Williamson.
Speaker 12: It was called a resident agency and there were only
Speaker 12: three or four agents working out of that office for
Speaker 12: the area.
Speaker 1: Resident agency was a fancy term for when the FBI
Speaker 1: is simply rented out office space in a civilian building.
Speaker 1: This particular resident agency was on the second floor of
Speaker 1: an unremarkable apartment building across from the Delaware County Courthouse.
Speaker 1: At first glance, there wasn't much to distinguish this little
Speaker 1: FBI outpost from the office of say, a mid sized
Speaker 1: regional paper company. AnyWho. The burglars had their target one
Speaker 1: Veteran Square, Media, Pennsylvania. For the next few months, the
Speaker 1: crew of nine would gather at their secret hideout, John
Speaker 1: and Bonnie's house and work on their plan.
Speaker 2: It was a big house, big old Victorian house. We
Speaker 2: had one room on the third floor that became the
Speaker 2: planning room.
Speaker 1: And almost perfect headquarters with a few small complications.
Speaker 2: We had to tell our children to not to talk
Speaker 2: about the maps that were up on the wall in
Speaker 2: the room where we were meeting. Don't talk about the.
Speaker 1: Maps now, sweetie, I know you used to be able
Speaker 1: to go into that room on the third floor. But well,
Speaker 1: mommy and daddy have we've gotten really into maps lately,
Speaker 1: and you know, just maps of nearby towns and stuff.
Speaker 1: Nothing you'd be interested in.
Speaker 2: Don't talk about the people who sometimes stay overnight.
Speaker 1: Sometimes mommies and daddies like to share maps with friends.
Speaker 1: What what's with all the questions? Just go to bed.
Speaker 1: Most nights, the Citizens Commission would gather at the Rains House.
Speaker 1: The evenings began with dinner, more often than not, a
Speaker 1: giant pot of spaghetti prepared by Bonnie.
Speaker 2: John and I were kind of the grandparents of this group.
Speaker 1: Then it was off to the scene of their planned crime,
Speaker 1: the apartment building at one Veteran Square. Their mission was
Speaker 1: to study every single detail about the office and its surroundings.
Speaker 11: We cased the place for at least two maybe three months.
Speaker 2: So we would case in pairs, usually male and female pairs,
Speaker 2: because if there was any suspicion about us in the car,
Speaker 2: if the police pulled up next to the car where
Speaker 2: we were, we could pretend to be a couple.
Speaker 9: Are there any beat copses at all in cars? What's
Speaker 9: happening with the courthouse. You know, when are the traffic
Speaker 9: jams in media and where.
Speaker 2: The schedule of the agents in the FBI office, you know,
Speaker 2: did they ever come in late at night back into
Speaker 2: the office or not? And we learned that it was
Speaker 2: they worked nine to five. They locked the door at
Speaker 2: five and go home. Lest we forget, it's still a
Speaker 2: government job.
Speaker 9: Who else is going in and out where the police?
Speaker 2: It was very time consuming and very tedious in some cases,
Speaker 2: but important to see the patterns of.
Speaker 1: Activity picture our perspective. Burglars paired off sitting in parked
Speaker 1: cars in the middle of winter, cataloging everything that happened
Speaker 1: in this sleepy town center night after night after night.
Speaker 1: Two things were inevitable, One boredom and two.
Speaker 10: Well, and Bob and I, you know, like all healthy,
Speaker 10: lusty people, decided this would be a great time to
Speaker 10: start an affair, you know, right in the fiery storm
Speaker 10: of revolution.
Speaker 12: You know, we did some kissing and necking while we
Speaker 12: were kazing. We were just we were just both a
Speaker 12: little horning, I guess.
Speaker 1: Despite the judy, Bob and the others noticed one big problem.
Speaker 1: A security guard was on duty around the clock in
Speaker 1: the courthouse, monitoring the front entrance with a clear view
Speaker 1: of the FBI office.
