Democracy needs whistleblowers. That’s why I broke into the FBI in 1971
▻http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/07/fbi-1971-burglary-hold-government-accountable
I vividly remember the eureka moment. It was the night we broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in March 1971 and removed about 1,000 documents from the filing cabinets. We had a hunch that there would be incriminating material there, as the FBI under J Edgar Hoover was so bureaucratic that we thought every single thing that went on under him would be recorded. But we could not be sure, and until we found it, we were on tenterhooks.
A shout went up among the group of eight of us. One of us had stumbled on a document from FBI headquarters signed by Hoover himself. It instructed the bureau’s agents to set up interviews of anti-war activists as “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.”
That was the first piece of evidence to emerge. It was a vindication.
Burglars in 1971 FBI office break-in come forward after 43 years
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/07/fbi-office-break-in-1971-come-forward-documents
When a group of anti-war activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, on 8 March 1971 they hoped that they would be hitting the bureau’s overweening director, J Edgar Hoover, where it hurt most. They would grab whatever documents they could find and in that way expose the culture of Big Brother illegality that Hoover had created.
FBI director J Edgar Hoover with Richard Nixon in 1968. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows
►http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-fbi-abandon-shadows.html
John and Bonnie Raines, two of the burglars, at home in Philadelphia with their grandchildren.
Mark Makela for The New York Times
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