July 10, 2024 • 38 mins
It’s 1970 when John and Bonnie Raines get a call from their friend and fellow activist, Bill Davidon. He suspects something is very wrong with the FBI, and plans to do the unthinkable: break into an FBI office to prove it.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Last time on SNAFU.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Heavyweight boxers Joe Praise You'er and Mihamed Atli meet in
New York's Madison Square Garden Monday night.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
There was a huge stack of mail, but this one
stood out because of the return address, which was Liberty
Publications Media, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
As long as I am Director of the FBI, it
will continue to maintain its high and impartial standards of investigation.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Last month, Burglars had an FBI a resident office and
took files which subsequently have been made public.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
The FBI entered my life very soon after that.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Reporter Betty Medsker now lived in San Francisco. Two decades
had passed since she first received an envelope from a
mysterious group called the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI.
That envelope contained fourteen top secret FBI files showing America's
beloved g men were surveilling American citizens with the goal
(01:12):
of quote enhancing paranoia. She still had no idea who
sent her those files that led to her bombshell reporting.
She had no idea about the incredible heist that pried
them out of the FBI's hands, and she might not
have ever known these things were it not for one
faithful evening in nineteen eighty nine, Betty was taking a
(01:38):
trip back to her old stomping grounds, Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
There were a number of people professionally and personally who
were very important to me, and I hadn't seen them
in a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Like John and Bonnie Rains, a young couple she'd known
from her days reporting on religion for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
And I called and said I was going to be
a town could we get together? And they immediately invited
me to come to their home for dinner that Friday night,
and I was very much looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
When Betty first met them, Bonnie was a young mother,
juggling her grad school studies and education, her job running
a daycare, and her three children. Her husband, John was
a young Methodist minister who taught religion at Temple University.
He was a gifted speaker, and he knew it. Some
might say he talked a little too much. Betty would
(02:33):
soon learn how true that was.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
We hadn't seen each other in a very long time.
We talked for quite a while and had a couple
classes of wine, catching each other up. On the last
decade of our lives. And at some point in the
middle of dinner, their youngest child came in. She had
(02:55):
a question for John. Then John said when he was
done answering her question, he said, Mary, this is Betty Metzker.
We want you to know Betty because many years ago,
when your dad and mother had information about the FBI
that we wanted to give to the public, we gave
(03:15):
it to Betty. And I was just absolutely stunned.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, I would think, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Mary was sort of lingering a little bit, but you
could just tell from the expression on her face that
this meant absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Sure, and she's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Dad?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
And then when she left the room, I said, you know,
are you telling me that you were you broke into
the FBI. And they had these wonderful white smiles on
their faces and said, yes. It just it just it
popped out, popped out. I think it was a combination
(04:04):
of the fact that we were so happy to see
each other and we were telling each other tales at
a little bit of wine. Here we are sitting in
their beautiful suburban home, you know, four children, nice black
dog named Jezebel, and the station wagon, which they've always had.
(04:24):
But also I just simply know them. I had no
idea how radical they were that night. I'm just asking
one question after another and finding it all pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I'm at Helms and this is Snapoo, a show about
history's greatest screw ups. This is season two Medburgh, the
story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI Snapoo.
It exposed today a young couple's decision to put everything
on the line.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Super testing one, two, three, four, five six.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
That's Betty Metzger interviewing John and Bonnie Rains.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
When the idea introduced you, well, let's see, I think
it was something like September or October.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
In September or October of nineteen seventy, John and Bonnie
Rains got a phone call from a friend, a man
by the name of Bill Davidan. Bill was a Navy veteran,
a physicist, a father of two. He was a noun
assuming man, calm, thoughtful, and deeply practical. Oh and a
dedicated anti war activist, just like John and Bonnie.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
I think he just initially, he just called John and
me from his home in Haverford and asked us if
we would we want to come to a party.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
That's Bonnie. Again, there was no actual party for activists.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
This was code for thinking about an action, and would
you want to come and talk about it?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
A protest action? That is Bonnie and John accepted the invitation.
Speaker 6 (06:19):
So we met with him at his home and we
walked outside in the field behind his home to talk
about it. And that's when he floated the idea to
John and me.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It was casual, you know, in the way that someone
today might propose starting a fantasy football league. Bill simply asked, hey,
what do you guys think about burglarizing an FBI office?
Speaker 6 (06:43):
And it took us back a bit crazy. That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, you're not wrong, Bonnie.
Speaker 6 (06:53):
Is this crazy or is this something we ought to
really take seriously?
Speaker 1 (06:57):
You had it right the first time. It's definitely crazy.
The FBI was the biggest baddest law enforcement agency in
the biggest baddest nation on earth. And who were John
and Bonnie Rains Uh, not professional burglars, not spies, just
a nice young couple with three children in a station wagon.
How the hell were they supposed to break into an
(07:20):
FBI office? And if the FBI caught them.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
No, they'll lock you in a room, and.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So with a room.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Thank you, Steven Soderberg. Anyway, unlike most sane people, the
Rainses would actually consider Bill Davidan's proposition because for months
they'd been suspicious that there was something very wrong with
the FBI, and this might be an opportunity to prove
it well.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Astar I was born in ran Rapids, Michigan, met waitressing
tables in the resort, and there in Michigan with family summer.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Cottage, long before they would consider breaking into an FBI office.
Bonnie and Clyde excuse me. Bonnie and John were just
two young people meeting by chance on a beautiful summer evening.
Bonnie was a waitress at the Homestead, a resort that
overlooked Lake Michigan. And John was a young Methodist minister, tall,
(08:16):
handsome and dining alone.
Speaker 6 (08:19):
And he was at one of my tables, and he
was this absolutely gorgeous man in a blue sport coat
and these brilliant blue eyes. Part of our job description
was to kind of chat up the guests, so I
proceeded to start a chat with him, I guess. So
we found some things to talk about.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
They sure did, Bonnie asked John how his day was,
and John told Bonnie that he just arrived. Literally, this
was his first dinner since getting back from the Deep South,
where he'd been jailed for participating in the nineteen sixty
one Freedom Rides.
Speaker 8 (08:59):
It was the experience for the first time in my life,
the fact that things were not okay with this country, that.
Speaker 9 (09:07):
There were very deep things that were not okay with
this country.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
The Freedom Rides were a courageous civil rights protest action.
Black and white passengers alike boarded greyhound buses headed into
the Jim Crow South. It was a few months after
the Supreme Court had ruled that interstate travel facilities be desegregated,
but before most of the South had accepted the new
reality of this ruling.
Speaker 8 (09:32):
A mob had gathered as our bus came into a
little Rock, Arkansas, and.
