The Burglary (30 page)

That Mitchell and McGovern, two of the most liberal members of Congress and among the very few members who had criticized him, immediately gave the copies of stolen documents they received to the FBI and quickly criticized the unknown burglars for their crime may have led Hoover to think he might have at least a reprieve from his greatest fears. Some FBI officials dared to think that if those two men—especially McGovern, then Hoover's strongest public critic—had refused to reveal the contents of the stolen documents, perhaps all members of Congress could be trusted to do the same. Perhaps this bit of magical thinking was caused by fear that the other shoe would soon drop and the hope that it could be prevented from dropping. Whatever the inspiration, William Sullivan, then associate director, dared to propose to Hoover, via a memo to
Clyde Tolson, that the FBI ask a select group of members of Congress to help the FBI solve this important crime. The FBI, he proposed, would ask them to give the bureau any stolen documents they received, and in the event they were contacted at their homes or offices by people associated with the burglary or distribution of documents, report the people to the FBI. Such a request would likely lead to adverse comment from some members of Congress, Sullivan wrote. “Nevertheless, we have an obligation to seek their assistance as a criminal violation has occurred. If any members of the Congress should cooperate, it would afford us an opportunity to obtain information which might lead to the solution of the case.”

There were a few problems with this idea. The only members of Congress Sullivan wanted to target were African Americans and liberal whites. If word got out that they had contacted only those people, Sullivan theorized, the FBI might be accused of regarding such members as prone to having contact with wanted criminals. FBI officials discussed eliminating that weakness in the proposed scheme by including a few white southern conservatives in the group. When it proved impossible to come up with an embarrassment-proof way of executing the plan, the idea was quickly shelved as unworkable.

An updated summary of the MEDBURG investigation, dated the next day, Tuesday, March 23, indicates that copies of stolen documents received the previous day from the two members of Congress were being examined by the FBI laboratory. The summary also noted, “If approved [by the
director], letter will be forwarded to deputy attorney general to determine if any legal action can be taken to prohibit disclosure of contents of documents. It being noted [Congressman] Mitchell has made several statements to the press alluding to contents and has admitted possessing Xerox copies of serials.”

DISCUSSION
of that new effort to prevent the stolen documents from becoming public must have taken place at FBI headquarters about the same time I arrived at the
Washington Post
newsroom that Tuesday, March 23, a little before 10 a.m. and picked up my mail. I had been off the previous day. That meant my mailbox was overflowing even more than usual with news releases. If it had not been for the interesting return address—“Liberty Publications, Media, PA”—I might have placed the envelope in a stack of mail to be opened later. But the return address caught my attention. I knew something, but I couldn't remember what, had happened in Media recently. Even I, who had left the
Evening Bulletin
in Philadelphia at the end of 1969 to join the
Washington Post
and continued to have a deep interest in news from Philadelphia, had not thought much about the burglary when I read the very short wire service story the
Post
ran shortly after the break-in. In the envelope were fourteen documents and a cover letter that looked like a mundane form letter, a somewhat faded copy of a copy. But the letterhead signaled it might not be mundane:

THE CITIZENS' COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE THE FBI

I had not heard of the commission. Its letter began “Dear friend” and continued:

Unaccustomed as I was to receiving stolen FBI documents from either known or anonymous sources, I started to read the documents with excitement but also with caution, the latter because I wasn't sure if they were authentic. It had not occurred to me when I read the story about the burglary two weeks earlier that files might have been stolen and sent to journalists—any journalists, let alone me.

The first document I read after I read the cover letter was the one that encouraged agents to increase interviews with dissenters “for plenty of reasons, chief of which are it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”

At first, I wondered if that document might be a joke, a bad one. Enhance paranoia? An FBI agent behind every mailbox? I realized that questions had been raised in the past year about the possible clandestine reach of the FBI into the antiwar movement, but I found it hard to believe the FBI would have paranoia as a stated goal. It seemed even more unlikely the bureau would reduce such goals to writing and place them in a file.

The document continued, “In addition, some will be overcome by the overwhelming personalities of the contacting agent and volunteer to tell all—perhaps on a continuing basis.” From what I had heard from various sources who had been interviewed by FBI agents, the agent who wrote this document seemed to have either a sense of humor or an exaggerated view of the impression FBI agents made on the people they interviewed.

It was clear that if the FBI had paranoia as a goal of its intelligence operations, it was significant news. Assuming the document was authentic, here was evidence that the federal government, through Hoover's FBI, was not simply spying. When William Rehnquist, the assistant attorney general, testified two weeks earlier before a Senate committee, he said surveillance by government intelligence agencies at that time did not create a “chilling effect.” But here was an FBI document that, if authentic, provided evidence
that the FBI went far beyond creating a chilling effect. The FBI, as a stated policy, wanted to freeze dissent.

