unfouled -- unfolding. i took what was outrage and horror about what was going on, and i realized that i had to take it somewhere with. >> bonnie rains worked in a daycare center in philadelphia. her husband, john, taught religion at temple university. they were the very picture of a golden couple. >> we had an 8-year-old, a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. we were family folks who also wanted to keep another track active in our lives which was political activism. >> that activism attracted the attention of the fbi. its director, the powerful and feared j. edgar hoover, received the anti-war movement which ranged from radical revolutionaries to peaceful protesters as a threat to national security. >> at one rally i had one of my children on my back, and not only did they take my picture, but they took her picture. >> protesters like the raines became increasingly convinced the fbi was conducting a covert campaign against them, tapping their phones and infiltrating anti-war groups. >> we you the fbi -- we knew the fbi was systematically trying to squash the dissent. >> determined to get proof the fbi was crossing the line, fellow activist and physics professor william davadon hatched a plan. he reached out to the raines and six others including a social worker, a graduate student and a taxi driver named keith forsyth. >> we agreed to meet someplace where we could talk, and he says what would you think about the idea of breaking into an fbi office. and i look at him, and i'm like, you're serious, aren't you? i was pretty vehement in my opposition to the war, and i the pelt like marching up and down the street with a sign was not cutting it anymore. and it was like, okay, time to, time kick it up a notch. >> the crew decided to break into a small fbi field office in pennsylvania. >> once i got over the shock of thinking that this was the nuttiest thing i'd ever heard in my life, i'm like, this is a great idea because we're not going to make any allegations. we're going to take their own paperwork, signed by their own people including j. edgar hoover, and give it to the newspapers. so let's see you argue with that. >> in the raines' third floor attic, the teamtive i haved up responsibilities -- divvied up responsibilities and assigned tasks. they hung maps to learn about neighborhood, planned escape routes and took extensive notes on the comings and goings in the movie. >> i signed up for a correspondence course in lock smithing. practice, you get pretty good. >> bonnie was assigned the job of going inside and is casing the office. >> i was to call the office and make an appointment as a sophomore student doing research on opportunities for women in the fbi. so they gave me an appointment. i tried to disguise myself as best i could, and i went to say good-bye, and i acted confused about where the door was. and that gave me a chance then to check out both rooms and know where the file cabinets were. >> bonnie discovered there was no alarm system and no security guards. she also found a second door leading inside. >> when she came back with that news, we became convinced, yes, i think we can get this done. we had more to lose than think about else in the group, because we had these kids. >> we faced the reality of if we were arrested and on trial, we would be many prison for very many years. we had to make some plans for that. >> a solid understanding of how they would conduct the break-in, they now needed to figure out when. >> march 8, 1971, frazier and ali were fighting for the championship of the world. and we had the feeling that maybe the cops might be a little bit distracted. [laughter] >> while the crew waited at a nearby hotel, for scythe arrived at the office -- forsyth arrived at the office alone. >> pull up to the door, and one of the locks is a cylinder, not a pin and tumbler lock, and i just about had a heart attack. >> they almost called it off, but that second door that bonnie noticed gave them another chance. >> at that point, you know that you're going to have to wing it. knelt down on the floor, picked the lock in 20 seconds. there was a dead bolt on the other side. i had a pry bar with me. i put the bar in there and yanked that sucker. at one point i heard a noise inside the office, and i'm like, are they in there waiting for me? basically said to myself, there's only one way to find out. i'm going the in. >> next, the inside crew walked into an empty office wearing business suits and carrying several suitcases. they cleaned out file cabinets and then made their way downstairs to the getaway car and drove off unnoticed. >> heavy weight champion of the world -- >> the group reconvened at a farmhouse an hour's drive away and started unpacking. >> we were liker oh, man -- like, oh, man, i can't believe this worked. we knew there was going to be some gold in there somewhere. >> eight of us were sorting piles. all of us could hear one, oh, look, look at this one, look. >> after several long nights digging for documents that looked the most revealing, the the burglars sent copies to journalists including washington post reporter betty medsger. >> the cover letter was from the citizens commission to investigate the fbi, and the first file that i read was about a group of fbi agents who were told to enhance the paranoia in the anti-war movement and to create an atmosphere that there's an fbi agent behind every mailbox. >> attorney general john mitchell asked the post not to write about the stolen document, saying it could endanger lives. >> the attorney general called two key editors and tried to convince them not to publish. >> but the post did publish the story on the front page. it was first of several reports and told how agents turned local police, letter carriers and switchboard operators into informants. >> there were very strong editorials calling for an investigation of the fbi. >> another stolen document would prove even more explosive, a routeing slip marked with a mysterious word. while reporters tried to uncover its meaning, the fbi was desperate to find the burglars. the bureau put nearly 200 agents on the investigation. hoover's best lead was the college girl who had visited their office. >> his command was find me that woman. >> agents actively searched for bonnie, but there were many anti-war activists who fit her description. >> we could hide within thousands of people. there were so many of us who were active. >> the documents proved -- >> two years later nbc reporter carl stern figured out meaning of that word, cointel pro. >> secret fbi memos made public today show that the late j. edgar hoover ordered a nationwide campaign to disrupt the activities of the new left without telling any of his superiors about it. >> of techniques were clearly illegal. burglaries and threats of violence were used. >> the fbi initially defended its actions. >> the government would have been derelict in its duty had it not taken measures to protect the fabric of our society. >> but the bureau's techniques were worse, and the targets more far reaching than the burglars ever imagined. >> diplomats, government employees, sports figures, socially prominent persons, senators and congressmen. the fbi at one time sought to blackmail the late martin luther king into committing suicide. >> marriages were destroyed, violence was encouraged, many americans were tapped and bugged, add their mail opened by the cia and the fbi and their tax returns used illegally. >> congress issued a series of reforms. when william webster took over the fbi in 1978, his mandate was clear. >> my primary focus was making clear that cointel pro was no longer one of the arrows in the quiver of the fbi. we were out of that business forever. >> webster admits the bureau's tactics were out of bounds but does not condone what the activists did to reveal them. >> you can say the information might be useful, but the method is hardly justifiable. there's a way to take on the unjust law in the courts and deal with it in that way. >> you know, there were things happening that were flat out wrong. ordinary how you treat your fellow man wrong. and we took a risk to try to do what we could to put a stop to it. >> the burglars were never caught. five years later with the statute of limitations running out, the fbi closed the case unsolved. >> on the very last memo where they say who they think broke into the meeting office, they're down to seven people. only one was, in fact, one of the media burglars. >> for nearly 20 years, betty medsger had no idea who the burglars were until one night an old acquaintance she was having beginner with let it slip. >> and our youngest daughter mary was there. i said, mary, she was the one that we sent all those docking units to. and betty's chin dropped like that. [laughter] >> i was absolutely stunned. [laughter] >> medsger spent years tracking down the other burglars and getting them to reveal the secret they had vowed to keep forever, the mastermind, william davodon, recently died, but he and four others are identified in medsger's book, "the burglary," and in a new documentary directed by joanna hamilton. >> we didn't notice the seemingly small event that had far reaching consequences. >> the exposure pushed congress to rein in government surveillance. it created a special court, the so-called fisa court, to issue warrants when intelligence agencies want to spy on u.s. citizens. but after 9/11, more wide-ranging surveillance was allowed. just how much the nsa's spying activities had grown was large will i unknown -- largely unknown until 2013 when contractor edward snowden leaked classified documents. [applause] >> the public has to decide whether these programs or policies are right or wrong. >> the u.s. government reportedly attaining top secret court orders requiring verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of americans to national security agency. >> revelations about government monitoring phone records and e-mails have renewed questions about the balance between privacy and security. >> i definitely see parallels between snowden's case and our case. what we revealed changed public opinion which is why the laws were changed. revealing ourselves is going to get people arguing with each other about what the fbi did then, what the nsa is doing now, i think that's a good thing. ♪ ♪ [applause] >> hello, everyone. and welcome. i've been asked to ask you to turn off or silence your phones, your cell phones, and refrain from flash photos. i'm katherine waterson, also known as kitsy burkhardt when i wrote for the philadelphia evening bulletin a number of years ago. [applause] [laughter] >> tonight i'm so honored to introduce betty medsger, the author of "the burglary: the discovery of j. edgar hoover's secret fbi." as well as three of the eight members of the courageous anti-war activist group who risked their futures to break into the fbi office in media, pennsylvania, 43 years ago and steal not just some, but every document in that office. [laughter] [applause] during the following week after the burglary while the fbi was looking frantically for the perpetrators, they moved 200 agents into the powellton neighborhood where i think many people from this audience live still. [applause] the group, which called itself citizens commission to investigate the fbi, photocopied and mailed out hundreds of the fbi's directives that proved beyond any doubt that the fbi had been waging an illegal and secret and criminal war on, against political dissent, against civil rights and equal rights activism and justice. the citizens commission sent the first batch of files to five people; three journalists and two members of congress. it shows how powerful j. edgar hoover's hold was because four of those five who received the files gave them, turned them over to the tbi. finishing bi. but one person did not, and that was betty medsger, who was a reporter at "the washington post." [applause] at that time. [applause] she wrote the first story about those, the content of those documents. and after the washington post had published it, which was a struggle for them because this was not popular thinking, people didn't believe it unless it had happened to them, but after her story others picked up the story, and it opened the floodgates of investigations that would unmask hoover and the fbi and ultimately open the public's mind to then pentagon papers that followed, watergate and other activities of our government that were illegal. for years we've never known the identity of these burglars, but now through betty medsger's brilliant book she, we not only get to go inside the burglary itself, but inside the lives and the minds of the people who were committed. and she also takes us inside those times which were so passionate and with the escalation of the war and the bombings, she really shows what compelled these activists to take these risks to