The Burglary (8 page)

They made that decision at the same time they created a close-knit family, three children by the time of the burglary.

For a week they discussed Davidon's question with each other every evening after dinner as their three children—Lindsley, seven; Mark, six; and Nathan, one—slept upstairs. They thought about the commitments they had made to each other and to their ideals, and about their love for and commitment to their children. With deep anguish, they questioned how much they were willing to let their family's future be threatened. Resistance, along with love, had been at the heart of their relationship from the beginning. Finally, they both agreed with Davidon's conviction that a crisis existed if dissent was being killed. They decided they were willing to join him in searching for evidence of whether that was true. They called him one evening and told him he could count on them to help solve this problem. They still thought an FBI office probably could not be burglarized.

A short time later, the Raineses met with John Raines's brother Bob and his wife and asked them, in strict confidence, one of the most important and painful questions they had ever asked anyone: Would they raise Lindsley, Mark, and Nathan if the Raineses went to prison? They were immensely grateful for the promise that they would.

KEITH FORSYTH WAS PLEASED
to get a call from Davidon in late 1970. He knew it would have something to do with protesting the war. Davidon was always looking for ways to oppose the war, and so was Forsyth. Since moving to Philadelphia a year earlier, he had come to respect Davidon a great deal.

Their phone conversation went like this:

Given the secrecy, Forsyth thought Davidon must have a very interesting idea to discuss. Little did he know.

When they met at the appointed time, Davidon wasted no time in telling Forsyth the reason for the “party.” He laid out his concerns and asked Forsyth, “What do you think of burglarizing an FBI office?”

Forsyth remembers being somewhat nonplussed by Davidon's proposal. “You know, somebody says to you, ‘Let's go break into the FBI office.' So
you look at them and say, ‘Yeah, okay, let's go break in. Then, after we finish that, let's go down to Fort Knox and steal a few million.' At first I thought, ‘Who are you kidding?' ”

Keith Forsyth was a part-time cabdriver when Davidon asked him to consider participating in the Media break-in. He had dropped out of college to devote more time to stopping the war.

That's what he thought, but he didn't say it. Instead of saying that, Forsyth thinks he probably nervously cleared his throat and stalled for time until he, somewhat falteringly, said something like, “Aren't these places, FBI offices, pretty tough to get access to?”

He wondered how Davidon could think this would be possible. But he knew Davidon didn't use dope and wasn't careless. Forsyth was even more surprised when Davidon told him he had already checked out an FBI office, the one in Media, and he thought it looked like it might be possible to break into it. Davidon also said he had first checked out the large
FBI office in downtown Philadelphia and decided it definitely would not be possible to break into. Too tall, too secure. At that point, Forsyth realized, “This guy is serious.”

Forsyth thought it would be impossible to burglarize an FBI office. He told Davidon he wanted to check out the office himself. After getting more proper—read: less hippie—clothes at a local thrift shop, he walked by the Media FBI office. He couldn't believe it. There was a simple lock on the door. It looked like security might be minimal. He remembers thinking, “ ‘Man, these guys have lost their minds.' The only thing you could think was that they didn't think at all about security. They must have thought it
was just too crazy, that no one would ever break into an FBI office, so they didn't have to worry about it.”

As he left the FBI office that day, he thought maybe Davidon was right. Maybe that office could be burglarized. Still, despite what appeared to be very weak security at the Media FBI office, Forsyth had lots of doubts. He recognized such a burglary would require a lot of meticulous testing and planning. Finally, he concluded that the potential value of what the burglary might accomplish was substantial. “I felt as though my enemy had expanded. It was no longer just the military machine that was waging a war in Vietnam. It was the United States government … and what it was doing, not just in Vietnam, but also to its own citizens. I wanted people to know that.”

He decided the burglary might well be worth the risk. He called Davidon and—unaware, as all the other burglars were, that he was talking to him on a phone that was being tapped by the FBI—he told Davidon he could count on him to participate. While preparing for a draft board raid, Forsyth had enrolled in a lock-picking course. Now he thought those skills might be useful again.

LIKE FORSYTH
, Bob Williamson, a state social worker, had dropped out of college to work against the war. Like many other young people in the antiwar movement, he had put his education and career goals on hold to focus, like a soldier, on what had become his self-imposed patriotic duty.

He found it easy to answer Davidon immediately. He didn't need time to consider it. “I think it's a great idea,” he remembers telling him. It simply seemed like an important job that needed to be done.

Bob Williamson was a social worker for the state of Pennsylvania. Like Forsyth, he had dropped out of college to spend more time as an antiwar activist.

WHEN DAVIDON ASKED
Susan Smith to meet to discuss an idea, she expected a challenge. Less than a year earlier, he had introduced her to the concept of raiding draft boards, something she had never imagined doing. By late 1970, she realized that if she wanted to engage in resistance against the war, Davidon was one of the best people to know. She was grateful for his leadership, but she did not expect it to lead to the question he posed to her now: “What do you think of burglarizing an FBI office?”

