The Burglary (26 page)

9

D
ESPITE GETTING LITTLE
or no sleep since the night before the burglary, most of the burglars took Davidon's advice and went to work or school the next day. By seven o'clock that evening they were back at the farmhouse. There was a sense of urgency as they convened again as the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. There had been no news stories about the burglary. As far as any of them knew, it was still a secret. Their planned public announcement seemed to have failed. They assumed the silence was a calm before a storm and that they were in a race to analyze and distribute FBI files before that storm hit.

Davidon arrived later than the others that evening. He was delayed by his phone interview with
Washington Star
columnist
Mary McGrory about the Saturday meeting with Kissinger at the White House.
Four days after the Media burglary, as the search for the burglars reached high gear, McGrory's interview with Davidon, along with a photograph of him, was on the front page of the
Star
.

For more than a week after the burglary, the burglars worked intensely as a cohesive group on thoroughly analyzing and organizing the files and preparing them for distribution. Under Davidon's leadership, they had developed a plan for release of the files. Unlike their failed strategy for announcing why the burglary had taken place, their distribution plan was handled so competently that it seemed like something that might have been organized by the best minds at J. Walter Thompson, a public relations/marketing agency then known as one of the best strategic marketers of information in the world. Davidon wisely concluded that the files would get much
more attention if they were sent to journalists in small sets in successive mailings instead of in one big mailing. To draw maximum attention to the content, he made sure that each set included documents of significant news value and a cover letter from the commission.

Except for an unplanned ride to the city one day, the files were kept at the farm until the burglars were ready to copy them. They had agreed well before the burglary that it was important to review the files as far away from the city as possible, but at a place the burglars could travel to and from easily each day as they maintained double lives—normal life at work or school by day, commission life at the farm at night. They were grateful that Ron Durst was willing to stay at the farm and protect the documents full-time. But one day the pressure on him became too great. Alone in the house, he worried to the point of near panic about the possibility that law enforcement officers might arrive at any moment and discover him and the files. He felt compelled to take them and himself elsewhere. He loaded them in his car and drove to the city. Unfortunately, he went to Powelton Village, a section of Philadelphia where many members of the Resistance and some of the Media burglars lived. Because of its reputation as a neighborhood full of antiwar activists, the FBI had placed some Powelton residents—and eventually most of the neighborhood—under heavy surveillance almost immediately after the burglary. By the time Durst drove there, the neighborhood already was well on its way to becoming ground zero in the bureau's search for the Media burglars. When he dropped in on a couple of friends and asked if he could store some documents in their home, he realized from their silence and the strained expressions on their faces that he had made a mistake and should get out of the area immediately. The neighborhood felt radioactive. He drove back to the farm realizing anew that the nice secluded house, lonely as it was, was definitely the preferred hiding place for the files.

After the burglars finished organizing the files and cover letters, it was time for what they thought would be the easiest part of the post-burglary aspects of their work: copying the documents. Instead, to their great surprise, copying the documents was the most threatening aspect of anything they did, from the beginning of planning the burglary to distributing the files. They had what seemed like a very workable plan for making the thousands of copies they needed. Before the burglary, Durst bought a used tabletop Xerox copier at a very low price and set it up at the farm. They thought they were going to have a completely self-contained operation there: read, analyze, copy, package for mailing. None of them recalls years later how much the copier cost. Whatever it was, they agree it was too much. The
copier was worthless. It operated so slowly that copying a document was like watching grass grow. This was not acceptable for people racing to copy and distribute documents before the FBI found them. In addition to copying slowly, much of the time the copier simply didn't work. Copies were so light it was nearly impossible to read them, and the ink had a foul odor—distinctive qualities that would be very helpful to FBI agents trying to trace copies to their source.