right the wrongs that they were seeing. betty was a perfect person to do this book, and she's been working on it for 20 years. she not only worked as a journalist for "the washington post" and the philadelphia evening bulletin, but she also became chair of the journalism department at san francisco state university, and she is the founder of its center for integration and improvement of journalism. her research in this book is exhaustive, and the story's so compelling, it's hard to imagine how many documents she read, how many interviews she conducted over two decades to create book. just alone she read the 33,698 pages the fbi had put out about media burglary among other things. on stage with her tonight will be three of the eight members of the citizens who were led by their hearts and their heads to take these risks for all of us. to me, they've always been heroes because they proved what we were experiencing but had not had any evidence of before except our own eyes, and that was not necessarily believed. the three are johnny and bonnie raines who had three young children at the time of the burglary and keith forsyth. keith is now an engineer, and at that time he was a full-time activist and a cab driver who went to locksmith school to learn how to pick the fbi's locks. [laughter] john raines, a professor of religion at temple university, had been a freedom rider in the 1960s where he witnessed the war against blacks in america. bonnie raines, who had taught in harlem and had been educated by her experiences there, had a job as director of a daycare center at the time of the burglary. the architect, haverford, sorry. what did i just say? harvard, yeah. he died the past november, and so sadly, he's not here with us. but as betty writes, bill wanted the public to know that despite the vast governmental power, the giant goliath was vulnerable to small davids, especially when the davids joined together. please join me in welcoming these davids, betty medsger, john raines, bonnie raines and keith forsyth. [applause] >> good evening. it's wonderful to be here in the, near the home of the burglary, in the home of the investigation that was done by 200 if fbi agents trying to find these people. in case you haven't seen them recently, you just now heard their names, keith forsyth, bonnie raines -- [applause] and john raines. [applause] it's especially nice to be in this immediate area, the beautiful library, and also neighborhood. this is the neighborhood that bill davidon and his late wife, maxine, lived in immediately prior, in the years prior to her death in 2010 and enjoyed many things about this neighborhood including coming here for events. so that feels like a special tie more us. i assume that if you're here and you have the enthusiasm that you've already shown, that you know a lot about the burglary. so i won't rehash the details except for some things that i'd like to say. it really began in 1970 when bill davidon had a very powerful idea. as he moved from peace organization to peace organization that year, people kept telling him that they thought that this were spies in their midst. and he was not a believer in conspiracies, and he was not someone who speculated. as a physicist, he believed in the scientific method, and he really thought that people were perhaps imagining that, that people in the movement by that time had is such a seasons of lack of hope -- such a sense of lack of hope or depression really about what they felt was their failure to stop the war. and so he thought as he heard this more and more and from a greater variety of people, he decided i think this is true. and if it's true, if the government is officially suppressing dissent, this is a crime against democracy, and it's a crime that needs to be stopped. and in that idea was the origin of the question that he then asked ten people he met with individually in late 1970 and asked what do you think of burglarizing an fbi office? now -- [laughter] not a question, not a question that many people would be asked. he invited ten people. one said, no. one turned him down. and there were nine. and then just not long before, just several days before the burglary the ninth person abandoned the group. that person knew everything that was planned, and these people and other burglars didn't seem to be fazed by that or a number of other obstacles that i think most people would be fazed by. and they proceeded to plan, and they seemed to have, they did have the same resolve that bill had which is hard for many of us to imagine. that instead of thinking like most people would about such a problem, how do you get evidence that the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country is suppressing dissent when it's also the most secretive and the most protected organization in the company, most people, i think it would be safe to say, would have thought this is a problem that cannot be solved. sure, it's terrible and simply lament. and bill was a problem solver, and he thought this problem is not too big to solve, it's so big it must be solved. and that, in that commitment that the others joined with him, the burglary was born with. the first news about the burglary was about two paragraphs long. it was a confirmation that the burglary had occurred. and somebody at the fbi said something about as profound as, well, a few things missing. [laughter] and two weeks later we found out everything was missing, that in the dark the burglars had gone in, and they had removed every piece of paper they found. it amounted to about a thousand files. the documents shocked the american public. again, it's so important to remember what a revered person hoover was, and there was that file that said enhance the paranoia, make people hi there's -- think there's an fbi agent behind every mailbox. that was a devastating thing to discover about the top law enforcement agency in the country. people started calling major members of congress percent first time, prominent members of congress calling for an investigation of the fbi. major newspapers in their editorials could for investigation of the fbi including the philadelphia end quirer which part of that time, i don't think, had ever written anything but praise for j. edgar hoover and the fbi. and that's motto single out the in-- not to single out the inquirer, that was true across the country. fortunately, when i accidentally found the burglars, two of the burglars thanks to john blurting out -- [laughter] a secret in 1989 we think it was, fortunately, they have agreed to come forward and tell their stories. they first came forward on the day that the burglary was published and at a showing of a, a private showing of a documentary, "1971," that's also about their story and that will be shown here for the first time on may 28th at the constitution center. that seems like a very appropriate thing, at constitution center. [laughter] and now thanks to their deciding that they would no longer be silent, they and the significance of what they did, i hope, can be remembered. i'm going to start with a question that i think a lot of people ask, it was just asked of me the afternoon by a reporter who was trying to figure out how in the world you were able to do what you did, what made it possible for you to decide to do such a radical thing? were there roots in your early lives, was it in your evolution at that time? keith, how would you decide 40 40 -- decide how it was possible? >> i think -- not that it's perfect today, but it's not like it was then. so i don't know, it didn't seem like such a momentous decision at the moment. it was, when you see something that's that wrong and no one whose job it is to do something about it is doing anything about it, then it just seems, well, then let's do it. i don't know how else to explain it. [laughter] >> well, what about the evolution that you went through when you were at worcester hoe? you had been -- though? you had been a very different person and then changed your position. >> oh, yeah. sure. i come from the midwest, from a small town. was, you know, not that i thought much about politics as a kid, but, you know, relatively conservative environment. and so certainly in those days i would never have in my wildest dreams imagined doing something like that. and i think what happened to me is what happened to a lot of people at concern in my case a fellow who's from philadelphia who i haven't seen in the intervening 40-some years gave me a small book about the history of vietnam, about the war in vietnam. it was published by quakers, the religious society of friends. and at the time he gave me this book, he was, basically, i was uninterested this politics, and he was trying to convince me that i should be. and he gave me this book to read, and it really turned my whole life upside down because this very short book detailed the history of american involvement in vietnam and documented very well why there was absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever for us to be there. it wasn't about democracy, it was about empire. and that all the things that i had been told by the media and by society at large and by the, by my schooling having to do with why we were over there were all lies. and so it was quite a difficult thing to accept for me because i just wasn't used to the idea of thinking that people were lying to me. but, you know, quakers were an organization i had a lot of respect for. i was, you know, came from a very religious background, and there was a process involved, but basically, when i came out the other end of the tunnel, i was convinced that they were right and what i had previously believed was completely wrong. and so at that point i just felt like, you know, i have to do something about this. i don't know if that answers your question. >> bonnie and john, would each of you describe your evolution coming to the point where you could do something like this? >> well, i guess i always, i was always even as a child concerned about the underdog, and particularly aware of what, how our society fails the poorest children. i taught school in east harlem, and i became very aware of the inequality. and then i moved on from teaching school in new york to moving to philadelphia and joining an enormous movement in protest against the war. there were many, many activists in philadelphia at that time, and i was anxious to affiliate with those activist is and look for -- activists and look for ways to take action. we all did the same things, we marched, we went to rallies, we took buses to washington. we did all of that to no avail, and the war was escalating, and the government was lying to citizens about the war. and i just became very, very much interested in the next step in protesting, and that became an affiliation with a group at that time which was called the catholic left. and the group itself was called the east coast conspiracy to save lives. and with that group we, we went into draft boards in the middle of the night and removed draft files and destroyed them to try -- we were one of many groups doing that, that kind of civil disobedience. and we were doing what we could to disrupt the draft, but the war continued to escalate. and, therefore, it became a compelling thing for me to find another way as a citizen, as an individual concerned woman to take action to begin to change systems in a serious kind of way. and that drew me into the part of the catholic left that was interested in something like a break-in, and bill davidon's ingenious idea which is to break into an fbi office and remove files and, hopefully, have hard evidence about what was going on at that time. >> i think it's so important to realize as they talk about what they did that they had no idea whether there was anything of value in the office, whether they'd find any document that would have the evidence that they had in mind. and i think many contrast to edward snowden right now who knew exactly what he was doing because he was an insider. they were an outsider. he saw the evidence and started collecting it. they went in and faced the same risk that if they had found empty forms, they would have faced the same risk as hay faced when they found -- as they faced when they found something significant. john, you've talked in the past about the evolution in your life and what made it possible. >> well, i'm looking at people with a lot of gray hair out there. some younger people. [laughter] and i suspect i'm looking at people who were back in the 1960s, some of you were in the streets along with me, because that's what was going on back then. i mean, philadelphia was the center of the protest movement in many respects. there were thousands and thousands of people out in the streets protesting against that war from 1965 right on through. i think the reason i got active with the east coast conspiracy to save lives, learned my burglary skills, i must say, from priests and nuns -- a wonderful experience -- [laughter] this is true, this is true. [applause] >> how many are here? [laughter] >> i got active in the civil rights movement beginning in 1961. i was a freedom rider and was arrested and put in jail in little rock. and that began for me a second education that in many respects i was not supposed to get. i was born into a relatively affluent family in minneapolis, minnesota, and went to private schools and camps and elite schools and had, oh, all the lessons, tennis, sailing, horseback riding, all that stuff. so i needed an education that i didn't get. the education i got first, and i didn't choose it -- none of us get to choose our first education or our first identity -- was a life lived from top-down, a world understood from top-down, a world understood, an identity formed and shaped by being inside privilege and inside power. so i didn't know what it was like to live in america. i only knew what it was like to live in a little tiny bubble at the top. well, i got a second education, and my teachers were the black folks down south. many of them without a college education, many of them couldn't write. they taught me what it meant on an american. it's from them that i learned the price you are willing to pay for freedom. i saw people lose their jobs because they stood in a line. and i literally, i was standing behind a black woman in southwest georgia in 1965, a woman half her age said, bessie, you get out of that line, or you never come to my house and work again. bessie stayed in the line. that changed my understanding of what the meaning of a vote is. now, it's easy to be cynicism, to be cynical today about votes. all the money that's pouring in and all that kind of stuff. but, my god, those teachers -- black folks, poor folks -- taught me what it's like when you have to struggle for freedom, when you have to struggle for dignity. and that changed me. i went down south to help them, i came back from the south because i was there in 1964 in mississippi, i was there at selma in '65. i came back from the south with a different way of being john raines. and that's what i brought to the war in vietnam. that and i knew damn well what j. edgar hoover was was we found out what -- because we found out what j. edgar hoover was down in the south. he hated martin luther king, he hated the civil rights movement. he wanted things to return to quiet, to to his kind of life. he was not a good man. he would, he has been the largest subversive in american history fighting, as he said, subversion and subverting the freedoms of this country. and he very nearly got away with it. he was the most powerful man in washington, without any question. second not touch him. they could not touch him. so somebody had to do something about that man. and that became our task. [applause] >> and he did get away with it for half a century. and there are many people who think at that time and still that the fbi in the 1970s would have never been investigated, none of the change -- none of the questions would have been raised had the change occurred if it had not been for what the burglary did. despite all of the courage that you had and the willingness to go ahead, i know there also was a great deal of various kinds of fear. and i wonder if you could talk about some of your experiences. first, a very practical one for keith. the night of the burglary, i think there were a couple times when you had unexpected experiences. first of all, you had trained to be able to break in how fast? >> on average 30 seconds. >> he did the lock-pucker olympics -- picker olympics every night in their attic which was the center of the planning. [laughter] >> right. and i just want to correct one slight misstatement that was made before, i didn't know study lock picking to break into the fbi office. i studied lock picking to break into draft boards first. [laughter] >> but you got your expertise -- [laughter] >> but the fbi was kind of like the graduate school. [laughter] a -- >> so when you came that night in your topcoat that you got at a thrift shop -- >> so we were, yeah, we were all dressed very well. and most of the people in the group did not need haircuts to look respectable. but there were who of us that did -- two of us who did, and so we got those haircuts. so we were willing to sacrifice a lot. [laughter] and so in addition to bonnie's casing of the inside, i had checked out the locks from the outside some time before to make sure that everything was good. and when i got there that night, one of the locks was different than the way i remembered it being. dramatically different as in i don't know how to open that kind of of lock. >> well, wasn't there also one more lock than you thought there was? >> well, this is where, you know, memory is a little vague after all these years, but i think there were always two locks on the door, but they were both the standard kind like on your front door which is cake to pick, not a problem. [laughter] a -- >> for you. [inaudible conversations] [laughter] >> don't worry, i'm not short of money right at the moment. [laughter] so, but one of locks when i arrived that night was not that type, it was a high security type lock like you see today on a kryptonite bike lock. and that takes a special tool to pick and some special techniques. so anyway, at that moment my heart just sank, because immediately i thought, a, i'm incompetent because i didn't see this lock before and, b, the whole thing is off because i can't get through the door. subsequent to after reading some of the documents you turned up, i think they had recently changed that lock, that's why i didn't see that before. but that as it may, at that point i completely lost my cool. i, you know, i was not able to stay calm and think of a plan b, i just completely freaked out ask called, called back to headquarters or and said finish. >> a motel -- >> yeah. i don't know what i said, but it probably wasn't that coherent. i was very upsettlement -- upset. so that time i did not get myself out of the fear. it wasn't really fear, it was more just when you really want something very badly and very suddenly you think that you're not going to get it, you know, you're very upset. but everybody talked me down and said let's think about this, and, of course, bill was the king of calm. you, i know there's some people, quite a few people, actually, in the audience who knew