I continued to read. As I did, the six colleagues with whom I shared a small office off the
Post
's main newsroom arrived one by one at their desks to start the workday. We were a somewhat motley crew of reporters with different specialties—science, medicine, education, and religion—crammed into a room not much larger than a walk-in closet in a large Georgetown house. Playing with the names of our specialties one day, managing editor
Howard Simons had named our group SMERSH—for “science, medicine, education, religion and all that shit.” I was one of the two religion reporters in SMERSH, though my reporting on religion in recent years, both at the
Evening Bulletin
in Philadelphia and at the
Washington Post,
often included coverage of education, the antiwar movement, and trials that were related to both religion and the antiwar movement. Since the previous November, I had covered developments in the case against the Berrigan brothers and others after J. Edgar Hoover made his sensational accusations against them at a hearing in November 1970. I also had written about the summer 1970 wedding of a former nun and former priest that was attended by more plainclothes FBI agents than invited guests. The wingtip shoes were the tip-off. But those assignments did not prepare me to easily believe what I was now reading.

Most mornings, I greeted each of my colleagues when they arrived. Not today. I was totally absorbed, hunched over the documents and not noticing what was happening around me. Every document told a story about FBI power that was unknown to anyone outside the FBI. One signed by Hoover, on November 4, 1970, had two subject headings—“Black Student Groups on College Campuses” and “Racial Matters.” It was the first of numerous sets of stolen documents I would receive over the next two months that revealed Hoover's preoccupation with surveillance of black people and students, especially black students:

All higher education institutions, including two-year colleges, throughout the country were to be included in this plan to monitor black students and black student organizations. “In connection with this program we must develop network of discreet quality sources in a position to furnish required information. Bear in mind that absence of information regarding these groups in any area might be the fault of inadequate source coverage and efforts should be undertaken immediately to improve this coverage.”

Hoover conveyed a sense of urgency about the need to monitor black students:

It was clear from the documents that black students were regarded as potentially violent and therefore as appropriate subjects to be watched and to have their actions recorded in FBI files. The details in another document provided evidence that the Philadelphia FBI office had followed up on Hoover's instructions swiftly and comprehensively. Less than a month after Hoover's directive, in a December 2, 1970, memo, Philadelphia SAC Jamieson listed thirteen private and public campuses in the Philadelphia area where the bureau already had established informants, as “per instructions” of the director. “Investigations are being opened or reopened.” The Philadelphia field office added private high schools to the list and established informants in them. Another document reported that
every
black student at
Swarthmore College was under surveillance.

One of the files revealed that on some campuses the bureau had a network of informers—called informants in FBI parlance—who provided reports to the bureau about the activities of professors and students. They included switchboard operators, letter carriers, the postmaster, campus security officers, the local police chief, and some college administrators.

In other evidence of the bureau's recently increased emphasis on campus investigations, in a September 16, 1970, memo, supervising FBI agents
throughout the country were informed that the director had approved hiring security informers aged eighteen to twenty-one. “We have been blocked off,” it noted, “from this critical age group in the past. Let us take advantage of this opportunity.”

The bureau's easy access to personal records was evident in the stolen files. The private records of
Muhammad Kenyatta, the leader of a national black rights organization based in Philadelphia, were collected without regard for whether they were related to any potential criminal activity. An agent reported in one file that detailed confidential data on Kenyatta and his wife, Mary—phone records, checking account records—had been given to agents without subpoenas. The information was provided by sources with the agreement that if the bureau ever had an official need to use the information in a court proceeding, it would be sought again—at that time with the legally required subpoena and as though the FBI had not already illegally received the information. Documents released later by the burglars provided additional information about these cozy relationships, including ones between the FBI and employers and with government employment agencies. It appeared that whatever information the FBI wanted, it was given, without regard to privacy restrictions. Banks, credit card agencies, employers, landlords, law enforcement agencies, and military recruiters all opened their confidential files and their mouths when the FBI appeared.

When I finished reading the documents, I went to the main newsroom to tell the national desk what I had received. I didn't realize I was answering a question that had just been asked. Another editor on the national desk,
Mary Lou Beatty, had just talked with Ken Clawson, then the
Post
's reporter who covered the Department of Justice, a beat that included the FBI.
At bureau headquarters the previous day, Clawson had learned about Senator McGovern and Representative Mitchell receiving and turning over copies of the stolen documents to the FBI. I approached the national desk right after he had called from the department press room to ask if anyone at the
Post
had received the documents. I promptly called Clawson and described what I had received.