Speaker 1: Last time on Snapoo.
Speaker 2: We had picked the time to begin the actual action,
Speaker 2: timing it to begin with the Ali Fraser fight.
Speaker 3: So I went to the door, mister confident, and there's
Speaker 3: a second lock on the door that wasn't there like
Speaker 3: two weeks before.
Speaker 4: We got this far, and we're just not going to
Speaker 4: give up. And that's when I remembered the second door.
Speaker 5: Who anonymous.
Speaker 4: I was really jacked up. Can you believe it? We
Speaker 4: pulled it off without a single hitch?
Speaker 6: Now, were you the first to a rhyme the morning?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 7: Yes, about seven seven thirty in the morning.
Speaker 1: Frank McLaughlin was an FBI agent based in Media, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one. On March ninth of that year,
Speaker 1: he was the first one to arrive for work, where
Speaker 1: his investigative acumen immediately told him is something wasn't right.
Speaker 7: I could tell the lock had been tampered with. I
Speaker 7: could tell by looking at it. So then I automatically
Speaker 7: looked at the second door, and that was that.
Speaker 8: You are.
Speaker 7: What do you think I suspected that there was a Berkeley?
Speaker 7: I mean, yeah, I've been in this business a lot
Speaker 7: of years.
Speaker 1: Inside, he astutely noted a few more telltale clues. For example,
Speaker 1: all of the documents in the entire office were missing.
Speaker 7: The doors were open and the files were gone. And
Speaker 7: I walked into my office a destroyers were rifled. It's
Speaker 7: a place that was ramsacked.
Speaker 1: From there, a series of bewildered g men passed the
Speaker 1: message up the chain of command. Before Whover even arrived
Speaker 1: at his office that morning, his underlings had already enlisted
Speaker 1: one of his most trusted agents, Deputy Associate Director Mark Felt.
Speaker 1: If that name sounds familiar, it's because a few years later,
Speaker 1: Felt would leak evidence about Watergate to the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: For that he's better known to the world as Deep Throat.
Speaker 6: That was after a famous porn movie at the.
Speaker 1: Time, Thanks Betty. Anyway, in nineteen seventy one, Felt was
Speaker 1: a highly respected g man, the kind the other g
Speaker 1: men turned to when the unthinkable happened.
Speaker 6: Mark Felt was in New York and he was shaving
Speaker 6: in his hotel room when he got a call telling
Speaker 6: him that there was an emergency in the FBI.
Speaker 1: Felt canceled his meetings in New York. He caught the
Speaker 1: next train down to Philadelphia. He hustled from Philly's thirtieth
Speaker 1: Street station to the FBI office at one Veteran Square
Speaker 1: in Media. He strode into the office, took charge, and
Speaker 1: immediately got to work covering his own ass.
Speaker 6: So when Mark Felt arrived that morning, he immediately focused
Speaker 6: on the safe in the office.
Speaker 1: That safe was the only unburgled thing in the whole office.
Speaker 1: It contained the agent's firearms, but no files.
Speaker 6: He thought that this was ridiculous, this is where the
Speaker 6: papers should have been kept.
Speaker 1: Yeah, funny thing about that the lead agent and media
Speaker 1: had put in a request for a larger safe just
Speaker 1: the year before. He specifically noted that not having one
Speaker 1: left his office vulnerable to burglars. That request landed on
Speaker 1: the desk of Deputy Associate Director Mark Felt.
Speaker 6: The other thing that he asked Felt for was an
Speaker 6: alarm system, an alarm system that would be connected to
Speaker 6: the police. Felt had turned him down on both of
Speaker 6: these things. When he asked why they couldn't have an
Speaker 6: alarm system, he said that they were so close to
Speaker 6: the local police station that that just wasn't necessary.
Speaker 1: You're close to a police station. If you get burgled,
Speaker 1: just scream, they'll hear you.
Speaker 6: And instead of a very large safe, he provided them
Speaker 6: with a very small safe.
Speaker 1: We'll never know. I Felt realized in that moment that
Speaker 1: this whole snapfoo was kind of his fault. But before
Speaker 1: he got to work searching for the culprits, he found
Speaker 1: something more important, someone to take the fall the lead
Speaker 1: agent in Media, who was sadly reassigned to Atlanta.
Speaker 6: Hoover, urged by Mark Felt, had gotten rid of the
Speaker 6: person in the office who knew the most about the
Speaker 6: area and probably could have been most helpful in conducting
Speaker 6: the investigation. Instead of Deep Throat, they were considering a
Speaker 6: nickname that morning. It would be deep Scapegoader.
Speaker 1: Suffice to to say, this was not the FBI's finest hour.
Speaker 1: A reporter later described Hoover as quote apoplectic when he
Speaker 1: heard about the burglary. Within hours, the director had assigned
Speaker 1: over two hundred agents to a new operation to track
Speaker 1: down and arrest the culprits. The secret code name for
Speaker 1: this operation medburgh medburg.
Speaker 6: I mean it was just a combination of media, meed,
Speaker 6: and burglary.
