Breaking Good? The Burglary that Exposed the FBI's Secret Surveillance Program

Transcript

e [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh first of all I'd like to acknowledge the co-sponsor of this session The Institute for World politics they have a table in the back if you want to visit them they have a guide to their graduate programs they offer master's degree in strategy intelligence international relations they have a smaller rack card as well okay and the president and founder has been a friend of mine for a long time John chowski he was an adviser to President Reagan on Soviet Affairs he will not be here this evening but his representatives are so I think you all by and large are familiar with the in the incident if I may call it that on the evening of March 8th 1971 it was the night of the Muhammad Ali Joe Frasier fight which was no coincidence by the way as you will hear from Mr and Mrs Reigns and Betty meder eight rather Ordinary People and please don't take that term for anything other than uh being uh from normal walks of life in fact I'll tell you who they were a religion Professor a daycare center worker a graduate student in a health profession another professor a social worker and two people who dropped out of college to work fulltime on building opposition to the Vietnam War it was that era of the anti War protests uh and the folks you'll hear from tonight were very much part of that so they can talk about that as well at any rate eight ordinary people including two of our speakers this evening pen the statue of limitations as run out broke into an FBI office in Media Pennsylvania small town outside of Philadelphia was I believe the office was a second story walk up uh their lock picker uh who was self-taught didn't realize there'd be two locks and they had to break in with a crowbar and a lockpick while they were in there they absolutely ransacked uh the office of the FBI there was no one there it was after 5:00 and no one worked after 5 they went into the office They carried out something on the order of a thousand documents I should say by the way to the best of my knowledge they had absolutely no idea what they were going to find in there and I think uh they will expand hand on that as well as medy uh Betty Meer they uh happen to contain a number uh quite a bit of information about FBI programs uh dealing with the American people not just information gathering but active measures if you will uh to influence the anti-war protest they uh they also picked up one item which led them to expose co-intel Pro which was the FBI program and I'll let them expand on that that was very interesting uh the story the documents they went through very hurriedly they picked what they thought were the most damaging of them and sent them to a variety of people several of whom simply returned them to the FBI it was that era it was not this era and uh they also sent them to the uh to the uh Washington Post and the decision there err was made to publish the documents and that was Ben Bradley whom we just lost and Katherine Graham that was the first time I believe Katherine Graham had uh rejected a request by the administration to not publish information about National Security um Jed goo was enraged and put something on the order of 200 special agents on the case and they were on it for some 5 years and never broke it so these very ordinary people uh eluded the FBI for some time years later and it's a fascinating story because I have heard Betty tell it when I first heard her speak two of the of the Breakin were John and Bonnie Reigns who are here with us this evening Betty meter happened to visit them and found out by pure happen stance and you will tell the story that they had been the people who had broken in and it is that story that uh Betty's book uh is about the story of the Breakin and the story of her discovering it and the story of the people involved and Betty I I believe you're staying this evening to sign books is that correct okay so um let me introduce the first speakers John and Bonnie Reigns uh as I say two of the people who conducted the Breakin John has taught at Temple University for from some 50 years he won the lindback distinguished teaching award and was honors professor of the year in 2004 one repeated Fullbright Awards to help establish comparative religious programs in Indonesia he is also a member of the United Methodist Church I'm sure I'm not including everything John I know you and Bonnie were very active in the anti-war protests and I believe earlier for the civil rights demonstrations as well Bonnie his wife uh was the first member of her family to attend college she became active in what became as the Catholic left on the East Coast if you remember the baragan brothers some of you may uh she met professor davidon of haford college who invited her to join the Breakin this now becomes a conspiracy uh to join the break-in group unfortunately Professor davidon I believe passed away earlier this year she earned her Masters in Education and became an early childhood specialist after the Breakin I believe you went back to tending to your educational uh Pursuits uh and today you work in child advocacy and public policy so first I would like to hear from and you would from the Reigns and after that we'll have an opportunity to meet Betty meter so let me first welcome help me welcome Betty and uh John and and Bonnie way come on up all right let me give you you have two mics there you thank you my things out of the way all right there we go we want they're they're all wrong that should be fine okay so welcome will you be the the timekeeper and if we're still going on too long you'll give us a signal want to join your movement Bonnie will be the my timekeeper you should see my side after after a few of these I give him a signal many many bruels here okay I'm John Reigns thank you very much all of you who uh have come and all of you who've made this possible we appreciate that I think it's a fun story and I don't think it's an old story I think it's a story that goes on my story of 1971 began 10 years before that 196 1 when I became a freedom writer and was for the first time in my life not the last time arrested in Little Rock Arkansa I was put in jail I was arrested on a threatened breach of the peace that was a very good charge we did want to break that piece that Unholy piece and uh when when law becomes the instrument of Injustice and oppression then it is not a crime to break that law the only way you can stop that law and the dangerous materials that are happening because of that law legalized segregation the only way you can stop that is to break that law that's what we learned back in the Civil Rights Movement that's what we brought to the anti-vietnam war movement that difference between law and crime I would go back down south many times in the early 60s Mississippi Freedom Summer the Selma March uh and uh and it became very clear to all of us involved in that civil rights movement that Jay Edgar Hoover hated that movement did everything he could to stop that movement later we would learn because of Co and telpro that jard g Hoover authorized the sending of a Anonymous letter to Martin Luther King in 1964 threatening him with blackmail and suggesting that he commit suicide that's the kind of dirty tricks that were going on well we in the Civil Rights Movement very quickly began to to learned that there was massive uh surveillance that there was massive informers intimidations we brought that information North was us when we came North to the anti-vietnam war movement in Philadelphia you must remember that in 1969 in 1950s and 1960s Jay Edgar Hoover was probably the most powerful man in Washington he was also probably the most popular man in Washington he was a national icon people believed him people trusted him and they trusted the organization the FBI uh that uh he was operating for for almost five decades no president could ask him to retire no Congressional committee no senate committee could ever hold him truly accountable for what he was doing with the FBI and its dirty tricks because that was the situation because Washington the people we sent down to Washington do the job that Washington is supposed to do in terms of regulating these very very powerful investigative institutions they were not doing it so we folks average folks outside the Beltway just citizens Bunny and I had at that time three kids under 10 three kids under 10 we didn't want to have to do this we went into this martyrdom thing we were very careful we had learned our burglar skills very carefully from the East Coast conspiracy to save lives the Catholic left movement the baragan started and I learned and Bonnie learned burky skills from largely from nuns and Priests yes this is true this is true and one of those nuns is here tonight Sarah Fe won't you stand up [Applause] Sarah now doesn't doesn't Sarah look like a dangerous person who learning burglary SK well we learn burglary skills because we learned Burgery skills because we use those skills to break into Selective Service offices and to remove the 1A files and to take those files off and burn them and back then there were no computers it was all a paper system you destroy their paper you know you cause some problems we decided to say yes when Bill davidon a wonderful gentle terribly intelligent physicist and mathematician teaching at haford when Bill davidon who we knew from the east coast conspir to save life called us up and said John and bnie can you come out to my house I have something to talk with you about we went out there and he asked us and eight others 10 of us all together eventually there would only be eight of us that would really do the the action what do you think about uh breaking into the FBI ah uh but the Mora Bill talked about that and he was a very meticulous kind of guy we took a look at the central FBI office in Philadelphia that was impossible it was open 24 hours a day 7 days a week but there were a a small there was a small office out in media second floor of an apartment house and that looked more promising so we began our casing we found out what people upstairs living in the apartments what their activities were at night when they came in when they went to bed when they got up we took very careful notes about the police activity the cars around that building because that building where the FBI offices was directly across the street from the Delaware County uh Courthouse very well that area and a guard was stationed 24 hours a day standing just in front of that Courthouse with a direct view of the door through which we would have to go when we went into the uh FBI office but there was one issue that we yet had to find out about we had to get inside that office during business days in order to find out if there