Speaker 2: Both the courthouse itself was well lighted and this intersection
Speaker 2: where the building was was well lighted. We could have
Speaker 2: been observed, easily been observed going in or out of
Speaker 2: the front door.
Speaker 1: Doing anything to debilitate the guard was out of the question.
Speaker 1: This was, after all, a group dedicated to nonviolence, attempting
Speaker 1: to distract him would carry its own risks. In the
Speaker 1: ideal burglary, nobody would notice anything out of the ordinary
Speaker 1: at all. They determined early on that the doors to
Speaker 1: one veteran Square were never locked, So the Citizens Commission
Speaker 1: decided to look as ordinary as possible and bank on
Speaker 1: playing it so cool that the guard would think nothing
Speaker 1: of them. But the door to the office itself that
Speaker 1: was a whole different story and would require a bit
Speaker 1: of finagling.
Speaker 9: I went to look at the locks fairly early in
Speaker 9: the process, and the main door was just a door,
Speaker 9: like on the front door of your house, same lock,
Speaker 9: So I was like, not a problem. It's always puzzled
Speaker 9: me why criminals don't learn lock picking, because it's really
Speaker 9: not hard, and you can get through almost any door
Speaker 9: in twenty seconds if you you know, are any good.
Speaker 9: When I got my certificate, that would have made it
Speaker 9: legal for me to go to a lock shop and
Speaker 9: buy lock picks. But I was not that stupid. I
Speaker 9: went to the hardware store and bought some spring steel,
Speaker 9: and I already had a grinder and a file, and
Speaker 9: I made my own so that they wouldn't be traceable.
Speaker 1: The crew installed a practice door, a door to nowhere
Speaker 1: up in the mysterious third floor room that was off
Speaker 1: limits to John and Bonnie's children.
Speaker 9: You can't really learn it by reading a book. It's
Speaker 9: like playing a musical instrument. You know, you start very slow,
Speaker 9: and you just do it over and over and over
Speaker 9: and over and over. Take a break, come back the
Speaker 9: next day. You do it over and over and over
Speaker 9: and over again, the next day, the next day, the
Speaker 9: next day, and you know, pretty soon you're in in
Speaker 9: twenty to thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: This went on for roughly two months. Even if you
Speaker 1: spend some of that time making out with your accomplice.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of long, monotonous evenings. But they found
Speaker 1: ways to keep their spirits up.
Speaker 2: Keith always made us laugh, and Bob, Bob Williamson was
Speaker 2: a story. He would tell these ridiculous shaggy dogs, stories
Speaker 2: and terrible jokes and puns, and a couple of them
Speaker 2: were also musicians. So occasionally we take a break and
Speaker 2: somebody bring out their guitar and we'd maybe sing a
Speaker 2: little bit together, but some.
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell tuns or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all those old tunes.
Speaker 1: The group was falling into a comfortable rhythm.
Speaker 2: They would sleep on air mattresses sometimes in our house.
Speaker 2: They would tell bedtime stories to our kids. So I mean,
Speaker 2: we really we formed a sort of cohesion that was
Speaker 2: pretty special.
Speaker 1: When she looks back, Bonnie plays it pretty cool. But
Speaker 1: imagine yourself in her and John's shoes, meticulously planning something
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous, unable to explain any of it to your
Speaker 1: kids even though they're right there, and knowing the whole
Speaker 1: time that going through with it could mean that you'll
Speaker 1: spend the rest of their childhoods behind bars.
Speaker 9: I remember being amazed. I guess is the best word.
Speaker 9: That you know, John and Bonnie had small children. I'm like,
Speaker 9: this is a whole different level of commitment.
Speaker 10: I mean, that woman was you know, yeah, she was
Speaker 10: part of the action, but she was just mothering the
Speaker 10: hell out of us. And you know, being a young revolutionary.
Speaker 10: I wasn't cooking, so her spaghetti was like a gift
Speaker 10: from heaven.