Speaker 6 (09:37):
There was confrontation of a mob that, as John said,
they wanted to kill me. They really would have killed
me if they gotten their hands on me.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
The Freedom Riders, including John, were arrested for breaching the peace.
They were fined, found guilty, and told to get out
of the state.
Speaker 9 (09:55):
But sure we did, going south deeper into the balance,
it was a very powerful experience for me, and it
exposed me to the power of the African American Southern
community of resistance.
Speaker 8 (10:10):
It had great moral authority, It acted under conditions of
great danger. It exposed itself to that danger. I began
to see law and order as a system which controls
other folks, oftentimes the black majority who.
Speaker 9 (10:27):
Could not vote.
Speaker 8 (10:32):
Bonnie hears this story, which is fresh off the press,
and I think she was intrigued by. Oh, yeah, I
think what I had for me. Maybe my blue eyes.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I'm not sure they don't hurt John, they don't hurt.
Speaker 6 (10:52):
I really admired him and thought this is a special
kind of man, and he he was very interested in me.
I guess he thought I was pretty and funny. I
had goals, I had ambition, I had spunk, and I
(11:13):
was willing to not just settle for the comfortable life
that I could have settled for.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
I wanted an adventure.
Speaker 6 (11:21):
I wanted my life to be an adventure.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
And he liked joke.
Speaker 6 (11:26):
He said it took him eight glasses of iced tea
to work up to asking me out on a date.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Less than a year later, John and Bonnie were married.
Three kids quickly followed but they made a promise to
each other that they wouldn't allow family to stand in
the way of fighting injustice, and there was plenty of
injustice to fight.
Speaker 10 (11:48):
I signed it up.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
About eight poumes from a US started on a mighty
role from so Alabama, the workers there who are striking
for a decent way, for decent working conditions.
Speaker 11 (12:03):
At the time when the operation of the machine becomes
so odious makes you so sick and marked that unless
you're framed the machine wing, I.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Didn't come working at all.
Speaker 6 (12:15):
There was so much at risk at that time in
our democracy that you were either an activist or you
went along with things.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
That were wrong.
Speaker 6 (12:26):
You had a choice you had to make, and we
made the choice to be activists. And if it meant
some risks that were involved, well that's what citizens sometimes
have to do.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
John and Vonnie Rain spent the nineteen sixties protesting for
civil rights, for women's rights, for labor rights. By nineteen
sixty nine, they were living in Philadelphia and becoming entrenched
in the fight against America's war in Vietnam.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
Asafia, the NAZE official, the military chief of Kuang Nai Province,
today denied charges that American soldiers on the ground executed
several hundred villagers. The villagers version of the incident was
given by survivors yesterday. They said a patrol of one
hundred Americans stormed into the hamlet, drove all the residents
out of their huts, and then opened fire with automatic weapons.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
On November twelfth, nineteen sixty nine, almost fifteen years after
American involvement in Vietnam began, report surface that US troops
had raided the Vietnamese village of Meli. The Americans had
burned huts, killed hundreds of civilians, including children, and committed
other atrocities. The army initially claimed that Meli was a
(13:40):
quote fierce firefight where one hundred and twenty eight enemy
troops and twenty civilians had been killed. But that was
a lie. It wasn't a battle, It was a slaughter.
Speaker 8 (13:52):
I might killed about ten to fifteen.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Men, women and children, men, women, shure, babies and movies.
Speaker 12 (14:02):
Why did you do it?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Why did I do it?
Speaker 12 (14:05):
Because I feel like I was ordered to do it.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Two days after these news reports, half a million Americans
marched in Washington. It was the largest anti war protest
in history.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
Be about today.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
People were hopeful at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Here's Betty Metzker. When she was a young reporter in Philly,
she sometimes covered the peace movement.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
In order for protest to happen, there has to be
a deep feeling that there can be a result because
of what we're doing, and people really did feel that way.
Speaker 11 (14:46):
We come out of the street, pour out with our
visions and our dreams and.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
The beauty that is within us.
Speaker 13 (14:53):
We will come as a new nation.
Speaker 6 (14:55):
You want us to stay.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I don't love my country.
Speaker 10 (15:00):
I entered on with a final better solution that joined and.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Hey, but despite the massive protests, the administration just wasn't interested, like,
not even a bit. While half a million Americans marched
in protest right outside the White House, President Nixon sat
inside and watched a football game on TV. People like
(15:24):
John and Bonnie had seen firsthand how protests can affect change,
but as the war dragged on, even they had to
acknowledge a sobering truth. Marching and demonstrating didn't seem like
it was going to stop this war. Here's John.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
It was a time in which we had a growing
feeling that the moral authority of the country was with
we the people, and was not in the administration in Washington.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Nixon later wrote in his memoirs that these protests quote
destroyed whatever small possibility may still have existed of ending
the war in nineteen sixty nine, which makes about as
much sense as smoking six packs a day and then
blaming your inphysema on the doctor who told you to quit.
Whoever's fault it was. And I happened to blame the
commander in chief of the United States Military, But that's
(16:14):
just me. The war did not end in nineteen sixty nine. Instead,
as the year came to a close, Nixon drafted a
whole new generation of men into the military to kill
and be killed in Vietnam.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Everybody, literally everybody knew a young man who was going
to Vietnam. You thought about your boyfriend, you thought about
your husband or your brother.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Christmas time, nineteen sixty nine, every family that included a
draft eligible young man crowded around their television set.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Pursue into the executive order, the Director's Sellective Service is
going to establish tonight random selection sekuch for induction for nineteen.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Seven eight teenagers just barely men perched on the edge
of their living room sofas nervously bouncing their knees and
drumming their fingers. Their parents hovered as the lottery unfolded
on the TV. Representatives in stiff suits reached their arms
into a fish bowl of blue plastic capsules, and the
young men at home prayed their birthdays wouldn't be called
(17:25):
September fourteen.
Speaker 13 (17:28):
September fourteen zero zero one, April twenty four.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
April twenty four is zero zero two.
Speaker 13 (17:39):
December thirty, December thirty zero zero three.
Speaker 6 (17:59):
In March, you rally, you write letters to members of Congress,
and none of it was making any difference whatsoever. In fact,
the war was worsening. Our voices were not being heard.
