The Burglary Read online

  After the White House meeting, Davidon reluctantly turned down an invitation from Davidson and Bell to have lunch. Wanting to get back to Philadelphia as soon as possible, he took a cab to Washington’s Union Station and boarded the first train to Philadelphia. As he did, he remembers, he had a mixture of reactions to what he had just experienced. He was glad the three of them had talked with Kissinger, but he also felt they probably had wasted their time. He hoped Kissinger would think about what they had said, but he was not very optimistic about that possibility.

  Settling his small frame into his Amtrak seat, he turned his attention to the next matter on his agenda: the FBI burglary. As the train whizzed through Baltimore and the late-winter brown-and-gray countryside of Maryland and Delaware that afternoon, he went through the list of burglary-related tasks that should have been done by then, plus a couple essential ones he would do the next day. He thought nearly everything was in place, but he didn’t want to take anything for granted. He made a to-do list. True to his by then well-trained burglar’s caution, he left no paper trail. The only physical “trail” left by the burglars was on the walls of the Raineses’ attic. By now, the weekend before the burglary, they had been to the attic for the last time. On the train, he “wrote” his to-do list in his mind, not on paper or sheetrock. Nothing would be traceable.

  To do:

  1. Call Sunday to reserve a room at the motel the group had chosen along U.S. Route 1, about two miles from downtown Media. That room would be the burglars’ staging area. All of them would gather there at about seven o’clock on Monday evening. Some members of the group would wait in the motel room and be available by phone to those inside the FBI office in case they needed help and to respond when they called to say it was time to pick them up after the shelves and drawers had been emptied.

  2. Call a rental car agency on Sunday and reserve the car he would use the night of the burglary. This was necessary because his wife needed the family’s car that evening.

  3. Call each burglar on Sunday and, in a cautious but natural way, ask if they were ready. Tell them what room he had reserved at the motel.

  4. Make sure all that was needed was in place—suitcases, cars, maps, tools, escape plans, waiting farmhouse, good minds, and brave souls.

  He followed up the next day. He reserved the room for Monday evening and then reserved a car. He made both reservations with his credit card, another sign of his belief that it was important to minimize cloak-and-dagger methods as much as possible, even in this burglary where he had insisted on tight security. “Simplicity makes it more possible to get things done,” he said years later, relishing the fact that simplicity had worked all those years ago.

  By Sunday evening, Davidon believed everything was in place and the burglars were ready.

  6

  With Thanks to Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier

  BEGINNING AT DAWN, the weather was good on the day the Media burglary was scheduled to take place. There were traces of snow and ice that morning, but the temperature in the Philadelphia area rose from 28 degrees in the morning to a sunny 54 degrees in the afternoon. That was good news for the people who were assigned to drive the getaway cars. It meant they would not have to worry about icy roads that night as they left Media and traveled narrow country roads late that evening, their trunks full of FBI files.

  The eight burglars worked their day jobs that day. If all went as planned, beginning tonight they would be working two jobs for a while—their usual ones plus a night job as members of the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI sorting and analyzing FBI files. Each of them felt a mix of fear and confidence as day turned to evening and it was almost time to leave their homes in various parts of the Philadelphia area and drive to the motel room Davidon had rented.

  As John and Bonnie Raines ate dinner with their children that evening, there was continuous upbeat conversation. Just three days earlier, they had all celebrated Nathan’s second birthday. Tonight he was still in a bubbly happy-birthday mood while Lindsley, eight, and Mark, seven, talked about what had happened in school that day.

  To the children, this was just an ordinary evening. They knew the plan—dinner together, followed by Dad and Mom going to a meeting after a babysitter arrived. To Mom and Dad, the evening was of course anything but ordinary.

  The Raineses’ children were used to their parents going to meetings. In fact, they had the impression that their parents had done so just about every evening. The only thing different tonight was that only the family gathered for dinner. The other people who often had dined with them recently weren’t here tonight. The children liked their parents’ new friends. Of course, they had no idea that these people had gone to the Raineses’ attic nearly every night in recent months to prepare themselves to pull off a burglary.

  Now the Raineses and the other burglars were about to execute the burglary they had planned in the attic. Tonight was the night.