Speaker 2: Some of the time we were meeting together in our house,
Speaker 2: I felt a little bit like a den mother because
Speaker 2: I was cooking spaghetti and meatballs and basically in kind
Speaker 2: of a supportive role, a secondary role. I definitely felt
Speaker 2: that way, and that was true in the movement generally anyway.
Speaker 2: It was very male dominated, and so I think I
Speaker 2: was a little resentful about that.
Speaker 1: But Bonnie's moment was about to come, because as the
Speaker 1: weeks passed, the team realized that staring at the office
Speaker 1: from the outside could only tell them so much. They
Speaker 1: had to get eyes on the inside. The team had
Speaker 1: been casing the media office for months, but they were
Speaker 1: still missing crucial details like how many ways into the
Speaker 1: office were there, Was there an alarm system, and if so,
Speaker 1: could it be disabled? How many signed photos of JEdgar
Speaker 1: Hoover dotted the office walls, any JEdgar Hoover bobbleheads in there?
Speaker 1: To get answers, someone had to go inside.
Speaker 2: My role emerged at that point, and I could pose
Speaker 2: as a college student to ask for a meeting with
Speaker 2: the head of the office.
Speaker 1: So Bonnie Rains called the FBI and scheduled a meeting.
Speaker 2: When I asked for the interview, I said that I
Speaker 2: was a student doing research on opportunities for women in
Speaker 2: the FBI. I was gratified that I finally had a
Speaker 2: speaking part. Not just a walk in part, but a
Speaker 2: speaking part.
Speaker 1: You're not a background actor anymore. You're in the movie.
Speaker 2: I had long hippie hair, so we knew that we
Speaker 2: had to figure out how to make me look not
Speaker 2: anything like I looked in my regular life. It was February,
Speaker 2: so I tucked my long hair up inside of a
Speaker 2: big winter hat, and I found this kind of nerdy
Speaker 2: winter coat. I looked a little bit like a college
Speaker 2: student who bought her clothes at thrift stores.
Speaker 1: This was the Citizens Commission's only chance to get a
Speaker 1: complete picture of the office they were planning to burgle.
Speaker 1: I love that word burgel. Every detail was important, but
Speaker 1: it was also the riskiest thing they'd ever done. Sitting
Speaker 1: outside an FBI office night after night was definitely kind
Speaker 1: of sketchy. But going right into the belly of the
Speaker 1: beast in disguise, well that's a whole different ballgame.
Speaker 2: John drove me in our station wagon with our little boy, Nathan,
Speaker 2: who was two at the time. They dropped me off
Speaker 2: and then they pulled around the corner to wait for
Speaker 2: me because I had to say that I had come
Speaker 2: on the bus.
Speaker 1: She walked into the cramped entryway of one Veteran Square
Speaker 1: and up the carpeted steps to the second floor. She
Speaker 1: entered the office and her receptionist told her to wait.
Speaker 1: As she waited, she did her best to memorize every
Speaker 1: detail of her surroundings.
Speaker 2: There were no cameras, there were no alarms over the doors.
Speaker 2: I couldn't see any security measures whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Okay, note to self, security cameras deter robbers go on.
Speaker 2: The building manager's office was right below the FBI office,
Speaker 2: so I was glad to see. There was carpeting on the.
Speaker 1: Floor, carpeting, muffles, footsteps.
Speaker 2: Lots of file cabinets. I wore glasses. I don't know
Speaker 2: who lent them to me, but I didn't wear glasses
Speaker 2: at the time, but I had glasses on and I
Speaker 2: couldn't see very well with those glasses on them, but
Speaker 2: that helped disguise my identity pretty well.
Speaker 1: Never trust someone in glasses. Wait a second, I.
Speaker 4: Wear glasses.
Speaker 1: Right where were we Eventually the g man in charge
Speaker 1: ushered this meek, little student reporter into his office.