So there was a lot of anger and frustration, and
we decided to pursue a different kind of civil disobedience.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
John and Bonnie's activism was about to get hardcore. Their
pursuit of civil disobedience brought them into contact with the
Catholic Peace Movement. To be clear, America's Catholic leadership were
not peacenicks. In fact, in nineteen sixty eight, the Archbishop
of New York counter protested at a peace rally, but
(18:45):
at the local level, many parish priests and their parishioners
felt the war contradicted their religious beliefs. They thought the
draft was wrong, and some of them were even willing
to violate earthly laws to fight it.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
Strategy was to go into draft boards in the middle
of the night, to break into draft boards and remove
draft files and destroy them.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
All American men aged eighteen to twenty five were required
to register with their local draft boards. These small offices
would store their draft files, which were necessary for actually
calling these men up to serve, but there were no
digital copies. Of course, everything ran on paper, which meant
that if someone broke into those draft boards and removed
or destroyed the files, the men in those files couldn't
(19:33):
be called up. It wasn't only the Catholic Peace movement
planning these raids, but many prominent draft board raiders were
priests or people close to them.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
We love to say that we learned our burglary skills
from nuns and priests.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
The draft board raids were strategic targeting offices specifically located
in poor neighborhoods.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
The men that they were drafting were all low income,
disadvantaged men who were just caught up in the draft
and sent over there to be slaughtered or to slaughter.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Rich people were more likely to be able to hire
attorneys that would be able to get them out of serving,
get doctors to find either valid or invalid reasons why
they shouldn't serve. There was learning how to fake mental illness.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So Bonnie John and a gaggle of nuns and priests
broke into federal draft board offices and made off with
draft files in the dead of night. Then they mailed
the files to the young men, along with a letter
explaining that they believed the war in Vietnam was unjust,
and now these men had a choice. They could report
to their Draft board office and offer to serve if
(20:47):
they wished, or they could keep their file and sleep
a little better at night knowing they would never be called.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
Well, we were triumphant. I mean we felt pretty good
about it. So I think we felt at least that
was one very concrete thing that we could do, that
we could accomplish.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
But they weren't naive. These raids weren't slowing the war.
Young men were still going to Vietnam at alarming rates,
many of them never to come home.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
There was such a feeling of deep despair and less hopefulness.
People really came to feel like we're having no impact.
This war is not going to end. People were debating
whether or not violence is appropriate.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Some fringe groups formed, like the infamous Weather Underground. They
began building bombs and blowing up public buildings. They issued
warnings in advance and usually struck at night when offices
were empty, but they wouldn't avoid casualties. On one tragic occasion,
a Weather Underground bomb accidentally detonated inside a townhouse in
New York City in the West Village, killing two members
(22:08):
of the group. The peace movement was worried that all
this escalation would discredit the movement, and soon that escalation
would be brutally answered by the government. On May fourth,
(22:29):
nineteen seventy, at Kent State University, more than two thousand
students gathered to protest the war. The scene was tense.
The National Guard fired tear gas into the crowd, then
protesters through rocks. Then the National Guard fired sixty seven
shots into the crowd. Nine unarmed students were injured and
(22:49):
four were killed. The war was coming home in a
horrifying way, which Neil Young eloquently captured in Ohio, a
song he wrote in the immediate aftermath of Kent State
as Summari. It was the first time American citizens were
(23:13):
killed while protesting the war in a gallup pole. Fifty
eight percent of Americans blamed the students for the shooting.
The peace movement was growing tired and exasperated, and on
top of all that, there was a growing paranoia amongst
activists in John and Bonnie's community, a lingering feeling that
(23:34):
a very powerful force was watching from the shadows.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
We were very aware that the FBI was everywhere in Philadelphia. Surveillance, surveillance,
and intimidation were everywhere. Most of us were acutely aware
that that was happening.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
According to Bonnie, it was easy to suss out the spies.
The peace movement had a certain fashion sense, long hair,
secondhand clothing, leather, fringe tied eye. But occasionally one would
spot somebody in the corner wearing all that stuff, with
a crew cut and wingtip shoes, also wielding a camera.
Speaker 6 (24:15):
Pretty apparent that they were just everywhere everywhere.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
March is meetings, you know, peaceful, legal, constitutionally protected assemblies,
and worse.
Speaker 6 (24:27):
I would take the children to school in a carpool
and there would be a car behind us with two
men in it, and one of my kids would say,
do you think that's the FBI. I mean, that's how
pervasive it was that even my children wondered whether we
were being followed and watched. It's intimidating. It's really it
(24:48):
is intimidating.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
To be fair, if this surveillance focused only on the
people who were illegally breaking into draft boards, well that
would be one thing, but all sorts of protesters felt
they were being watched, surveiled simply for exercising their First
Amendment right to free speech. Here's John Rains.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
There was a feeling that the FBI worked for the
other side, the feeling that the FBI was used as
not simply an instrument of investigation, but an instrument of
intimidation that was using its power to pursue what we
felt to be highly unjust policies in Southeast Asil.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
There's a term for this when a government starts keeping
tabs on people not because they're breaking the law, but
because they're criticizing the government. It's called a police state.
John and Bonnie had the nagging feeling that America was
becoming one, but they had no way of knowing for sure,
that is until they got a call from Bill Davidon
(25:53):
inviting them to a party. By nineteen seventy, peace activists
in Philadelphia had the eerie feeling that they were being
watched by the FBI. But what could be done about it?
It was incredibly hard to prove this was actually happening,
(26:15):
so people resigned themselves to this new reality, but not everyone.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
I was becoming increasingly involved in things like peace marches
and giving talks against government policy.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
This is Bill Davidan.
Speaker 8 (26:30):
Another whole part of the movement.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
I've had to do with draft resistance and sort of
actions which many people consider illegal.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Bill has passed away, but here he is in an
interview from twenty twelve.
Speaker 10 (26:47):
I grew up in Newark, New Jersey. My childhood was
not somewhat unconventional one. I got interested in some aspects
of politics.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Bill's activism started early. When he was only eleven years old,
he heard the mayor of Jersey City had banned a
socialist from speaking there, so he boarded a bus all
by himself to protest, supporting a stranger's First Amendment rights.
When I was eleven, I spent weekends trading baseball cards
and picking up fart jokes. But Bill Daviadon was already
(27:21):
going miles out of his way to stand up for
free speech in the face of government repression. I mean,
I guess he could have also traded a few baseball
cards while he was there, But the point is when
he saw injustice, Bill took a stand.
Speaker 10 (27:36):
I was concerned about political matters, but my energies were
more directed towards the threat of nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Bill was studying to become a theoretical physicist. When the
United States dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
he was devastated that the science he loved was being
corrupted for mass human casualty. Decades later, he was afraid
that his country would use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. He
began protesting in Philadelphia, and it wasn't long before he
(28:09):
was rubbing shoulders with the Catholic peace movement. Bill was
a scientist and as such, a methodical and practical problem solver.
