First published 2014
Betty Medsger reconstructs the 1971 break-in at the FBI's Media, Pennsylvania office by eight ordinary Americans calling themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI. The group included a religion professor, day-care director, physicist, cab driver, and graduate student, all united by suspicions that J. Edgar Hoover was operating outside constitutional bounds. They meticulously planned their heist for the night of the Joe Frazier-Muhammad Ali boxing match, when attention would be elsewhere. The stolen files revealed COINTELPRO, Hoover's secret program targeting civil rights organizations, antiwar groups, and student activists through surveillance and disruption tactics designed to "enhance paranoia" and convince Americans an FBI agent lurked "behind every mailbox." Medsger, the first journalist to receive the leaked documents while at The Washington Post, spent decades tracking down the anonymous burglars and persuading them to break their silence. Her investigation reveals how this single act of civil disobedience exposed government overreach and helped trigger broader revelations, including the Pentagon Papers release three months later.
Genres: history, 20th-century, crime, biography-memoir, 21st-century, government, activism, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: government-conspiracy, investigative-journalism, whistleblower
Setting: Media, Pennsylvania, Washington Post
Period: 1971
538 pages · Hardcover · Knopf