Smith eventually said yes to Davidon's question, but she did so with considerable reluctance and fear. She didn't like this sort of thing. It went against the core of her philosophy about political life. Engaging in clandestine acts, not taking public responsibility for them, was in opposition to her deepest ethical sense.

But as she thought about Davidon's question, she too regarded the official suppression of dissent as so important that she decided it was worth risking her freedom to search for the truth about such suppression. She had grown increasingly concerned about the destructive accusations that people were mentally ill if they expressed concern that the FBI was spying inside the peace movement. She thought the assumption that some people blithely expressed—“Of course our government would not do that”—was dangerous and should be challenged with evidence. Like Davidon, she thought this problem should not be ignored or left to fester.

She told Davidon she would participate.

RON DURST WAS
a graduate student at the time, preparing for a career in a health profession. Recently divorced, he was willing to take risks he would not have been willing to shoulder just a couple years earlier.

Durst's first reaction to Davidon's question was “Brilliant idea.” He respected Davidon as leader and as friend. He still marvels at the simplicity of the idea: get files that document what the FBI is doing, give those files to the public. Only an impressive mind, braced with great courage, could envision carrying out that obvious but frightening and challenging plan to get evidence. Durst thought the idea should be tested as soon as possible. He told Davidon he wanted to be part of the group.

Smith and Durst agreed to be interviewed for this book but not to be named. They and Janet Fessenden, the only member of the group who has not been found, will be referred to by fictitious names. The other five burglars have agreed to be identified.

DAVIDON FINISHED
his recruitment shortly before the December holidays. He rarely shows pride, but he did years later when he thought about the people who had said yes to his invitation. He smiled as he remembered their good qualities. From the beginning, he was sure he had assembled a fine team. Together they deepened their skills as amateur burglars and after research decided the break-in should be attempted.

They were in many ways ordinary but at the same time extraordinary. They were part of that group of acutely aware people who during the Vietnam War took to heart and mind their belief that war was the most powerful act their government carried out on behalf of the public using citizens' money and lives. Therefore, they thought they had a responsibility to study and understand the war and to engage with fellow citizens and government officials regarding this monumentally important thing, war. In recent years, after many years of participating in rallies, demonstrations, and letter writing, they had engaged in acts of resistance, not with enthusiasm, but because to them doing so was a necessity in the face of government officials' continued refusal to consider arguments that the war was an unjust one and should stop.

The war was on their minds daily. They did not know how to be indifferent. They had a keen sense of empathy that led them to identify with the agony of American troops and the agony of the Vietnamese people. The numbers alone were enough to propel such people to think, in frustration, “How long can this go on? What else can we do?” For nearly a decade, Americans woke up hearing daily news reports about “yesterday in Vietnam,” followed by the number of American troops, the number of South Vietnamese, and the number of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong who had been killed. This regular roll call of the dead was an ongoing marker of the dimensions of the war and, in the minds of many activists, a depressing reminder of their failure to stop it.

The downward spiral toward hopelessness in 1970 that Davidon wanted to stem was a reflection, in part, of those growing numbers. In some months, more than five hundred American soldiers were killed. In the end, the totals were: 58,152 Americans killed; 2 million Vietnamese civilians and 1.1 million
Vietnamese military killed. For Americans, the losses were enormous. For the Vietnamese, they were simply staggering. Vietnam lost 12 to 13 percent of its population in the war. To put that loss in perspective, if the United States had lost the same portion of its 1970 population, 28 million people would have died—a number that would have represented the killing of every man, woman, and child who lived in California, Arizona, and Michigan at the time.

Other statistics reflect the amount of dissent that took place. Between 1965 and 1970, more than 170,000 young men were officially recognized as
conscientious objectors who refused to fight for religious or moral reasons. Later in the war, others refused to serve because of their opposition to this particular war and sought recognition as selective conscientious objectors, a category of refusal to serve that was recognized as valid late in the war by the U.S. Supreme Court. Formal charges were brought against 209,517 young men for violating draft laws. An additional 360,000 were investigated but not charged. Opposition to the war among active-duty troops was unprecedented, but it was not widely reported. Americans were aware of veterans who opposed the war, such as Secretary of State
John Kerry of Massachusetts, who with others formed
Vietnam Veterans Against the War. But few Americans were aware that the antiwar movement was active in barracks, on aircraft carriers, and on the battlefields of Vietnam. According to Pentagon records, 503,926 troops deserted between 1966 and 1971. By 1972, there were reports of entire units refusing to go into battle. One group of soldiers, based at Fort Hood in Texas, refused to report for riot-control duty at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. They knew their assignment would be to control antiwar activists. Because they agreed with those activists, they refused the duty and served time in a military prison.