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40 - EVENTS/INTELLIGENCE_SCANDALS/Media FBI Office Break-In.md
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@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ tags:
- Hoover
- 1970s
start: 1971-03-08
summary: "The Media, Pennsylvania FBI office break-in on March 8, 1971, by the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI removed approximately 1,000 documents whose distribution to the press exposed COINTELPRO and triggered Hoover's formal termination of the program."
summary: "The Media, Pennsylvania FBI office break-in on March 8, 1971, by the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI removed approximately 1,000 documents whose distribution exposed COINTELPRO and led Hoover to end the program."
location: "Media, Pennsylvania"
---
@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ The group's identities remained unknown until 2014, when five members went publi
### The Documents and Their Distribution
The group mailed packets of documents to multiple journalists and to Representative Parren Mitchell (D-Maryland). Several major newspapers, including the Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times, received the documents. Most held them initially. The Los Angeles Times published a story within days. [[The Washington Post]]'s Ben Bagdikian received and published documents, working with reporters including Betty Medsger; the Justice Department requested the Post not publish, and the Post ultimately decided to publish.[^1]
The group mailed five sets of the 14 most explosive memoranda, under the name "Liberty Publications," to two members of Congress (including Representative Parren Mitchell, D-Maryland) and to writers at three national newspapers, among them Betty Medsger of [[The Washington Post]] and Jack Nelson of the [[Los Angeles Times]]. Four of the recipients quickly handed the packages to the FBI; the copies sent to Nelson were apparently diverted and never reached him. Medsger alone wrote a story. Attorney General [[John N. Mitchell]] telephoned Post editors and publisher Katharine Graham to ask that it not run, and Graham approved publication; the Post's front-page article of March 24, 1971 was headed "Stolen Documents Describe FBI Surveillance Activities."[^2]
The documents included bureaucratic records with the word "COINTELPRO" in their headers - the program had never been publicly named and its existence was not known outside the FBI. The documents revealed that the FBI had been infiltrating and disrupting legal political organizations, opening mail, maintaining informants in campus and civil rights organizations, and preparing regular reports on the political views of American citizens.[^1]
@ -46,3 +46,4 @@ The Media documents seeded subsequent journalistic and congressional investigati
### Footnotes
[^1]: Medsger, Betty. *The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI*. Knopf, 2014. Davidon, William, et al. (Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI). Original documents distributed March 1971. Church Committee, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976.
[^2]: Garrow, David J. "Meet the Burglars Who Outsmarted Hoover's FBI," *The Washington Post*, January 26, 2014, p. B1 (review of Medsger, *The Burglary*), https://www.davidgarrow.com/File/DJG2014WaPoMedsgerFBI.pdf ; Neier, Aryeh, "The Burglars Who Exposed the FBI," *The New York Review of Books*, October 23, 2014, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/10/23/burglars-who-exposed-fbi/