Speaker 1: Hey there, it's your host ed helms. Here. Real quick,
Speaker 1: before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind
Speaker 1: you that my brand new book is coming out on
Speaker 1: April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive Guide to
Speaker 1: History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre order it
Speaker 1: right now at snafudashbook dot com. Trust me, if you
Speaker 1: like this show, you're gonna love this book. It's got
Speaker 1: all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't
Speaker 1: squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am
Speaker 1: also going on tour to celebrate that's right. I'm coming
Speaker 1: to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've ever wanted
Speaker 1: to see me stumble through a live Q and A
Speaker 1: or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting turned into
Speaker 1: a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head to Snaffo
Speaker 1: dashbook dot com to pre order the book and check
Speaker 1: out all the tour details and day it's or just
Speaker 1: click the link in the show notes that'll work too.
Speaker 1: It's March eighth, nineteen seventy one and just about every
Speaker 1: human being on planet Earth is completely consumed by one
Speaker 1: single event.
Speaker 2: Heavy wait boxers Joe Praise You're and Mihamad Ali meet
Speaker 2: in New York's Madison Square. The richest fight of all
Speaker 2: times had more work. At least twenty five foreign countries
Speaker 2: will show the.
Speaker 1: Fight on TV. Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frasier, better known
Speaker 1: as the Fight of the Century. I want to tell
Speaker 1: you this is going to be a spectacular evening. Attention
Speaker 1: of the excitement here is monumental. A lucky twenty thousand
Speaker 1: have scored tickets to watch the fight at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's anyone is there. The VIPs include a couple
Speaker 1: of Kennedy's foreign dignitaries astronauts who just returned from the moon.
Speaker 1: Ringside is a who's who of seventies icons, Ed Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Hugh Hefner, Diana Ross, Barbara streisand all here to see this.
Speaker 2: Guy inful, beautiful, red and white robe.
Speaker 1: Ali, the former heavyweight champ, is battling to reclaim his
Speaker 1: title from current champ Fraser. Joe Fraser.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, that seems to be a mingling of
Speaker 2: booms with you.
Speaker 1: As the opening bell nears, the time stops. Around the world,
Speaker 1: people rush to their TVs and radios. City streets completely empty.
Speaker 1: Out in barracks across Vietnam, US servicemen huddle around transistor radios.
Speaker 1: Inside an arena in Chicago, an actual riot erupts when
Speaker 1: the projector breaks down right before the fight starts. I'm
Speaker 1: al and the red trunk, Joe Fraser and the Brain
Speaker 1: Trunk lay up there very light, which all means that
Speaker 1: some one hundred miles south of New York City, in
Speaker 1: a small Pennsylvania town called Media, the streets are even
Speaker 1: sleepier than usual. Downtown is deserted. They're no policemen on patrol,
Speaker 1: no locals out for an evening stroll, and no one
Speaker 1: keeping a close eye on the entrance of a four
Speaker 1: story brick building that sits at one veteran square. So
Speaker 1: when the doors to that building swing open and two
Speaker 1: men and two women walk out, nervously carrying bulging suitcases
Speaker 1: and loading them into a car out front, no one
Speaker 1: takes notice. Those four folks with the suitcases, Well, they're
Speaker 1: not leaving for a trip. They're part of a team
Speaker 1: of burglars who decided this was the perfect night to
Speaker 1: do something unthinkable, rob the FBI, break into their offices,
Speaker 1: steal every document in sight, and zoom off into the
Speaker 1: night with a trunk full of secrets. I'm Ed Helms
Speaker 1: and this is Snaffoo, a show about history's greatest screw ups.
Speaker 1: Last season we told you all about Able Archer eighty three,
Speaker 1: the nuclear near miss which could have ended the world
Speaker 1: as we know it. This season, we bring you Medburg,
Speaker 1: the story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI
Speaker 1: snaffo it exposed.
Speaker 3: It was a Tuesday that morning. I arrive and as usual,
Speaker 3: I go to the mail room first and pick up
Speaker 3: my mail.