Speaker 1: What a cute portmanteau. For the first time in its history,
Speaker 1: classified Bureau documents had fallen into outside hands, but for now,
Speaker 1: at least those documents remained secret. Hoover's FBI was in
Speaker 1: a race against the clock, and the orders were clear,
Speaker 1: find these anonymous burglars before an embarrassment became a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: I'm Ed Helms and this is Snafu, 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 snaffoo
Speaker 1: it exposed. Today, the FBI hunts the burglars Todd.
Speaker 5: Haof Hao.
Speaker 1: In the dead of night, hours before Frank McLaughlin would
Speaker 1: even discover the crime scene. The burglars sat in a
Speaker 1: Quaker farmhouse in the Pennsylvania Woods with pages and pages
Speaker 1: of loot. As the adrenaline wore off, it was time
Speaker 1: to see what they had scored. They separated the documents
Speaker 1: into piles and dug in.
Speaker 9: I think we all trusted each other to know what
Speaker 9: was important and what wasn't. Judy and I worked together.
Speaker 9: They had a little shed off of the main cabin.
Speaker 9: But I remember Judy and I spending a lot of
Speaker 9: time in that shed and holding hands and but working too.
Speaker 10: I thought it was very romantic to go through the
Speaker 10: files and decide, you know, which ones you weren't gonna copy.
Speaker 11: Yeah, some files were boring and some were strange, like
Speaker 11: the memo that informed overweight agents they'd be subject to
Speaker 11: weekly weigh ins until they lost the extra pounds, or
Speaker 11: the one that instructed agents on the proper protocol for
Speaker 11: observing j Edgar Hoover's birthday. Who would have guessed this
Speaker 11: guy was more of a birthday diva than my five
Speaker 11: year old niece. An hour passed, and the burglars were
Speaker 11: undoubtedly feeling nervous that they had just risked everything to
Speaker 11: steal a bunch of nothing.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 4: I remember someone in the other room said, you've got
Speaker 4: to come and see this.
Speaker 1: The whole team stopped what they were doing and gathered
Speaker 1: around one document. Hearts pounding, they took turns reading. It
Speaker 1: was a memo from headquarters to all FBI agents. The
Speaker 1: memo instructed agents to conduct interviews with anti war activists,
Speaker 1: not for the purpose of investigating any illegal activity, but
Speaker 1: rather in.
Speaker 4: Order to enhance the paranoia. They were to give the
Speaker 4: impression that there was an FBI agent behind every mailbox.
Speaker 10: And it was like, at last something, That's what they wanted.
Speaker 10: They wanted people to think that there was a boogeyman
Speaker 10: behind every mailbox.
Speaker 6: We had some idea that this was pretty explosive.
Speaker 1: They kept reading, and soon the floodgates opened.
Speaker 3: It was just a constant stream of people saying, oh, man,
Speaker 3: look at this, and then everybody would stop and look
Speaker 3: up and they would read something, you know, and then
Speaker 3: a couple of minutes later somebody would say, holy Macro,
Speaker 3: you're not going to believe this.
Speaker 1: One file detailed the movements and grades of a congressman's daughter.
Speaker 12: The records indicated that during the spring semester of nineteen
Speaker 12: sixty nine, she attended the AutoMac.
Speaker 1: Who was being surveilled because she, like her parents, opposed
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War.
Speaker 12: Where major is fringe and as many courses.
Speaker 1: Another conversation was picked up by a phone tap on
Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party's Philadelphia office. The tap didn't appear
Speaker 1: to have picked up anything illegal, but agents had taken
Speaker 1: scrupulous notes. As one panther phoned his mom to ask
Speaker 1: for bus fare, he.
Speaker 12: Asked his mother to send him seventeen dollars to get home.
Speaker 1: They'd also intercepted a letter from a Boy Scout troop
Speaker 1: leader asking the Soviet embassy about the possibility of taking
Speaker 1: his troop to Russia for a camping trip next summer.
Speaker 12: We would like very much to go to the Soviet
Speaker 12: Union to travel through your country and meet our counterparts
Speaker 12: in the USSR, if possible.
Speaker 1: Another file alleged quote communist infiltration of a local women's.
Speaker 12: Group, Martin Luther King Junior, who will address the fiftieth
Speaker 12: anniversary banquet?
Speaker 1: Be the nature of that infiltration. Martin Luther King Junior
Speaker 1: had been invited to speak at their upcoming banquet.
Speaker 12: Copies of the names and biographical data are attached here too.
Speaker 1: A local civil rights leader, Mohammad Kanyata, was also being surveiled.
Speaker 12: There are two persons authorized to sign checks on this account,
Speaker 12: and they are Mohammed Kanyata and Mary Kenyata.
Speaker 1: Again, there was zero evidence of criminal activity in his file,
Speaker 1: but the FBI had obtained records of his phone calls
Speaker 1: and bank transactions.
Speaker 12: The Peltan's account was forty four dollars and thirty two cents.
Speaker 1: As they kept reading, the burglars realized banks, employers, landlords,
Speaker 1: utility companies, local police, and individual busybodies had all happily
Speaker 1: collaborated with the FBI to surveil their friends and associates,
Speaker 1: no subpoenas, no warrants, and absolutely zero consideration for privacy.