He often preferred simple solutions. Breaking into draft boards was dangerous,
but that didn't necessarily mean it always had to be complicated.
Speaker 10 (28:27):
There are a number of different ways to open the
doors to draft boards. One of the simplest is that
in a couplifications we just put up a little sign
that said, please don't lock the door, and generally people
didn't lock the door.
Speaker 14 (28:44):
He was a brilliant person. I think he had a
lot of motivation and determination and drive.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
This is Sarah davidan Bill's daughter.
Speaker 14 (28:59):
So we lived in a little town called Haverford, and
there was a TV appliant store in Brinmar, which was
the next town over, maybe like a three or four
mile walk, And so he bought a TV and thought
that he could just walk back to his apartment with
this TV. And he's carrying this huge box down Lancaster Avenue,
(29:20):
and you know, that was pre cell phone, so he
couldn't like, you know, call an uber and say, yeah,
I was wrong. So he did the whole walk with
this TV, stopping like every half a block. And by
the time he got there, I mean, he was just
like pouring sweat and he was like, you know, wiping
the sweat off of his face. But he got that
(29:42):
TV back to his apartment and he said, oh, it
ended up being a little bit heavier than I thought
it was, and I don't know why. That story in
particular is sort of like, you know, reminds me of
who my dad is. But I think it was just
sort of like this needs to be done, I'm going
to do it, like he just wanted to get things done,
(30:03):
like he wanted to get shit done. You know.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Bill was a doer and the kind of person his
community trusted, the kind of person you might come to
if you thought big Brother was spying on you.
Speaker 10 (30:19):
A lot of people felt they're being watched. Perfectly legitimate
organizations suspected FBI surveillance getting people to look over their
shoulder and to constantly worry about whether they're being watched
or not, and should create an atmosphere of fear.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
If it was true that the FBI was surveilling peace
activists simply because of their protest activity, that would be
a violation of the First Amendment rights of the very
citizens the FBI was sworn to protect. But Bill also
worried that all of this surveillance might have another effect.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
He felt that if act had this feeling that there
was FBI agent in their midst, it would build cynicism
and probably would lead to activists dropping out and to
other people just not coming into activism. For Bill, dissent
(31:18):
was at the heart of democracy. If the FBI was
spying on people, he regarded it as a crime, and
a crime that needed to be solved.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
But Bill knew it would be no use accusing the
FBI of such a crime unless he had cold, hard proof.
Speaker 10 (31:36):
As frustrating party, because it's hard to get people to
be actively concerned with threats that are not visible.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Bill was a walking set of contradictions. Born to Jewish parents,
he was an atheist, yet actively involved in the Catholic
peace movement. Bill was quiet but still a natural leader,
had a rare gift for comprehending the mysteries of the
physical universe, and yet also purchased a big ass TV
with no plan for how to get it home. By
(32:10):
the early nineteen seventies, Bill and other activists started hearing
strange noises when they picked up their phones. Guys in
unconvincing hippie garb were showing up at protests and taking photos.
People who protested the war were being followed and intimidated.
So Bill looked at this evidence and formed a hypothesis
(32:30):
some organization, a federal law enforcement agency, to be precise
must be surveilling the anti war movement. Like any good scientists,
Bill knew the next step test the hypothesis.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
And so he finds himself thinking about, would you dare
break into an FBI office?
Speaker 14 (32:49):
How complicated would it be to go into the office.
Speaker 7 (32:53):
Yeah, you know, I've no.
Speaker 8 (32:55):
Records on what kinds of disruption.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
If Bill was right about the FBI surveiling the peace movement,
then that meant they were probably keeping files documenting that surveillance.
Find the files and he'd have proof that the government
was suppressing free speech. He didn't know anything for certain,
but even the possibility that this was going on was
intolerable to Bill Davidan. So Bill decided to throw a party.
(33:28):
He invited John and Bonnie Rains.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
We stayed up late a lot talking about it.
Speaker 6 (33:38):
Of course, we had more at risk because we had
three children under the age of ten.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
John and Bonnie had already decided that if they said yes,
they'd take this action together, which made the decision that
much more serious. This wasn't like breaking into a draft board.
People who'd been caught for that usually served a year
two at most, But breaking into an FBI office and
stealing confidential documents. That was the kind of crime that
(34:08):
came with decades of prison time. Their kids would lose
their mom and their dad.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
I mean, you really can't use the fact that you're
a parent as an excuse to step back and not
be engaged. It just seemed that that was the one
and only way to reveal the truth. I mean, basically,
what it came down to were threats to our democracy.
I was raised with those kinds of values and the
(34:36):
idea that you have an individual responsibility to protect our
fragile democracy and to tell the truth.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
I was just really angry.
Speaker 6 (34:51):
Really, and I was feeling so helpless and frustrated, and
I thought, here's something that might just make a great,
big difference, and maybe we can make it happen.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
They called Bill, they said we're in. But they had
no idea what they were about to unleash, no way
of knowing that their action would fundamentally change the way
Americans thought about their country, their government, and the people
who were supposed to be keeping them safe. Oh yeah,
(35:26):
one more thing I should mention at this very moment
that Bonnie and John called Bill and agreed to be
part of his plot to burgle an FBI office. The
FBI was tapping Bill Davidan's phone. Next time on SNAFU,
david plans his attack on Goliath.
Speaker 7 (35:48):
There is nothing mysterious about the meta which the Federal
Bureau of Investigation works.
Speaker 12 (35:53):
He called me and asked me if I was interested
in going to a party, which was you know code,
I said, sign me on.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
There were no alarms over the doors. I couldn't see
any security measures whatsoever.
Speaker 12 (36:08):
It's really not hard and you can get through almost
any door in twenty seconds if you are any good.
Speaker 6 (36:13):
I just felt like I was living in the heart
of the dragon and it was just my job to
stop the fire, and this seemed like a way to
do it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Snapfoo is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and
Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
season of Snapfoo is based on the book The Burglary
The Discovery of j Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by
Betty Metzger. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Mike Walbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chugg, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger.
(36:58):
Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Producer
is Stephen Wood. This episode was written by Albert Chen,
Sarah Joyner, and Stephen Wood, with additional writing and story
editing from Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Tory Smith is
our associate producer. Nevin Calla Poly is our production assistant.
Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
(37:21):
Sensitivity consult from Olowa Kemi, Ala de Sui, editing, sound
design and original music by Ben Chubg, Engineering and technical
direction by Nick Dooley. Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia
Canny and Jimma Castelli Foley. Theme music by Dan Rosatto.
Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel well shand Ben Rizak.
Additional thanks to director Johanna Hamilton for letting us use
(37:43):
some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen
seventy one. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy
Fine Gold, Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Rains, John n Rains, Sarah
Schumer and Bob Williamson.
