The Burglary (20 page)

In that moment, when the burglars discovered that damning evidence that the FBI was not what Hoover had long claimed it was—that creating paranoia among Americans was part of this law enforcement agency's mission—they knew that whatever would happen to them as a result of what they had done this night—arrest, trial, time in prison—the risk had been worthwhile. They were amazed that from the piles of files that surrounded them in the house they had found such a document, little more than an hour after arriving at the farm and opening their suitcases. It rewarded and motivated them through the long days and nights of little sleep ahead. They knew they had in their possession very important information Americans needed to know. They would find many important documents as they read the files, but this document would become emblematic of the burglary. People would remember the “paranoia” file years later when the Media burglary was mentioned.

That brief document spelled out the essence of what Davidon had feared was at the core of FBI practice—a policy about political spying that was the antithesis of what a law enforcement agency should be in a democratic society. The need for evidence had motivated him to propose this extreme means of citizen investigation: the burglary of an FBI office in the absence of oversight of the FBI by any government official or agency. Now it was clear he had been right. In that little house in the woods, in the middle of a Quaker retreat that had nurtured nonviolent political action, the eight burglars now held in their hands the first evidence that, except for fear, cowardice, and apathy, could have been unearthed by federal officials or journalists many years earlier.

THE BURGLARS READ
FBI files all night that first night at the farmhouse. They were consumed by what they read. Every once in a while, one of them would gasp in surprise and yell, “Listen to this.” They would gather around that person and read the newest discovery. They despaired about much of what they found. They felt like someone who has been suffering from a disease doctors have been unable to diagnose for years. Then one day a doctor accurately identifies the disease. The diagnosis is terrible, but the patient needs to know it in order to try to find a cure. They hoped a cure would be found for the serious problems the files revealed. It was unclear if oversight of the FBI, always dormant, if not dead, could come alive. Assuming
they were not arrested and the files were not confiscated, they hoped they were now on their way to making public evidence that would cause the nation's leaders to recognize the need to establish oversight.

As they read, at times they were sad. At other times they were angry or amazed. They also were occasionally amused, even when they read the “mailbox” document, which included this statement:

“Some will be overcome by the overwhelming personalities of the contacting agent and volunteer to tell all—perhaps on a continuing basis.” The burglars had attended many antiwar rallies and demonstrations and often observed FBI agents and informers writing notes and taking photographs. Some, if not all, of the group knew people who had been interviewed by FBI agents. Not once had any of them heard any of those people say they were “overcome by the overwhelming personalities” of the agents.

As of this point, these amateur burglars had succeeded in ways the most famous burglars of the century—the men who a little more than a year later would botch the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate in Washington in June 1972—would have envied. Each of those five burglars and their two leaders were well trained in the skills of burglary by their former employers, the FBI and the CIA. As former CIA agent Howard Hunt helped plan the Watergate burglary from his White House office, he called the CIA and, according to a CIA file on the conversation, asked a contact at the agency “if he had a retiree or resignee who was accomplished at picking locks.” The agency recommended someone and sent his résumé, with lock-picking expertise cited. Even with training by lock pickers from the CIA, none of the Watergate burglars turned out to be as skilled as Forsyth.

BY THE TIME
the Media burglars forced themselves to stop reading the morning after the burglary, at about 5 a.m., they felt a deep satisfaction from knowing already that their act of resistance should have a significant impact. Most of them drove home and then to their jobs in the city. Davidon had advised everyone to act as normal as possible, especially now during the immediate aftermath. For instance, he planned to be at his campus office, as he always was on Tuesday mornings, so no one, if interviewed later by an investigator or reporter, would be able to say, “Come to think of it, he wasn't there that Tuesday, like he usually is.”

Durst stayed at the farmhouse with the documents. As a graduate student
who worked part-time, he had a flexible schedule. Because of that, he volunteered to stay at the farm and protect the documents twenty-four hours a day until they had been analyzed, copied, and prepared for public distribution. The other burglars lived and worked in the city every day and then drove to the farm after work to carry out their file review duties for several hours each evening.

As they prepared to leave the house that first morning, some of them wanted to take care of what they considered unfinished business. At about five o'clock, between two pages of files, Davidon noticed a very small piece of paper with a series of handwritten numbers on it. He asked inside crew members if they had seen a
safe in the office. They confirmed there was a safe with a combination lock. They had tried to open it but failed. Davidon felt sure the number he found must be the combination code. It tempted him. He remembers thinking that it “seemed such a shame to have this information and not use it.”

He decided he would go to the FBI office on his way home and open the safe. He and Durst became preoccupied with what might be in it. They thought it was probably where agents put their most important, most explosive documents. It would be so easy to get inside, he thought. Thanks to Forsyth, of course, the door was unlocked.

