July 17, 2024 • 45 mins
With the team assembled, the burglars begin staking out a small FBI satellite office in Media Pennsylvania. And Bonnie Raines takes a big risk.
To read more about the FBI’s history, check out Daniel Chard’s book, Nixon’s War at Home.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Last time on SNAPOO pursuing.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
The executive order.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
The Director's Selective Service is going to establish tonight a
random selection sequence or induction or nineteen.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Seventy for Bill, dissent was at the heart of democracy.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
How complicated would it be to go into the office.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
If the FBI was spying on people?
Speaker 5 (00:28):
Records of what kinds of the surveillance or disruption?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
He's regarded it as a crime that needed to be solved.
He just called John and me and asked us, if
we want to come to a party.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
You got to do what you got to do. You know,
you have to maintain your own personal integrity.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
That's Keith Forsyth succinctly stating his personal philosophy. When Keith
entered cap College in Ohio in the fall of nineteen
sixty nine, he says he wasn't very political. But just
a year later, when Bill Davidan invited Keith to help
him burglarize the FBI, Keith said, yes, So what changed? Well,
(01:16):
it all started with a book and it.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Was called Piece in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It was a small paperback published by a pacifist Quaker organization.
A guy in Keith's dorm loaned it to him, it
told the history of the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese perspective.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You know, we went.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
In there and tried to help the French maintain a
colonial ownership of the Vietnam and enslayed the people there.
When the French got tired, they got their ass. Kidd
of the NBN threw we picked up when they left off.
That book just blew me away. I mean, I can't
the emotional power that of the effect that had on me.
(01:55):
It was just really indescribles that was quoting.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
But already knew the American government's justification for the war
that the Vietnamese people needed to be rescued from the
ever expanding chokehold of communism. But through extensive research, he
was learning a very different side of the story. Nothing
he could find justified America's role in Vietnam. He even
(02:18):
asked the State Department to make the case for the war,
but their response was not convincing.
Speaker 6 (02:25):
And I still remember the phrase I was saying to myself,
this can't be true. This is America. I remember we were.
Speaker 7 (02:32):
In the newsroom of the student newspaper or something, maybe
a graphic some leafless for in a Cambodian invasion protests,
and the news of Vatkan State came over the wire,
and you know, we're.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
Just down a road from Kent State.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Keith and his peers were horrified by Kent State, and
he was even more shocked by what happened just two
weeks later at Jackson State in Mississippi, where local police
unleashed a barrage of gunfire on a dorm full of
unarmed black students, killing two young men. Heith heard the
police's official story, then he heard a tape of what
(03:12):
actually happened.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
It was ten or.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
Twenty rifles and distals and shotguns all being fired, you
know once.
Speaker 8 (03:20):
Anyway, the story.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
They circulated later that somebody shot at them and they
shot back was obviously bullshit. It was just all a sudden,
all this barrage and it sounded like a machine gun
wire And.
Speaker 8 (03:31):
That was it for me.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
Was already man, it was already feeling and raised and betrayed,
and after that it just multiplied.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Keith had already dropped out of school to protest the
war full time.
Speaker 6 (03:47):
I felt that Vietnam war was a horrendous moral outrage.
It's no different than if you were walking down the
street and you saw somebody walk up to a stranger
and fill their brains out for no reason whatsoever. I mean,
you would have a reaction to that.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Heath headed for the epicenter of America's anti war movement, Philadelphia.
He got a job driving a cab, and he began
spending his nights with the local anti war movement burglarizing
draft boards. He became an expert in picking locks. He
actually got certified as a locksmith as part of his
training to burglarized draft boards. So by late nineteen seventy,
(04:24):
when Bill Davidon decided to break into the FBI.
Speaker 9 (04:28):
He called me and asked me if I was interested
in going to a party, which was you know code.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
It was the same called John and Bonnie Rains had received.
Bill was inviting Keith to join an action targeting the FBI,
and Keith didn't need much convincing.
Speaker 9 (04:48):
When you're twenty years old, you do a lot of
things that you might think twice about later. I was
really really really really angry and really really really frustrated,
and I'm like, if we can up Deannie, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I'm Ed Helms and this is Snaffo a show about
history's greatest screw ups. This is season two Medburg, the
story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI snaffo
it exposed this week how to break into the FBI.
(05:44):
Let's check back in with our professional heist consultant, Steven
Soderberg in the sort of typical heist film.
Speaker 6 (05:52):
Each person has a specific skill set in a specific role,
and it's fun to watch them perform that.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Keith Forsyth, who by the way, looked a little like
John Lennon in the early seventies, brought his aptitude for
lock picking.
Speaker 9 (06:07):
It's really not hard and you can get through almost
any door twenty seconds if you, you know, are any good.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Also attending the party was Sarah Schumer, a professor and
colleague of Bill Davidan's. Sarah had been politically active since
the early days of the civil rights movement, so she
was no stranger to the inside of a jail cell.
Speaker 10 (06:28):
You just assumed your phone was wiretapped, you know, if
you were an activist, you assumed you were followed one
way or another.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Ralph Daniel was a young graduate student in psychology. He
protested the war, but initially avoided anything illegal. He worried
getting arrested would interfere with his studies. Nevertheless, he apparently
drew the ire of a Philadelphia cop named Lieutenant Fenzil.
One day, Ralph was standing around not breaking the law
(07:00):
while some friends illegally chained themselves to the entrance of
a draft board.
Speaker 11 (07:03):
Office, and Fencil I decided he arrested me, and he said,
I've seen you at too many demonstrations. I'm busting you
even though you're not chained.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
So it's arguably Lieutenant Fenzil's fault that Ralph wound up
accessing his more rebellious, less law abiding side.
Speaker 11 (07:22):
If rules seemed foolish, I typically would not follow them.
I was also twenty six. I still felt invincible the
way a lot of young people do.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
And when Bill invited him to the party.
Speaker 11 (07:36):
I said, sign me on. I didn't hesitate at all.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Next up Bob Williamson, a social worker steeped in the
non violent teachings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Bob
quickly realized that Philadelphia law enforcement was working against Philadelphians.
Speaker 12 (07:52):
Nobody felt good when they saw a police car driveway.
They weren't providing any kind of a service to the community.
It was like an occupying force.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So Bob dedicated his evenings to following cops with a camera,
policing the police. Eventually he fell in with the anti
war crowd and added draft board raids to his resume.
He also had a fondness for corny jokes that sort
of became something.
Speaker 12 (08:15):
I was known for having an inappropriate sense of humor.
At the worst time.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Bill recruited Bob, and Bob recruited Judy fine Gold. Judy
was a military counselor at the American Friends Service Committee,
the same Quaker organization whose book about Vietnam changed Keith's life.
Speaker 10 (08:35):
I was basically living my truth as pure as you
can live life, and I would go to work as
a military counselor trying to get people out of the
military that didn't want to be there anymore.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Legally, she was just nineteen, but she'd been actively protesting
the war since age twelve, literally growing up in the movement.
Speaker 10 (08:56):
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 (09:07):
Bill approached two other people who we can't name. One
turned him down. The other said, yes, but we'll just
have to call him Burglar number nine.
Speaker 13 (09:19):
Beno.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Remember that it's going to be important later, But for now,
Bill had his team. Some were married with children, while
some were practically still children themselves. Some had years of
experience conducting illegal anti war actions like draft board raides.
Others were taking that step for the first time. Some
of them were immediately identifiable as hippies I'm looking at you,
(09:43):
Keith and Bob, while others were clean cut professionals. But
despite these differences, they had a lot in common. They
hated the war, they cherished free speech. They knew they
could trust Bill Davidan, and they did not trust ja
Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 13 (10:01):
What a friend we have in whover freedom has no
true or for is your thinking left us? He will
(10:22):
get you in the.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
That's folk singer Tom Paxton singing an ode to Hoover
in nineteen seventy. Obviously, he's joking about his admiration for Hoover,
but the thing about that song is most of mainstream
America probably agreed with it. Unironically at the time. Hoover
spent decades cultivating his in the FBI's image, and it worked.
He was your friend. But more than that, he was
(10:50):
your protector.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
We are playing disaster if we do not soon take
some positive action against the growing maldetary nation in this land.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
It is that's Jay Edgar himself, striking a note he'd
play his entire career. America is on the verge of catastrophe,
and law and order conservatism is the only thing holding
us back from the brink.
Speaker 14 (11:16):
He was a serious bureaucrat. He was a heavily anti
communist conservative.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
That's doctor Daniel Chard, a professor of history at Western
Washington University. Hoover was born in eighteen ninety five, the
son of a government pencil pusher.
Speaker 15 (11:31):
And came of age in Jim Crow, Washington, DC and
of what was then just the dominant cultural values of
white male authority.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
It's truly impossible to overstate how much this guy loved authority,
and of course he loved America, or at least his
version of it. As a kid, Hoover rewrote the classic
story of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. You know,
I cannot tell a lie, but in Little j Edgar's version,
Washington's cousin Ike was responsible for axing the tree. I mean,
(12:04):
the point of that story isn't about chopping down a tree.
It's about being honest when it matters. But Hoover wasn't
concerned about honesty. He preferred his own story, where the
founder of our country was simply faultless. In the first place,
he didn't.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Like the Left. He held racist views.
Speaker 14 (12:19):
He was in a racist fraternity at George Washington University.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Dan's not just tossing that word around casually. Hoover's fraternity
had some very close ties to the KKK at the time,
as in a lot of guys were members of both.
Like the Klan, they were still mourning the loss of
the Civil War. Its members deeply revered Confederate General Robert E. Lee,
whom the fraternity referred to as quote the last gentle
(12:47):
night to pay for college plus fraternity dues. A young
Jay Edgar took a job at the Library of Congress.
There he began a lifelong love affair with organization and
meticulous filing systems. A racist with a passion for file keeping,
I wouldn't want to get stuck talking to that guy
(13:07):
at a party.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
There is nothing mysterious about the meadow which the Federal
Bureau of Investigation is working formula is a simple one.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Oh wow, cool, okay.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
Intensive training, casually investigated, Okay, highly efficient pressure they oh okay.
Plus rigid requirements in regard to conduct intelligence and integrity.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Listen, I'm just going to go. I'm going to get
a drink.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
I'll be a special agents. Must be a good marksman. Yeah,
have the courage to shoot it out with the most
venomous of public. And you must know how to take fingerprints,
what to do with the math. Hey, must know that
no clue.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Sorry, sorry to cut you off. I just have to
I just have to go somewhere else now. Somehow, Hoover
managed to graduate law school without ever taking a class
in constitutional law. That's like graduating from medical school without
ever taking a class on bones. The Justice Department didn't
(14:06):
seem to mind. They hired him anyway. Before long, he
was rising through the ranks.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
And was involved in what were called the Palmer Raids
or the.
Speaker 14 (14:14):
First National Red Scare, going after the radical labor movement
after World War One.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Hoover was only twenty four years old, and here he
was engineering the roundups and arrests of communists, socialists, anarchists,
black political organizers, and anyone who was suspected of being
any of the above. They were detained without due process,
and some were even tortured, all under Hoover's supervision. The
(14:40):
Palmer Raids, as they came to be known, should have
earned him a reputation for excessive brutality and violating the Constitution,
but apparently Hoover's superiors liked what they saw. Just shy
of his thirtieth birthday, the Justice Department named j. Edgar
Hoover the new head of its Bureau of Instigation. In
(15:03):
the nineteen thirties, Hoover's g men put the gangster machine
gun Kelly in prison for life and gunned down Public
Enemy number one, John Dillinger. Fun fact, Hoover kept Dillinger's
glasses and death mask in a display case outside his office,
and if that wasn't creepy enough, he invited agents in
training to come and make their own castings of the
(15:25):
death mask. Catching gangsters earned Hoover the appreciation of the
public and presidents alike. He expanded the bureau's reach, modernized
its approach to investigations, and hired thousands of new agents.
He was also particularly keen to pluck new hires out
of the same KKK adjacent fraternity of which he'd been
(15:47):
a member. Many of those men formed the foundation of
Hoover's new intelligence gathering juggernaut.
Speaker 14 (15:54):
The changes the name in the thirties to the FBI
rather than just Bureau of Investigation. He build it up
as a very powerful organization with a lot of autonomy
from congressional oversight or executive oversight.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
During the Red Scare of the forties and fifties, Hoover
did pretty much exactly what you'd expect him to do,
funneled information on suspected commies to Joe McCarthy and the
House on American Activities Committee. But even after the Red
Scare died down.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Mister Hoover, some people are saying today that communism is
no longer a danger to our country.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
What is your opinion about that?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
I think the Communism is as serious amens to the
United States as it ever was, if not more so,
because today you have in charge of the Communist Party
a hard core, fanatical group of members who are dedicated
to the overthrow of our government by FOSSEM and violence.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
As the head of a federal agency, Hoover had to
go to Congress once a year to review his department's budget,
But unlike his peers, Hoover's hearings always happened in closed session,
no public, no press. Every year he'd give a version
of the same spiel.
Speaker 16 (17:13):
You thought those rads were scary in nineteen seventy, boy,
let me tell you what they got planned for seventy one, and.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Every year Congress bought it, increasing the FBI's budget. Hoover
had learned to game the system. No one in America's
history held onto a high ranking position like Hoover's for
as long as he did. When he first got the job,
Calvin freaking Coolidge was president, and Hoover stayed in his
role through eight presidencies. He watched sixteen attorneys general come
(17:45):
and go. They all had the authority to fire him,
and some came pretty close, but none of them did.
It's probably not a coincidence that Hoover was also collecting
dirt on public officials for decades. Suffice to say, Hoover
clung to his job like an angry barnacle.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
His office had two layers.
Speaker 14 (18:09):
He had a full office and then an interior office
within that, and he had what was called the official
and confidential files that were so secret he kept them
in there. It was known that he had intelligence files
on different congressmen.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
He knew who John F. Kennedy was sleeping with, and
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
On one level, this was probably pretty childish, a chance
to giggle at a senator's secret sexual proclivities, but really
showing off his collection of secrets served as a veiled threat.
You think that's embarrassing, well, just to imagine what I've
gone on you you you you threats of blackmail. Notwithstanding,
(18:50):
Hoover really should have been forced out in nineteen sixty
five when he reached what was the government's mandatory retirement
age of seventy. But despite being famously well endowed, google
it if you don't know what I'm talking about, Lyndon
Johnson lacked the balls to enforce that rule, so instead
he did this.
Speaker 8 (19:08):
The nation cannot afford to LUGI, and therefore I have
just now signed an executive order exempting you from compulsory
TIMA for an indefinite period of time.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Hoover outlasted LBJ and was still in office when Nixon
took over. By that point, his penchant for blackmail was
something of an open secret, but overall his propaganda had
paid off. He was a conservative crime fighting hero, and
even if they didn't revere the guy, most Americans just
trusted him. He certainly had some strange obsessions. Here's a
(19:43):
direct quote from a memo Hoover wrote regarding new hires.
Speaker 16 (19:47):
I recently saw a photograph of a favorably recommended clerical applicant.
This photograph reflected long sign burns and long hair in
the back, and two full on the sides. Please, when
interviewing applicants, be alert for long hairs, beards, mustaches, pear
shaped heads, truck drivers, etc.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I don't even know what that means, but now I'm
kind of worried. Honey, do I have a pear shaped head? Oh?
Thank god? Today. Some of Hoover's idiosyncrasies just sound goofy.
But to the men of Hoover's FBI, his word was gospel,
partially because Hoover's FBI tended to hire guys like Hoover,
(20:28):
meaning they were all guys and they were all white.
In nineteen sixty two, Attorney General Robert Kennedy publicly called
Hoover out over this. In response, Hoover promoted his black
chauffeur to the role of special agent. Of course, that
special agent kept driving Hoover's car.
Speaker 14 (20:47):
They're all white men exclusively. There's a lot of World
War Two veterans in the FBI. They're pretty conservative. The
FBI recruited heavily among Catholics. They saw Catholics as people
who were kind of a cultured into being part of
an institution with a hierarchy that they would like listen
(21:10):
to authority.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
By nineteen seventy, the FBI could be fairly described as
an army of many Hoovers, straight laced, serious minded white
men who tucked in their shirts, avoided sideburns like the plague,
loved God, hated communism, and had some sort of weird
thing against truck drivers. Apparently, the FBI's official motto was fidelity, bravery,
and integrity. Get it. Those are wonderful words with wonderful meaning.
(21:38):
But as the years passed, Hoover increasingly conducted activities that
did not mesh with those ideals. Back in those days,
tapping someone's phone involved placing a physical tap on the
actual phone lines. This meant if somebody was tapping your phone,
you might hear a telltelle noise.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You got on the phoney you heard quickly, but you know,
you knew.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
Something was off.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
So even if they couldn't prove it, Tom Paxton and
others just kind of knew it was their pal j
Edgar on the line.
Speaker 13 (22:11):
Does your telephone sound Puney, is some stranger standing by
standing by? Do not bother your revel.
Speaker 8 (22:28):
Man.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
Take it to the fv.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
H up in Philadelphia. Bonnie Rains, her husband John, and
seven others had said yes when a quiet physicist named
Bill Davidon invited him to his quote unquote party. Despite
the fact that most of them hadn't met before Bill's party,
they quickly bonded over their shared goal to expose FBI
(23:10):
surveillance from the outset. The nine would be burglars agreed
that they would never tell another living soul what they
were about to do, and they also agreed on a name.
The citizens commissioned to investigate the FBI.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
We knew we had to identify ourselves in a particular
kind of way. So it flipped the whole idea of
a commission that investigates this and a commission that investigates
that to our responsibility to investigate the FBI.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
It might have been a tad grandiose or sarcastic, like
referring to your cat as the acting director of vomiting
on the sofa cushion, but the name also pointed to
one of the core beliefs that all nine members shared.
If the government wasn't going to hold itself accountable, duty
would have to fall to the citizens. Next step, pick
(24:06):
the target. I know we.
Speaker 9 (24:08):
Discussed the possibility of doing the Philadelphia FBI office because
I went down and cased it in the daytime. If
the sign in books for the building still exists, my
alias is in there. Probably Bill Travis, I'm guessing, was
probably it.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
The Philadelphia FBI office was an impenetrable citadel smack dab
in the center of downtown Philly, a stone's throw from
City Hall, in just a few minutes from police headquarters.
This office was not an ideal target. So Bill david
On and his crew looked elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Well, he said, I opened up the phone book, and
there's an FBI office in Media, which is practically next
door to Haverford where he lived, a little office in Media,
and so maybe we could think about the feasibility of that.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
As far as unthinkable heists went, the FBI office in
the bedroom community of Media, Pennsylvania seemed less unthinkable. Here's
Bob Williamson.
Speaker 12 (25:12):
It was called a resident agency and there were only
three or four agents working out of that office for
the area.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Resident agency was a fancy term for when the FBI
is simply rented out office space in a civilian building.
This particular resident agency was on the second floor of
an unremarkable apartment building across from the Delaware County Courthouse.
At first glance, there wasn't much to distinguish this little
FBI outpost from the office of say, a mid sized
regional paper company. AnyWho. The burglars had their target one
(25:46):
Veteran Square, Media, Pennsylvania. For the next few months, the
crew of nine would gather at their secret hideout, John
and Bonnie's house and work on their plan.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
It was a big house, big old Victorian house. We
had one room on the third floor that became the
planning room.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And almost perfect headquarters with a few small complications.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We had to tell our children to not to talk
about the maps that were up on the wall in
the room where we were meeting. Don't talk about the.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Maps now, sweetie, I know you used to be able
to go into that room on the third floor. But well,
mommy and daddy have we've gotten really into maps lately,
and you know, just maps of nearby towns and stuff.
Nothing you'd be interested in.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Don't talk about the people who sometimes stay overnight.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Sometimes mommies and daddies like to share maps with friends.
What what's with all the questions? Just go to bed.
Most nights, the Citizens Commission would gather at the Rains House.
The evenings began with dinner, more often than not, a
giant pot of spaghetti prepared by Bonnie.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
John and I were kind of the grandparents of this group.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Then it was off to the scene of their planned crime,
the apartment building at one Veteran Square. Their mission was
to study every single detail about the office and its surroundings.
Speaker 11 (27:09):
We cased the place for at least two maybe three months.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
So we would case in pairs, usually male and female pairs,
because if there was any suspicion about us in the car,
if the police pulled up next to the car where
we were, we could pretend to be a couple.
Speaker 9 (27:31):
Are there any beat copses at all in cars? What's
happening with the courthouse. You know, when are the traffic
jams in media and where.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
The schedule of the agents in the FBI office, you know,
did they ever come in late at night back into
the office or not? And we learned that it was
they worked nine to five. They locked the door at
five and go home. Lest we forget, it's still a
government job.
Speaker 9 (28:00):
Who else is going in and out where the police?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
It was very time consuming and very tedious in some cases,
but important to see the patterns of.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Activity picture our perspective. Burglars paired off sitting in parked
cars in the middle of winter, cataloging everything that happened
in this sleepy town center night after night after night.
Two things were inevitable, One boredom and two.
Speaker 10 (28:33):
Well, and Bob and I, you know, like all healthy,
lusty people, decided this would be a great time to
start an affair, you know, right in the fiery storm
of revolution.
Speaker 12 (28:45):
You know, we did some kissing and necking while we
were kazing. We were just we were just both a
little horning, I guess.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Despite the judy, Bob and the others noticed one big problem.
A security guard was on duty around the clock in
the courthouse, monitoring the front entrance with a clear view
of the FBI office.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Both the courthouse itself was well lighted and this intersection
where the building was was well lighted. We could have
been observed, easily been observed going in or out of
the front door.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Doing anything to debilitate the guard was out of the question.
This was, after all, a group dedicated to nonviolence, attempting
to distract him would carry its own risks. In the
ideal burglary, nobody would notice anything out of the ordinary
at all. They determined early on that the doors to
one veteran Square were never locked, So the Citizens Commission
(29:45):
decided to look as ordinary as possible and bank on
playing it so cool that the guard would think nothing
of them. But the door to the office itself that
was a whole different story and would require a bit
of finagling.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
I went to look at the locks fairly early in
the process, and the main door was just a door,
like on the front door of your house, same lock,
So I was like, not a problem. It's always puzzled
me why criminals don't learn lock picking, because it's really
not hard, and you can get through almost any door
in twenty seconds if you you know, are any good.
(30:25):
When I got my certificate, that would have made it
legal for me to go to a lock shop and
buy lock picks. But I was not that stupid. I
went to the hardware store and bought some spring steel,
and I already had a grinder and a file, and
I made my own so that they wouldn't be traceable.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
The crew installed a practice door, a door to nowhere
up in the mysterious third floor room that was off
limits to John and Bonnie's children.
Speaker 9 (30:58):
You can't really learn it by reading a book. It's
like playing a musical instrument. You know, you start very slow,
and you just do it over and over and over
and over and over. Take a break, come back the
next day. You do it over and over and over
and over again, the next day, the next day, the
next day, and you know, pretty soon you're in in
(31:19):
twenty to thirty seconds.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
This went on for roughly two months. Even if you
spend some of that time making out with your accomplice.
That's a lot of long, monotonous evenings. But they found
ways to keep their spirits up.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Keith always made us laugh, and Bob, Bob Williamson was
a story. He would tell these ridiculous shaggy dogs, stories
and terrible jokes and puns, and a couple of them
were also musicians. So occasionally we take a break and
somebody bring out their guitar and we'd maybe sing a
little bit together, but some.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Joni Mitchell tuns or.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, all those old tunes.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
The group was falling into a comfortable rhythm.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
They would sleep on air mattresses sometimes in our house.
They would tell bedtime stories to our kids. So I mean,
we really we formed a sort of cohesion that was
pretty special.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
When she looks back, Bonnie plays it pretty cool. But
imagine yourself in her and John's shoes, meticulously planning something
incredibly dangerous, unable to explain any of it to your
kids even though they're right there, and knowing the whole
time that going through with it could mean that you'll
spend the rest of their childhoods behind bars.
Speaker 9 (32:36):
I remember being amazed. I guess is the best word.
That you know, John and Bonnie had small children. I'm like,
this is a whole different level of commitment.
Speaker 10 (32:49):
I mean, that woman was you know, yeah, she was
part of the action, but she was just mothering the
hell out of us. And you know, being a young revolutionary.
I wasn't cooking, so her spaghetti was like a gift
from heaven.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Some of the time we were meeting together in our house,
I felt a little bit like a den mother because
I was cooking spaghetti and meatballs and basically in kind
of a supportive role, a secondary role. I definitely felt
that way, and that was true in the movement generally anyway.
It was very male dominated, and so I think I
(33:26):
was a little resentful about that.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
But Bonnie's moment was about to come, because as the
weeks passed, the team realized that staring at the office
from the outside could only tell them so much. They
had to get eyes on the inside. The team had
(33:53):
been casing the media office for months, but they were
still missing crucial details like how many ways into the
office were there, Was there an alarm system, and if so,
could it be disabled? How many signed photos of JEdgar
Hoover dotted the office walls, any JEdgar Hoover bobbleheads in there?
To get answers, someone had to go inside.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
My role emerged at that point, and I could pose
as a college student to ask for a meeting with
the head of the office.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
So Bonnie Rains called the FBI and scheduled a meeting.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
When I asked for the interview, I said that I
was a student doing research on opportunities for women in
the FBI. I was gratified that I finally had a
speaking part. Not just a walk in part, but a
speaking part.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
You're not a background actor anymore. You're in the movie.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I had long hippie hair, so we knew that we
had to figure out how to make me look not
anything like I looked in my regular life. It was February,
so I tucked my long hair up inside of a
big winter hat, and I found this kind of nerdy
winter coat. I looked a little bit like a college
(35:11):
student who bought her clothes at thrift stores.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
This was the Citizens Commission's only chance to get a
complete picture of the office they were planning to burgle.
I love that word burgel. Every detail was important, but
it was also the riskiest thing they'd ever done. Sitting
outside an FBI office night after night was definitely kind
of sketchy. But going right into the belly of the
(35:35):
beast in disguise, well that's a whole different ballgame.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
John drove me in our station wagon with our little boy, Nathan,
who was two at the time. They dropped me off
and then they pulled around the corner to wait for
me because I had to say that I had come
on the bus.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
She walked into the cramped entryway of one Veteran Square
and up the carpeted steps to the second floor. She
entered the office and her receptionist told her to wait.
As she waited, she did her best to memorize every
detail of her surroundings.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
There were no cameras, there were no alarms over the doors.
I couldn't see any security measures whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Okay, note to self, security cameras deter robbers go on.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
The building manager's office was right below the FBI office,
so I was glad to see. There was carpeting on the.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Floor, carpeting, muffles, footsteps.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Lots of file cabinets. I wore glasses. I don't know
who lent them to me, but I didn't wear glasses
at the time, but I had glasses on and I
couldn't see very well with those glasses on them, but
that helped disguise my identity pretty well.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Never trust someone in glasses. Wait a second, I.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Wear glasses.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Right where were we Eventually the g man in charge
ushered this meek, little student reporter into his office.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
He was even a little flirty with me, I remember that,
and seemed to be flattered that I was really interested
in in the FBI and interested in that interview. I
was very chatty, a little bit flirty, and very grateful
for the information that he gave me, And it was
(37:32):
all just very friendly, and he never asked my name.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
For Christ's sake, the average dentist's office has a sign
in sheet. But I guess he was flustered. These guys
spend most of their time filling out paperwork and triplicate
to please Hoover. It's not every day a girl comes
into the office and wants to know about your big
important job.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
At some point in the chat, he asked me where
I was from, and I came up with I said heart.
I don't know why I said Hartford, but I wasn't
going to say Philadelphia. I'm Hartford.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Luckily, for Bonnie, nobody really wants to chat about Hartford.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I asked if I could have an application of sample
application form for employment, and he went to the file
cabinet to get it, and I could see that the
file cabinets were not locked.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Come on, there had to be something in the FBI
handbook about locking file cabinets. As Bonnie wondered how these
agents could be so dumb, John waited outside by the
car with an increasingly restless.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Toddler, Nathan, I'm sure was saying, where's mommy, Where's mommy?
Why is it taking so long? I think an actress
mode kicked in, and that's the only way I can
describe it. I just got into the role. I wasn't
nervous at all. I had an important job to do
and I really wanted to accomplish it, and they didn't
(38:59):
do it anything to make me feel nervous either. And
then there was a third room beyond his office, and
when I was getting ready to leave, I pretended to
be confused about the way out, and so that gave
me a chance to go into the third office, thinking
that that was the way that I would leave, And
(39:22):
that gave me the chance to see another door from
the hallway in that third office, and that the door
was blocked by this huge metal file cabinet.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Let's recap. The office consisted of two rooms, no alarm system,
no cameras, the floor was carpeted and quiet to walk on.
There were two ways in and out, the main door
and a second one, which was clearly not in use,
as it was blocked by a heavy filing cabinet. Later on,
she'd be very glad she clocked that second door, but
(39:55):
for now, she dashed around the corner and got into
the car where John and Nathan and we're waiting.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I was just so elated that I was able to
determine the things that we needed to have determined about it.
I was just I felt very satisfied that this was
now probably going to enable us to move forward in
the way that we wanted to. I felt that that
was our green light. It was a green light for us,
(40:24):
and the only thing we had to do after that
was to establish the date for the burglary.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
None of the members of the Citizens Commission to Investigate
the FBI remember precisely how they settled on the moment
to strike, but that might be because it was kind
of a no brainer.
Speaker 9 (40:49):
Somebody wasn't me. Somebody suggested, what about the night of
the Ali Fraser fight, And it was like a brilliant suggestion.
Speaker 11 (40:57):
We knew that's all they were going to attention to,
and we timed it. We knew time the fight would start,
so we timed the entry for.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
That bingo March eighth. Months of casing, endless hours of
lock picking practice, dozens of makeout sessions, I'm guessing, and
one acting masterclass from Bonnie Rains. It was all leading
up to this one night. The team had thought of everything,
avoided all loose ends, and played their cards close to
(41:28):
the vest. Everything was perfect, and.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Then one of the members of the group dropped out.
We just didn't see it coming because it seemed to
us that Bill had recruited the nine of us very
very carefully, and he had a history with the movement.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Less than a week before March eighth, the ninth burglar bailed.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Well, that was very, very very disturbing, and he really
couldn't give us a reason.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Maybe his ideology shifted, or maybe he just decided he
didn't want to risk going to prison. Frankly, there are
plenty of legitimate reasons not to burglarize the FBI, but
he didn't give one. Was he a plant? Had he flipped?
The possibilities were terrifying, and so was the prospect of
carrying on without him. The crew had been obsessively careful
(42:25):
about keeping their action under wraps. They'd lied to family,
made excuses to friends, and had cover stories ready to
go if anyone noticed them casing. But now someone who
knew their plan in intimate detail was at large. If
I'd been Bonnie Rain's at that moment, I would have
(42:46):
just told everyone, Okay, thanks, it's been fun, but it's over.
Get out of my house, take your maps, your homemade
lock pecks with you. But she didn't back out, and
neither did any of the others. As paranoid as they were,
or in my opinion, should have been, Bonnie says, they
just accepted it as another inevitable risk of their plan.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
We couldn't control him really once he left the group,
but we had to hope that there was a loyalty
to us, that he was not going to say anything
to anyone about about his involvement in the action. We
were very worried about that.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Next on SNAFU, It's go time, A'll leave versus Fraser
David versus Goliath, the greatest law enforcement agency in the
world versus nine scratch that, eight amateur burglars with everything
to lose.
Speaker 9 (43:41):
I'm like, well, that was either the FBI or the
heating system, and there's only one way to find out which.
Speaker 10 (43:48):
I remember thinking, I'm not breathing, but I've got to
be breathing because I'm functioning.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Security imagineers taken.
Speaker 14 (43:57):
The people are coming on the ring.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Supposed to have them.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
There was no Plan B. I mean, there was just
no Plan B.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and
Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
season of Snaffoo is based on the book The Burglary,
The Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by
Betty Metzger. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Mike Valbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger.
(44:30):
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.
(44:52):
Sensitivity console from Olowa Kemi Ala De Sui, editing, sound
design and original music by Ben Chubg, Engineering and tech
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 Welsh and Ben Rzak.
Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use
(45:15):
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 Rains, Sarah Schumer
and Bob Williamson.
Last time on SNAPOO pursuing.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
The executive order.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
The Director's Selective Service is going to establish tonight a
random selection sequence or induction or nineteen.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Seventy for Bill, dissent was at the heart of democracy.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
How complicated would it be to go into the office.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
If the FBI was spying on people?
Speaker 5 (00:28):
Records of what kinds of the surveillance or disruption?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
He's regarded it as a crime that needed to be solved.
He just called John and me and asked us, if
we want to come to a party.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
You got to do what you got to do. You know,
you have to maintain your own personal integrity.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
That's Keith Forsyth succinctly stating his personal philosophy. When Keith
entered cap College in Ohio in the fall of nineteen
sixty nine, he says he wasn't very political. But just
a year later, when Bill Davidan invited Keith to help
him burglarize the FBI, Keith said, yes, So what changed? Well,
(01:16):
it all started with a book and it.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Was called Piece in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It was a small paperback published by a pacifist Quaker organization.
A guy in Keith's dorm loaned it to him, it
told the history of the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese perspective.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You know, we went.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
In there and tried to help the French maintain a
colonial ownership of the Vietnam and enslayed the people there.
When the French got tired, they got their ass. Kidd
of the NBN threw we picked up when they left off.
That book just blew me away. I mean, I can't
the emotional power that of the effect that had on me.
(01:55):
It was just really indescribles that was quoting.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
But already knew the American government's justification for the war
that the Vietnamese people needed to be rescued from the
ever expanding chokehold of communism. But through extensive research, he
was learning a very different side of the story. Nothing
he could find justified America's role in Vietnam. He even
(02:18):
asked the State Department to make the case for the war,
but their response was not convincing.
Speaker 6 (02:25):
And I still remember the phrase I was saying to myself,
this can't be true. This is America. I remember we were.
Speaker 7 (02:32):
In the newsroom of the student newspaper or something, maybe
a graphic some leafless for in a Cambodian invasion protests,
and the news of Vatkan State came over the wire,
and you know, we're.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
Just down a road from Kent State.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Keith and his peers were horrified by Kent State, and
he was even more shocked by what happened just two
weeks later at Jackson State in Mississippi, where local police
unleashed a barrage of gunfire on a dorm full of
unarmed black students, killing two young men. Heith heard the
police's official story, then he heard a tape of what
(03:12):
actually happened.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
It was ten or.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
Twenty rifles and distals and shotguns all being fired, you
know once.
Speaker 8 (03:20):
Anyway, the story.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
They circulated later that somebody shot at them and they
shot back was obviously bullshit. It was just all a sudden,
all this barrage and it sounded like a machine gun
wire And.
Speaker 8 (03:31):
That was it for me.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
Was already man, it was already feeling and raised and betrayed,
and after that it just multiplied.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Keith had already dropped out of school to protest the
war full time.
Speaker 6 (03:47):
I felt that Vietnam war was a horrendous moral outrage.
It's no different than if you were walking down the
street and you saw somebody walk up to a stranger
and fill their brains out for no reason whatsoever. I mean,
you would have a reaction to that.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Heath headed for the epicenter of America's anti war movement, Philadelphia.
He got a job driving a cab, and he began
spending his nights with the local anti war movement burglarizing
draft boards. He became an expert in picking locks. He
actually got certified as a locksmith as part of his
training to burglarized draft boards. So by late nineteen seventy,
(04:24):
when Bill Davidon decided to break into the FBI.
Speaker 9 (04:28):
He called me and asked me if I was interested
in going to a party, which was you know code.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
It was the same called John and Bonnie Rains had received.
Bill was inviting Keith to join an action targeting the FBI,
and Keith didn't need much convincing.
Speaker 9 (04:48):
When you're twenty years old, you do a lot of
things that you might think twice about later. I was
really really really really angry and really really really frustrated,
and I'm like, if we can up Deannie, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I'm Ed Helms and this is Snaffo a show about
history's greatest screw ups. This is season two Medburg, the
story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI snaffo
it exposed this week how to break into the FBI.
(05:44):
Let's check back in with our professional heist consultant, Steven
Soderberg in the sort of typical heist film.
Speaker 6 (05:52):
Each person has a specific skill set in a specific role,
and it's fun to watch them perform that.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Keith Forsyth, who by the way, looked a little like
John Lennon in the early seventies, brought his aptitude for
lock picking.
Speaker 9 (06:07):
It's really not hard and you can get through almost
any door twenty seconds if you, you know, are any good.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Also attending the party was Sarah Schumer, a professor and
colleague of Bill Davidan's. Sarah had been politically active since
the early days of the civil rights movement, so she
was no stranger to the inside of a jail cell.
Speaker 10 (06:28):
You just assumed your phone was wiretapped, you know, if
you were an activist, you assumed you were followed one
way or another.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Ralph Daniel was a young graduate student in psychology. He
protested the war, but initially avoided anything illegal. He worried
getting arrested would interfere with his studies. Nevertheless, he apparently
drew the ire of a Philadelphia cop named Lieutenant Fenzil.
One day, Ralph was standing around not breaking the law
(07:00):
while some friends illegally chained themselves to the entrance of
a draft board.
Speaker 11 (07:03):
Office, and Fencil I decided he arrested me, and he said,
I've seen you at too many demonstrations. I'm busting you
even though you're not chained.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
So it's arguably Lieutenant Fenzil's fault that Ralph wound up
accessing his more rebellious, less law abiding side.
Speaker 11 (07:22):
If rules seemed foolish, I typically would not follow them.
I was also twenty six. I still felt invincible the
way a lot of young people do.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
And when Bill invited him to the party.
Speaker 11 (07:36):
I said, sign me on. I didn't hesitate at all.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Next up Bob Williamson, a social worker steeped in the
non violent teachings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Bob
quickly realized that Philadelphia law enforcement was working against Philadelphians.
Speaker 12 (07:52):
Nobody felt good when they saw a police car driveway.
They weren't providing any kind of a service to the community.
It was like an occupying force.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So Bob dedicated his evenings to following cops with a camera,
policing the police. Eventually he fell in with the anti
war crowd and added draft board raids to his resume.
He also had a fondness for corny jokes that sort
of became something.
Speaker 12 (08:15):
I was known for having an inappropriate sense of humor.
At the worst time.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Bill recruited Bob, and Bob recruited Judy fine Gold. Judy
was a military counselor at the American Friends Service Committee,
the same Quaker organization whose book about Vietnam changed Keith's life.
Speaker 10 (08:35):
I was basically living my truth as pure as you
can live life, and I would go to work as
a military counselor trying to get people out of the
military that didn't want to be there anymore.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Legally, she was just nineteen, but she'd been actively protesting
the war since age twelve, literally growing up in the movement.
Speaker 10 (08:56):
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 (09:07):
Bill approached two other people who we can't name. One
turned him down. The other said, yes, but we'll just
have to call him Burglar number nine.
Speaker 13 (09:19):
Beno.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Remember that it's going to be important later, But for now,
Bill had his team. Some were married with children, while
some were practically still children themselves. Some had years of
experience conducting illegal anti war actions like draft board raides.
Others were taking that step for the first time. Some
of them were immediately identifiable as hippies I'm looking at you,
(09:43):
Keith and Bob, while others were clean cut professionals. But
despite these differences, they had a lot in common. They
hated the war, they cherished free speech. They knew they
could trust Bill Davidan, and they did not trust ja
Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 13 (10:01):
What a friend we have in whover freedom has no
true or for is your thinking left us? He will
(10:22):
get you in the.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
That's folk singer Tom Paxton singing an ode to Hoover
in nineteen seventy. Obviously, he's joking about his admiration for Hoover,
but the thing about that song is most of mainstream
America probably agreed with it. Unironically at the time. Hoover
spent decades cultivating his in the FBI's image, and it worked.
He was your friend. But more than that, he was
(10:50):
your protector.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
We are playing disaster if we do not soon take
some positive action against the growing maldetary nation in this land.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
It is that's Jay Edgar himself, striking a note he'd
play his entire career. America is on the verge of catastrophe,
and law and order conservatism is the only thing holding
us back from the brink.