Speaker 12: Will continue to monitor bank account of National Black Economic
Speaker 12: Development Conference in Southeast National Bank, followed by copies of
Speaker 12: bank statements.
Speaker 1: Kiseled chicks and While the targets ranged from women's lib
Speaker 1: groups to boy Scout troops, the FBI was clearly preoccupied
Speaker 1: with black activists. They weren't just tapping the phones of
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers and leaders like Kenyata. Every single black
Speaker 1: student at Swafmore College was under surveillance. When they finally
Speaker 1: got through all the files, the burglars tallied up what
Speaker 1: they'd found. Forty percent of the cases in the Media
Speaker 1: office dealt with surveillance of legal political activity. By contrast,
Speaker 1: investigations of murders, rapes, and interstate crimes constituted just twenty
Speaker 1: percent of the files, and a measly one percent dealt
Speaker 1: with organized crime. If the Media office was any indication,
Speaker 1: spying on law abiding citizens was the FBI's number one priority,
Speaker 1: The stolen files mostly FBI surveillance activity in the Philadelphia area.
Speaker 6: Oh, it was all horrifying. It was horrifying, but.
Speaker 1: It was clear that the mandates were being sent to
Speaker 1: FBI offices nationwide.
Speaker 9: I think we all felt disgusted.
Speaker 1: One memo came directly from Hoover, directing all offices to
Speaker 1: surveil black student unions on every single college campus in
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 9: I had no particular admiration for the FBI at that point,
Speaker 9: but that was a new low not even I had imagined.
Speaker 1: And Hoover said their activity posed a quote definite threat
Speaker 1: to the nation's stability and security. They didn't realize it yet,
Speaker 1: but the single most important document the burglars had stolen
Speaker 1: was a simple routing slip at the top in big
Speaker 1: block letters was a code word, which at the time
Speaker 1: meant nothing to the burglars. Co intel pro A single
Speaker 1: code word on a single page in a mountain of files,
Speaker 1: a needle in a haystack, A needle so dangerous that
Speaker 1: Hoover was prepared to do anything to catch these burglars
Speaker 1: before that code word could see the light of day.
Speaker 8: I must have been about what six point thirty in
Speaker 8: the morning, and I stopped to a paypall on at
Speaker 8: Chestnut Hill at a gas station. The whole place was empty.
Speaker 1: I before they could finally return home to their children.
Speaker 1: John and Bonnie Rains had one more task. They pulled
Speaker 1: up to a gas station and Bonnie waited in the
Speaker 1: car as John made a phone call. In his hand
Speaker 1: was a statement announcing what the Citizens Commissioned to Investigate
Speaker 1: the FBI had just done.
Speaker 8: We'd written a common statement and this was to be
Speaker 8: read to the writer's fellow.
Speaker 5: Well, I was dead the phone.
Speaker 1: That's Bill Winzel, the reuters fella, Yeah, the phone.
Speaker 5: And the voice said, this is a Citizens Commission to
Speaker 5: investigate the FBI. I thought, oh, this is going to
Speaker 5: be interesting. Good Bill.
Speaker 1: On the night of March eighth, nineteen seventy one, the
Speaker 1: Citizens Commissioned to Investigate the FBI removed files from the
Speaker 1: media Pennsylvania Office of the FBI. These files will now
Speaker 1: be studied to determine the nature and extent of surveillance.
Speaker 4: John was on the phone with the reporter reading the statement,
Speaker 4: and I was waiting in the car and a police
Speaker 4: car pulls up into the gas station. He was curious,
Speaker 4: I guess about what we were doing at that time
Speaker 4: of the night on a public phone.
Speaker 1: The police car crept by. The officer peered at John.
Speaker 1: John spotted the car, but he kept reading. His hand
Speaker 1: trembled holding a piece of paper that contained his confession
Speaker 1: to a federal.
Speaker 4: Crime, and we just absolutely freaked out.
Speaker 1: The police car kept moving and slowly drove away. John
Speaker 1: continued reading, we have taken this action because we believe
Speaker 1: that democracy can survive only in an order of justice,
Speaker 1: of an open society and public trust. And then the
Speaker 1: police car returned, driving even more slowly this time.
Speaker 4: I was really afraid at that point, because John had
Speaker 4: that piece of paper right there in front of him
Speaker 4: in the phone booth.
Speaker 1: She leaned over and banged on the window to get
Speaker 1: John's attention, her expression clearly conveying a message every spouse understands,
Speaker 1: hurry the up. But even with the cops checking him
Speaker 1: out and Bonnie glaring at him, John dictated the entire letter.
Speaker 1: He had a cover story just in case if the
Speaker 1: police bothered him, he'd just pretend he was on the
Speaker 1: phone with his bookie. He catched the fight last night.
Speaker 1: Officer John continued reading the statement. In doing this, we
Speaker 1: know full well the legal jeopardy in which we place ourselves.
Speaker 1: We feel most keenly our responsibilities to those who daily
Speaker 1: depend on us, and whom we put in jeopardy by
Speaker 1: our own jeopardy. But under the present circumstances, this seems
Speaker 1: to us our best way of loving and serving them,
Speaker 1: and in fact, all the people of this land, the
Speaker 1: citizens commissioned to investigate the FBI. As John finished and
Speaker 1: hung up the phone, the police car drove off and disappeared.