bill, and he just did not get flustered. and he was so analytical. and we all talked about it and said, well, what about the second door? and so then i started to feel better. so i went back in, and -- >> but there was a problem with that second door. >> right. >> but not in the beginning. in the beginning, it was just a regular pin tumbler block. i got through it, i pushed the door, and it only went about a quarter of an inch. so there was a dead bolt on the other side. so i could hear the radio of the building manager underneath my feet. he lived right underneath where i was working. [laughter] so i'm wondering, i wonder how loud it's going to be when i break the this thing open with a crowbar, and is he going to hear me? so i did. i tried to make it as quick as possible on the theory that one loud noise is less upsetting than lots of small noises. [laughter] and apparently, my theory was right, because i waited, and nothing happened. and then i pushed the door a little further and somewhere in the process i think what you're probably referring to when you ask about fear is somewhere in this process of getting through the second door i heard a cranking sound inside -- clanking sound inside the office. at that point i was scared. [laughter] and i didn't know if it was the heating system or the if, wi -- the fbi jostling furniture. so, you know, what are you going to do? you know, you take a couple deep breaths and hope it's the heating system. [laugher] you know, it's just not the kind of thing, you know, you're not going to give up at that point. it just would -- i just can't imagine that. >> we should also describe that this is happening in a very public place really. >> many right, right. >> that the building in media -- >> right. the hallway of an apartment building, actually. >> right. a stair welshing an open stairwell, well lit. you went in from outside into a well-lit space where you could be with seen outside or inside, went up the stairs. everything was open to the third ask fourth floors -- and fourth floors where people lived. and so the reason that he had been especially carefulful about trying to do it very fast was that they were concerned that residents might come by, and there would be somebody standing, breaking into an fbi office. >> right. >> and what was planned to take about 30 seconds ended up taking quite a long time. >> it took much longer. i don't know how lengthy we want to get here but with, basically, after i got through the dead bolt, i got another half inch, and the doorstopped again. and there was a ginormous file cabinet -- yeah, well, you probably did. [laughter] >> but he had no choice. >> but you forgot to move it while you were in there. [laughter] so i started, you know, i could tell by the way the door moved that it was the doorknob was hitting the file cabinet, so i started pushing, and this thing started tipping. [laughter] and i'm guessing it weighed roughly a hundred pounds, something of that order, about what i weighed. and so if it had hit the ground, that would have been the end because i know that would have awakened everybody in the building. so there had to be a way to move it, and the noor was carpet. -- the floor was carpet. so i eventually went out to the car. thank goodness this was 1971 and not 20 years later when they had real jacks in cars and got the pillar out of a jack about so long and used that as a pry bar. so there i was laying on floor of the hallway -- [laughter] >> a resident could have come by at any time. >> with my feet braced up against the wall working this crowbar -- [laughter] pri bar -- or jack stand about a millimeter at a time. i don't really remember how long it took me. it seemed like a hundred years, but it was probably at least 20 minutes. because you couldn't move it very far without tipping it over. and that was really the most nerve-wracking, because it would be pretty hard to explain that -- [laughter] and so, yeah, that was, that was a relief when that was over, and i finally got inside. >> okay. let's talk about a different kind of fear. john, the kind of fear that you experienced in the weeks leading up, the peer and concern -- the fear and concern about the family. there were four of the burglars who had chirp, but john and bonnie had three small children at the time. >> and we were both burglars, therefore, we both faced possible prison time. yeah. bonnie was much more courageous in some ways than i was. after bonnie went into the fbi and cased them and found out there was no security devices either on the file cabinets or on the doorways, then it became clear -- and it was the first time that it did become clear -- that we're going to do this. and that's when i started getting nervous, because i knew that j. edgar hoover would throw everything he had at us. and he did. i mean, he sent out 200 agents to rye to find us. -- to try to find us. they were everywhere. some of you, if you were living in the village or the university city back then, you remember how many of the fbi, they just poured all over the place. and, yeah, for the first five years i was, i was scared. we were very lucky in the sense that we had done our casing very carefully, we were not reckless, we were meticulous. and then we were also very lucky because there were thousands of activists back then. and when they left no physical evidence, you know, from the scene itself of the burglary, we could -- >> [inaudible] >> then we could disappear into this sea of fellow activists. and with very little physical evidence to go on to separate us out from the other thousands activists, it became really impossible retrospectively, it became impossible for those 200 agents to find us. but for the first five years i was looking over my shoulder every now and then. >> and, bonnie, would you talk about the philosophy that you and john had really developed long before the burglary about resistance and family? >> well, i think we, we came to the realization that it really is up to every citizen in a democracy to protect rights in a democracy, and if there is abuse of those rights, you can't just sit back and wait for someone else to look other way. we felt determined to participate as citizens and also a second very important reason for us was that we were thinking about the kind of society our children would grow up into and what was that society going to look like in terms of a true democracy. and we wanted to try to guarantee the rights of