Speaker 6 (38:14):
H
Last time on SNAFU.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Heavyweight boxers Joe Praise You'er and Mihamed Atli meet in
New York's Madison Square Garden Monday night.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
There was a huge stack of mail, but this one
stood out because of the return address, which was Liberty
Publications Media, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
As long as I am Director of the FBI, it
will continue to maintain its high and impartial standards of investigation.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Last month, Burglars had an FBI a resident office and
took files which subsequently have been made public.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
The FBI entered my life very soon after that.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Reporter Betty Medsker now lived in San Francisco. Two decades
had passed since she first received an envelope from a
mysterious group called the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI.
That envelope contained fourteen top secret FBI files showing America's
beloved g men were surveilling American citizens with the goal
(01:12):
of quote enhancing paranoia. She still had no idea who
sent her those files that led to her bombshell reporting.
She had no idea about the incredible heist that pried
them out of the FBI's hands, and she might not
have ever known these things were it not for one
faithful evening in nineteen eighty nine, Betty was taking a
(01:38):
trip back to her old stomping grounds, Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
There were a number of people professionally and personally who
were very important to me, and I hadn't seen them
in a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Like John and Bonnie Rains, a young couple she'd known
from her days reporting on religion for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
And I called and said I was going to be
a town could we get together? And they immediately invited
me to come to their home for dinner that Friday night,
and I was very much looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
When Betty first met them, Bonnie was a young mother,
juggling her grad school studies and education, her job running
a daycare, and her three children. Her husband, John was
a young Methodist minister who taught religion at Temple University.
He was a gifted speaker, and he knew it. Some
might say he talked a little too much. Betty would
(02:33):
soon learn how true that was.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
We hadn't seen each other in a very long time.
We talked for quite a while and had a couple
classes of wine, catching each other up. On the last
decade of our lives. And at some point in the
middle of dinner, their youngest child came in. She had
(02:55):
a question for John. Then John said when he was
done answering her question, he said, Mary, this is Betty Metzker.
We want you to know Betty because many years ago,
when your dad and mother had information about the FBI
that we wanted to give to the public, we gave
(03:15):
it to Betty. And I was just absolutely stunned.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, I would think, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Mary was sort of lingering a little bit, but you
could just tell from the expression on her face that
this meant absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Sure, and she's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Dad?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
And then when she left the room, I said, you know,
are you telling me that you were you broke into
the FBI. And they had these wonderful white smiles on
their faces and said, yes. It just it just it
popped out, popped out. I think it was a combination
(04:04):
of the fact that we were so happy to see
each other and we were telling each other tales at
a little bit of wine. Here we are sitting in
their beautiful suburban home, you know, four children, nice black
dog named Jezebel, and the station wagon, which they've always had.
(04:24):
But also I just simply know them. I had no
idea how radical they were that night. I'm just asking
one question after another and finding it all pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I'm at Helms and this is Snapoo, a show about
history's greatest screw ups. This is season two Medburgh, the
story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI Snapoo.
It exposed today a young couple's decision to put everything
on the line.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Super testing one, two, three, four, five six.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
That's Betty Metzger interviewing John and Bonnie Rains.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
When the idea introduced you, well, let's see, I think
it was something like September or October.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
In September or October of nineteen seventy, John and Bonnie
Rains got a phone call from a friend, a man
by the name of Bill Davidan. Bill was a Navy veteran,
a physicist, a father of two. He was a noun
assuming man, calm, thoughtful, and deeply practical. Oh and a
dedicated anti war activist, just like John and Bonnie.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
I think he just initially, he just called John and
me from his home in Haverford and asked us if
we would we want to come to a party.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
That's Bonnie. Again, there was no actual party for activists.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
This was code for thinking about an action, and would
you want to come and talk about it?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
A protest action? That is Bonnie and John accepted the invitation.
Speaker 6 (06:19):
So we met with him at his home and we
walked outside in the field behind his home to talk
about it. And that's when he floated the idea to
John and me.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It was casual, you know, in the way that someone
today might propose starting a fantasy football league. Bill simply asked, hey,
what do you guys think about burglarizing an FBI office?
Speaker 6 (06:43):
And it took us back a bit crazy. That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, you're not wrong, Bonnie.
Speaker 6 (06:53):
Is this crazy or is this something we ought to
really take seriously?
Speaker 1 (06:57):
You had it right the first time. It's definitely crazy.
The FBI was the biggest baddest law enforcement agency in
the biggest baddest nation on earth. And who were John
and Bonnie Rains Uh, not professional burglars, not spies, just
a nice young couple with three children in a station wagon.
How the hell were they supposed to break into an
(07:20):
FBI office? And if the FBI caught them.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
No, they'll lock you in a room, and.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So with a room.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Thank you, Steven Soderberg. Anyway, unlike most sane people, the
Rainses would actually consider Bill Davidan's proposition because for months
they'd been suspicious that there was something very wrong with
the FBI, and this might be an opportunity to prove
it well.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Astar I was born in ran Rapids, Michigan, met waitressing
tables in the resort, and there in Michigan with family summer.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Cottage, long before they would consider breaking into an FBI office.
Bonnie and Clyde excuse me. Bonnie and John were just
two young people meeting by chance on a beautiful summer evening.
Bonnie was a waitress at the Homestead, a resort that
overlooked Lake Michigan. And John was a young Methodist minister, tall,
(08:16):
handsome and dining alone.
Speaker 6 (08:19):
And he was at one of my tables, and he
was this absolutely gorgeous man in a blue sport coat
and these brilliant blue eyes. Part of our job description
was to kind of chat up the guests, so I
proceeded to start a chat with him, I guess. So
we found some things to talk about.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
They sure did, Bonnie asked John how his day was,
and John told Bonnie that he just arrived. Literally, this
was his first dinner since getting back from the Deep South,
where he'd been jailed for participating in the nineteen sixty
one Freedom Rides.
Speaker 8 (08:59):
It was the experience for the first time in my life,
the fact that things were not okay with this country, that.
Speaker 9 (09:07):
There were very deep things that were not okay with
this country.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
The Freedom Rides were a courageous civil rights protest action.
Black and white passengers alike boarded greyhound buses headed into
the Jim Crow South. It was a few months after
the Supreme Court had ruled that interstate travel facilities be desegregated,
but before most of the South had accepted the new
reality of this ruling.
Speaker 8 (09:32):
A mob had gathered as our bus came into a
little Rock, Arkansas, and.
Speaker 6 (09:37):
There was confrontation of a mob that, as John said,
they wanted to kill me. They really would have killed
me if they gotten their hands on me.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
The Freedom Riders, including John, were arrested for breaching the peace.