Speaker 2: He was even a little flirty with me, I remember that,
Speaker 2: and seemed to be flattered that I was really interested
Speaker 2: in in the FBI and interested in that interview. I
Speaker 2: was very chatty, a little bit flirty, and very grateful
Speaker 2: for the information that he gave me, And it was
Speaker 2: all just very friendly, and he never asked my name.
Speaker 1: For Christ's sake, the average dentist's office has a sign
Speaker 1: in sheet. But I guess he was flustered. These guys
Speaker 1: spend most of their time filling out paperwork and triplicate
Speaker 1: to please Hoover. It's not every day a girl comes
Speaker 1: into the office and wants to know about your big
Speaker 1: important job.
Speaker 2: At some point in the chat, he asked me where
Speaker 2: I was from, and I came up with I said heart.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I said Hartford, but I wasn't
Speaker 2: going to say Philadelphia. I'm Hartford.
Speaker 1: Luckily, for Bonnie, nobody really wants to chat about Hartford.
Speaker 2: I asked if I could have an application of sample
Speaker 2: application form for employment, and he went to the file
Speaker 2: cabinet to get it, and I could see that the
Speaker 2: file cabinets were not locked.
Speaker 1: Come on, there had to be something in the FBI
Speaker 1: handbook about locking file cabinets. As Bonnie wondered how these
Speaker 1: agents could be so dumb, John waited outside by the
Speaker 1: car with an increasingly restless.
Speaker 2: Toddler, Nathan, I'm sure was saying, where's mommy, Where's mommy?
Speaker 2: Why is it taking so long? I think an actress
Speaker 2: mode kicked in, and that's the only way I can
Speaker 2: describe it. I just got into the role. I wasn't
Speaker 2: nervous at all. I had an important job to do
Speaker 2: and I really wanted to accomplish it, and they didn't
Speaker 2: do it anything to make me feel nervous either. And
Speaker 2: then there was a third room beyond his office, and
Speaker 2: when I was getting ready to leave, I pretended to
Speaker 2: be confused about the way out, and so that gave
Speaker 2: me a chance to go into the third office, thinking
Speaker 2: that that was the way that I would leave, And
Speaker 2: that gave me the chance to see another door from
Speaker 2: the hallway in that third office, and that the door
Speaker 2: was blocked by this huge metal file cabinet.
Speaker 1: Let's recap. The office consisted of two rooms, no alarm system,
Speaker 1: no cameras, the floor was carpeted and quiet to walk on.
Speaker 1: There were two ways in and out, the main door
Speaker 1: and a second one, which was clearly not in use,
Speaker 1: as it was blocked by a heavy filing cabinet. Later on,
Speaker 1: she'd be very glad she clocked that second door, but
Speaker 1: for now, she dashed around the corner and got into
Speaker 1: the car where John and Nathan and we're waiting.
Speaker 2: I was just so elated that I was able to
Speaker 2: determine the things that we needed to have determined about it.
Speaker 2: I was just I felt very satisfied that this was
Speaker 2: now probably going to enable us to move forward in
Speaker 2: the way that we wanted to. I felt that that
Speaker 2: was our green light. It was a green light for us,
Speaker 2: and the only thing we had to do after that
Speaker 2: was to establish the date for the burglary.
Speaker 1: None of the members of the Citizens Commission to Investigate
Speaker 1: the FBI remember precisely how they settled on the moment
Speaker 1: to strike, but that might be because it was kind
Speaker 1: of a no brainer.
Speaker 9: Somebody wasn't me. Somebody suggested, what about the night of
Speaker 9: the Ali Fraser fight, And it was like a brilliant suggestion.
Speaker 11: We knew that's all they were going to attention to,
Speaker 11: and we timed it. We knew time the fight would start,
Speaker 11: so we timed the entry for.