Speaker 14 (11:16):
He was a serious bureaucrat. He was a heavily anti
communist conservative.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
That's doctor Daniel Chard, a professor of history at Western
Washington University. Hoover was born in eighteen ninety five, the
son of a government pencil pusher.
Speaker 15 (11:31):
And came of age in Jim Crow, Washington, DC and
of what was then just the dominant cultural values of
white male authority.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
It's truly impossible to overstate how much this guy loved authority,
and of course he loved America, or at least his
version of it. As a kid, Hoover rewrote the classic
story of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. You know,
I cannot tell a lie, but in Little j Edgar's version,
Washington's cousin Ike was responsible for axing the tree. I mean,
(12:04):
the point of that story isn't about chopping down a tree.
It's about being honest when it matters. But Hoover wasn't
concerned about honesty. He preferred his own story, where the
founder of our country was simply faultless. In the first place,
he didn't.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Like the Left. He held racist views.
Speaker 14 (12:19):
He was in a racist fraternity at George Washington University.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Dan's not just tossing that word around casually. Hoover's fraternity
had some very close ties to the KKK at the time,
as in a lot of guys were members of both.
Like the Klan, they were still mourning the loss of
the Civil War. Its members deeply revered Confederate General Robert E. Lee,
whom the fraternity referred to as quote the last gentle
(12:47):
night to pay for college plus fraternity dues. A young
Jay Edgar took a job at the Library of Congress.
There he began a lifelong love affair with organization and
meticulous filing systems. A racist with a passion for file keeping,
I wouldn't want to get stuck talking to that guy
(13:07):
at a party.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
There is nothing mysterious about the meadow which the Federal
Bureau of Investigation is working formula is a simple one.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Oh wow, cool, okay.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
Intensive training, casually investigated, Okay, highly efficient pressure they oh okay.
Plus rigid requirements in regard to conduct intelligence and integrity.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Listen, I'm just going to go. I'm going to get
a drink.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
I'll be a special agents. Must be a good marksman. Yeah,
have the courage to shoot it out with the most
venomous of public. And you must know how to take fingerprints,
what to do with the math. Hey, must know that
no clue.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Sorry, sorry to cut you off. I just have to
I just have to go somewhere else now. Somehow, Hoover
managed to graduate law school without ever taking a class
in constitutional law. That's like graduating from medical school without
ever taking a class on bones. The Justice Department didn't
(14:06):
seem to mind. They hired him anyway. Before long, he
was rising through the ranks.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
And was involved in what were called the Palmer Raids
or the.
Speaker 14 (14:14):
First National Red Scare, going after the radical labor movement
after World War One.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Hoover was only twenty four years old, and here he
was engineering the roundups and arrests of communists, socialists, anarchists,
black political organizers, and anyone who was suspected of being
any of the above. They were detained without due process,
and some were even tortured, all under Hoover's supervision. The
(14:40):
Palmer Raids, as they came to be known, should have
earned him a reputation for excessive brutality and violating the Constitution,
but apparently Hoover's superiors liked what they saw. Just shy
of his thirtieth birthday, the Justice Department named j. Edgar
Hoover the new head of its Bureau of Instigation. In
(15:03):
the nineteen thirties, Hoover's g men put the gangster machine
gun Kelly in prison for life and gunned down Public
Enemy number one, John Dillinger. Fun fact, Hoover kept Dillinger's
glasses and death mask in a display case outside his office,
and if that wasn't creepy enough, he invited agents in
training to come and make their own castings of the
(15:25):
death mask. Catching gangsters earned Hoover the appreciation of the
public and presidents alike. He expanded the bureau's reach, modernized
its approach to investigations, and hired thousands of new agents.
He was also particularly keen to pluck new hires out
of the same KKK adjacent fraternity of which he'd been
(15:47):
a member. Many of those men formed the foundation of
Hoover's new intelligence gathering juggernaut.
Speaker 14 (15:54):
The changes the name in the thirties to the FBI
rather than just Bureau of Investigation. He build it up
as a very powerful organization with a lot of autonomy
from congressional oversight or executive oversight.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
During the Red Scare of the forties and fifties, Hoover
did pretty much exactly what you'd expect him to do,
funneled information on suspected commies to Joe McCarthy and the
House on American Activities Committee. But even after the Red
Scare died down.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Mister Hoover, some people are saying today that communism is
no longer a danger to our country.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
What is your opinion about that?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
I think the Communism is as serious amens to the
United States as it ever was, if not more so,
because today you have in charge of the Communist Party
a hard core, fanatical group of members who are dedicated
to the overthrow of our government by FOSSEM and violence.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
As the head of a federal agency, Hoover had to
go to Congress once a year to review his department's budget,
But unlike his peers, Hoover's hearings always happened in closed session,
no public, no press. Every year he'd give a version
of the same spiel.
Speaker 16 (17:13):
You thought those rads were scary in nineteen seventy, boy,
let me tell you what they got planned for seventy one, and.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Every year Congress bought it, increasing the FBI's budget. Hoover
had learned to game the system. No one in America's
history held onto a high ranking position like Hoover's for
as long as he did. When he first got the job,
Calvin freaking Coolidge was president, and Hoover stayed in his
role through eight presidencies. He watched sixteen attorneys general come
(17:45):
and go. They all had the authority to fire him,
and some came pretty close, but none of them did.
It's probably not a coincidence that Hoover was also collecting
dirt on public officials for decades. Suffice to say, Hoover
clung to his job like an angry barnacle.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
His office had two layers.
Speaker 14 (18:09):
He had a full office and then an interior office
within that, and he had what was called the official
and confidential files that were so secret he kept them
in there. It was known that he had intelligence files
on different congressmen.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
He knew who John F. Kennedy was sleeping with, and
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
On one level, this was probably pretty childish, a chance
to giggle at a senator's secret sexual proclivities, but really
showing off his collection of secrets served as a veiled threat.
You think that's embarrassing, well, just to imagine what I've
gone on you you you you threats of blackmail. Notwithstanding,
(18:50):
Hoover really should have been forced out in nineteen sixty
five when he reached what was the government's mandatory retirement
age of seventy. But despite being famously well endowed, google
it if you don't know what I'm talking about, Lyndon
Johnson lacked the balls to enforce that rule, so instead
he did this.
Speaker 8 (19:08):
The nation cannot afford to LUGI, and therefore I have
just now signed an executive order exempting you from compulsory
TIMA for an indefinite period of time.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Hoover outlasted LBJ and was still in office when Nixon
took over. By that point, his penchant for blackmail was
something of an open secret, but overall his propaganda had
paid off. He was a conservative crime fighting hero, and
even if they didn't revere the guy, most Americans just
trusted him. He certainly had some strange obsessions. Here's a
(19:43):
direct quote from a memo Hoover wrote regarding new hires.
Speaker 16 (19:47):
I recently saw a photograph of a favorably recommended clerical applicant.
This photograph reflected long sign burns and long hair in
the back, and two full on the sides. Please, when
interviewing applicants, be alert for long hairs, beards, mustaches, pear
shaped heads, truck drivers, etc.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I don't even know what that means, but now I'm
kind of worried. Honey, do I have a pear shaped head? Oh?
Thank god? Today. Some of Hoover's idiosyncrasies just sound goofy.
But to the men of Hoover's FBI, his word was gospel,
partially because Hoover's FBI tended to hire guys like Hoover,
(20:28):
meaning they were all guys and they were all white.
In nineteen sixty two, Attorney General Robert Kennedy publicly called
Hoover out over this. In response, Hoover promoted his black
chauffeur to the role of special agent. Of course, that
special agent kept driving Hoover's car.
Speaker 14 (20:47):
They're all white men exclusively. There's a lot of World
War Two veterans in the FBI. They're pretty conservative. The
FBI recruited heavily among Catholics. They saw Catholics as people
who were kind of a cultured into being part of
an institution with a hierarchy that they would like listen
(21:10):
to authority.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
By nineteen seventy, the FBI could be fairly described as
an army of many Hoovers, straight laced, serious minded white
men who tucked in their shirts, avoided sideburns like the plague,
loved God, hated communism, and had some sort of weird
thing against truck drivers. Apparently, the FBI's official motto was fidelity, bravery,
and integrity. Get it. Those are wonderful words with wonderful meaning.