Speaker 1: This time it did not come back. Mission accomplished, John
Speaker 1: and Bonnie drove home.
Speaker 4: We tore the statement up and threw it out the
Speaker 4: window and went home to our kids.
Speaker 1: As the scraps of paper fluttered to the ground, John
Speaker 1: and Bonnie laughed with glee or perhaps sleep deprivation. Meanwhile, Bill,
Speaker 1: the Reuter's fellow, was wide awake. He just had a
Speaker 1: bombshell dropped right into his hands.
Speaker 5: I knew I was going to have to call the
Speaker 5: FBI to tell them I had gotten the call, and
Speaker 5: I needed confirmation that all your files had been stole.
Speaker 1: Bill expected the FBI to give him the run around,
Speaker 1: or a simple no comment.
Speaker 5: You know, they could have said what not answering questions,
Speaker 5: but they didn't. They confirmed it, and trustfully, at this
Speaker 5: point they're looking pretty bad.
Speaker 1: He laughs now. But Bill would soon realize this phone
Speaker 1: call made him a suspect. In the coming weeks, he'd
Speaker 1: be stalked by FBI agents. According to him, one actually
Speaker 1: punched him in the stomach. Bill could only corroborate basic
Speaker 1: details with the FBI. His story ran in The New
Speaker 1: York Times the next day, around fifty words in total,
Speaker 1: buried on page seven. The story acknowledged that a burglary
Speaker 1: had taken place, but said nothing about the nature of
Speaker 1: the records that were stolen. Hoover still had time to
Speaker 1: catch the burglars before they spilled his secrets. After the
Speaker 1: burglars sorted through the files, it was time to share
Speaker 1: them with the world. They packaged up copies of the documents,
Speaker 1: addressed them to two congressmen and three reporters, and dropped
Speaker 1: them in the mailbox. The return label read Liberty Publications Media, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: At that point, Bonnie says, it was out of their hands.
Speaker 4: We had to depend on courageous journalists and editors to
Speaker 4: do their job. Then that was just one more thing
Speaker 4: to be anxious about. Would they So we just had
Speaker 4: to hope, and we had to wait and see what
Speaker 4: the reaction of the general public would be to the
Speaker 4: truth about the FBI.
Speaker 1: The burglars would later learn that the congressmen and who'd
Speaker 1: received the files had immediately turned them right back over
Speaker 1: to the FBI, but not Betty Metzker. She retrieved her
Speaker 1: mail at the Washington Post, found a mysterious envelope, and
Speaker 1: met the moment head on.
Speaker 13: FBI records stolen from the media Pennsylvania office showed that
Speaker 13: one goal of a bureau was to spread that very
Speaker 13: impression among left wing organizations that there was an agent
Speaker 13: behind every mail box.
Speaker 1: The FBI was falling out of public favor for pretty
Speaker 1: much the first time ever, not only for its questionable ethics,
Speaker 1: but also for its questionable effectiveness. A New York Times
Speaker 1: editorial read quote, little confidence is inspired by the security
Speaker 1: measures of a security agency whose files can be so
Speaker 1: easily burglarized. Here's burglar. Ralph Daniel I was also real excited,
Speaker 1: because we did have some concern that this funky little
Speaker 1: outpost for the fbi't wasn't going to have much.
Speaker 6: But we knew, we knew this was dynamite stuff.
Speaker 4: After we mailed the documents, our job was done.
Speaker 1: This was moving along unbelievably well. When the Citizens commissioned
Speaker 1: to investigate the FBI met at the farmhouse for the
Speaker 1: last time. They renewed the vow they had made at
Speaker 1: the start they would never tell a living soul what
Speaker 1: they had done.
Speaker 5: We decided we're not getting together as a group ever again.
Speaker 5: We really parted ways.
Speaker 1: Apart from John and Bonnie, who continued to be married,
Speaker 1: the rest of the crew knew their best chance of
Speaker 1: staying safe was to stay apart. No more dinners, no
Speaker 1: more phone calls, no returning to media every March for
Speaker 1: a reunion barbecue.
Speaker 4: We absolutely could not be in contact with each other
Speaker 4: at all. I'm sure that bothered me to some extent,
Speaker 4: but that's the way it had to be. It's just
Speaker 4: the way it had to be.
Speaker 1: And so the burglars left the Quaker Farmhouse in the
Speaker 1: Woods one last time. The Citizens Commission to Investigate the
Speaker 1: FBI was effectively dissolved, but the FBI's hunt for them,
Speaker 1: code named Medburg, was just getting started, and soon the
Speaker 1: g men would come a knocking. When the Washington Post
Speaker 1: published the contents of those first media files, j Edgar
Speaker 1: Hoover was livid. His only consolation was that the story
Speaker 1: could have been way worse. The story revealed the FBI
Speaker 1: wanted to make activists paranoid to think there was a
Speaker 1: quote FBI agent behind every mailbox. But the article made
Speaker 1: no mention of Hoover's biggest liability, the code word co
Speaker 1: intel pro. For all he knew, it was just a
Speaker 1: matter of time. Hoover needed to catch those burglars fast.