were electronic security devices inside we have to find out if the file cabinets had security locks and so on so we had to send somebody inside now after the Breakin the very quickly surmised that they had been cased can you imagine they were doing black jobs black bag jobs all over the place but but it was impossible back then for the FBI I think to imagine if they would be the target of a robbery uh but they found out oh yeah we got cased it was that woman who said she was a a a student from from swathmore college interested in seeing what the future of the FBI for women might be and afterwards jover was reported to shout at his agents find me that woman 200 agents find me that woman there she [Applause] is just just an ordinary swore college student happen to have three children under 10 but uh we had uh bill davidon just let me back up a little a little bit because Bill thought that if the FBI was suppressing dissent trying to break the peace movement and um and abusing People's First Amendment rights that it was as important to expose that as it was to end the war bill was very sure of that but he knew that we had to have documentation about what was going on in in terms of trying to break the PE movement and intimidate citizens exercising their rights and the only way to do that was to get documentation uh in their own paperwork in their own uh directives and the only way to do that was to get into an FBI office and remove documents in the hopes that we would find something incriminating we didn't really know but we knew how active the FBI was in the Philadelphia area on the college campuses and universities and uh and we were very aware of some of the heavy hand Ed tactics of surveillance and intimidation so we were very uh careful and prepared when we went into those offices and we removed about a thousand documents every document in the office took them out in suitcases looking like um people leaving an apartment to go to the on a trip to the train station and uh and then quickly um met at a farmhouse outside of Philadelphia to start sifting and uh we didn't really ex expect anything immediately we thought we were going to have to sift through a thousand documents or more in the hopes that we could find some documentation but it didn't take very long because the FBI was known as as a consumate um bureaucracy they kept pieces of paper about everything everybody everything was on paper and none of those file cabinets were even locked so uh we were able to remove every document and quickly discovered some documents that were very incriminating and uh that spurred us on to finally sort the documents into uh 60% of them which were about political surveillance had nothing to do with law enforcement and 40% that were actually um cases that the FBI was pursuing like bank robberies and stolen cars so we didn't want to touch any of those those were legitimate but we certainly did want to focus on the 60% that we thought the general public ought to be able to know about and our objective was to take the most incriminating and shocking to be to be truthful documents about what was going on in secret and get them out into the public through hopefully through either members of Congress that we sent the documents to or to through the newspapers um because the public has the right to know and ought to know uh what is what is what their government should be doing and should not be doing uh and as it turned out the only uh the only paper that was ready to publish them at at at a considerable cost to itself um and also was able to document that these were authentic because Mitchell the Attorney General in Nixon's Administration kept calling the Washington Post and telling them to that they should never print that story so it was obviously uh factual and and important to get out to the American public And the reporter who wrote the story and and when it was published uh later on in March was Betty meder Who was a reporter at that time at the Washington Post and we had known Betty in her days in Philadelphia when she was with a newspaper the Philadelphia bulletin covering religion and uh so after a struggle inside of the PO post and Doc and Betty will tell you more about that because it was an important part of the story if uh if that story hadn't made it out in into the public eye uh everything we had done would have been for nothing and uh that had us quite concerned so I'm going to I'm going to turn now to Betty who will pick it up here we're a bit of a tag team you see um that's actually how it worked back then too didn't it we were a tag team she just didn't know who was sending her these documents um and Betty will describe receiving those documents and then what what entailed following that and uh hopefully you'll be happy to hear that there were some very very positive outcomes that didn't end just in 1971 so okay thank you very much Bonnie let me give you a hand down and uh John before you come down for the podium uh let me thank you for deciding to share your birthday with this audience so we're sure 81 today happy [Applause] birthday uh as Bonnie said we'll now turn to Betty Meer whom I first heard speak on the case in politics and Pros for well over an hour and kept people absolutely enthralled and the book is equally as fascinating uh Betty began her journalism career and it was a career in 1964 at the tribute Democrat in Johnstown Pennsylvania she moved to the Post in 1970 to write about racial issues criminal justice and religion uh she was the one who as the Reign said received the anonymous copies of the stolen FBI files and wrote the first stories and at that time as we said kathern Graham and Ben Bradley backed you up and printed the story the first time that they had done that over the objections of the government um and I think that that uh one of the things that humanizes the story a great deal for me is the fact uh that Betty and the Reigns had known each other years before when she was a reporter and cing uh as they said religion but didn't have the slightest notion that those were the folks who had carried out the break-in so Betty welcome we look forward to hearing your side of the story okay set okay is this okay yeah uh thank you very much Peter um and and very good to be here um Peter asked me to talk about my role as a journalist uh when I wrote the story and then years later when I decided to write the book so as you can see I've had a very long history with this story and I must say that it's been uh a pleasure to finally tell the story in its fullness now which I didn't have the opportunity to do back then for me the uh connection begins uh two weeks and one day after after the burglary in late March of 1971 when I went to the office on a Tuesday morning to the first thing I always did was go to my mailbox and it was always bulging with news releases and uh I took everything out and there was this large manila folder on the bottom and it was uh addressed to me and it had a return label of Liberty Publications Media Pennsylvania that didn't mean anything thing to me but it seems slightly tiing and definitely more interesting than all those PR releases that were in the other envelopes so they got set aside that day to be taken care of later I opened that envelope went back to my little office that I shared with uh seven other people and um opened it and on the top was a cover letter um not a personally addressed cover letter but a letter that had gone with all five cop copies that the burglars had had uh sent out I found out later and it was a a letter that began dear friends and it said that it was from the citizens commission to investigate the FBI which is what the group called itself the citizens commission to investigate the idea as though it was an officially appointed body and uh it was sent anonymously of course there were no names in it and they announced that they on the night of March 8th that they had burglarized the um media FBI office and stolen every file in it and that they were now sending these files out to uh two members of Congress and three journalists in the hope that uh the documents would see the light of day well that certainly made me pay attention I was not used to getting any mail that said I was receiving copies of stolen FBI documents and so I proceeded to read There were just 14 files in that first set and it would be the first a number of sets that would arrive every 10 days to two weeks until the middle of May but in that first set the first uh the first file I read uh was the one that had been written by an agent it was as a newsletter written as a newsletter based coming out of a meeting of agents that had been held in Washington the previous fall on people who uh were covering what in within the FBI what was called new left an umbrella term and um it said one of the first things that that caught my eye was it encouraged agents to enhance the paranoia among these denters enhance the paranoia and make people think there's an FBI agent behind every mailbox and so that certainly captured my attention and at first I thought that maybe this was a a a joke of some kind or a hoax since there wasn't any name attached to it and the language seemed so extreme I was uh perhaps naive but I thought that that was an unusual thing for an intelligence agency to reduce to writing and and have having a file um and then I continued reading and uh one of the files was about the hiring of uh who was hired as as informers um on on some of the campuses in the in the area uh switchboard operators uh campus security people and mid-level administrators and postal carriers um and then um I think that among all of those 14 files that I received that day the ones that struck me then and certainly over the years what I regarded as the most important information were the ones that described the nature of black surveillance that was that was taking place and some of it was specific to the Philadelphia area and some some of it was uh in fact about programs that were being conducted uh throughout the country and the there was uh extensive surveillance going on in Black communities and the files referred to where that that surveillance might be taking place and it was just about any place that an ordinary person might go in the course of their daily life uh the corner store their Church their Library their schools classrooms um um and then also the types of people who enter by by uh professional reasons like bill collectors have reason to enter the black community people who might be considered as as informers and um also uh there were statements about the fact that every agent was required to uh have to to hire an Informer who would report on a regular basis about the black community about people in the black community except here where every agent was expected to have six informers