Speaker 1: This is journalist Betty Medsker. That Tuesday was March twenty third,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, two weeks after the Ali Fraser fight.
Speaker 1: It began like any other morning. Betty woke up in
Speaker 1: her apartment in Washington, d c. She had her usual
Speaker 1: breakfast a couple of pieces of toast, took the city
Speaker 1: bus to work, and arrived at the Washington Post offices
Speaker 1: at ten o'clock.
Speaker 3: I'd been off for two days and so there was
Speaker 3: a huge stack of mail. But this one stood out,
Speaker 3: not only because it was a large entlop, but because
Speaker 3: of the return address, which was Liberty Publications Media, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Betty was a born Pennsylvanian, but she'd never heard of
Speaker 1: Liberty Publications. She took the envelope with her to the newsroom.
Speaker 1: You might have a picture of that Washington Post newsroom,
Speaker 1: typewriters clacking away like machine gun fire, thick haze of
Speaker 1: cigarette smoke, someone screaming copy, Woodward and Bernstein running around
Speaker 1: shaking notepads at each other with their latest scoop. Well,
Speaker 1: that picture, immortalized in the classic book and movie All
Speaker 1: the President's Men, is actually pretty darn close, especially according
Speaker 1: to Betty the cigarette smoke.
Speaker 2: Is there any place you don't smoke?
Speaker 1: But in the spring of nineteen seventy one, Woodward and
Speaker 1: Bernstein were still Nobody's Watergate was still just a hotel,
Speaker 1: and the Washington Post hadn't yet become the crusading institution
Speaker 1: that took down the Nixon White House. Betty herself was
Speaker 1: a young reporter who'd been at the paper for just
Speaker 1: a year. Her beat was religion, and she shared an
Speaker 1: office about the size of a walk in closet with
Speaker 1: a motley crew of fellow reporters.
Speaker 3: There were six of us in there, and we wrote science, medicine,
Speaker 3: and education and religion. An editor made up a term.
Speaker 3: It was called Smirsh Science, medicine, education, religion and all
Speaker 3: that shit. So that's where I worked.
Speaker 1: You worked in the Smirsh department.
Speaker 3: I worked in the Smursh department.
Speaker 1: But that morning Betty didn't have time for any smershion around.
Speaker 1: Like any good journalists who's just been sent a mysterious envelope,
Speaker 1: she was dying to know what was inside.
Speaker 3: When I got to my office, I opened that envelope. First,
Speaker 3: dear friend, enclosed, you will find copies of certain files
Speaker 3: from the Media Pennsylvania Office of the FBI which were
Speaker 3: removed by our Commission for Public Scrutiny. We are making
Speaker 3: these copies of.
Speaker 1: The letter went on to say that Betty had permission
Speaker 1: to make copies of the files and to publish their contents.
Speaker 3: Your degree a public association or disassociation with our Commission
Speaker 3: is entirely a matter of your choice. Sincerely, the Citizens
Speaker 3: Commission to Investigate the FBI. I'm shocked. I think most
Speaker 3: people in the United States couldn't imagine that anybody would
Speaker 3: have the nerve to break into an FBI office, and
Speaker 3: would have thought that such a place would have been
Speaker 3: the most secure place.
Speaker 1: Inside the envelope were fourteen xerox FBI files. It didn't
Speaker 1: take long for Betty to grasp that these documents were explosive.
Speaker 3: The first one was pretty shocking. It was a document
Speaker 3: urging agents to increase interviews with dissenters and quote for
Speaker 3: plenty of reasons, chief of which are enhanced the paranoia
Speaker 3: endemic in these circles, and further served to get the
Speaker 3: point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.
Speaker 1: An FBI agent behind every mailbox, sort of like Uncle Fester,
Speaker 1: but in wingtips. At first, Betty wondered if what she
Speaker 1: was reading was a hoax to enhance paranoia. Seriously, she
Speaker 1: kept reading.