They were fined, found guilty, and told to get out
of the state.
Speaker 9 (09:55):
But sure we did, going south deeper into the balance,
it was a very powerful experience for me, and it
exposed me to the power of the African American Southern
community of resistance.
Speaker 8 (10:10):
It had great moral authority, It acted under conditions of
great danger. It exposed itself to that danger. I began
to see law and order as a system which controls
other folks, oftentimes the black majority who.
Speaker 9 (10:27):
Could not vote.
Speaker 8 (10:32):
Bonnie hears this story, which is fresh off the press,
and I think she was intrigued by. Oh, yeah, I
think what I had for me. Maybe my blue eyes.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I'm not sure they don't hurt John, they don't hurt.
Speaker 6 (10:52):
I really admired him and thought this is a special
kind of man, and he he was very interested in me.
I guess he thought I was pretty and funny. I
had goals, I had ambition, I had spunk, and I
(11:13):
was willing to not just settle for the comfortable life
that I could have settled for.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
I wanted an adventure.
Speaker 6 (11:21):
I wanted my life to be an adventure.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
And he liked joke.
Speaker 6 (11:26):
He said it took him eight glasses of iced tea
to work up to asking me out on a date.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Less than a year later, John and Bonnie were married.
Three kids quickly followed but they made a promise to
each other that they wouldn't allow family to stand in
the way of fighting injustice, and there was plenty of
injustice to fight.
Speaker 10 (11:48):
I signed it up.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
About eight poumes from a US started on a mighty
role from so Alabama, the workers there who are striking
for a decent way, for decent working conditions.
Speaker 11 (12:03):
At the time when the operation of the machine becomes
so odious makes you so sick and marked that unless
you're framed the machine wing, I.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Didn't come working at all.
Speaker 6 (12:15):
There was so much at risk at that time in
our democracy that you were either an activist or you
went along with things.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
That were wrong.
Speaker 6 (12:26):
You had a choice you had to make, and we
made the choice to be activists. And if it meant
some risks that were involved, well that's what citizens sometimes
have to do.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
John and Vonnie Rain spent the nineteen sixties protesting for
civil rights, for women's rights, for labor rights. By nineteen
sixty nine, they were living in Philadelphia and becoming entrenched
in the fight against America's war in Vietnam.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
Asafia, the NAZE official, the military chief of Kuang Nai Province,
today denied charges that American soldiers on the ground executed
several hundred villagers. The villagers version of the incident was
given by survivors yesterday. They said a patrol of one
hundred Americans stormed into the hamlet, drove all the residents
out of their huts, and then opened fire with automatic weapons.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
On November twelfth, nineteen sixty nine, almost fifteen years after
American involvement in Vietnam began, report surface that US troops
had raided the Vietnamese village of Meli. The Americans had
burned huts, killed hundreds of civilians, including children, and committed
other atrocities. The army initially claimed that Meli was a
(13:40):
quote fierce firefight where one hundred and twenty eight enemy
troops and twenty civilians had been killed. But that was
a lie. It wasn't a battle, It was a slaughter.
Speaker 8 (13:52):
I might killed about ten to fifteen.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Men, women and children, men, women, shure, babies and movies.
Speaker 12 (14:02):
Why did you do it?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Why did I do it?
Speaker 12 (14:05):
Because I feel like I was ordered to do it.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Two days after these news reports, half a million Americans
marched in Washington. It was the largest anti war protest
in history.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
Be about today.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
People were hopeful at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Here's Betty Metzker. When she was a young reporter in Philly,
she sometimes covered the peace movement.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
In order for protest to happen, there has to be
a deep feeling that there can be a result because
of what we're doing, and people really did feel that way.
Speaker 11 (14:46):
We come out of the street, pour out with our
visions and our dreams and.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
The beauty that is within us.
Speaker 13 (14:53):
We will come as a new nation.
Speaker 6 (14:55):
You want us to stay.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I don't love my country.
Speaker 10 (15:00):
I entered on with a final better solution that joined and.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Hey, but despite the massive protests, the administration just wasn't interested, like,
not even a bit. While half a million Americans marched
in protest right outside the White House, President Nixon sat
inside and watched a football game on TV. People like
(15:24):
John and Bonnie had seen firsthand how protests can affect change,
but as the war dragged on, even they had to
acknowledge a sobering truth. Marching and demonstrating didn't seem like
it was going to stop this war. Here's John.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
It was a time in which we had a growing
feeling that the moral authority of the country was with
we the people, and was not in the administration in Washington.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Nixon later wrote in his memoirs that these protests quote
destroyed whatever small possibility may still have existed of ending
the war in nineteen sixty nine, which makes about as
much sense as smoking six packs a day and then
blaming your inphysema on the doctor who told you to quit.
Whoever's fault it was. And I happened to blame the
commander in chief of the United States Military, But that's
(16:14):
just me. The war did not end in nineteen sixty nine. Instead,
as the year came to a close, Nixon drafted a
whole new generation of men into the military to kill
and be killed in Vietnam.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Everybody, literally everybody knew a young man who was going
to Vietnam. You thought about your boyfriend, you thought about
your husband or your brother.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Christmas time, nineteen sixty nine, every family that included a
draft eligible young man crowded around their television set.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Pursue into the executive order, the Director's Sellective Service is
going to establish tonight random selection sekuch for induction for nineteen.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Seven eight teenagers just barely men perched on the edge
of their living room sofas nervously bouncing their knees and
drumming their fingers. Their parents hovered as the lottery unfolded
on the TV. Representatives in stiff suits reached their arms
into a fish bowl of blue plastic capsules, and the
young men at home prayed their birthdays wouldn't be called
(17:25):
September fourteen.
Speaker 13 (17:28):
September fourteen zero zero one, April twenty four.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
April twenty four is zero zero two.
Speaker 13 (17:39):
December thirty, December thirty zero zero three.
Speaker 6 (17:59):
In March, you rally, you write letters to members of Congress,
and none of it was making any difference whatsoever. In fact,
the war was worsening. Our voices were not being heard.