all citizens as much as we could individually, and we felt that you just, you don't stop being responsible because you are a parent. in some ways you need to be more responsible because you're really investing in your children's future. so we, and we were a political family. our children were hearing a lot about activism and the war in vietnam, and they were, they were beginning to understand the values that were so important to us and to our colleagues. >> also we, you have to remember that we still routinely as a society require fathers and mothers the take on jobs -- to take on jobs that protect and help the rest of us that put them in jeopardy. every day a policeman goes to work he or she puts their kids' lives on the line. every day fire people go out and climb the ladders, they put their families in jeopardy. every day mothers and fathers in the armed services go overseas and fight, they put their families in jeopardiment -- jeopardy. we don't ever stop, you know, being citizens. probably the single most important gift we give to our children is not their education, although that's important, it is a nation they're going to live their adult lives in and raise their children and grandchildren in. that's the most important gift we give our kids. if we did not stop j. edgar hoof, there was nobody in washington who was going to stop that man. we had to do what we did, or it just wouldn't get done. >> keith, you were going to -- >> i was just going to say what john just, you know -- [laughter] i think that's a tremendous analogy. >> do you remember as one of the youngest members of the group at the time, do you remember -- >> still am. [laughter] >> sorry. but you're a father now -- [laughter] and you don't have the white hair. [laughter] do you remember what you thought when you saw those three kids running around in the house as you were planning the burglary, did that mean anything? >> oh, absolutely. i thought these people are some people with guts, meaning these two right here. [applause] yeah. i was very impressed. >> go ahead. >> i was very impressed. >> i'd like to ask one more question of you before we turn it over to audience questions. in looking back and thinking of the burglary and its aftermath and today, what do you think is the most important discovery or lesson that emerged from the burglary and its impact? keith? >> boy, that's a tough one. >> you can succeed. >> yeah. yeah. >> you can beat 'em. >> yeah. [applause] yeah, i mean, i think, you know, goliath is tough, but he's not invulnerable. and so i think that's still true today and probably always will be. >> bonnie? >> i think probably it has something to do with truth, that if you can get the truth out there and articulate what needs, the message that needs to go out, that people will take that seriously and in some cases change their expectations of their government. that's one of the things i think i learned. the other is how frightening it is that one man in one institution can gather so much raw power to do what he did over five decades. and that is frightening to me and hopefully will not ever happen again. but that was, certainly, there was -- that lesson was there. >> bill davidon was very strong on these points also, and i talked about the importance of planting seeds of hope, being willing to fail but trying over and over again and saying how many times that the movement did fail, but this one time we did succeed and how good it felt. >> right. >> we'd like to have questions from the audience. okay. oh, there's a mic coming, right? >> i spent a lot of -- >> would you like to, please, identify yourself? >> my name's rick conrad. i spent a lot of years working with bill davidon, and there was a night on april 4, 1968, where we were at a meeting planning a demonstration that was going to happen april 6th, and we'd been told by john mark blowen, the coordinator for the committee of nonviolent action, there was a chance that martin luther king would come to the demonstration if the city basically gave a schedule. he was actually scheduled. and the phone rapping in the office -- rang in the office, and this is a story about bill davidon, really, because he was our leader. there were many others, but bill, for me at least, was the great inspiration. and the phone rang, and john martin went to answer it. and i think all of us were wondering was that martin luther king, was he going to come to our demonstration? it was the battleship new jersey being christened to go and slaughter people in vietnam. he couldn't talk, and his wife went over, and bill said, was it king? and john was just in tears, just flowing all over. and jill said king had been killed. and i wondered how much, you know, maybe in retrospect if that -- because i, my understanding is there's a document where hoover says we're going to have to use the drug strategy to destroy the civil rights movement. but he certainly, you know, was in print shown to be a total enemy of civil rights. [inaudible conversations] >> oh, the question -- [laughter] i wanted to share that. is that where that document came from, the one about where king was talking about the exploiting drugs? that was from your break-in, right? >> that was, that was the most explosive document. we didn't know what cointel pro meant, counterintelligence program is, written on the top of one of the documents, but we didn't know what that was. and it took about two or three years and a very important investigative reporter thatted for nbc, carl stern, and then he had to use the freedom of intelligence act. one of those document, and betty has seen it, was, in fact, the letter that was sent anonymously to dr. martin luther king in 1964 blackmailing him and saying the only way he can get out of this, clear his name now is to commit suicide. that was okayed by j. edgar hoover. that was sent to martin luther king. >> cointel was revealed as a result of a document in the media burglary that just simply had that label on the top, and that was the cue that carl stern took up. .. who did you send the documents to? >> starting with the last question we sent out the documents in waves. the initial set went to betty and to scoop nelson at the bureau of the "l.a. times" to tom wicker, two representative mitchell and senator george mcgovern. senator mcgovern and representative mitchell sent them back to the fbi. mitchell at least said there was material in it which is further than mcgovern went. tom