  As the Raineses talked with the children over dinner that evening, John felt sick at times. The days leading up to tonight had been wrenching for him. He kept asking himself how he and Bonnie could possibly take the risks they were about to take. He never told her he thought they should drop out of the group; he didn’t think they should. What they wanted to accomplish was very important and might only be possible by burglary. But he remembers thinking during the weeks leading up to this night that if Bonnie suggested they should drop out, he would agree immediately. Instead, as he became more frightened about the burglary, she became more and more confident. By dinner this evening, he had long realized that she was not going to suggest they back out. He watched her now as she talked with the children. In her smiling, responsive face, he saw a wonderful mother. He also saw determination and courage. He knew she was ready for tonight. He wasn’t, but he knew they were going to move forward. He told himself that he too would find courage.

  Normal moments can seem so wonderful. It is very painful, though, to think that normal moments may be about to end, especially when you know that you yourself may be about to cause them to end. That’s how John Raines felt as he looked at the children at dinner on the night of the burglary. They were beautiful. Their chatter was cute. It was more than cute; it was downright precious. Such a wonderful normal thing it was to be sitting there at the dinner table with Bonnie and their three children. It was the kind of experience he took for granted every day. Over the nine years of their marriage, they had created a wonderful life together. They felt deep love and respect for each other. Their life seemed ideal, especially now. It was rich with shared passions, shared values, and shared daily joys. He found it impossible to imagine a better family life. Never again, he thought, would he take it for granted. He couldn’t stop thinking about how what he and Bonnie were about to do could rob them and their children of such lovely normal moments, could rob them of years of normal, not to mention very special, moments. He had to fight hard to prevent these thoughts from consuming him.

  The babysitter arrived. That meant it was time to go. They were going to be a little late. They were supposed to meet the other burglars at about seven o’clock. It was nearly 6:30 now, and the drive would take about forty-five minutes. As planned, they told the children they wouldn’t be home until after the children were asleep. Actually, if all went according to plan, and they were not arrested tonight, they would not come home until shortly before the children woke up the next morning. They didn’t want them to know they would be gone all night, or possibly much longer.

  The children ran to hug their parents as they put on their heavy winter coats. They both remember kneeling and holding each child in a long, strong embrace, probably stronger than they had ever held them. They tried to act as though nothing unusual was happening. Each of them remembers that as they hugged the children, they hoped, with a nearly desperate feeling, that they would see them in the morning, that they would walk in the door, perhaps by 6 a.m., as quietly as possible, take a shower, get dressed for work, and then, as though t
hey had been there all night, wake the children. They hoped that all would go as planned and that they would be back in the company of Lindsley, Mark, and Nathan, seated together again around the big kitchen table for breakfast the next morning as though nothing unusual—nothing that could take normal away—had just happened.

  In those brief farewell moments, they knew with a painful sting that this—their family together—was the sacrifice they had very reluctantly agreed to make. They had agreed that this was a time of extraordinary injustice and that there was a need for nonviolent resistance by some people, including them, that might involve extreme sacrifice. Committed as they were now, as they hugged their children, more than ever they knew how much they longed for the sacrifice not to become a reality. They kissed them and said goodbye. As they were about to close the door, their eyes lingered briefly on the faces of the three children waving and gleefully shouting goodbye.

  The Raineses got into their old maroon Ford station wagon, John at the wheel. Like the other burglars, they were going to participate in a burglary that late-winter evening because they felt a direct and personal responsibility for what their country did. They had come of age at a time when two opposite trends dominated American life. There was a strong desire in the 1950s to conform in nearly every way and create a happy family life in the new expanding suburbs that ringed American cities, and in the process become disengaged from the pressing issues of the day. By the late 1960s, though, another trend had grasped the minds and hearts of some Americans: disenchantment with disengagement. The Raineses were among the people who had embraced engagement as a necessity of citizenship, of life itself. Every one of the burglars felt a strong personal responsibility to correct injustices, even if doing so involved personal risks.

  As they drove to the motel, not talking much, John Raines’s stomach was churning. He silently and urgently asked himself, “Why are we doing this?” He knew the answer, and it was one he completely embraced. Still, as the time of the burglary grew closer, it was painful for him to live out the commitment he had made to Bonnie and the other burglars. He was sure, no matter how tonight turned out, that people would think it was an utterly wild idea. They would wonder how these burglars ever were able to think they could possibly get away with it. Right now, on the road to the burglary, he wondered the same thing.