So there was a lot of anger and frustration, and
we decided to pursue a different kind of civil disobedience.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
John and Bonnie's activism was about to get hardcore. Their
pursuit of civil disobedience brought them into contact with the
Catholic Peace Movement. To be clear, America's Catholic leadership were
not peacenicks. In fact, in nineteen sixty eight, the Archbishop
of New York counter protested at a peace rally, but
(18:45):
at the local level, many parish priests and their parishioners
felt the war contradicted their religious beliefs. They thought the
draft was wrong, and some of them were even willing
to violate earthly laws to fight it.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
Strategy was to go into draft boards in the middle
of the night, to break into draft boards and remove
draft files and destroy them.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
All American men aged eighteen to twenty five were required
to register with their local draft boards. These small offices
would store their draft files, which were necessary for actually
calling these men up to serve, but there were no
digital copies. Of course, everything ran on paper, which meant
that if someone broke into those draft boards and removed
or destroyed the files, the men in those files couldn't
(19:33):
be called up. It wasn't only the Catholic Peace movement
planning these raids, but many prominent draft board raiders were
priests or people close to them.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
We love to say that we learned our burglary skills
from nuns and priests.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
The draft board raids were strategic targeting offices specifically located
in poor neighborhoods.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
The men that they were drafting were all low income,
disadvantaged men who were just caught up in the draft
and sent over there to be slaughtered or to slaughter.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Rich people were more likely to be able to hire
attorneys that would be able to get them out of serving,
get doctors to find either valid or invalid reasons why
they shouldn't serve. There was learning how to fake mental illness.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So Bonnie John and a gaggle of nuns and priests
broke into federal draft board offices and made off with
draft files in the dead of night. Then they mailed
the files to the young men, along with a letter
explaining that they believed the war in Vietnam was unjust,
and now these men had a choice. They could report
to their Draft board office and offer to serve if
(20:47):
they wished, or they could keep their file and sleep
a little better at night knowing they would never be called.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
Well, we were triumphant. I mean we felt pretty good
about it. So I think we felt at least that
was one very concrete thing that we could do, that
we could accomplish.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
But they weren't naive. These raids weren't slowing the war.
Young men were still going to Vietnam at alarming rates,
many of them never to come home.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
There was such a feeling of deep despair and less hopefulness.
People really came to feel like we're having no impact.
This war is not going to end. People were debating
whether or not violence is appropriate.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Some fringe groups formed, like the infamous Weather Underground. They
began building bombs and blowing up public buildings. They issued
warnings in advance and usually struck at night when offices
were empty, but they wouldn't avoid casualties. On one tragic occasion,
a Weather Underground bomb accidentally detonated inside a townhouse in
New York City in the West Village, killing two members
(22:08):
of the group. The peace movement was worried that all
this escalation would discredit the movement, and soon that escalation
would be brutally answered by the government. On May fourth,
(22:29):
nineteen seventy, at Kent State University, more than two thousand
students gathered to protest the war. The scene was tense.
The National Guard fired tear gas into the crowd, then
protesters through rocks. Then the National Guard fired sixty seven
shots into the crowd. Nine unarmed students were injured and
(22:49):
four were killed. The war was coming home in a
horrifying way, which Neil Young eloquently captured in Ohio, a
song he wrote in the immediate aftermath of Kent State
as Summari. It was the first time American citizens were
(23:13):
killed while protesting the war in a gallup pole. Fifty
eight percent of Americans blamed the students for the shooting.
The peace movement was growing tired and exasperated, and on
top of all that, there was a growing paranoia amongst
activists in John and Bonnie's community, a lingering feeling that
(23:34):
a very powerful force was watching from the shadows.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
We were very aware that the FBI was everywhere in Philadelphia. Surveillance, surveillance,
and intimidation were everywhere. Most of us were acutely aware
that that was happening.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
According to Bonnie, it was easy to suss out the spies.
The peace movement had a certain fashion sense, long hair,
secondhand clothing, leather, fringe tied eye. But occasionally one would
spot somebody in the corner wearing all that stuff, with
a crew cut and wingtip shoes, also wielding a camera.
Speaker 6 (24:15):
Pretty apparent that they were just everywhere everywhere.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
March is meetings, you know, peaceful, legal, constitutionally protected assemblies,
and worse.
Speaker 6 (24:27):
I would take the children to school in a carpool
and there would be a car behind us with two
men in it, and one of my kids would say,
do you think that's the FBI. I mean, that's how
pervasive it was that even my children wondered whether we
were being followed and watched. It's intimidating. It's really it
(24:48):
is intimidating.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
To be fair, if this surveillance focused only on the
people who were illegally breaking into draft boards, well that
would be one thing, but all sorts of protesters felt
they were being watched, surveiled simply for exercising their First
Amendment right to free speech. Here's John Rains.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
There was a feeling that the FBI worked for the
other side, the feeling that the FBI was used as
not simply an instrument of investigation, but an instrument of
intimidation that was using its power to pursue what we
felt to be highly unjust policies in Southeast Asil.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
There's a term for this when a government starts keeping
tabs on people not because they're breaking the law, but
because they're criticizing the government. It's called a police state.
John and Bonnie had the nagging feeling that America was
becoming one, but they had no way of knowing for sure,
that is until they got a call from Bill Davidon
(25:53):
inviting them to a party. By nineteen seventy, peace activists
in Philadelphia had the eerie feeling that they were being
watched by the FBI. But what could be done about it?
It was incredibly hard to prove this was actually happening,
(26:15):
so people resigned themselves to this new reality, but not everyone.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
I was becoming increasingly involved in things like peace marches
and giving talks against government policy.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
This is Bill Davidan.
Speaker 8 (26:30):
Another whole part of the movement.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
I've had to do with draft resistance and sort of
actions which many people consider illegal.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Bill has passed away, but here he is in an
interview from twenty twelve.
Speaker 10 (26:47):
I grew up in Newark, New Jersey. My childhood was
not somewhat unconventional one. I got interested in some aspects
of politics.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Bill's activism started early. When he was only eleven years old,
he heard the mayor of Jersey City had banned a
socialist from speaking there, so he boarded a bus all
by himself to protest, supporting a stranger's First Amendment rights.
When I was eleven, I spent weekends trading baseball cards
and picking up fart jokes. But Bill Daviadon was already
(27:21):
going miles out of his way to stand up for
free speech in the face of government repression. I mean,
I guess he could have also traded a few baseball
cards while he was there, But the point is when
he saw injustice, Bill took a stand.
Speaker 10 (27:36):
I was concerned about political matters, but my energies were
more directed towards the threat of nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Bill was studying to become a theoretical physicist. When the
United States dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
he was devastated that the science he loved was being
corrupted for mass human casualty. Decades later, he was afraid
that his country would use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. He
began protesting in Philadelphia, and it wasn't long before he
(28:09):
was rubbing shoulders with the Catholic peace movement. Bill was
a scientist and as such, a methodical and practical problem solver.
He often preferred simple solutions. Breaking into draft boards was dangerous,
but that didn't necessarily mean it always had to be complicated.
