Updated September 2018
While Edward Snowden's revelations
about government snooping opened the world's eyes to the power of the American surveillance state, back in 1971, there
was a much less technological intrusion into the Federal Bureau of
Investigation in an attempt to prove that J. Edgar Hoover and his Bureau were
breaking the law. For over 40 years, those involved in the break-in at
the FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania remained uncaught despite a massive
manhunt that involved 200 FBI agents however, some of the eight protestors
involved have now stepped forward and claimed responsibility including John
Raines, now 80 years of age and his wife, Bonnie Raines, now 72 years of age.
Let's start by looking at a bit of history to put the break-in into
context.
For those of us that were around
during the early 1970s, it was a time of turmoil. Anti-Vietnam and
anti-government protests were becoming increasingly violent. The violence
reached a new peak in May 1970 when the Ohio National Guard shot and killed
four students and wounded nine others during an anti-war protest at Ohio State
University in Kent, Ohio. After the killing, nationwide student strikes
took place, resulting in the closing of 450 educational facilities across the
United States and roughly 4 million students took part in both violent and
non-violent protests. In Washington D.C., 100,000 protestors demonstrated
against the killing of unarmed students and American involvement in the war,
resulting in the removal of President Richard Nixon to Camp David for two days
to ensure his safety.
With all of this ongoing
anti-government action, someone had to take the blame. The term "The New Left" was coined to collectively
describe the college-aged baby boomers who were attempting to change American
culture and rebuild society in a cultural revolution. The early core of
the New Left was formed by the Students for a Democratic Society, a radical organization
that aspired to overthrow the American political institution, promoting
civil rights, voting rights and urban reform . As well, the SDS
spearheaded the anti-Vietnam war movement and acted to destroy the pro-war
Hubert Humphrey's chances at gaining the Democratic nomination for President at
the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention.
With the social environment in the
United States bordering on anarchy, there were fears that the FBI was targeting
and harassing young Americans that were part of the New Left in an attempt to
undermine their efforts. Young Americans in Philadelphia, a centre of the
anti-war movement became increasingly concerned that the FBI was using illegal
surveillance to prevent student dissent, an issue that was almost impossible to
prove. A physics professor at Haverford College in Haverford,
Pennsylvania just outside Philadelphia, William Davidon, came up with a plan to
break into the FBI field offices at Media Pennsylvania. He assembled a
team of eight people who called themselves "The Citizens' Commission to
Investigate the FBI", including Bonnie and John Raines. The Raines
had three young children; Bonnie was working at a daycare centre and John was a
professor at Temple University. One of the group members, Keith Forsyth,
trained himself as a locksmith so that he could pick the door locks. Ms.
Raines made an appointment under the guise of looking for a job in the office
so that she could make a mental map of the layout and any security system that
was in place (there was no security). During the interview she disguised
herself and wore gloves the entire time so that she would leave no fingerprints
behind. The group picked May 8th, 1971 as the break-in date, the night of
the first "Fight of the Century" between Muhammad Ali and Joe
Frazier. The group entered the office, filled suitcases with every file
present and made their way to a Quaker farmhouse an hour away. There,
they sorted through the hundreds of documents and then mailed the most
incriminating ones that proved that the FBI was spying on political activists
to the press, including the Washington Post. In case you wanted to read
Ms. Raines recent column on the subject, here is a link to a column written by her,
explaining her involvement.
In response to the revelations, the
Senate formed the Church Committee which investigated the
operations of United States intelligence agencies including the FBI's spying
operation known as COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), the secret
program that was used to infiltrate domestic political groups and smear the
reputation of America's perceived enemies including Martin Luther King.
The fourteen reports published in 1975 and 1976 were the most extensive
review of the nation's intelligence activities that were ever made public and
included investigations into U.S. involvement in attempts to assassinate
foreign leaders including Fidel Castro and Vietnam's Diem brothers. Book III opens with the following two pages:
Note the sentence:
""Covert action" is the label applied to clandestine activities
intended to influence political choices and social values.".
COINTELPRO, the covert action program, was authorized by J. Edgar Hoover and operated in the years
between 1956 and 1972 when its existence was confirmed by the Media, Pennsylvania
burglary. The Church Committee found that COINTELPRO had ignored legal
restrictions.
Here,
from 1975, is what Idaho Senator Frank Church had to say about government
surveillance (ignoring the presence of Rick Santorum on the set of Meet the
Press for the moment):
Here is the full quote from the 1975 interview of Senator Church:
"In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are
doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability
that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now, that is
necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or
potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time
could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any
privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone
conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge
in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has
given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would
be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in
resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within
the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the
capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it
that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within
the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss.
That is the abyss from which there is no return." (my bold)
It's interesting to hear/read the words of a United States Senator who is saying the same thing that the "tinfoil hat" crowd has been saying for years.
With 2013's revelations courtesy of
Edward Snowden, one has to wonder if history isn't repeating itself. With
today's advanced technology that allows the gathering of trillions of data
points, it is far easier for the government to potentially "influence
political choices and social values" through intimidation than it ever has
been in history.
Posts