who would report to them on a regular basis about activities in the black in the black community so when I was done reading um I by the time I was done I thought that I wasn't dealing with a hoax uh because i' had been a reporter as Bonnie said in Philadelphia and so some of the names were familiar to me from my the reporting that I had done there so one when I was finished I went out into the the new main Newsroom and went to the national desk and said that uh I I've gotten this information these copies of of stolen FBI Files but I don't know if they're authentic and the editor I went to Mary luat uh was kind of startled because she had just received a call from the reporter at the post Ken Clawson who then covered the FBI and the justice department as a whole and he had called and said has anybody at the post received these files and what prompted that question uh was the fact that two of the recipients had been Senator George McGovern and representative Pon Mitchell from Baltimore and they had received him the previous day and had uh immediately returned them to the FBI and there had been uh small stories that had just come out saying that that had happened and they had both criticized the crime of of the break in um and so uh the the national desk had told Ken no we we didn't receive those but now I walk up and they know otherwise so they have me call him and describe the files to him and then he gets back to me an hour or so later that morning and the FBI has confirmed through Ken that they are authentic they are copies of some of the files that were stolen in media and at that that point uh we assumed that this was the most important thing that we needed to know that they were authentic and I was assigned to go off and and work on the story um I didn't realize what else was happening uh in the post that day the discussions that were taking place excuse me I did find out that the Attorney General had called and said that publication of these of these files uh could would be endanger National Security and endanger lives and uh what I didn't realize was the the amount of calls that was taking place and the nature of of the discussion now fortunately from looking at the files it really was quite possible to uh realize that these the publication of these files would not endanger National Security or endanger lives um what was happening as I was writing in all afternoon and calling some sources in Philadelphia who were named in the files what was happening was that the Attorney General was C called each of the editors involved Ben Bradley and Ben bag Dian uh multiple times and also calling kathern Graham the publisher of the of the paper and kathern Graham did not want to publish the files and the the attorney for the paper also did not want to publish the files and the two editors were quite strong on the fact that they thought that they should be published and took the position that this was important information about an institution that was very important to the public and that this was information that showed a side of the FBI that the public had no idea existed and therefore it was it was very important um by the time I handed in my story at 6 o' uh I realized for the first time that that there was a likelihood at that point that the story was not going to be published I should point out um that the there were a couple facts that help understand why there was reluctance uh for one time this was the first time that a journalist had received uh government secret government files that had been provided by someone outside the government who had stolen them so in their minds that definitely caused you go into pause mode to think about whether there are special ethical or legal implications here and the other un very unusual aspect from the point of view of the publisher was that this was the first time that Katherine Graham had been urged by the ni Nixon Administration to suppress a story so in very important ways everybody involved in making the decision was in uncharted waters and that's why it took them until it took until 10:00 that night to make a decision and at 10:00 that night they did decide that they would publish and the story was on the front page above the fold the next morning the immediate reaction was um a very uh loud outcry from certain quarters for one thing very few people in Congress up until that time had had criticized J Edgar Hoover but as of those files coming out uh that changed and there were about eight Senators who immediately called for an investigation of the FBI and the same thing happened in editorials around the country that they people expressed shock that that uh the this information wasn't known that this kind of thing was happening and suggested that there should be an investigation of of the FBI and many of those editorials were written in papers that until that time had never expressed anything but but praise for Mr Hoover um that attitude continued to be expressed uh for uh the time throughout the the time that we were publishing which would be up through early to miday and then the issue of what to do about the FBI whether to investigate the FBI pretty much went quiet and I think one big factor uh caused that and that was that in very late April um Sam Irvin Senator Sam Irvin from North Carolina uh spoke in response to some uh demands that had been made or requests that had been made in each editorial where it was suggested that the Senate should conduct an investigation of of the FBI and also from each of the Senators who who expressed this desire that there be a senate investigation they all recommended that Senator Iran be the person to chair such a such a committee uh for two primary reasons first he um uh was known as the great defender of the Constitution and if descent was being suppressed and by the FBI in any significant way it was it would be good to have him do doing the questioning but the other thing was that he had just recently completed um an investigation the first investigation of uh domestic surveillance as a matter of fact and it was domestic surveillance by the US Army and that had that had just ended um and that had actually there had been no no conclusions as a result of that but that was was still hanging and I think that at that point he felt that that had caused public reaction but there had been no uh legislation as a result of it at any rate he said that he would not uh do such a thing a year later another journalist brought the issue alive the issues that came out of the media files when I should also mention that the Pentagon paper came out in June less than a month after the last media files dead and that also shifted attention to the Pentagon papers in a very uh strong way and that continued for quite some time and then Watergate came after that but a year after the burglaries um released their files um another journalist Carl Stern reporter at NBC who reported on the FBI and the justice department was wait was in the U Senate Judiciary Committee office and someone there uh said to Carl as he was waiting for someone to make a copy of a document for have you seen this and they handed him this one page that was a media file that really in the end I think probably turned out to be the most powerful of all the files it was a mere routing slip it was at the top in in large capital letters it said Coen telpro and at it was a a a routing slip on the top of a magazine article advising uh administrators of universities on on how to um bring more discipline into and more control into uh their campuses in in regard to the protests that were being T being done then by professors and and students and at the bottom it said that um agents should uh distribute this file this to uh University presidents uh do it anonymously to unfriendly ones and do it in person to Friendly University presidents and Carl was struck by that and he we want he thought that was a strange way to do things to send it to uh University professors anonymously but then what really struck him was what does that term mean and he set out to find out he wrote to the to the attorney general there was then uh I believe Mr kleining by that time and then also to Pat gray who was the acting director of the FBI and they turned him down and he approached them multiple times and each time they turned down and again it was stated that for the uh explanation he was asking for the explanation of what coel Pro was for that explanation to come out would endanger National Security and finally in 19 early 1973 after a year of being turned down uh he sued he sued the FBI to get the founding papers that would explain what coel Pro was and um he became the first journalist to be successful uh with an foi suit the foi uh law was passed in 1966 and Mr Hoover had uh told officials at that time to always ignore request for files and so no one had received uh uh positive response to request by that time and he when he sued um he he eventually won but when he won it didn't look like he really was going to win um the judge judge barington Parker um ordered the FBI to provide Carl with the founding documents of Co Andel Pro and um the justice department and the FBI decided to appeal and then the middle of the appeal this is late 1973 in the middle of the appeal Robert Bourke became the acting attorney general and Robert Bourke decided that the appeal should be stopped and that the co-intel profounding document should be released to Carl Stern and I heard murmurs attach and I think you should also know that when Robert bour did that he also suggested to the incoming Attorney General William Saxby who I believe was Nixon's last attorney general um he recommended to him that he conduct an investigation of Co Andel proo as operated by the FBI the coel profounding papers came out and a small investigation uh was started by Saxby but the coel pro docu founding documents coming out made a big difference they were a statement by Hoover of what conel Pro operations were were to dup disrupt uh the lives of individuals but also the organizations that it felt were detrimental to society it had started in 1956 with the Communist party and gone through a series of organizations and then uh ending up most recently with uh coel Pro left um excuse me shortly after that uh the coel pro programs themselves started to be revealed and it was this that made a significant difference in public reaction to what the meaning of the of the burglary from media uh really was and what it led to and it was a combination of of things that that made people quite Disturbed uh eventually the list of of things went all the way from what I call uh crude to cruel uh crude being uh such things as injecting laxatives into activist oranges um hiring prostitutes known to have venial disease to seduce activist but then far more serious things um at times such as um supporting um FBI informers in giving false testimony against someone uh accusing them of murder and in one instance leading to uh person staying in prison in more than one instance staying in prison for decades before finally having as a result of an appeal process finally being exonerated and judges uh revealing that the exonerating evidence was available to the FBI from from the beginning in in these cases so that kind of information is created a different atmosphere that was also of course encouraged by what people felt from the Revelation some of the revelations that came out uh in during Watergate and then in December of 1974 um there was a a story written by Seymour hirs in the New York Times that revealed that the CIA in violation of its Charter had uh for for many years uh cond conducted a domestic uh surveillance operation and that was sort of the um the final thing that made Congress within a month both houses of Congress decide to investigate all intelligence agencies now as my life changed um I left Washington went to California became a journalism Professor kept writing about other things wasn't really thinking about the burglary I was noticing as time went that other things were happening as a result of of what they had done and certainly that the church committee was uh having public hearings where much more information was coming out and then noticed the reforms that were taking place the strengthening of the Freedom of Information Act in 74 uh and then the finally the establishment of official oversight of intelligence agencies and I never thought much about the burglars I never had any idea who they were I did feel that I had an obligation to uh protect them given the significant story that they had provided that could not have been gotten in any other way uh and so made a decision that I would not have been willing to submit the the uh the papers that I received uh but I also wasn't wasn't asked to do that um and then um in uh many years later I was in Philadelphia for the first time in quite a while and and I gave myself that weekend to see people uh acquaintances from the years I had worked there and the first evening that I was there I had dinner at the home of John and Bonnie Reigns and as they mentioned we we knew each other John was a professor at Temple uh and it was an Innovative religion department and he was an Innovative professor and I wrote about some of the work that he was doing there and that was how we met so this night that I uh came back from California years later and we're catching up on each other's lives what's happening to us at some point we go into the dining room and uh their daughter the fourth child the youngest child Mary whom I had never met comes into the room and as she does John turns to Mary and says Mary we want you to meet Betty we want you to know Betty because many years ago when your dad and mother had information about the FBI that we wanted to give to the American public we gave it to Betty I was very shocked I could tell that this me nothing to Mary she had no interest in it and nice as she was I could hardly wait until she left the room and when she did leave the room I said are you telling me you're media burglars and they told me that they were and John swears to this day that he blurted that out not intending to I I believe him I think so we spent a lot of time that evening with my asking a lot of questions and they're providing a lot of answers and one thing two things that I learned that evening was that 10 days after the burglary when they had finished their work and they were ready to send out the files that uh that was their last meeting and that they made two promises to each other first that they wouldn't associate with each other anymore because they were concerned that the arrest of one could lead to the arrest of another and then the other thing was that they had promised each other that day that they would take the secret of the burglary to their graves assuming that they were not arrested so I knew that um but a couple weeks later I got in touch with them and I said I I think that this the story is such an important piece of American history that I'd like for you to reconsider that vow of of secrecy and Co cooperate with my writing a book about what you did and as another part of that I asked them if they would try to find the other bur and if the two of them agreed would they try to find the other burglers and see if they would agree to having the story told and um eventually uh they did find all but one of the eight people and they all agreed to tell their story and since my book came out in January the eighth person has also surfaced and has now told her story in the paperback edition of of the book so that's how the story came to be thank you so much Betty It's a Wonderful story uh Thriller as a matter of fact uh our next speaker is Ray bat Venice Dr Ray bat Venice as a matter of fact uh whom I've known for a number of years he is an historian and educator specializing in Counter Intelligence as a function of statecraft he served as a special agent in the FBI for some 25 years in Washington and Baltimore uh he supervised the investigations of Ronald Pelton John and Michael Walker and several others in The Counter Intelligence sphere he has written two books on FBI's Counter Intelligence program and he's contributed to the Oxford Handbook of National Security and intelligence today he operates FBI studies.com a website focusing on the FBI and other CI issues he's nunk professor at GW University iwp The Institute of world politics and mercy Hurst College and uh Rey graciously agreed to uh join us this evening for the panel and I believe I think you told me Ry that you joined the FBI either a year before or a year after the Breakin I can't remember which a year after a year after okay well we'll keep that straight fingerprints are not on any and your fingerprints are not on anything okay please help me welcome Ray bat ven yeah I'm I'm looking around this room and I see some people who would remember this and if you remember um Richard Nixon in April of 1970 announced the incursion into Cambodia and that sent the uh that sent the country into a uh into just a a firestorm of criticism my wife and I that's all right pet don't worry about it um we took our little Mustang down to uh Washington here'll be a night just like tonight and just to see and later on years later decades later when I was asked to do this I'm I'm thinking to myself did I really see what I saw so we're riding driving our little Mustang down and I we get to the White House it's all it's dark it's all CLE lights and we're driving along and there had to be I don't know I'm guessing but easily hundreds of thousands of people on the ellipse on the mall and we're riding past the White House and what you see here I I apologize for for the graininess but I took this out of the hatchet I've got a couple of my students here from GW University and if you look in the back you see buses okay and those buses for those of you who don't remember visualize yourself I won't I'll I'll go quickly here because we I'll focus on my comments when we sit down visualize yourself at the South fence of the White House looking up toward the Truman Balon okay the back of the White House mentally walk yourself around to the left around the perimeter of the White House up 17th Street a slight right onto 16th Street and then further up all the way around uh Lafayette Park past Trinity Church back down curl around come down 15th Street to the southeast corner of the White House grounds loop around and come right back to your starting place that was wall to wall bumper to Fender Washington DC buses okay I hope this works this here what you're seeing here was later described as a picnic those are police officers inside this perimeter of fences and it's funny how this happens now with all of the uh controversy over the fence jumpers there was absolutely nobody who could jump over the fence CU these were DC buses and not buses that you see today with nice big Windows very very small Windows okay and these are police officers inside that perimeter that's Lafayette Park and that of course is the White House over there this gives you an idea of the buses okay basically bumper to Fender so no nobody could uh nobody could breach that that perimeter and this is the other last one I'll I'll show it's very hard to see oops wait a minute let me see do I have it here there it is that's one of the protesters sitting on top of the bus now you go right over the bus you're on you're basically in a sidewalk and then over the fence of the White House and that's an NVA flag he's carrying okay so my point in saying all this and just very very brief terms is from the government standpoint now I'm not making any defense of what happened we can talk about that over um uh during the Q&A and during the panel discussion but what uh what we're what we're confronting at least my perception of what the government was confronting here was a Siege mentality okay a literally a fear of uh of internal of internal revolt and I was I'm glad I went back back and saw this because in my dotage I really began to wonder if I saw what I was actually seeing so basically in summarizing my comments uh I was asked to talk a little bit about the uh reforms I joined the bureau in 1972 where I really came to focus on this business was in 1975 when I joined a Counter Intelligence Squad and I remained in CI but what we began to see was of course for me me looking back it starts with the U uh Church Pike committee the Senate and the The Joint um Congressional uh uh hearings to investigate the abuses and following on that in my opinion one of the greatest pieces of legislation the uh the reality the sunshine piece of legislation was the Freedom of Information Privacy Act in 1967 as Betty pointed it out it was passed but it had no teeth in 1974 it was it was the Privacy Provisions was strengthened and we began to see efforts on the part of Americans to begin to get their files and you could see I I was a living witness to senior agents trying to go back and redact files and examine files there were no guidelines at all at this particular point and then following on that of course following on that was the the decision on the part of the United States Congress to say we are no longer going to tolerate intelligence and Counter Intelligence being the exclusive purview of the executive branch we are going to step up and we are going to be an equal partner in this and the vehicle for that today as it was when it started was what the Senate select committee on intelligence the house permanent select committee on intelligence today uh for all practical purposes the FBI cannot do anything the the CIA the intelligence Community RIT large cannot do anything without informing Congress later on what Betty hasn't spoken about which is equally frankly abhorent but again we we if we have time we can put this into context there's no excuse for what happened okay was that were the wirs and the microphones okay Hoover from all I can gather Hoover was really required to make his own decisions on microphones for reasons that I'm still not clear about perhaps someone in the audience can help explain that I but when it came to wir Taps he had to get Authority from the attorney general and attorney's General down through the decades gave him those authorities okay no more 1978 Congress passes the foreign int elligence surveillance act and under the foreign intelligence surveillance act intelligence related wir Taps have to go to a special court if you re those of you who remember I'm watching my time here for those of you who remember many considered this what it considered this a Star Chamber how many of us remember that a Star Chamber because it was what a secret Court over the past couple of years we've seen this issue Revisited haven't we and then in the foll in year again another landmark piece of legislation the classified information procedures Act is passed now we have a mechanism now the government has a mechanism for taking classified information legitimate classified information that is to say Peter when he was wearing his CIA hat got a piece of information from a foreign intelligence service which got that information from a human Source saying that there was an AS here in the United States and we had identified him or her now we had a mechanism a legal mechanism for getting a wir tap through fisa so there were a number of these reforms that occurred really from that 1974 period in the wake of Watergate really up to the Advent of the Reagan Administration but those were the key period those were the key elements that um really were respond in many respects by what John and Bonnie uh Bonnie did and of course your role in it uh Betty in terms of making it public so I'll end my remarks here and uh we can we can resume when we have the panel discussion in the interest of time I'll just turn it over to Peter to be careful of the 800 pound gorilla sitting in the back of the room uh he's now appearing at East Street Cinema and that of course is Edward Snowden uh I think the parallels between uh the Snowden case and the case we're discussing this evening are quite extraordinary and uh I think you will see them in as well as we go along I'd like to make maximum use of our time um I have some questions but I'd like to start with the panel itself uh would uh would anyone like to begin either of you3 by questioning Ray or Ray do you have a question for the reain or for Betty um and I'll ask you all to speak into speak into the mics the only question I have well not the only question I have is um how did you how did the two of you manage to keep this secret for so long I mean how did you manage I mean that's amazing how you managed to stay under the radar for so long and uh I'm not looking for a specific you know I mean because because that kind of thing I know I'm I'm saying because I that kind of thing is very stressful but my experience that men and women who commit a crime and let's face it this is what you did for a higher calling when I you know the bottom line is you still had to live a life and I'm just curious if you had any anxiety was there any pressure stress I know I saw some of it in the book but well we didn't have to brag uh not for the first five years that's for sure uh we weren't into uh uh we weren't into uh making Heroes of ourselves or anything like that uh within five years what's the statue of limitations over I had gone on with my life as a professor uh Bonnie had gone on with her life as a as an administrator and daycare uh uh the the work had been done what what we we were just the first step right without what Betty did as a second step then without what finally Congress and Senate did uh further steps uh none of the none of the restraints that were brought upon the FBI and the CIA for a while because then 911 911 happened and all of a sudden the gates are wide open anything goes again and uh that would lead us into we want to talk about Mr snow but but I but I won't do that now Bonnie did you want to add anything no just that we had busy lives uh we had structure to our lives we had um we went on and had another child and uh it was it was better to get a get ahead with our with our lives and uh and not constantly look over our shoulders um we did we were very careful we were very very meticulous and careful and strategic we left no physical evidence at the in the offices of the FBI so they really uh it was proved to be very difficult for them to find us and bring charges and fortunately it didn't happen so we could get on with with our regular lives and that that was a very good thing um Ry I can't imagine that it could have been that difficult to find uh the perpetrators that is the Reigns and the others I have seen explanations in Betty's book uh that the FBI couldn't de uh question two of them because they were involved in another case but in a word I can only imagine the fury that Jade G Hoover must have had about this incident one of his own offices being broken into oh yeah in a few words how would you explain how they were not found well I think what I you I I read your I read your book and it was apparent to me that they were for lack of a better this is not a very sophisticated word but sniffing around you so to speak in other words they had reason to believe or suspicion to believe that part of your group had been involved but what you did was I mean this is not a primer to commit a crime please I'm not trying to get that but what I'm saying what I'm saying is that you did all the right things in other words you you had cased the place you had there was no you left no physical evidence and you there unless you were prepared to give a uh confession or unless one of your co-conspirators decided to no uh dime you out as they say then there was no way that the FBI could um could uh could investig I mean could really bring charges against you um Ian that's it in the bottom line there was one other element and that was that Philadelphia at that time was the center of all of the opposition to the war the opposition was growing more and more intense so we were just we were among thousands of people who were opposed to that war and were active so they would they had to literally go through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of names of possible suspects what I also found was the fact that your uh something that they missed the it's been a while since I've read the book but wasn't there the fellow who picked the lock went to a lockpicking school a correspondence course yeah correspondence course and they had the bureau had the record of that or there was a record and they missed it am I they the record they got the the the roles of all of the students but they didn't they didn't Target him about 28 let me it was very important also that uh the FBI right from the very beginning and right from the very top jar ghob thought that uh that the the media folks were going to be caught because the media folks were part of a group called The Camden 28 already they had infiltrated that group with an FBI Informer so they knew that that group was going to get busted they were busted when they went into the Camden draft board uh and uh and Hoover from the very beginning thought that if we get those camed in 28 we have the media folks well only two of the eight of us were in fact members of the Camden 28 so I think the the focus of the FBI shifted uh luckily for us shifted away from our side of the river over to the other side of the river cabin you know Ray just to share something with the audience it was a period of great um civil divisions in the United States over the Vietnam War and that continued to grow with television coverage and so forth and I certainly recall I was in the CIA at that time and I Rec call very very divided uh feelings amongst people we had people leave the agency over the issue uh people uh indicate they would not serve in Vietnam so there were very divided feelings about the War what was the bureau like at that time well I can only uh I can only discuss the bureau after 19 uh after July of 1972 by July of 1972 the war was beginning to wind down okay and to be frank uh I was in the Cleveland field office for about 18 months and I never I was on was an organized crime Squad at that time and I never never got any sense of any kind of division maybe I was naive maybe I just wasn't paying attention to it but I never received any type of sense that there was a um sort of a uh political cleavage so to speak on one side or another interesting yeah yeah of course you were you were the law enforcement side yeah and uh and and I was at that time frankly I was the low man on the totem pole I was just trying to keep my nose above water and learn my job um I know for example that one of the one of the uh major um uh programs that we had was going after deserters we did a we did a lot of that we uh young men and it was I mean we were not talking about violent criminals here we're talking about Young young men who for whatever reason just walked away from the military and it was our job to go out and uh and some of those young men were hiding out in a house just around the corner from us in Germantown section of Philadelphia so I mean that I saw that in Cleveland but again you know the other thing that I found so these are more Optics than anything else I don't want to I don't want to monopolize this but these are sort of just Impressions the largest squads now I have no statistics to back this up okay but it's just more observation the largest squads that we had in the big offices now I'm talking about New York Washington San Francisco probably La did I say New York and Boston they were the they were basically the new Left Squad and the black radical Squad that's right okay because I tell my students I'm I'm so blessed to have two a couple of my students here tonight I tell them this is the period of time this period in the 1960s is when we move away the organization moves away from conventional far encounter intelligence which is an entirely different craft as you know all together we're talking about internal security right now this is how I sort of frame it okay and we had moved away from that so the majority a large I guess a large number of Agents were working on those two particular squads they were really dominating the agenda in from the mid to the late 60s into the into the early 70s in the largest offices of New York especially not just New York but I mean New York Los Angeles San Francisco Philadelphia