Speaker 10 (28:27):
There are a number of different ways to open the
doors to draft boards. One of the simplest is that
in a couplifications we just put up a little sign
that said, please don't lock the door, and generally people
didn't lock the door.
Speaker 14 (28:44):
He was a brilliant person. I think he had a
lot of motivation and determination and drive.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
This is Sarah davidan Bill's daughter.
Speaker 14 (28:59):
So we lived in a little town called Haverford, and
there was a TV appliant store in Brinmar, which was
the next town over, maybe like a three or four
mile walk, And so he bought a TV and thought
that he could just walk back to his apartment with
this TV. And he's carrying this huge box down Lancaster Avenue,
(29:20):
and you know, that was pre cell phone, so he
couldn't like, you know, call an uber and say, yeah,
I was wrong. So he did the whole walk with
this TV, stopping like every half a block. And by
the time he got there, I mean, he was just
like pouring sweat and he was like, you know, wiping
the sweat off of his face. But he got that
(29:42):
TV back to his apartment and he said, oh, it
ended up being a little bit heavier than I thought
it was, and I don't know why. That story in
particular is sort of like, you know, reminds me of
who my dad is. But I think it was just
sort of like this needs to be done, I'm going
to do it, like he just wanted to get things done,
(30:03):
like he wanted to get shit done. You know.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Bill was a doer and the kind of person his
community trusted, the kind of person you might come to
if you thought big Brother was spying on you.
Speaker 10 (30:19):
A lot of people felt they're being watched. Perfectly legitimate
organizations suspected FBI surveillance getting people to look over their
shoulder and to constantly worry about whether they're being watched
or not, and should create an atmosphere of fear.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
If it was true that the FBI was surveilling peace
activists simply because of their protest activity, that would be
a violation of the First Amendment rights of the very
citizens the FBI was sworn to protect. But Bill also
worried that all of this surveillance might have another effect.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
He felt that if act had this feeling that there
was FBI agent in their midst, it would build cynicism
and probably would lead to activists dropping out and to
other people just not coming into activism. For Bill, dissent
(31:18):
was at the heart of democracy. If the FBI was
spying on people, he regarded it as a crime, and
a crime that needed to be solved.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
But Bill knew it would be no use accusing the
FBI of such a crime unless he had cold, hard proof.
Speaker 10 (31:36):
As frustrating party, because it's hard to get people to
be actively concerned with threats that are not visible.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Bill was a walking set of contradictions. Born to Jewish parents,
he was an atheist, yet actively involved in the Catholic
peace movement. Bill was quiet but still a natural leader,
had a rare gift for comprehending the mysteries of the
physical universe, and yet also purchased a big ass TV
with no plan for how to get it home. By
(32:10):
the early nineteen seventies, Bill and other activists started hearing
strange noises when they picked up their phones. Guys in
unconvincing hippie garb were showing up at protests and taking photos.
People who protested the war were being followed and intimidated.
So Bill looked at this evidence and formed a hypothesis
(32:30):
some organization, a federal law enforcement agency, to be precise
must be surveilling the anti war movement. Like any good scientists,
Bill knew the next step test the hypothesis.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
And so he finds himself thinking about, would you dare
break into an FBI office?
Speaker 14 (32:49):
How complicated would it be to go into the office.
Speaker 7 (32:53):
Yeah, you know, I've no.
Speaker 8 (32:55):
Records on what kinds of disruption.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
If Bill was right about the FBI surveiling the peace movement,
then that meant they were probably keeping files documenting that surveillance.
Find the files and he'd have proof that the government
was suppressing free speech. He didn't know anything for certain,
but even the possibility that this was going on was
intolerable to Bill Davidan. So Bill decided to throw a party.
(33:28):
He invited John and Bonnie Rains.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
We stayed up late a lot talking about it.
Speaker 6 (33:38):
Of course, we had more at risk because we had
three children under the age of ten.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
John and Bonnie had already decided that if they said yes,
they'd take this action together, which made the decision that
much more serious. This wasn't like breaking into a draft board.
People who'd been caught for that usually served a year
two at most, But breaking into an FBI office and
stealing confidential documents. That was the kind of crime that
(34:08):
came with decades of prison time. Their kids would lose
their mom and their dad.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
I mean, you really can't use the fact that you're
a parent as an excuse to step back and not
be engaged. It just seemed that that was the one
and only way to reveal the truth. I mean, basically,
what it came down to were threats to our democracy.
I was raised with those kinds of values and the
(34:36):
idea that you have an individual responsibility to protect our
fragile democracy and to tell the truth.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
I was just really angry.
Speaker 6 (34:51):
Really, and I was feeling so helpless and frustrated, and
I thought, here's something that might just make a great,
big difference, and maybe we can make it happen.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
They called Bill, they said we're in. But they had
no idea what they were about to unleash, no way
of knowing that their action would fundamentally change the way
Americans thought about their country, their government, and the people
who were supposed to be keeping them safe. Oh yeah,
(35:26):
one more thing I should mention at this very moment
that Bonnie and John called Bill and agreed to be
part of his plot to burgle an FBI office. The
FBI was tapping Bill Davidan's phone. Next time on SNAFU,
david plans his attack on Goliath.
Speaker 7 (35:48):
There is nothing mysterious about the meta which the Federal
Bureau of Investigation works.
Speaker 12 (35:53):
He called me and asked me if I was interested
in going to a party, which was you know code,
I said, sign me on.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
There were no alarms over the doors. I couldn't see
any security measures whatsoever.
Speaker 12 (36:08):
It's really not hard and you can get through almost
any door in twenty seconds if you are any good.
Speaker 6 (36:13):
I just felt like I was living in the heart
of the dragon and it was just my job to
stop the fire, and this seemed like a way to
do it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Snapfoo is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and
Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
season of Snapfoo is based on the book The Burglary
The Discovery of j Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by
Betty Metzger. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Mike Walbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chugg, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger.
(36:58):
Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Producer
is Stephen Wood. This episode was written by Albert Chen,
Sarah Joyner, and Stephen Wood, with additional writing and story
editing from Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Tory Smith is
our associate producer. Nevin Calla Poly is our production assistant.
Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
(37:21):
Sensitivity consult from Olowa Kemi, Ala de Sui, editing, sound
design and original music by Ben Chubg, Engineering and technical
direction by Nick Dooley. Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia
Canny and Jimma Castelli Foley. Theme music by Dan Rosatto.
Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel well shand Ben Rizak.
Additional thanks to director Johanna Hamilton for letting us use
(37:43):
some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen
seventy one. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy
Fine Gold, Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Rains, John n Rains, Sarah
Schumer and Bob Williamson.
Speaker 6 (38:14):
H
Host
Ed Helms
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