wicker went back to the fbi also. i don't think anyone knows for sure how that happened whether he returned them or whether they were accepted and returned them. no one knows but once it went to nelson he went to his deathbed knowing he never sent the files because there was an fbi informer reading all of his mail and grabbed the documents to send back. luckily betty was not high enough on the enemies list to have her own private informer and so the documents got through to her. later on they were sent to other people as well. as far as how we got together i think betty got it accurately. that was how they were organized. that was all i need to know was that they were trustworthy. we agreed not to get together again after we distributed the last few documents for security reasons. everything we found we trashed a lot of it because it was evidence so we called the most important things and distributed and characterized, counted up what we had. but we didn't keep it and we didn't stay in touch with each other so we intentionally basically avoided each other for the next. >> for years. >> longer than five years. >> i would just like to ask about jack nelson. at that time by 1971 there were probably only two reporters in the country who had written anything that raise questions about j. edgar hoover and the fbi and the strongest one of those was jack nelson. what was discovered later since then is that at that time hoover had a very active campaign inside the "l.a. times" to get jack nelson fired. he failed at that but he succeeded in some ways for for instance by their being somebody inside the office who looked at his mail to make sure he never got the mail. >> two questions. bette how long was it between the time that you received the files and your first . >> i receive the files at 10:00 in the morning and by 10:00 that night -- they were in and the next day. [applause] that was not a simple thing though. she did not want to publish. it was the first time that journalists had ever received secret government files from someone outside the government who had stolen them in contrast to an inside whistleblower so that raised ethical and legal questions and the inside counsel also opposed publication but to editors strongly pushed for publication and she changed her mind. this was also the first time the nixon administration had pressed her to not publish his story. she had much practice without later on as you know. >> the second question is for the group. were there any files still out there are? [laughter] [laughter] >> on the weekend when the office was closed i took half of the files to the xerox machine to temple university. [applause] we didn't realize that every xerox machine has a fingerprint. you can trace that with the given document to a particular machine. we didn't know that at the time. about two weeks after we mailed documents in the story broke i was in my office one day and i saw a xerox car pull up to the curb and the guy got out. they moved the drum and left. they said who was that guy? [laughter] the files that i copied could have been traced to that office but it never happened. >> it was interdisciplinary. >> i am sure that you have seen results in edward snowden although it's slightly different but we have seen a lot of outreach that he is made public and not a lot of action. in your opinion, what do we do next? >> well, we knew something about the fbi and the degree of surveillance they were using to intimidate, not to investigate but to intimidate. it was political action. nasa and the cia want us to be afraid. they need for us to be afraid. in some strange way. about him getting pardoned by some press news account. [laughter] and it's funny because it's sad and because it's true. i am grateful that people are in favor of reviewing government illegitimate secrets by whatever means necessary but i think in some ways it's more pertinent to ask what can we do about what's happening today and so i don't know what the answer to that is but i think we have to figure out something. >> hi. my name is bob smith and i'm with -- security which was formed in media two years after the break-in. i am not partial to using the term are great because i have been charged with it in the plowshares civil disobedience action. i did want to ask a couple of things. many times over the years and on the average the anniversary of the march 8 break in on international women's day that we held a celebration there are that would connect very much to the current need for truth telling, truth telling and for resisting the fear. of course you mentioned a very close friend of ours, but to remember he taught us to break through the fear and to john peter grady who many of us knew as part of the east coast conspiracy. anyway, so i would just like to invite you all and everyone here on march 8 at noon to come out to the media. we are going to have the media made up in front of the delaware county courthouse at veterans square on front street which is right across the street from where the county court apartment building where the fbi and the selective service are located that was the subject of many acts of civil disobedience which the fbi dealt with in an anything but nonviolent fashion against a few of us. any way to invite everyone including and i need to talk with you all, to come out to media on march 8, saturday march 8 at noon for what we are calling the media meet up for democracy, civil liberties and dissent. mrs. for edward snowden and private manning to remember a lineage that began with a mission to investigate the fbi. thank you all very much. [applause] >> we have a file on the fbi. [inaudible] >> he didn't want to jump to any conclusions so his conviction by the fbi office must have been based on more than just an antipathy for the fbi. i would like to know what is the the -- about the fbi that you know of that took such drastic action? >> i can answer that question. we talked about it quite a bit. he had no files on the fbi but what he had was a strong perception that turned out to be true. he thought j. edgar hoover was a bureaucrat and as such received greatly detailed files on everything including documents about how to deal with dissent. he really didn't have any idea of the 30 tricks that would be involved. but he thought the j. edgar hoover would require meticulous records of everything. when you combine those two things that was a very dangerous combination. he had no