Atlanta I imagine uh and remember at the same time we were moving out of the period of the clan I mean at the the the the Klux clan in the late 60s was still causing a lot of fear I in in interest in the interest of this I I brought this along I I'm reading um uh Leon Panetta's book uh worthy fights and people tend to forget that in his early years he was a Nixon Republican and he was the head of the office of civil rights in the department of health education and Welfare and he said he in his book he says the work was tense and frantic and sometimes frightening when my staff and I visited particularly hostile communities in the Deep South we would put Scotch tape on the hoods of our cars before leaving them when we returned we checked to see that the tape was still there to make sure they hadn't been tampered with bombs were on our minds so you know there was a just just a lot going on at this can I ask a tough question please go right all right uh does the name uh Fred Hampton mean anything to you Freddy Hampton yes what happened to him and what was the FBI involvement I don't know I don't know I don't I don't remember Informer in the Black Panther Party I Chicago did he draw detailed maps of the of of the apartment where a a squad uh of of uh of special Squad of Chicago Police uh fired into that 87 shots had not yet killed Fred Hampton went in at close range put a gun to the back of his head and killed him that was an assassination plot in which jgar Hoover's FBI was involved mhm Jane seberg does that mean anything to you sure does okay well then you tell I no no I don't listen I I you have the advantage over me because you're familiar with these specifics all I'm trying to do is to put this in context now you talk about Jean sber and you talk about Freddy Hampton do you know who Waverly Jones is go ahead do you know who rock olori is go ahead do you know who Joseph piagentini is do you know who Waverly Brown is no so I have the advantage over you okay so you tell me who were those people there were four police officers who were assassinated in New York you ask any police officer in New York and they'll they'll they'll know these people uh instinctively because they were they were they were executed executed in the back of the head by the Black Liberation Army Herman Bell was that the Black Panthers no it was the Black Liberation Army and that's my point not to get argumentative but this is how complex this is and this is how this is where legitimate descent intersects with internal security and the difficulties of trying to cope with this you Betty talks it's an excellent book but Betty talks about the Breakin in um at U at media a week before a cap bomb had occurred the capital building had exploded had been bombed okay so what I'm my point and a month later a month later this is where you had the moratorium out here we had you had um people rioting in the streets you had tear gas being thrown out uh when I graduated a r or a demonstration well call it what you will call it what you will there was Mayhem there was destruction there was a lot of damage I mean the the records are pretty clear well may I ask you a question I understand what you're what you want to pick up the mic uh there you go buddy thank you I one I as I went through the history this and and I certainly recognize the M matter of fact one of the things that concerns me when I look at that history there were a lot of domestic bombings and such that occurred during during that era and my sense is that the focus of the FBI the way the FBI went about its intelligence gathering by putting an emphasis on harassment that that actually def defeated the FBI's Mission and made it uh very difficult in fact I think it's very difficult to find an instance of where any bombing was known about ahead of time and prevented or that even after domestic bombings took place that people were arrested I mean that the that the shape of the intelligence gathering was was such that the protection was not not being provided you make an I'm sorry yeah you make an excellent point and you're absolutely right because what happened and this is uh this is what happened later on the they had made in some cases legitimate um uh legitimate cases in other words prosecutable cases that fell apart because of illegal break-ins in other words it's the fruit of the poisonous tree the more you the more you look at if and if and if any one of of those bits of evidence are collected illegally the whole case falls apart and that's what happened you're absolutely right there were cases legitimate cases of bombings which uh the FBI investigated with local police that fell apart because of the very points that we were making earlier these were illegal surreptitious entries there were illegal wire typs you're absolutely right all I'm arguing is and not even arguing I'm just stating the facts that that a lot of what was was muddling this up and I'm not making any excuses I mean these were clearly Fourth Amendment violations no question at all but it was muddled because of all of these other issues and um uh and it should not have happened but it did just to follow up on that sure please I the P the things that we came to know about that went on in Co Andel Pro MH um the operations under that name started in 1956 MH but in fact some of those techniques had been had been used much earlier and things that were clearly resulting in harassment and and worse and not um arrest or prevention of crime and one of the things that in all of my research I had the greatest trouble understanding and I hope maybe you can shed some light on oness um I found it so difficult to understand how in decades of operations that thousands of agents and informers um when being asked to do the kinds of things that I just gave a short list of like the injections and oranges and things that ended in people spending decades in uh prison under false terms how was it that during all of that time as far as I know um people didn't stand up and say wait a minute uh isn't this indefensible morally or legally how do we understand that it's a very hard question for me to answer I'm not sure I can answer are you talking about you're talking about government officials standing up or you talking about I mean inside the FBI I'm really talking about the only people who knew speculate I can only speculate and um uh and I I emphasized that it's only spec because I wasn't there I don't know but I think there was dissent there were people within the bureau saying that we're wasting our time I don't know I can't give you chapter and verse there were people within the bureau saying we're wasting our time you point out I think about Neil Welsh for example later on uh uh there were people but remember this was an autocratic organization and one person had the boat and that was how it was going to work out I think when it comes to people who are let's say informants sources uh people would simply turn it down it's another words they wouldn't go public with it they would simply say that I would approach you would you do this I me no I'm not interested fine I just move on to to another um uh to someone else but that's really Betty the best answer that I that I can give you that the autocratic structure was such that it was almost impossible people to resist there yeah there was no fresh air so to speak in other words there was no uh rarely any tolerance of descent from within in fact it was just the opposite it was intolerance again from my perception of what went on you know so there was no voice coming from the US Constitution um saying not only is this wasting our time but it's wrong it is illegal it is immoral it is wrong and we sh we this has nothing to do with the mission of the FBI finally yeah I mean was there no voice like that I I mean I not that i' not that I found I mean you certainly had uh Attorneys General who in fact I I have it in my briefcase I won't use it now but there's a wonderful uh document that I found in conjunction with my research the with who are actually going directly to the president saying this is what we're doing and we have we have files we're having files we have files on people and this was presented to uh Harry Truman as early as 1950 so there wasn't like I don't want to convey the impression that uh that that Hoover that this was all within the confines of the FBI everybody knew it don't delude we don't delude ourselves Attorneys General knew about it the White House knew knew about it senior people in the executive branch knew the agency knew about it the Army knew about it it was it was not just an FBI program this was a collective program right across the government so and why was that why was that it was in response to the war in Vietnam and why did the war before that John well I know but but we're talking about the we're talking about those pictures we're talking about things that were going on in' 6869 7071 yes the country was tearing itself apart it sure was and a good question is why why did we get ourselves into that mess I have an answer to that a nation that allows itself to be governed by fear will be a poorly governed Nation we were a nation governed by fear in the 50s and 60s the fear back then was communism communism was everywhere it was a red tide that was going to swamp Freedom everywhere and if you were a politician in Washington and were labeled as soft on communism it was the end of your career that meant that you would not hold you would not hold the responsible people who were breaking the first and fourth amendments you were muzzled that's why we couldn't that's why we had to do what we did because Washington was ruled by fear today Peter I think the same thing is going on I think this is a country riddled with fear it's not uh it's not the disease Coming Out of Africa uh it is everywhere the terrorist everywhere there's terrorist if you're a politician you can't come out strongly against NASA you can't come out strongly against what CIA and FBI are now doing and we know they're doing thank God for Mr Snowden uh you can't because if there should be oh for God's sakes let's hope not if there should be another attack that's the end of your career that's the end of your party we are muzzled here in Washington by the fear that is generating across this country a nation that allows itself to be governed by fear will be a poorly governed Nation we are a poorly governed Nation today I believe okay well I I would just add to your remarks Rey and and John there was dissent within agent within the agency over the requirements to surveil Americans overseas there were people who objected to that and who offered to resign I believe there were resignations let me uh uh there's very Lively discussion I'd like to keep it going but I'd like to open it to the audience for questions you may have if