Speaker 3: One of the things was a file on Swarthmore College,
Speaker 3: and it revealed that every black student on the Swaphthmore
Speaker 3: campus was under FBI surveillance. And this was being done
Speaker 3: by people who had been hired by the FBI as informers,
Speaker 3: and included switchbird operators, letter carriers, the postmaster of Swarthmore,
Speaker 3: the local police chief, and some college administrators.
Speaker 1: And it didn't stop at this one Liberal Arts College.
Speaker 1: There was a pattern. Files in the envelope showed the
Speaker 1: FBI was surveilling citizens all over Philadelphia. The subjects Betty
Speaker 1: was reading about in these files they were anti war protesters,
Speaker 1: civil rights activists, labor unions, and a noticeably high percentage
Speaker 1: were black.
Speaker 3: The FBI was operating something that was very much like
Speaker 3: the Stosse was operating in East Germany. What became clear
Speaker 3: was every document was telling a story about FBI power
Speaker 3: that was unknown to anyone outside the FBI.
Speaker 1: That brassy, jingoistic tune comes from a big budget nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine Hollywood production called The FBI Story, made in
Speaker 1: cooperation with the Bureau itself. The movie spins through the
Speaker 1: greatest hits of agency cases, from the Osage Indian murderers
Speaker 1: to the pursuit of communists. And it wouldn't be an
Speaker 1: all American field good story without everyone's favorite leading man,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart tell n.
Speaker 2: Why twenty one if and when White he passes the
Speaker 2: cor and arrest them.
Speaker 1: Stewart played the quintessential FBI agent. He was conservative, level headed, trustworthy,
Speaker 1: clean shaven, well quaffed, and of course white. A government
Speaker 1: man or in the parlance of the day, A g
Speaker 1: man and g men were American heroes. FBI myth making
Speaker 1: was pretty much its own genre of entertainment in the
Speaker 1: mid twentieth century. It wasn't just movies. FBI agents were
Speaker 1: valiant heroes in comic books and radio shows.
Speaker 2: This is Your FBI, the official broadcast from the files
Speaker 2: of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 1: And they were the stars of a TV show that,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one was in its sixth season and
Speaker 1: at the height of its popularity the FBI. The FBI
Speaker 1: story was everywhere, and that didn't happen by accident. The
Speaker 1: story of the bureau, familiar to most Americans, was crafted
Speaker 1: by one man, the ultimate g man.
Speaker 4: America stands at the crossroads of destiny. It is a
Speaker 4: common destiny in which we shall all finally stand all four.
Speaker 1: That's Jay Edgar Hoover, longtime director of the FBI. He
Speaker 1: was a small man, but terrifyingly intimidating, so buttoned up
Speaker 1: that he made Beaver Cleaver look like a Hell's angel.
Speaker 1: Hoover was also a brilliant pr man, transforming a relatively
Speaker 1: obscure bureau of the Justice Department into a nationally revered
Speaker 1: household name that FBI TV show. Hoover was intimately involved
Speaker 1: in its production, often suggesting storylines. As for that Jimmy
Speaker 1: Stewart movie. Hoover edited and approved the scripts himself, and
Speaker 1: he tasked FBI agents with investigating every person on set,
Speaker 1: even the gaffers. Caffle with the lighting guys. It's starting
Speaker 1: to look a little communist. As far as Hoover's message
Speaker 1: to the American people, it was simple. They could always
Speaker 1: count on the FBI.
Speaker 4: I take humble prize, insenitally stating here tonight that as
Speaker 4: long as I am Director of the FBI, he will
Speaker 4: cont you to maintain its high and impartial standards of investigation.
Speaker 4: Despite the hostile opinions of its detractors.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of Americans revered Hoover. A Gallup poll
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one found that over seventy percent of
Speaker 1: Americans thought he was doing a good, too excellent job.