Speaker 1: That bingo March eighth. Months of casing, endless hours of
Speaker 1: lock picking practice, dozens of makeout sessions, I'm guessing, and
Speaker 1: one acting masterclass from Bonnie Rains. It was all leading
Speaker 1: up to this one night. The team had thought of everything,
Speaker 1: avoided all loose ends, and played their cards close to
Speaker 1: the vest. Everything was perfect, and.
Speaker 2: Then one of the members of the group dropped out.
Speaker 2: We just didn't see it coming because it seemed to
Speaker 2: us that Bill had recruited the nine of us very
Speaker 2: very carefully, and he had a history with the movement.
Speaker 1: Less than a week before March eighth, the ninth burglar bailed.
Speaker 2: Well, that was very, very very disturbing, and he really
Speaker 2: couldn't give us a reason.
Speaker 1: Maybe his ideology shifted, or maybe he just decided he
Speaker 1: didn't want to risk going to prison. Frankly, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of legitimate reasons not to burglarize the FBI, but
Speaker 1: he didn't give one. Was he a plant? Had he flipped?
Speaker 1: The possibilities were terrifying, and so was the prospect of
Speaker 1: carrying on without him. The crew had been obsessively careful
Speaker 1: about keeping their action under wraps. They'd lied to family,
Speaker 1: made excuses to friends, and had cover stories ready to
Speaker 1: go if anyone noticed them casing. But now someone who
Speaker 1: knew their plan in intimate detail was at large. If
Speaker 1: I'd been Bonnie Rain's at that moment, I would have
Speaker 1: just told everyone, Okay, thanks, it's been fun, but it's over.
Speaker 1: Get out of my house, take your maps, your homemade
Speaker 1: lock pecks with you. But she didn't back out, and
Speaker 1: neither did any of the others. As paranoid as they were,
Speaker 1: or in my opinion, should have been, Bonnie says, they
Speaker 1: just accepted it as another inevitable risk of their plan.
Speaker 2: We couldn't control him really once he left the group,
Speaker 2: but we had to hope that there was a loyalty
Speaker 2: to us, that he was not going to say anything
Speaker 2: to anyone about about his involvement in the action. We
Speaker 2: were very worried about that.
Speaker 1: Next on SNAFU, It's go time, A'll leave versus Fraser
Speaker 1: David versus Goliath, the greatest law enforcement agency in the
Speaker 1: world versus nine scratch that, eight amateur burglars with everything
Speaker 1: to lose.
Speaker 9: I'm like, well, that was either the FBI or the
Speaker 9: heating system, and there's only one way to find out which.
Speaker 10: I remember thinking, I'm not breathing, but I've got to
Speaker 10: be breathing because I'm functioning.
Speaker 1: Security imagineers taken.
Speaker 14: The people are coming on the ring.
Speaker 1: Supposed to have them.
Speaker 2: There was no Plan B. I mean, there was just
Speaker 2: no Plan B.
Speaker 1: Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
Speaker 1: season of Snaffoo is based on the book The Burglary,
Speaker 1: The Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by
Speaker 1: Betty Metzger. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Speaker 1: Mike Valbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger.
Speaker 1: Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Producer
Speaker 1: is Stephen Wood. This episode was written by Albert Chen,
Speaker 1: Sarah Joyner and Stephen Wood, with additional writing and story
Speaker 1: editing from Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Tory Smith is
Speaker 1: our associate producer. Nevin Calla Poly is our production assistant.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
Speaker 1: Sensitivity console from Olowa Kemi Ala De Sui, editing, sound
Speaker 1: design and original music by Ben Chubg, Engineering and tech
Speaker 1: direction by Nick Dooley. Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia
Speaker 1: Canny and Jimma Castelli. Foley theme music by Dan Rosatto.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and Ben Rzak.
Speaker 1: Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use
Speaker 1: some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens
Speaker 1: Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy
Speaker 1: fine Gold, Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Rains, John Rains, Sarah Schumer
Speaker 1: and Bob Williamson.