What to do? By the time they were ready to copy files, the burglars were well aware that a massive search for them was under way. Under the circumstances, it was of course not feasible to arrange for Xerox repair service at either the farm or at a Xerox repair center. Besides, the copier seemed to be beyond repair. This unexpected situation presented them with two problems that needed to be solved immediately: where to copy the files and how to get rid of the smelly, malfunctioning copier. They realized that though it was of no value to them, the copier could become a significant piece of evidence for the FBI. They found an easy solution to that problem. The philosophy professor who had turned down Davidon's invitation to be part of the group wanted to know if he could help them in any way. How was he at deep-sixing copy machines? He took on the job. He later told Davidon that on a weekend visit to friends in Ohio, he buried the copier deep in his host's densely cluttered garage. As he described the copier's resting place to Davidon later, it was one of those garages overflowing with what looked like a family's lifetime of discarded papers and old belongings. It seemed like a perfect place to conceal a fugitive copier. As far as is known, it never was discovered by anyone and may still be buried in that Ohio garage.

Once the burglars were rid of the copier, they made a decision that would bedevil them—and the FBI and the Xerox Corporation—for several months. Davidon and John Raines each took portions of the documents and copied them at their respective campus offices. Throughout this process—from casing through burglary, working at the farmhouse with documents, copying documents, and handling envelopes—the burglars continued to be very strict about wearing gloves. Davidon and Raines did so now as they stood for many hours at campus copiers near their offices copying and collating stacks of documents, separating them into precise groups. They copied files on a Sunday when colleagues and janitors were unlikely to be there and wonder why they were doing so much copying, not to mention why they were wearing gloves as they copied page after page. As far as they knew, no one saw them as they endlessly copied FBI files on overheated machines.

AS THE BURGLARS COPIED
and fretted about distributing the documents as soon as possible, agents searched. From J. Edgar Hoover's perspective, the investigation was going badly. The “UNSUB” woman had not been identified, despite the fact that agents working the case continued to show the police artist's drawing of her to other agents, police officers, and countless other people they thought might be able to identify her. No one had. By a week after the burglary, lock-picking tools still had not been found in or near the Media office. FBI lab personnel were unable to identify precisely what tools were used on the locks. A locksmith brought in to evaluate the damaged locks offered no real help but offered high praise for the unknown lock picker. In his report he noted, “Lock obviously manipulated by person highly skilled in working with locks.” Keith Forsyth chuckled many years later when he learned how highly his work had been regarded.

As the investigation continued, some top FBI officials in Philadelphia and Washington focused on determining which documents had been stolen. The task wasn't easy, but it was necessary in order for them to assess what damage would be done to the FBI if any of the documents became public. Simultaneously, the director kept insisting that the documents must be found and never become public. He was especially concerned about informers being identified. In a memo to a long list of field office supervisors around the country, he repeated his original demand: “This investigation must be given preferred investigative attention and all leads handled expeditiously.”

During the first week of the investigation, reports from field offices included these:

The 33,698-page investigative record of the burglary conveys the impression that FBI officials in Washington and Philadelphia, beginning with Hoover, were frantic but not focused as they issued orders and reviewed findings. Consequently, ideas for new lines of investigation easily sparked new interest and swiftly diverted investigators' attention in new directions and away from earlier lines of investigation. Lines of investigation appear to have been both pursued and abandoned without justification for the shifts. Distraction, rather than analysis and insight, seemed to be the key driver during the early, most intense months of the investigation.

At first, the overriding assumption was that the burglary was done by people from the Catholic peace movement. Immediately, though, the field of possible suspects was expanded to include practically anyone who either looked inappropriate, according to FBI standards, or was known to have antiwar opinions. Those two descriptions covered a substantial portion of the population at that time. As the names of potential suspects flowed in from around the country, it did indeed seem as though any long-haired person, “hippie-looking” person, or known antiwar protester qualified to be considered a MEDBURG suspect. One insignificant tip led to the sudden
investigation of communes throughout the Philadelphia area. The manpower employed by the bureau to investigate MEDBURG—approximately two hundred agents at the peak—was great, and so was the wasted energy.