Speaker 1: The document containing the infamous agent behind every mailbox line
Speaker 1: was basically an instruction manual for how to interrogate anti
Speaker 1: war activists. It also included the following quote, some will
Speaker 1: be overcome by the overwhelming personalities of the contacting agent
Speaker 1: and volunteer to tell all. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: All the g men had to do was contact some activists,
Speaker 1: overwhelm them with personality, and the suspects would spill their guts.
Speaker 1: Let's see how that went. I'm going to read you
Speaker 1: some of the actual reports agents sent to headquarters. Two
Speaker 1: director from Indianapolis checked on the whereabouts of a man
Speaker 1: from Bloomington who agents thought might quote do such a thing.
Speaker 1: Two director from Newark possible suspect found by the Red Bank,
Speaker 1: New Jersey office a long haired person sitting in a car.
Speaker 1: Two director from Philadelphia visited local commune Farkal Farm. The
Speaker 1: commune is primarily engaged in drug and sex activities. However,
Speaker 1: they could definitely still know something. Okay, buddy, better stay
Speaker 1: put there at Farkel Farm, see if you can get
Speaker 1: some good inter court I mean. Intel agents had recovered
Speaker 1: a partial palm print from the media office, found on
Speaker 1: the side of the large filing cabinet. They sent it
Speaker 1: to the lab and waited for results. Their strongest lead
Speaker 1: was the Unknown walk In, a college girl who had
Speaker 1: visited the office weeks before the burglary, ostensibly for a
Speaker 1: newspaper article. They had to call her the unknown walk In,
Speaker 1: of course, because none of the agents thought to ask
Speaker 1: for her name. That really pissed Hoover off. He made
Speaker 1: it objective number one for the agents to find that woman.
Speaker 4: Find me that.
Speaker 1: The agents who saw Bonnie in the office that day
Speaker 1: worked with a Philadelphia sketch artist to drop a picture
Speaker 1: to distribute to agents nationwide. The quality of the sketch
Speaker 1: was well, just imagine someone handed you a picture of
Speaker 1: an oval and said, go find this egg.
Speaker 4: I laughed. I just laughed and laughed. It was pretty funny.
Speaker 4: It's almost like a cartoon.
Speaker 1: Accompanying the sketch was a written description apparently Bonnie's coat
Speaker 1: was quote soiled and in need of cleaning and pressing,
Speaker 1: and her hair was quote apparently not well combed or
Speaker 1: well kept. Were you offended by their description?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was a little offended. We just knew that
Speaker 4: Hoover was beside himself that this had happened.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, that was no surprise. I mean, two
Speaker 3: seconds after Bill suggested the idea, I'm like, they really
Speaker 3: gonna be pissed if we pull this off.
Speaker 4: He dispatched two hundred agents to flood the Philadelphia area
Speaker 4: to find us.
Speaker 1: Powelton Village is a neighborhood in West Philadelphia filled with
Speaker 1: red brick townhouses. In nineteen seventy one, it was a
Speaker 1: hotbed of anti war activism. Hoover was certain that if
Speaker 1: the burglars were to be found, they'd be found here,
Speaker 1: and he was actually right. More than half of the
Speaker 1: burglars did live in Powelton Village at the time. Judy
Speaker 1: was one of them.
Speaker 10: We knew that we were poking the hornet's nest.
Speaker 6: I mean we knew it.
Speaker 10: We had a lot of heat, you know, everybody was
Speaker 10: being intimidated.
Speaker 1: Mostly the g men just sat in their cars for
Speaker 1: weeks on end, equipped with long lens cameras watching, and
Speaker 1: whether or not somebody was actively involved in anti war
Speaker 1: protests didn't really seem to matter to these agents. At
Speaker 1: least one resident learned that the heart Way, I.
Speaker 4: Haven't been active in resistance politics or anything, and yet
Speaker 4: you know, twelve armed agents broke into my house.
Speaker 6: Throughout that time, very seldom did they figure out actual
Speaker 6: information that could lead to arrest. They really lost their
Speaker 6: ability to be sharp at solving crimes, and they did
Speaker 6: outrageous things instead. And this kind of just massive surveillance.
Speaker 6: By sitting in the cars, it's very unlikely you're going
Speaker 6: to get information that tells you anything about who broke
Speaker 6: into that FBI office.
Speaker 1: This approach was classic Hoover. It was more or less
Speaker 1: the same tactic that had been revealed in the media files.
Speaker 1: Surveil everyone all the time in what's known as blanket surveillance.
Speaker 1: It was exhaustive, time consuming, and generated so much information
Speaker 1: that it became impossible to suss out which bits actually mattered.
Speaker 1: Blanket surveillance is great for intimidation, but for crime solving
Speaker 1: not so much.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 3: There were so many agents hanging around village that somebody
Speaker 3: in the community decided the way to fight back was
Speaker 3: to make fun of them.
Speaker 1: For example, when agents inevitably fell asleep in their cars, a.
Speaker 6: Local resident would stand beside an FBI car and blow
Speaker 6: a bullhorn as another residence stood on the other side
Speaker 6: of the FBI car with a tray of freshly baked
Speaker 6: cookies and milk ready for the agents as they jolded
Speaker 6: awake after the bullhorns sound. I don't know if any
Speaker 6: agents ever accepted the cookies into milk.
Speaker 1: Somebody also had the brilliant idea to go around and
Speaker 1: slap bumper stickers on all the surveillance cars that said
Speaker 1: this is an FBI car. And then there was the
Speaker 1: street fair.
Speaker 6: They called it Your FBI in Action Street Fair.
Speaker 1: The fair was a spectacle planned by the residents of
Speaker 1: Powellton Village to make a mockery of Hoover's FBI. Copies
Speaker 1: of the stolen media files, which by now had gotten around,
Speaker 1: were nailed to trees. You could get your picture taken
Speaker 1: with a life sized cardboard cutout of j Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 1: There were skits too, yes open up FBI wa kids
Speaker 1: assembled jigsaw puzzles depicting FBI agents sleeping in their cars.
Speaker 1: What can I say? It was a family affair. There
Speaker 1: were even musical performances captured by a film crew from
Speaker 1: the Educational Broadcasting Corporation.
Speaker 7: They know it you are, They know if you are streets,
Speaker 7: they know if you.
Speaker 13: Are land all right, And if you plan to smash
Speaker 13: the state.
Speaker 8: Better are not crown.
Speaker 10: You better not smiled, You better.
Speaker 1: Not see love me while Edgar Hoover's hanging. Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you know. I never really thought about the similarities between
Speaker 1: Hoover and Santa before, but I guess they were both
Speaker 1: surveillance experts, both pretty demanding bosses. But then again, no
Speaker 1: one's ever accused the g men of being jolly.
Speaker 6: I've never heard anybody say that an FBI agent was
Speaker 6: observed laughing at any feings.
Speaker 3: My experience was that FBI agents did not have a
Speaker 3: sense of humor. At least they didn't think my jokes
Speaker 3: were funny.
Speaker 1: It may have been silly, but the residents of Palellton
Speaker 1: Village were making a point. They now knew every tactic
Speaker 1: in the FBI's paranoia playbook, and it wasn't going to
Speaker 1: work on them. And at that fair, posing for a
Speaker 1: picture with his family. Alongside the cardboard cutout j Edgar
Speaker 1: Hoover was none other than Bill Davidan, the mastermind of
Speaker 1: the burglary. As the FBI bumbled its way through the investigation,
Speaker 1: Bill created a new role for himself the unofficial burglary spokesperson.
Speaker 1: He talked to the press and discussed the files at
Speaker 1: academic conferences. He'd never admitted to being a burglar, let
Speaker 1: alone the mastermind, just a concerned citizen who wanted to
Speaker 1: spread the word about what was in those files. Bill
Speaker 1: Davidan was hiding in plain sight. It was kind of brilliant,
Speaker 1: definitely ballsy, but also a bit baffling to his accomplices,
Speaker 1: who felt that a better place for him to hide
Speaker 1: might have been. I don't know, out of sight entirely.
Speaker 1: Here's Bill.
Speaker 14: I thought it was important to have outreach, and John
Speaker 14: was very opposed to that. You know, he was very
Speaker 14: uneasy about sort of being publicly involved in discendating information
Speaker 14: about media. And I guess my feeling is something illegal
Speaker 14: about doing that, so why not?
Speaker 15: Yeah, but it also seems as though it might attract
Speaker 15: it's important to avoid this cloak and dagger atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But for the rest of the burglars. The heat of
Speaker 1: the Medburg investigation was more menacing, and soon some of
Speaker 1: them would come to face the agents hunting them.
Speaker 4: We were trying to go back to our normal lives,
Speaker 4: but it was just it was the elephant in the room.
Speaker 4: As they say, there were things to be scared about.
Speaker 4: You don't know for sure, you don't know one hundred percent,
Speaker 4: so you worry about that.
Speaker 16: But I'm at home. I thought I never loved that
Speaker 16: I had started with.
Speaker 1: The Day after the burglary, Sarah Schumer realized she had
Speaker 1: lost one of her gloves.
Speaker 16: Did that mean that I had put my hand on
Speaker 16: door jams and whatnot? Without it on the head fingerprints?
Speaker 1: For weeks, Sarah couldn't think of anything else. Day by day,
Speaker 1: hour by hour, she retraced her steps in her head,
Speaker 1: again and again. At what point that night did she
Speaker 1: lose that glove? She couldn't sleep. Some days, she couldn't eat.
Speaker 1: Sarah describes it like the feeling you have when you're
Speaker 1: far from home and suddenly start wondering if you left
Speaker 1: the oven on. But this time she couldn't go back
Speaker 1: and check. Sarah didn't yet know that the FBI had
Speaker 1: recovered a partial palm print from the office.
Speaker 16: And then the next morning, I got a phone call
Speaker 16: from the FBI that they wanted to interview me, and
Speaker 16: I called two faculty friends to come down to my office.
Speaker 1: Sarah told the agents she talked to them, but only
Speaker 1: in the presence of her friends, and only if they
Speaker 1: let her use a tape recorder.
Speaker 16: And I said no, that would not be acceptable. They said, well,
Speaker 16: then you don't have any questions for you.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they clearly weren't the world's best burglar catchers,
Speaker 1: but when it came to sewing fear, the FBI was
Speaker 1: the best in the game.
Speaker 9: So I'm at my job and I get page downstairs.
Speaker 1: Bobby have two visitors. They have crew cuts and wingtip shoes.
Speaker 9: So I went downstairs and my visitors were these two
Speaker 9: FBI agents, and you know, they suggested that we go
Speaker 9: outside and talk, and they escorted me to a car
Speaker 9: that was parked right outside the office.
Speaker 1: They asked Bob to get in the car. Then the
Speaker 1: agent stirred to him and asked, Bob, do you know
Speaker 1: anything about this burglary and media?
Speaker 9: You know, I'd read all those documents. I knew what
Speaker 9: they were doing. If they're going to arrest you. They're
Speaker 9: going to arrest you right away. And if they're not
Speaker 9: going to arrest you, they just want to see if
Speaker 9: they can get information out of you. And your best
Speaker 9: strategy is to refuse to say anything. That's another one
Speaker 9: of those pesky constitutional rights. You don't have to talk
Speaker 9: to them in this case, I said, Fellas, I'm sorry
Speaker 9: to disappoint you, but I'm just not going to say
Speaker 9: anything that you guys want to hear. You might as
Speaker 9: well just take me home.
Speaker 1: Bob waited for the agent to ask for directions, but
Speaker 1: instead the agent merely nodded to the driver. He drove
Speaker 1: right up to the spot.
Speaker 9: They knew exactly where I lived, and I hope we've
Speaker 9: lived there for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: One day, not long after the burglary, John and Bonnie
Speaker 1: Rains had an unexpected visitor.
Speaker 4: The ninth member of the group who dropped out showed
Speaker 4: up at our front door nine and so we invited
Speaker 4: him in and he said that he wanted to talk
Speaker 4: to us because he had heard from someone that there
Speaker 4: were documents that had to do with missile silos and
Speaker 4: he was very concerned about that.
Speaker 1: John and Bonnie promised him there was nothing about missile
Speaker 1: silos in the media files, but the ninth Burglar was convinced.
Speaker 1: He said he was worried the group would leak sensitive
Speaker 1: files that would threaten national security. And then he said,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of turning you in.
Speaker 4: Didn't want him to see us freak out, but we
Speaker 4: were freaking out.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you'd do in this situation, but
Speaker 1: I can pretty much guarantee you would not do what
Speaker 1: John did hire the guy to come back the next
Speaker 1: weekend to paint his kitchen.
Speaker 4: The kitchen didn't need painting, it.
Speaker 1: Was, in fact a ruse. The ninth Burglar returned the
Speaker 1: following weekend, and as they spent the afternoon rolling on
Speaker 1: a fresh coat of yellow, John tried to find out
Speaker 1: where Number nine's paranoia was really coming from.
Speaker 4: So, John, how did you hear this? And he said
Speaker 4: that his girlfriend told him that. And John said, well,
Speaker 4: how long has she been your girlfriend? And he said, oh,
Speaker 4: I don't know, three or four months. And John said,
Speaker 4: have you thought about the fact that she might be
Speaker 4: an FBI informant? And his eyes sort of popped wide
Speaker 4: open like that, and John said, I can assure you
Speaker 4: that there were no documents of that nature whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Number nine left covered in paint and seeming to trust
Speaker 1: that his friends wouldn't endanger the safety of the nation.
Speaker 1: At least for now. John and Bonnie's nerves were fried.
Speaker 1: They weren't out of the woods. There was still the
Speaker 1: possibility they could be caught, that their children might be
Speaker 1: left without parents over the coming weeks. They worried that
Speaker 1: Number nine might still turn them in. And then there
Speaker 1: was a knock on the door.
Speaker 8: There were two of them, you know, the nice guy
Speaker 8: on the mean guy, And it was exactly at the game.
Speaker 1: John had just returned from playing tennis, which was lucky
Speaker 1: because he needed a minute to think.
Speaker 8: When I first came in, I was assuming that my
Speaker 8: tennis clothes.
Speaker 4: I was all swear.
Speaker 8: I'd gone upstairs to shower and left them alone downstairs
Speaker 8: for fifteen times WHI I was shower.
Speaker 1: He came downstairs, fresh as a daisy and ready to bluff.
Speaker 8: They were investigating the media break yet, and they want
Speaker 8: to know, do I know anything about that?
Speaker 1: John being? John launched into a filibuster. Did he know
Speaker 1: about the files? Of course he did. Everybody knew about him.
Speaker 1: He turned the interrogation into a lecture, you gm in
Speaker 1: ought to be ashamed of yourselves, and you need to
Speaker 1: be out.
Speaker 8: There, you know, looking at major crimes.
Speaker 17: And at the end of the interview, they said, by
Speaker 17: the way, you didn't have anything to do with this, didue?
Speaker 17: But my answer was I said, well, I feel so angry.
Speaker 8: About what I found out from the papers that I
Speaker 8: don't want to make your search for people any easier,
Speaker 8: So I'm not going to say what I was or not.