(21:38):
But as the years passed, Hoover increasingly conducted activities that
did not mesh with those ideals. Back in those days,
tapping someone's phone involved placing a physical tap on the
actual phone lines. This meant if somebody was tapping your phone,
you might hear a telltelle noise.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You got on the phoney you heard quickly, but you know,
you knew.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
Something was off.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
So even if they couldn't prove it, Tom Paxton and
others just kind of knew it was their pal j
Edgar on the line.
Speaker 13 (22:11):
Does your telephone sound Puney, is some stranger standing by
standing by? Do not bother your revel.
Speaker 8 (22:28):
Man.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
Take it to the fv.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
H up in Philadelphia. Bonnie Rains, her husband John, and
seven others had said yes when a quiet physicist named
Bill Davidon invited him to his quote unquote party. Despite
the fact that most of them hadn't met before Bill's party,
they quickly bonded over their shared goal to expose FBI
(23:10):
surveillance from the outset. The nine would be burglars agreed
that they would never tell another living soul what they
were about to do, and they also agreed on a name.
The citizens commissioned to investigate the FBI.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
We knew we had to identify ourselves in a particular
kind of way. So it flipped the whole idea of
a commission that investigates this and a commission that investigates
that to our responsibility to investigate the FBI.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
It might have been a tad grandiose or sarcastic, like
referring to your cat as the acting director of vomiting
on the sofa cushion, but the name also pointed to
one of the core beliefs that all nine members shared.
If the government wasn't going to hold itself accountable, duty
would have to fall to the citizens. Next step, pick
(24:06):
the target. I know we.
Speaker 9 (24:08):
Discussed the possibility of doing the Philadelphia FBI office because
I went down and cased it in the daytime. If
the sign in books for the building still exists, my
alias is in there. Probably Bill Travis, I'm guessing, was
probably it.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
The Philadelphia FBI office was an impenetrable citadel smack dab
in the center of downtown Philly, a stone's throw from
City Hall, in just a few minutes from police headquarters.
This office was not an ideal target. So Bill david
On and his crew looked elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Well, he said, I opened up the phone book, and
there's an FBI office in Media, which is practically next
door to Haverford where he lived, a little office in Media,
and so maybe we could think about the feasibility of that.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
As far as unthinkable heists went, the FBI office in
the bedroom community of Media, Pennsylvania seemed less unthinkable. Here's
Bob Williamson.
Speaker 12 (25:12):
It was called a resident agency and there were only
three or four agents working out of that office for
the area.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Resident agency was a fancy term for when the FBI
is simply rented out office space in a civilian building.
This particular resident agency was on the second floor of
an unremarkable apartment building across from the Delaware County Courthouse.
At first glance, there wasn't much to distinguish this little
FBI outpost from the office of say, a mid sized
regional paper company. AnyWho. The burglars had their target one
(25:46):
Veteran Square, Media, Pennsylvania. For the next few months, the
crew of nine would gather at their secret hideout, John
and Bonnie's house and work on their plan.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
It was a big house, big old Victorian house. We
had one room on the third floor that became the
planning room.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And almost perfect headquarters with a few small complications.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We had to tell our children to not to talk
about the maps that were up on the wall in
the room where we were meeting. Don't talk about the.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Maps now, sweetie, I know you used to be able
to go into that room on the third floor. But well,
mommy and daddy have we've gotten really into maps lately,
and you know, just maps of nearby towns and stuff.
Nothing you'd be interested in.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Don't talk about the people who sometimes stay overnight.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Sometimes mommies and daddies like to share maps with friends.
What what's with all the questions? Just go to bed.
Most nights, the Citizens Commission would gather at the Rains House.
The evenings began with dinner, more often than not, a
giant pot of spaghetti prepared by Bonnie.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
John and I were kind of the grandparents of this group.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Then it was off to the scene of their planned crime,
the apartment building at one Veteran Square. Their mission was
to study every single detail about the office and its surroundings.
Speaker 11 (27:09):
We cased the place for at least two maybe three months.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
So we would case in pairs, usually male and female pairs,
because if there was any suspicion about us in the car,
if the police pulled up next to the car where
we were, we could pretend to be a couple.
Speaker 9 (27:31):
Are there any beat copses at all in cars? What's
happening with the courthouse. You know, when are the traffic
jams in media and where.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
The schedule of the agents in the FBI office, you know,
did they ever come in late at night back into
the office or not? And we learned that it was
they worked nine to five. They locked the door at
five and go home. Lest we forget, it's still a
government job.
Speaker 9 (28:00):
Who else is going in and out where the police?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
It was very time consuming and very tedious in some cases,
but important to see the patterns of.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Activity picture our perspective. Burglars paired off sitting in parked
cars in the middle of winter, cataloging everything that happened
in this sleepy town center night after night after night.
Two things were inevitable, One boredom and two.
Speaker 10 (28:33):
Well, and Bob and I, you know, like all healthy,
lusty people, decided this would be a great time to
start an affair, you know, right in the fiery storm
of revolution.
Speaker 12 (28:45):
You know, we did some kissing and necking while we
were kazing. We were just we were just both a
little horning, I guess.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Despite the judy, Bob and the others noticed one big problem.
A security guard was on duty around the clock in
the courthouse, monitoring the front entrance with a clear view
of the FBI office.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Both the courthouse itself was well lighted and this intersection
where the building was was well lighted. We could have
been observed, easily been observed going in or out of
the front door.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Doing anything to debilitate the guard was out of the question.
This was, after all, a group dedicated to nonviolence, attempting
to distract him would carry its own risks. In the
ideal burglary, nobody would notice anything out of the ordinary
at all. They determined early on that the doors to
one veteran Square were never locked, So the Citizens Commission
(29:45):
decided to look as ordinary as possible and bank on
playing it so cool that the guard would think nothing
of them. But the door to the office itself that
was a whole different story and would require a bit
of finagling.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
I went to look at the locks fairly early in
the process, and the main door was just a door,
like on the front door of your house, same lock,
So I was like, not a problem. It's always puzzled
me why criminals don't learn lock picking, because it's really
not hard, and you can get through almost any door
in twenty seconds if you you know, are any good.
(30:25):
When I got my certificate, that would have made it
legal for me to go to a lock shop and
buy lock picks. But I was not that stupid. I
went to the hardware store and bought some spring steel,
and I already had a grinder and a file, and
I made my own so that they wouldn't be traceable.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
The crew installed a practice door, a door to nowhere
up in the mysterious third floor room that was off
limits to John and Bonnie's children.
Speaker 9 (30:58):
You can't really learn it by reading a book. It's
like playing a musical instrument. You know, you start very slow,
and you just do it over and over and over
and over and over. Take a break, come back the
next day. You do it over and over and over
and over again, the next day, the next day, the
next day, and you know, pretty soon you're in in
(31:19):
twenty to thirty seconds.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
This went on for roughly two months. Even if you
spend some of that time making out with your accomplice.
That's a lot of long, monotonous evenings. But they found
ways to keep their spirits up.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Keith always made us laugh, and Bob, Bob Williamson was
a story. He would tell these ridiculous shaggy dogs, stories
and terrible jokes and puns, and a couple of them
were also musicians. So occasionally we take a break and
somebody bring out their guitar and we'd maybe sing a
little bit together, but some.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Joni Mitchell tuns or.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, all those old tunes.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
The group was falling into a comfortable rhythm.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
They would sleep on air mattresses sometimes in our house.
They would tell bedtime stories to our kids. So I mean,
we really we formed a sort of cohesion that was
pretty special.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
When she looks back, Bonnie plays it pretty cool. But
imagine yourself in her and John's shoes, meticulously planning something
incredibly dangerous, unable to explain any of it to your
kids even though they're right there, and knowing the whole
time that going through with it could mean that you'll
spend the rest of their childhoods behind bars.
Speaker 9 (32:36):
I remember being amazed. I guess is the best word.
That you know, John and Bonnie had small children. I'm like,
this is a whole different level of commitment.
Speaker 10 (32:49):
I mean, that woman was you know, yeah, she was
part of the action, but she was just mothering the
hell out of us. And you know, being a young revolutionary.