Speaker 1: Only seven percent had a negative view of him. Hoover
Speaker 1: had been exempted from compulsory retirement in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: which essentially made him FBI director for life. His power
Speaker 1: across five decades was unquestioned when someone suggested to John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy that maybe it wasn't a great idea for one
Speaker 1: person to have all that power for that long. Kennedy
Speaker 1: then the President replied with resignation. You don't fire God,
Speaker 1: Hey God, sorry a bug. Yeah, you are fired, damn it.
Speaker 4: Furthermore, the FBI will continue to be objective in its investigations,
Speaker 4: and we'll stay within the bounds of its authorized jurisdiction,
Speaker 4: regardless of pressure groups which seek to use the FBI
Speaker 4: to attain their own selfish aims to the detriment of
Speaker 4: our people as a whole.
Speaker 1: Back at the Washington Post offices, Betty Metzger was holding
Speaker 1: documents that did not jibe with the FBI. America knew
Speaker 1: the contents of the files were so shocking, so illegal,
Speaker 1: Betty was skeptical that they were actually real. She took
Speaker 1: the files to an editor.
Speaker 3: I explained that I've just received these files that are
Speaker 3: stolen from an FBI office, and she stops me, and
Speaker 3: she says, we just got a call from Ken klok.
Speaker 1: Ken Clawson was a veteran reporter who was well sourced
Speaker 1: inside the federal government. That morning, one of Clawson's government
Speaker 1: sources had reached out to him, asking if anyone at
Speaker 1: the post had received stolen FBI documents. If the FBI
Speaker 1: was asking about them, then clearly the files Betty received
Speaker 1: were authentic.
Speaker 3: I start to confront within myself the significance and the
Speaker 3: danger involved. I realized I needed to think about what
Speaker 3: I was doing. I needed to think about the personal
Speaker 3: implications of it.
Speaker 1: Betty knew that writing this story could make her an
Speaker 1: enemy of the FBI, something nobody wanted, as it could
Speaker 1: have very real consequences.
Speaker 3: I'm concerned about fingerprints on the files that I've received,
Speaker 3: so I thought it was very important, even when I
Speaker 3: just thought of fingerprints, that I protect them as though
Speaker 3: they were people that I had faced and made a
Speaker 3: promise to.
Speaker 1: And so, despite knowing that it could create powerful enemies
Speaker 1: for this, heretofore under the radar smirsh reporter, Betty sat
Speaker 1: down to write her story.
Speaker 3: I just stayed on the office, working and writing and
Speaker 3: rewriting the stories all afternoon. Like any other story, I
Speaker 3: would simply write it and hand it in and it
Speaker 3: would be published the next day.
Speaker 1: But this wasn't like any other story. Betty finished the
Speaker 1: piece and turned it in at six pm.
Speaker 3: I then learned that it might not be published the
Speaker 3: next day, and might not ever be published, And that
Speaker 3: was a great shot.
Speaker 1: If Betty's story never saw the light of day, then
Speaker 1: the public might never know that the FBI was watching them.
Speaker 3: Catherine Graham was very frightened by the situation.
Speaker 1: Catherine Graham was the publisher of the Washington Post. Graham
Speaker 1: is a journalism legend who received the loftiest honor you
Speaker 1: can imagine. Meryl Streep played her in a movie.
Speaker 3: Do You Have the Papers?
Speaker 1: Not Yet? The movie The Post is all about Catherine
Speaker 1: Graham and her executive editor Ben Bradley, and their decision
Speaker 1: to publish a batch of leaked federal documents known as
Speaker 1: the Pentagon Papers. But that was all yet to come.
Speaker 1: On this day, March twenty third, nineteen seventy one, no
Speaker 1: American newspaper had ever published government documents stolen by sources
Speaker 1: from outside the government. Graham and the Post leadership were
Speaker 1: in completely uncharted territory.
Speaker 3: It was not just that unprecedented and that the documents
Speaker 3: had been stolen. We had them by virtue of a
Speaker 3: crime being committed.