you would all be kind enough to wait for the microphone everybody can hear your question we have run right down here in the front Laura we'll take that first thank you um I actually have a million and one questions but at the risk of these guys I'm Aaron uh I'm researching doing some intern work here um at the Spy Museum I've got a million and one questions but at the risk of them becoming an angry mob I'll try and limit myself John he's not my plant he's an intern from yeah um first of all thank you to you three for for what you did and what you do it's from not just a academic perspective but personal perspective it's a shame that you're necessary but thank you anyway um first question uh Miss Reigns did you ever feel um concerned or worried or even uh rejective of the fact that you had to go and case The Joint um was there ever an element of good grief no I'm not doing that someone else can go and do it um and the question I to the whole panel um after the church and Pike committees there were lots of questions about whether the agencies were a rogue elephant supine elephant were they being properly um overseen do you feel that the reforms were successful have been maintained and if not can they ever be maintained when we have attacks like 911 and and whatever you know how hard is it to maintain and establish oversight thank you I hope that wasn't too much thanks who else um you asked about my willingness to go into case no I was very willing to do that uh it was absolutely necessary in terms of our knowing that that we could go ahead with it responsibly and I was I was 29 at the time and I we had three children under 10 but everybody told me I still looked like a kid so I was to pose as a Swarthmore College student asked for an interview with the office and about opportunities for women in the FBI and they were very gracious with me and I tried to disguise my appearance there's a wonderful this is time to take a little commercial break there's a documentary also that's been made about the story called 1971 and uh I'm portrayed in it by a young actress and uh she's she disguises her appearance by putting her hair up inside of a winter hat wearing these big thick glasses and um and taking notes uh in the interview without ever taking my gloves off they never noticed that I never took my gloves off so there was no suspicion and I was able to get all the very very important information that we needed there were no security um systems in the office the file cabinets were not locked and uh there were there was a second door that we ended up having to finally go through but that enabled um I was very pleased that I was able to say it looks like we can can do this and U 1971 the documentary will be released uh in late February here in Washington DC you'll be able to see it in theaters here uh also there'll be a PBS uh broadcast of 1971 on May 18th 18th uh so the it's a really well done documentary and if you haven't seen it already you have a chance to see it in the coming months and you can find out where it's going to be on uh the 1971 film uh Facebook page okay uh other questions uh here's one right here Amanda or one right there why don't you start at that end and then we'll come over here wait wait wait I would like to hear respon the second question second question that's a very important question as I understand it you're you're asking about what we think about the mechanisms that were established and and what um I there were absolutely no mechanisms before for for oversight and that means official but there also really wasn't journalistic uh oversight either very very little reporting on on intelligence um I think that what has H what we've seen evolve has been the the weakening from time to time and some and then since 911 great weakening most of the time but the fact that the mechanisms are in place were put in place then is extremely important it made a difference from time to time in the 80s and the '90s um it would surface that the FBI had done some things that were very much like the the old actions and Congress would conduct hearings and it would be aired in in in public and and whoever was director at the time would say we take this to hard we will not do this but I think that the most important thing and I hope this doesn't get lost is that these events started the first public discourse and the public felt that it was appropriate for the public to pay attention and that's the thing that has gotten kind of lost I think in the past decade the the importance of the public paying attention to these issues and asking questions and as simple as that sounds it's really the most complicated and most important thing I think for for us to do to not lose those mechanisms and make sure that they they become stronger now I I share that view I think the uh I think the uh the the best change the greatest change occurred when the Senate select committee and the house permanent select committee uh were formed and established because we call Congress the people's house and and and the American public really should be placing demands on the Senate select committee on the house permanent Select Committee for them to tell them what's going on I mean it is it there's a shared responsibility for this and even though there was a lot of snur and Drang over Snowden when you really look at it closely it was muted and it was muted because Congress was aware of all of these things or or I I'll I'll I'll bet you I'll Wade you any money all of these things that were going on through the Senate select committee and through the house permanent select committee the other thing is you have seen a remarkable strengthening of the justice department in the Justice when we when I started out it was the Office of Intelligence policy review and they were uh not an utsman I mean they were like a sitting judge there was there's been a lot of controversy over the years over the fact that fisa what's reported to fisa is X number of wiretaps and microphones were installed uh and and and there's a lot of criticism about that but how many are approved are far far less than how many are applied for so there's a real strong check and balance in that and now lastly you have a whole National Security division within the Department of Justice and you now have a whole new body of law national security law that has developed as a result of these two folks here so it's there's been a lot of change and a lot of uh improved oversight as a result of that okay yes all right good thank thank you for bringing that up and we'll go over here question okay I do have a question I have to admit that I've known John and Bonnie since the 1970s when I was John's student and I want to compliment the both of you for it's very clear you didn't do this for fame or Glory you did it because as you thought as I do that it was the right thing to do and I really appreciate that I never suspected at all I knew about the break-in I knew you both and your family but I had no idea so when I open the New York Times and there you were oh my goodness but I wasn't shocked I was surprised but I wasn't shocked because I knew politically where you stood and I've thought about this a lot because how did I miss that I'd make a crummy spy but I realized something through going through all of this myself Bonnie you were my first role model as a working mother and I realized that John was a great mentor to women's students and it was due to you and your strength and all that you did I just want to thank you oh my gosh I don't know where we'd be without you thank you so much okay so Bonnie you are a role model in addition to being that woman okay let's go over here right here I don't think we've G given enough credit to the uh co-intel Pro operation um basically uh thwarting the civil rights movement and also prolonging the war in Vietnam by making the middle level I mean when you go after Martin Luther King and the leadership of the civil rights movement and you basically set people against each other in the anti-war movement and then use various forms of blackmail to uh neutralize critics of the government I think it had a an important effect on on um making things happen much more slowly than they did and causing probably a lot more death and destruction as a result okay other questions there's one right back there Laura uh I'm Conor Woods I'm fort enough to be Professor b as a student at GW uh studying history especially American studies and um now Counter Intelligence and my question is for Mr and Mrs Reigns um we heard that uh several Senators who received um the documents that you retrieved um just sent them back to the FBI and we heard from uh miss meder that the um fight at the Washington Post was fairly strong um whether or not to even publish these documents once they were received and I just wanted to know um what was the plan if these documents that you went to such great risk to retrieve um were just never released by these people to whom you sent them later no you go ahead go well our leader was a guy by the name of Bill davidon and uh even before the Washington Post published he was out there uh all over the uh suburbs uh and in the city of Philadelphia with copies of the of the FBI Files could say where he got them of course but and but he said well everybody can have there was an FBI fair in in in West Philadelphia which is close to the pen campus and and it was where the center of of activity against that war was and they had an FBI fair in which you could buy these copies of of of the FBI Files so I mean the game was going on the game was going on uh uh the the people of of of of palon that's the name of the the area of Philadelphia were inundated there were 200 agents sent out to try to find us and and at least half of them were in West Philadelphia all day long disguised of course trying to disguise themselves but but the ones who are taking pictures the FBI agents the ones who are taking pictures they had their pictures taken blow up full size and then for sale all over and and and then they had these air horns people of of of of of of palon village and and they would go around all day and all night and wherever they found an FBI car they go beep so you hear all over day and night beep beep beep beep beep beep I mean the the intention of the FBI was to intimidate and therefore Stop The Descent and we were not intimidated there's another um there was there would have been another strategy that actually was taking place at the same time and that was to use uh the many forms of alternative press that were out there at that time and uh most of them were were very very anxious to to write about what had uh what had been revealed and I think we would have had to try to use those alternative press advantages to the max if we could um and I I think we we never had a chance to really sort of stop catch our breath and say well what's Plan B we really wanted plan a to and we depended on people like Betty to uh to move the ball forward uh John and and Bonnie Reigns am I correct is this your first public appearance speaking about the events of that evening no no we've actually um we've had some wonderful events uh around some of them in law schools interestingly enough um the film is being shown at film festivals all all over and Betty and the director of the film Johanna Hamilton and the two of us hopefully also Keith who was the lock picker try to be a team to talk about it together and so we've had some really great um experiences in terms of getting the message out there and getting the dialogue going and of course Edward Snowden is right there in the room every single time we're asked to to talk about it all right uh other questions for the panel okay right here okay here's something I'm trying to figure out uh the files were sent to you Betty uh every 10 days so who was sending them and where were they um while um well bit by bit you were sending them I was sending them and the files were not in our basement but were in the basement of a nearby friend who did not know what was in those cardboard boxes in his basement I just asked him what can I put some cardboard boxes in here for a while now the reason the reason I couldn't tell him is we had found out about grand juries and we couldn't tell even close I couldn't tell my brothers I couldn't tell my parents what we had done because if they known and a grand jury had come up they would have been faced themselves either they had to tell what they knew or they were going to go to jail so uh that they were safely in in in a basement just around the corner from my house so and they were being photocopied on a regular basis and then sent out at intervals um oh yeah that's a story hopefully you know tell them the story oh I I know we don't have the time it's it's it's a great story but we don't have has to do with a xerox machine well let's just put it this way that in addition to get that woman or get any of those people get that Xerox machine became a large uh cry too they came close they came close to finding out about the Xerox machine at Temple University and at hord College we didn't know back then nobody knew really back then that every xerox machine left a a fingerprint and and therefore every document made on that particular machine could be traced back to that machine I didn't know that of us knew it oh one one day one day I was sitting in my office and I heard commotion going on in in the photo copy room and I I looked out my window and there was a a car out there with a white car with a Xerox logo there and then I saw this guy carrying our drum back to that car and I said oh dear one of the great Mysteries that Betty you know she really worked on this we never found out what happened to that drum they never they never traced it for some reason interesting they never traced it or they did trace it and somebody refused to reveal it it's a it's a possibility we might want to talk separately to The Good Sister here who was their locks and pck expert before the evening is out any final questions uh here's right here yes well I was wondering um what you did with the 40% of the files that were legit FBI Crime Files we burned them no we burned them but what we discovered was that there was no white crime there was no white crime going on anywhere of the country at that time there was no white crime investigations going on under the trade gear Hoover Uh most of them were were uh uh stolen cars uh because as soon as you go across a state line and stolen car that becomes a federal offense and that you know those people get arrested all the time they get caught it really looks great when you go before Congress you got all this great arrest record kind of thing but uh it was stolen cars yes right there Hi John and Bonnie you made a reference earlier to um Edward Snowden could you just make a brief comment about what you think about what he did uh well I think the parallels are quite apparent they're not perfect parallels but there certainly are parallels and I I think that uh I think Edward Snowden was in a position to see things that he clearly knew were wrong um I like to say that his mom and dad raised him right because he knew the difference between right and wrong saw something that was clearly wrong and very dangerous in a democracy and he was in a position as an inside whistleblower to uh to reveal that information and none of it had anything to do with National Security I think he was very careful in the way he went about releasing that information through responsible journalists and he's paid a a terrible price for it um I I certainly don't want anyone to ever be able to refer to him as a traitor and my hope is that uh when this plays itself out and the general public be begins to be much more informed about what NSA and all the other uh surveillance agencies are doing that there will be a call for something to to happen to change the situation and to allow him to come back uh Betty Ray comment on the Snowden I think that the uh Department of Justice should discontinue any negotiations with his lawyer and he should he should remain in the workers Paradise uh for the rest of his life Betty it's fascinating when you look at the motivation of of Snowden and motivation of the burglers and it really is almost precisely the same and uh also in the desire expressed and acted upon at the time to uh try to not prevent uh law enforcement that should be taking place um but and in his case um also sifting through things over a long period of time uh because he really does not believe in endangering National Security as as he has has expressed it and then also choosing uh two journalist because he felt that it would be um very he thought that there was a d would be a danger involved if he just threw the stuff out as would be possible today for some people to do on the internet and chose people who he thought uh had great ability to pass judgment and their editors had great ability to pass judgment and not publish uh information that would endanger National Security so I see tremendous parallel involved uh let me take a last question right there and she's been waiting a long time oh all right fine right there and then over here I didn't see this one sorry it'll be really quick um and I haven't read the book yet so I'm apologize this is in it and I'm going to um because you've completely peaked my curiosity um but why the heck did the members of Congress return or I guess yeah return the files to the FBI um I'm just really curious about that thank you two two members of Congress right two members of Congress yeah and the other two news organizations by the way it was an entirely different time this was it was unprecedented for members of Congress or for for journalists to receive something like this and so they reacted in very very different ways than you expect them to act as a result of things that you know about that have happened in in intervening years does that sound sure they were intimidated I'll say it again J Kover was not only the most powerful man in Washington in the 50s and 60s he was the most popular man he was made Popular by we the people who agreed that we should fear what he told us we should fear and there therefore we gave to him great power and we gave to him that power that he used in the way that he did use it to Define who an unamerican was and unamerican was for J Edgar Hoover anybody who disagreed with J Edgar Hoover okay last question here thank you hi my name is Kayla Eon I'm a student at American University um I'm curious as to what your opinions are on violent means of resistance um there was some mention of domestic bombings and Mr Reigns you said earlier that it's not a crime to break a law if it's oppressive um does that apply here is just is violence Justified if it's against an unjust government and do you think the violence that occurred um in the 60s and 70s did that help or hinder your cause oh that's a good question um I came out of the civil rights movement that was not nonviolent protest determinedly nonviolent often times attacked violently but never responding violently to the violent attacks by the time you get down to the late 1960s the tactics of nonviolent protest against the war in Vietnam were clearly not getting any attraction here in Washington so some of us decided we had to move from nonviolent protest to nonviolent disruption but always nonviolent why because nonviolent what you're trying to do is persuade others of the rightness of your protest that's the dumbness the shooting yourself in the foot of violence you lose the very audience you're trying to persuade we knew that thank God for those violent sheriffs and policemen down south boy we in the Civil Rights Movement we needed that violence we needed the television CA cameras on that violence that's what won us that day now you choose nonviolence because you're a citizen and you're trying to talk to fellow citizens and that you have to do non-violently I would like to yes py speak to that um through what I learned from from Bill davidon about his motivation it was he who came up with the idea for the burglary and nonviolence uh was incredibly important to him and part of what was going through his mind in 1970 that led him to ask this question what do you think of burglarizing an FBI office was his deep concern not only about the war which he had been feeling for nearly a decade by that time but also his deep concern about the violence On The Fringe of the peace movement and he felt that that was getting out of control he also felt very strongly that the further escalation of the war and the resistance to re-evaluating whether we were going in a wrong direction had caused people to become deeply frustrated and caused some to go over the edge in into violence and he was looking for um what he called a more aggressive nonviolence when he joined with the Catholic peace movement people but that was also very much on on his mind when he felt after hearing many many people say tell him in 1970 that the peace movement was infiltrated with people who were trying to suppress descent FBI informers FBI agents um that it was a nonviolent response that that was needed for for for that and he was very much against uh the violent reaction that was taking place last comment Ray uh no I thought this was a wonderful evening I thoroughly enjoyed being here and I'll let Betty Who was the wonderful author of this book have the last word oh I think I think I just had I think you did too I think I just okay John and and Bonnie thank you so much for being with us this evening Reign Bonnie Betty meter and Ray bap [Applause] he [Music] [Laughter] [Music]