I wasn't cooking, so her spaghetti was like a gift
from heaven.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Some of the time we were meeting together in our house,
I felt a little bit like a den mother because
I was cooking spaghetti and meatballs and basically in kind
of a supportive role, a secondary role. I definitely felt
that way, and that was true in the movement generally anyway.
It was very male dominated, and so I think I
(33:26):
was a little resentful about that.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
But Bonnie's moment was about to come, because as the
weeks passed, the team realized that staring at the office
from the outside could only tell them so much. They
had to get eyes on the inside. The team had
(33:53):
been casing the media office for months, but they were
still missing crucial details like how many ways into the
office were there, Was there an alarm system, and if so,
could it be disabled? How many signed photos of JEdgar
Hoover dotted the office walls, any JEdgar Hoover bobbleheads in there?
To get answers, someone had to go inside.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
My role emerged at that point, and I could pose
as a college student to ask for a meeting with
the head of the office.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
So Bonnie Rains called the FBI and scheduled a meeting.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
When I asked for the interview, I said that I
was a student doing research on opportunities for women in
the FBI. I was gratified that I finally had a
speaking part. Not just a walk in part, but a
speaking part.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
You're not a background actor anymore. You're in the movie.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I had long hippie hair, so we knew that we
had to figure out how to make me look not
anything like I looked in my regular life. It was February,
so I tucked my long hair up inside of a
big winter hat, and I found this kind of nerdy
winter coat. I looked a little bit like a college
(35:11):
student who bought her clothes at thrift stores.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
This was the Citizens Commission's only chance to get a
complete picture of the office they were planning to burgle.
I love that word burgel. Every detail was important, but
it was also the riskiest thing they'd ever done. Sitting
outside an FBI office night after night was definitely kind
of sketchy. But going right into the belly of the
(35:35):
beast in disguise, well that's a whole different ballgame.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
John drove me in our station wagon with our little boy, Nathan,
who was two at the time. They dropped me off
and then they pulled around the corner to wait for
me because I had to say that I had come
on the bus.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
She walked into the cramped entryway of one Veteran Square
and up the carpeted steps to the second floor. She
entered the office and her receptionist told her to wait.
As she waited, she did her best to memorize every
detail of her surroundings.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
There were no cameras, there were no alarms over the doors.
I couldn't see any security measures whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Okay, note to self, security cameras deter robbers go on.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
The building manager's office was right below the FBI office,
so I was glad to see. There was carpeting on the.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Floor, carpeting, muffles, footsteps.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Lots of file cabinets. I wore glasses. I don't know
who lent them to me, but I didn't wear glasses
at the time, but I had glasses on and I
couldn't see very well with those glasses on them, but
that helped disguise my identity pretty well.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Never trust someone in glasses. Wait a second, I.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Wear glasses.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Right where were we Eventually the g man in charge
ushered this meek, little student reporter into his office.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
He was even a little flirty with me, I remember that,
and seemed to be flattered that I was really interested
in in the FBI and interested in that interview. I
was very chatty, a little bit flirty, and very grateful
for the information that he gave me, And it was
(37:32):
all just very friendly, and he never asked my name.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
For Christ's sake, the average dentist's office has a sign
in sheet. But I guess he was flustered. These guys
spend most of their time filling out paperwork and triplicate
to please Hoover. It's not every day a girl comes
into the office and wants to know about your big
important job.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
At some point in the chat, he asked me where
I was from, and I came up with I said heart.
I don't know why I said Hartford, but I wasn't
going to say Philadelphia. I'm Hartford.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Luckily, for Bonnie, nobody really wants to chat about Hartford.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I asked if I could have an application of sample
application form for employment, and he went to the file
cabinet to get it, and I could see that the
file cabinets were not locked.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Come on, there had to be something in the FBI
handbook about locking file cabinets. As Bonnie wondered how these
agents could be so dumb, John waited outside by the
car with an increasingly restless.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Toddler, Nathan, I'm sure was saying, where's mommy, Where's mommy?
Why is it taking so long? I think an actress
mode kicked in, and that's the only way I can
describe it. I just got into the role. I wasn't
nervous at all. I had an important job to do
and I really wanted to accomplish it, and they didn't
(38:59):
do it anything to make me feel nervous either. And
then there was a third room beyond his office, and
when I was getting ready to leave, I pretended to
be confused about the way out, and so that gave
me a chance to go into the third office, thinking
that that was the way that I would leave, And
(39:22):
that gave me the chance to see another door from
the hallway in that third office, and that the door
was blocked by this huge metal file cabinet.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Let's recap. The office consisted of two rooms, no alarm system,
no cameras, the floor was carpeted and quiet to walk on.
There were two ways in and out, the main door
and a second one, which was clearly not in use,
as it was blocked by a heavy filing cabinet. Later on,
she'd be very glad she clocked that second door, but
(39:55):
for now, she dashed around the corner and got into
the car where John and Nathan and we're waiting.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I was just so elated that I was able to
determine the things that we needed to have determined about it.
I was just I felt very satisfied that this was
now probably going to enable us to move forward in
the way that we wanted to. I felt that that
was our green light. It was a green light for us,
(40:24):
and the only thing we had to do after that
was to establish the date for the burglary.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
None of the members of the Citizens Commission to Investigate
the FBI remember precisely how they settled on the moment
to strike, but that might be because it was kind
of a no brainer.
Speaker 9 (40:49):
Somebody wasn't me. Somebody suggested, what about the night of
the Ali Fraser fight, And it was like a brilliant suggestion.
Speaker 11 (40:57):
We knew that's all they were going to attention to,
and we timed it. We knew time the fight would start,
so we timed the entry for.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
That bingo March eighth. Months of casing, endless hours of
lock picking practice, dozens of makeout sessions, I'm guessing, and
one acting masterclass from Bonnie Rains. It was all leading
up to this one night. The team had thought of everything,
avoided all loose ends, and played their cards close to
(41:28):
the vest. Everything was perfect, and.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Then one of the members of the group dropped out.
We just didn't see it coming because it seemed to
us that Bill had recruited the nine of us very
very carefully, and he had a history with the movement.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Less than a week before March eighth, the ninth burglar bailed.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Well, that was very, very very disturbing, and he really
couldn't give us a reason.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Maybe his ideology shifted, or maybe he just decided he
didn't want to risk going to prison. Frankly, there are
plenty of legitimate reasons not to burglarize the FBI, but
he didn't give one. Was he a plant? Had he flipped?
The possibilities were terrifying, and so was the prospect of
carrying on without him. The crew had been obsessively careful
(42:25):
about keeping their action under wraps. They'd lied to family,
made excuses to friends, and had cover stories ready to
go if anyone noticed them casing. But now someone who
knew their plan in intimate detail was at large. If
I'd been Bonnie Rain's at that moment, I would have
(42:46):
just told everyone, Okay, thanks, it's been fun, but it's over.
Get out of my house, take your maps, your homemade
lock pecks with you. But she didn't back out, and
neither did any of the others. As paranoid as they were,
or in my opinion, should have been, Bonnie says, they
just accepted it as another inevitable risk of their plan.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
We couldn't control him really once he left the group,
but we had to hope that there was a loyalty
to us, that he was not going to say anything
to anyone about about his involvement in the action. We
were very worried about that.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Next on SNAFU, It's go time, A'll leave versus Fraser
David versus Goliath, the greatest law enforcement agency in the
world versus nine scratch that, eight amateur burglars with everything
to lose.
Speaker 9 (43:41):
I'm like, well, that was either the FBI or the
heating system, and there's only one way to find out which.
Speaker 10 (43:48):
I remember thinking, I'm not breathing, but I've got to
be breathing because I'm functioning.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Security imagineers taken.
Speaker 14 (43:57):
The people are coming on the ring.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Supposed to have them.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
There was no Plan B. I mean, there was just
no Plan B.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and
Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
season of Snaffoo is based on the book The Burglary,
The Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by
Betty Metzger. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Mike Valbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger.
(44:30):
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.
(44:52):
Sensitivity console from Olowa Kemi Ala De Sui, editing, sound
design and original music by Ben Chubg, Engineering and tech
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 Welsh and Ben Rzak.
Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use
(45:15):
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 Rains, Sarah Schumer
and Bob Williamson.
Host
Ed Helms
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com