Speaker 1: Betty would later learn that earlier that day, the Attorney
Speaker 1: General of the United States. John Mitchell had repeatedly phoned
Speaker 1: the Post demanding that they not publish her story.
Speaker 3: It was the first time that the publisher had been
Speaker 3: asked by the administration to suppress a story they didn't
Speaker 3: want the public to know.
Speaker 1: The Attorney General claimed that the documents could damage national security.
Speaker 1: That sounded plausible, except Betty and her editors, unlike the
Speaker 1: Attorney General, had actually read the documents. Did they threaten
Speaker 1: to embarrass the government? Absolutely, But there was nothing in
Speaker 1: those files that even touched on national security.
Speaker 3: The government had the power to hurt the institution, and
Speaker 3: Catherine Graham had responsibility for protecting the institution.
Speaker 1: Hours passed. Finally Betty's phone rang.
Speaker 3: At ten o'clock. I get a call saying that the
Speaker 3: decision was just made. The decision was made to publish.
Speaker 1: Stolen documents describe FBI surveillance activities. That was the headline
Speaker 1: plastered on the front page of the Washington Post, on
Speaker 1: newsstands and doorsteps all over America on March twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. The story painted a picture of an
Speaker 1: FBI far different from the g men Americans knew from
Speaker 1: their TV sets and radios. It described a vast surveillance
Speaker 1: network infiltrating college campuses, targeting black students and activists, and
Speaker 1: intentionally trying to create an atmosphere of paranoia. The reaction
Speaker 1: to the story was tectonic. Soon members of Congress were
Speaker 1: calling for an investigation into the FBI and for the public.
Speaker 1: Trips to the mailbox were never quite the same.
Speaker 2: Burglars had an FBI resident office at FBI records stolen
Speaker 2: from the media Pennsilvan and FBI records which have been
Speaker 2: made in public include a letter in which.
Speaker 1: Betty had seen just fourteen files. The letter from the
Speaker 1: Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI implied that there were
Speaker 1: still more files in their possession. What Betty didn't know
Speaker 1: yet was just how many and how much more damning
Speaker 1: those documents would be. But for the time being, Betty
Speaker 1: was just thrilled to see her story published.
Speaker 3: I was very excited, and early that morning I went
Speaker 3: opened my apartment door and picked up my newspaper and
Speaker 3: was happy to see it there.
Speaker 1: But the story didn't end there. Betty's article was highly
Speaker 1: embarrassing for the FBI, which, as she was about to learn,
Speaker 1: put her on j Edgar Hoover's radar.
Speaker 3: The FBI entered my life very soon after that. I
Speaker 3: decided to call a friend in Philadelphia and share my excitement.
Speaker 3: I lifted the receiver on my kitchen phone and a
Speaker 3: man spoke to me and said, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: And this is a great shock to pick up your
Speaker 3: phone and somebody talking to you. And I said, who
Speaker 3: are you? What are you doing? And did not reveal
Speaker 3: who they were, but kept asking me who was I
Speaker 3: trying to call? And why was I trying to call someone?
Speaker 2: Here?
Speaker 3: I was the reporter who had just written that the
Speaker 3: FBI agents are supposed to make people paranoid and feel
Speaker 3: as though there's an FBI agent behind every mailbox. So
Speaker 3: here apparently was an effort to make me paranoid and
Speaker 3: know that there was an FBI agent behind my phone.
Speaker 1: Betty was never able to confirm that he was an
Speaker 1: FBI agent, but I mean, who else could it be?
Speaker 1: And this wouldn't be the only time she would have
Speaker 1: an unnerving run in that made her wonder was the
Speaker 1: FBI now after her? Turns out that first batch of
Speaker 1: stolen FBI documents was just the beginning. The files kept coming.
Speaker 1: Checking the mail each morning, became a moment of high
Speaker 1: drama for Betty.