Speaker 1: Just minutes after the agents left, probably regretting talking to
Speaker 1: John in the first place, Bonnie rains the unknown walk
Speaker 1: in walked in. If John had kept the agents even longer,
Speaker 1: they would have run right into their number one target,
Speaker 1: the Get Me That Woman woman. She and John spent
Speaker 1: the next twenty minutes making sure the agents hadn't left
Speaker 1: any secret recording devices. As the weeks passed and the
Speaker 1: FBI continued to circle, John and Bonnie decided to take
Speaker 1: a step back. This incredible heist, which so far they'd
Speaker 1: gotten away with, would be their last criminal enterprise. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Sarah Schumer continued to lose sleep thinking about that glove.
Speaker 16: I didn't know whether anybody else was being questioned by
Speaker 16: the FBI or whether I was the only one that
Speaker 16: they were tracking down, and if I was the only one,
Speaker 16: why was that? And as was it because I left
Speaker 16: Prince and nobody else did so is isolating.
Speaker 1: The burglar's secret and their fear of it getting out
Speaker 1: created a special kind of isolation. There was simply no
Speaker 1: one for them to turn to to process this intense experience.
Speaker 1: This isolation, and the ever present threat of the FBI
Speaker 1: led Judy Finegold to make the most drastic choice of all.
Speaker 1: She left Philadelphia forever. She and her new love interest,
Speaker 1: sorry Bob, simply packed up and headed west.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to get out of town.
Speaker 6: I didn't have a plot or a plan.
Speaker 4: We just went wes.
Speaker 1: Judy found her way to New Mexico and began living
Speaker 1: under an assumed name, severing connections to everyone she knew,
Speaker 1: even her parents. After everything that had gone down, she
Speaker 1: says she just had a feeling that sooner or later
Speaker 1: someone might slip up.
Speaker 10: I really didn't trust that. After a while, like people
Speaker 10: would start getting relax and say, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 10: You're at some party and somebody'll say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 10: I remember, you know, Bob said, you know, and they
Speaker 10: got the media files, you know, so I just decided
Speaker 10: to leave, and it was absolutely terribly painful, you know.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 1: After a few months, the media files were no longer
Speaker 1: making news. By May, the burglars had released all of
Speaker 1: the relevant stolen documents. Betty Metzger had nothing new to
Speaker 1: report on, and to make matters worse.
Speaker 13: Senator Dole, the Republican chairman, accused the Democrats of trying
Speaker 13: to make the FBI look like an American guestapo.
Speaker 1: Congress declined to investigate. Hoover had avoided a congressional investigation
Speaker 1: for now, but President Nixon had started to view him
Speaker 1: as a liability. So one day in late nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: Nixon decided he'd had enough. He was finally going to
Speaker 1: fire J. Edgar Hoover. Here's Professor Daniel Chard.
Speaker 2: He arranged his whole special breakfast with Hoover where he
Speaker 2: was going to try to break the news.
Speaker 1: Hmm, you smell that. That's just the scent of waffles
Speaker 1: and bacon and me finally getting rid of your ass.
Speaker 1: Nixon didn't actually tell Hoover he was fired. He offered
Speaker 1: him the opportunity to retire with dignity and let a
Speaker 1: new FBI director make a fresh start. But even at
Speaker 1: the age of seventy six, coming off the worst scandal
Speaker 1: of his career, Hoover called Nixon's bluff.
Speaker 2: And Hoover was just too slick. Hoover said, I would
Speaker 2: be happy to go into retirement if you would put
Speaker 2: in that you would like me to do that, And
Speaker 2: Nixon realizes he's not going to do that. He doesn't
Speaker 2: want to put that in writing because Hoover is so popular,
Speaker 2: especially among the conservative base.
Speaker 1: When the breakfast ended, Hoover was still the director of
Speaker 1: the FBI. Nixon had even agreed to increase the bureau's
Speaker 1: personnel budget. Even now fighting for his job, as his
Speaker 1: men flailed around desperately interrogating every hippie in the greater
Speaker 1: Philadelphia area. Hoover was a force to be reckoned with.
Speaker 1: And even though his g mens blanket surveillance tactics had
Speaker 1: allowed most of the culprits to slip right through their
Speaker 1: fingers undetected, they still had some tricks up their sleeves.
Speaker 9: And then I hear this guy yelled.
Speaker 1: Freeze coming up on snappho.
Speaker 3: They came to the doors, guns drawn and put us
Speaker 3: up against the wall.
Speaker 1: The FBI arrested twenty persons in Camden.
Speaker 14: New Jersey, early today and charged them with trying to
Speaker 14: steal draftra and the federal building there.
Speaker 9: Forty seven years would have been the maximum.
Speaker 6: There was this feeling that nothing actually would happen in
Speaker 6: terms of Hoover having to face the music. It felt
Speaker 6: like the end at that time, but it wasn't the end.
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 Snafoo is based on the book of 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 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: Facts checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
Speaker 1: Sensitivity consult from Oloa Kemi Ala de Sui, Editing, sound
Speaker 1: design and original music by Ben Chugg, Engineering and technical
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 Riizak.
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,