Buried Treasure: COINTELPRO (Part 1: The Burglary)
Skullduggery
Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, Victoria Bassetti
4.0 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2021
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On March 8, 1971, a group calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI successfully broke in to an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania. The documents that they stole revealed a massive illegal surveillance program being run by the Bureau, designed to intimidate, persecute, and destroy primarily Black individuals and organizations. In this episode, the first of our two-part "Buried Treasure" series commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of this historic break-in, Michael Isikoff and Dan Klaidman talk with Keith Forsyth, a member of the team that committed the burglary, and Betty Medsger, the journalist whose investigative reporting first made public the shocking findings from the trove of stolen documents.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, featuring an interview with Shaka King, director of the new film Judas and the Black Messiah.
GUESTS:
- Keith Forsyth, member, Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI
- Betty Medsger, author and investigative reporter
HOSTS:
- Michael Isikoff (@Isikoff), Chief Investigative Correspondent, Yahoo News
- Dan Klaidman (@dklaidman), Editor in Chief, Yahoo News
RESOURCES:
- The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI by Betty Medsger (2014)
- "After 43 years, activists admit theft at FBI office that exposed domestic spying" by Michael Isikoff (Jan. 6, 2014)
- "The Greatest Heist You've Never Heard of" (NYT Video, 2014)
- 1971, documentary film dir. by Johanna Hamilton
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| 0:00.0 | Secret FBI memos made public today show that the late J. Edgar Hoover ordered a nationwide |
| 0:06.9 | campaign to disrupt the activities of the new left without telling any of his |
| 0:11.9 | superiors about it. Many of the techniques were clearly illegal. |
| 0:15.4 | Berglaries forged blackmail letters and threats of violence were used. |
| 0:19.8 | The FBI at one time sought to blackmail the late Martin Luther King into committing suicide. |
| 0:26.1 | That was just some of the coverage that flowed from one of the most extraordinary |
| 0:32.0 | burglaries in American history. The break-in of a small FBI office outside Philadelphia on the evening of March 8th, |
| 0:40.4 | 1971, 50 years ago this Monday. |
| 0:43.6 | While much of the country that night was obsessing over the fight of the century, the Bout and Madison Square Garden between |
| 0:49.7 | Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, a small group of anti-Vietnam War protesters |
| 0:54.7 | broke into the Bureau's resident office in media, Pennsylvania and stole up to |
| 1:00.4 | 1000 secret documents and then began mailing them anonymously to members of Congress and journalists. |
| 1:07.2 | Director J. Edgar Hoover was enraged and he had good reason to be worried. |
| 1:11.6 | The documents exposed shocking abuses of surveillance of left-wing protesters and student groups and of directors for every |
| 1:19.6 | FBI field office to create so-called racial squads charged with recruiting informants inside minority communities. |
| 1:28.4 | And it also contained the first clues to the existence of Coentel Pro, the secret FBI program to arass and intimidate civil rights leaders, |
| 1:37.3 | including Martin Luther King. We'll talk to the first reporter to receive and then write about the stolen FBI documents, Betty Medsker, |
| 1:44.8 | and then to one of the burglars who broke into the office, Keith Forsyth. This is the first of two episodes of Skolduggeries buried treasure |
| 1:53.0 | that will explore the history of FBI abuses that have new residents today. |
| 2:00.9 | I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States. |
| 2:07.8 | I will to the best of my building. |
| 2:09.4 | Reserve, protect and defend. Constitution of the United States. So help me God. |
... |
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