Speaker 3: So one Saturday, I was at my desk and I
Speaker 3: had received more files from the more FBI files, and
Speaker 3: I was sitting there reading starting to read them, and
Speaker 3: this man I had never seen came up and introduced
Speaker 3: himself and said, I've been watching your mail and I
Speaker 3: see that you're getting these files from the FBI. And
Speaker 3: then he said, I also see that your mother is
Speaker 3: writing to you from Johnstown, that you're occasionally getting mail
Speaker 3: from her. And that's a sort of a strange thing
Speaker 3: for somebody to be saying. But it was even stranger
Speaker 3: than that, because yes, my mother lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: but she had never written to me at the Washington Post.
Speaker 3: She didn't even know the address of the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: This was a downright freaky interaction. Oh hi there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've never met, but I'm keeping really close tabs on
Speaker 1: your mail. Just FYI, By the way, how's your mom,
Speaker 1: whom I've also never met? Is she still getting her
Speaker 1: hair done at that same place on the third Tuesday
Speaker 1: of every month. Fantastic Betty was getting an object lesson
Speaker 1: and what it meant for the FBI to sew paranoia.
Speaker 1: Why was the bureau going to such lengths to rattle her?
Speaker 1: Was this petty retaliation or were there more secrets yet
Speaker 1: to be revealed? The anonymous packages had been mailed from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Betty had previously worked as a reporter in Philadelphia, so
Speaker 1: she was well sourced in the area. She reached out
Speaker 1: to a source she thought might know where the files
Speaker 1: were being kept, and even better, might be able to
Speaker 1: get Betty access to any remaining files.
Speaker 3: She was very open to the idea, and she said,
Speaker 3: let me pursue people that would seem like logical connections
Speaker 3: and get back to you. So I was very excited,
Speaker 3: and as I walked back into the newsroom from that appointment,
Speaker 3: I walked past Ken Clawson's desk.
Speaker 1: You might remember Ken Clawson. He was the Washington Post
Speaker 1: reporter who had confirmed the authenticity of the stolen files
Speaker 1: on the day Betty received them. Clawson actually even shared
Speaker 1: a byline with Betty on that first story because of
Speaker 1: his contribution. One thing worth mentioning here. It just so
Speaker 1: happens Clawson had written a glowing story on Hoover for
Speaker 1: the Post just a few months earlier.
Speaker 3: I just spontaneously just stopped and I said, Ken, I
Speaker 3: just had the most wonderful thing happen. I told him
Speaker 3: what had happened, and that there was a possibility that
Speaker 3: I would be able to go someplace and see all
Speaker 3: of the stolen files. And his eyes just came alert
Speaker 3: and then hardened, and he said, I'm going with you.
Speaker 3: In that moment, I knew I had made a terrible mistake.
Speaker 1: Betty thought back to that fluff piece that Clawson had
Speaker 1: written on Jay Edgar Hoover months earlier. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: best not to let Clawson be Woodward to herb Bernstein.
Speaker 3: And I said, well, no, Ken, these are confidential sources
Speaker 3: of mine and there's no way that they would let
Speaker 3: me bring somebody else along. And he said no, he said,
Speaker 3: I will have to go with you. And at that
Speaker 3: point I somehow graciously got out of the conversation. About
Speaker 3: a half hour passed and I looked up and there
Speaker 3: was Ken, and he said, in very stern language, I
Speaker 3: am going with you when you go to see those files.
Speaker 3: He was saying it as though he had the power
Speaker 3: to give me an order, which wasn't true.
Speaker 1: So Betty reached out to her source and canceled their rendezvous.
Speaker 3: I had to make that assumption that he was so
Speaker 3: close to the FBI that if we went and actually
Speaker 3: found where the documents were, that the FBI might be
Speaker 3: there too.
Speaker 1: Betty never learned for sure. Y Clawson was so weirdly
Speaker 1: aggressive that day. But a year later he left the
Speaker 1: Washington Post for a job at the White House as
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon's communications officer. And guess what he proudly displayed
Speaker 1: on his new White House desk.