At first, the brash idea seemed irresistible, but as he reconsidered it, he thought some of the residents in the building might leave early for work about the time he would arrive. His wiser self prevailed. He was tired and realized he could not trust his reflexes after a sleepless night and the pressures of the last twenty-four hours. He decided not to go to the office. Whatever was in the safe would have to remain undiscovered. Given what was in it, that was a fortunate decision.

Forsyth decided that on his drive back to Philadelphia he would get rid of some things he thought the burglars should not have—bullets. The inside crew had grabbed a large brown leather briefcase from the FBI office closet and scooped into it assorted small items from the agents' desk drawers, mostly paper clips and bullets. They packed the briefcase into one of the suitcases. Forsyth was perturbed when he discovered the bullets. A bunch of nonviolent antiwar activists, he thought, should not be caught with them. He also was mildly amused that agents kept bullets and paper clips side by side in their desk drawers, as if both were basic office supplies. Everyone agreed with Forsyth that they should get rid of the bullets immediately.

As the sun was starting to rise, Forsyth parked at the end of a bridge in
a small village between the farm and the city. Once again making a proper appearance in his Brooks Brothers topcoat, but this time carrying an FBI agent's briefcase instead of his own, he walked to the center of the bridge and deep-sixed the briefcase, unwanted bullets included, into a turbulent spot in the Schuylkill River. He watched the briefcase sink and then he drove home confident that the only dangerous items the burglars now possessed were J. Edgar Hoover's secret files. Soon they would find out how dangerous they were.

IT WAS TIME
to let the world know the burglary had taken place. The burglars hoped they would be ready to distribute copies of stolen files in about two weeks. Early this morning, though, they were ready to release a statement announcing what they had done and why they had done it. Everyone in the group had agreed to the statement, written a little more than a week earlier by Davidon and John Raines. It had been decided that John would call a reporter and read the release on the way home from the farmhouse the morning after the burglary.

The Raineses left for home and their special assignment at about six o'clock. They were eager to return before the children woke up. Bonnie was driving, and John was nervously reading the statement aloud, rehearsing the call he would make momentarily to the reporter. The reporter had been carefully chosen—Bill Wingell, a freelance reporter based in Philadelphia who wrote for the Reuters news service. Davidon had met Wingell at several antiwar events he covered, but John Raines had never met or talked with him, so his voice could not be recognized by Wingell.

As they got close to Chestnut Hill, a residential area in the far northwest corner of Philadelphia, they knew they couldn't put off the call any longer. In an area where there were no homes or offices, they saw a phone booth outside a closed gas station. Bonnie parked a few feet from the booth. John fumbled for coins as he entered the booth, closed it, and then dialed Wingell's number. It was a little before 6:30 a.m. The ringing phone wakened Wingell. John told him he wanted to read a statement to him and launched right into the rather lengthy statement. But Wingell stopped him. He needed a few moments to put paper in his typewriter and otherwise get prepared to take dictation, including clearing his mind of sleep and becoming fully alert. It was an awkward moment for both of them. Finally, Wingell said he was ready to take the statement. John started to read again, but now more slowly. This time his words jolted Wingell to full alertness:

At this point in his slow reading, John noticed out of the corner of his eye that a police car was slowly driving by. Bonnie and John laugh as they recall the scene many years later. It was far from funny at the time. “John is sitting in the phone booth with his paper, reading away,” Bonnie recalls. The police officer slowed down and peered in a very obvious way at John. He kept reading, but he was very aware that he was being observed. The police officer circled and came around again, driving even more slowly this time. Again he stared directly at John as he read.

Bonnie may have been more frightened at this moment than she was at any point before or during the burglary. She leaned over the passenger seat and knocked nervously and as loudly as she could on the front passenger window of the car, motioning for John to stop reading and return to the car. She wanted to drive away before the police car returned again. “This is the closest we came to blowing the whole thing,” says John. “We didn't know what to think. It was clear the cop was trying to figure out what we were doing.” It wasn't normal to see a middle-aged couple at a phone booth at 6:30 a.m., with one of them reading a document into the phone. They had contingency plans for how to deal with police while casing, and for how to block the street in front of the burglarized building with a fake breakdown, but they had no contingency plan for this situation. Here was a police officer looking into John's face from just a few yards away. In John's hands was what amounted to an elaborately detailed confession of the burglary—a bonanza for an arresting officer. What would he say if the police officer got
out of his car and asked, “What are you doing?” John had no idea what he would say.

But in this critical moment, John changed.

He lost the fear that had nearly paralyzed him in recent weeks, especially the previous evening. He, who had been so frightened before the burglary, now, in a moment of potential crisis, summoned more courage than he knew he had and, in a split second, decided not to abort the call He continued reading:

The police car did not return a third time. As he read, John comforted himself with the possibility that the police officer may have thought he was reading numbers to his bookie in the aftermath of the great fight the night before. He kept dictating the statement to Wingell: