The FBI, the NSA and a Long-Held Secret Revealed

By Amy Goodman, TruthDig

09 January 14

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his week, more news emerged about the theft of classified government documents, leaked to the press, that revealed a massive, top-secret surveillance program. No, not news of Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency, but of a group of anti-Vietnam war activists who perpetrated one of the most audacious thefts of government secrets in U.S. history, and who successfully evaded capture, remaining anonymous for more than 40 years. Among them: two professors, a day-care provider and a taxi driver.

Passionately opposed to the U.S. war in Vietnam, this group of seven men and one woman was certain that the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, was spying on citizens and actively suppressing dissent. In order to prove their case, they broke into an FBI field office in the Philadelphia suburb of Media, Pa., on March 8, 1971, and stole all the files inside. What they found, and mailed to the press, exposed COINTELPRO, the FBI's counterintelligence program, a global, clandestine, unconstitutional practice of surveillance, infiltration and disruption of groups engaged in protest, dissent and social change. Their courageous act of nonviolent burglary shook the FBI, the CIA and other agencies to the core. They triggered congressional investigations, increased oversight and the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. These activist burglars, most of whom have come forward this week, revealing their names for the first time, have not only a remarkable story to tell about the past, but a critical and informed perspective on Snowden, the NSA and government spying today.

"The citizens' right to dissent is the last line of defense for freedom," John Raines told me. He was a professor of religion at Temple University when he, his wife, Bonnie, and the others who intended to break into the FBI office formed what they called the "Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI." Since John and Bonnie Raines had three children under the age of 10 at the time of the burglary, I asked how they decided to engage in an act that could have sent them both to prison for years. John replied, "We routinely ask, as a society, mothers and fathers to take on as part of their work highly dangerous activities. We ask that of all policemen. We ask that of everybody that works for the fire department. We ask that of mothers and fathers who are sent overseas to defend our freedoms in the Army and Navy. We routinely ask of people to take on jobs that risk their families." He went on, "As citizens, we stepped forward and did what we had to do because nobody in Washington would."

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