Speaker 3: Framed photograph that was signed to Ken with affection Jay Edgar.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, just as Betty suspected, the files
Speaker 1: she was receiving, well, they would just be the tip
Speaker 1: of the iceberg. The full picture was going to upend
Speaker 1: everything the American public thought they knew about the FBI
Speaker 1: and would knock a revered American hero off his throne.
Speaker 5: President's official spokesman claims creating fear mistrustance has spread far
Speaker 5: out of control its penetration in labor union's, college campuses, churches,
Speaker 5: The FBI had under surveillance every political figure, every student activist,
Speaker 5: and every leader for peace and justice in this country.
Speaker 1: So who exactly was responsible for exposing the FBI's secrets
Speaker 1: who were these anonymous citizens who sent Betty those files?
Speaker 1: And how the hell did they successfully break into the
Speaker 1: nation's most powerful law enforcement agency, all under the cover
Speaker 1: of a huge boxing match. Hang on a second, that
Speaker 1: plot is actually sounding kind of familiar. On a fight
Speaker 1: night like the one two weeks from the night to
Speaker 1: night that we're going to rob it one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million without breaking a sweat. Oceans eleven one of
Speaker 1: my all time favorite heist movies from Master of the
Speaker 1: Heist himself, filmmaker Steven Soderberg. Speaking of Steven, while you
Speaker 1: were making Oceans, did you know about this actual real
Speaker 1: life burglary that took place on a fight night? No,
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 3: I have so many questions.
Speaker 1: I do too, Stephen, I do too. I'm excited for
Speaker 1: you to learn more about this story.
Speaker 4: Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I have never listened to a podcast before. Obviously I
Speaker 1: have to hear this, all right, Stephen, and listeners get ready.
Speaker 1: This season you'll hear how Jay Edgar Hoover embroiled the
Speaker 1: FBI in one of the worst intelligence snaffoos of all time,
Speaker 1: The daring heist that exposed it all and the staggering
Speaker 1: fallout that sent shock waves through America.
Speaker 6: We love to say that we learned our burglary skills
Speaker 6: from nons and priests. One day he came up to
Speaker 6: me and he said, would you like to be part
Speaker 6: of a small group where we're going to go after
Speaker 6: the FBI. I just felt like I was living in
Speaker 6: the heart of the dragon and it was just my
Speaker 6: job to stop the fire.
Speaker 3: And this seemed like a way to do it.
Speaker 6: I was just really angry, that's really and I thought,
Speaker 6: here's something that might just make a great, big difference.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, we are really here. This is dynamite stuff.
Speaker 5: There was no place to hide. They released their powers
Speaker 5: against you.
Speaker 2: Mike.
Speaker 4: Well, that was either the FBI or the heating system,
Speaker 4: and there's only one.
Speaker 2: Way to find out which Maney of the tech names
Speaker 2: were clearly illegal but justified in the interest of national security.
Speaker 6: If it meant some risks that were involved, well that's
Speaker 6: what citizens sometimes have to do.
Speaker 1: Snafoo 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 Snapoo is based on the book The Burglary,
Speaker 1: The discovery of j 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 Martine. 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 Melissa Martino and Ed Helms. Tory Smith is
Speaker 1: our associate producer. Nevin Callapoly is our production assistant. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
Speaker 1: Sensitivity consult from Oloakemi Ala de Sui, editing, sound design
Speaker 1: and original music by Ben Chugg, Engineering and technical direction
Speaker 1: by Nick Dooley. Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia Canny
Speaker 1: and Jimma Castelli Foley. Theme music by Dan Rosatto. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and Ben Riizak. Additional
Speaker 1: thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use some
Speaker 1: of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen seventy one. Finally,
Speaker 1: our deepest gratitude to the Courageous Citizens Commission to Investigate
Speaker 1: the FBI, Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy Fine, Gold, Heath Forsyth,
Speaker 1: Bonnie Rains, John Rains, Sarah Schumer and Bob Williamson was
Speaker 1: talking m