  He had taken serious risks before, even life-threatening ones. He remembered the night he spent alone in a cell in a dark jail in a small town in southwestern Georgia during one of the summers when he went to the South to join black people in the struggle for their basic rights. Black leaders had discovered that John was in danger. In an act of great generosity and solidarity, a local black farmer had put up his small farm as bail to get him out of jail, perhaps saving his life. Tonight was far more difficult for John to face than even that night he spent alone in jail. He didn’t think their lives would be threatened tonight, but he did think their entire future would be. He had never felt as frightened as he did tonight on the way to Media.

  THE OTHER BURGLARS WERE at the motel room by 7 p.m. John and Bonnie Raines were the last to arrive. Keith Forsyth and the four members of the inside team—the people who would enter the office and steal the files—were dressed, according to plan, in “uptown clothes,” as Forsyth liked to call their special burglary clothes. Susan Smith remembers wearing a skirt for the occasion. By then she seldom wore skirts, and she thinks this may have been the last time she did, an accommodation to the burglary. Forsyth and Bob Williamson bought their secondhand but very sophisticated burglary clothes at a Main Line charity clothing store, the one where Forsyth had bought his used Brooks Brothers suit—“Best five-dollar Brooks Brothers suit I’ve ever bought,” he enjoyed saying years later—before he walked by the FBI office the first time to circumspectly inspect the lock on the entrance. By now he also had a fine secondhand Brooks Brothers topcoat, for warmth and to conceal burglary tools, purchased at the same charity store. Forsyth still enjoys thinking that their burglary clothes might have been previously owned and worn by some of the highest-ranking members of Philadelphia’s old Main Line establishment. Williamson, the only somewhat hippie-looking member of the group, traded his dashiki, his frequent garb at that time, for more typical clothes. He had even trimmed his long hair a bit for this special occasion.

  Davidon remembers feeling calmness mixed with both fear and the pumping drive of adrenaline as the burglars gathered in the motel room. Others described the atmosphere similarly—a combination of controlled excitement and fear. All agree that everyone was sober and serious. After weeks of planning together, they had confidence in one another. Each of them was aware that he or she held the future of everyone in the group in their hands. A mistake made by one could be disastrous to all. Bonds of trust seemed to be strong. Despite the pressure, no one in the group remembers hearing any expressions of concern from anyone about any other member’s behavior that night, or, for that matter, at any time while they worked together.

  They had no idea that night what, if anything, the person who had abandoned the group just a few days earlier, would do—or, for all they knew, already had done—with the comprehensive and potentially devastating information he possessed. The burglars moved into the first stage of the burglary as though no one except the eight of them knew anything about their plans.

  Sometime between 7:30 and 8 p.m., Forsyth and John Raines got ready to leave the motel room—Forsyth to drive to Media to break into the FBI office, John to drive to a parking lot at Swarthmore College, where he would wait for Bonnie to arrive after the burglary along with suitcases to be transferred from Smith’s car to the Raineses’ station wagon. Words of reassurance were exchanged. There was a strong but quiet shared recognition among all of them that this moment was what they had been preparing for.

  The burglary was beginning now.

  IN NEW YORK, where prefight events were warming up, the scene was wild. The city was snowbound, but that didn’t prevent thousands of people who could not get tickets to the Ali-Frazier fight from ringing the outside perimeter of Madison Square Garden. So great was the anticipation that thousands of people were arriving early—inside and outside the arena. About the time Forsyth and John Raines left the motel, a parade of celebrities was arriving at the Garden. So many were in the audience that when it was time to invite them into the boxing ring to be introduced, a common practice at boxing matches at the Garden, ring announcer Johnny Addie said he would not introduce the celebrities tonight because everybody was there.

  That seemed to be true. A star-studded audience the likes of which had never been seen before at the Garden was there to watch these two undefeated heavyweight champions, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, face off—Gene Kelly, Woody Allen, Ed Sullivan, Joey Bishop, Peter Falk, Robert Goulet, Carol Lawrence, Dick Cavett, Lorne Greene, Diana Ross, Michael Caine, Bill Cosby, James Taylor, David Frost, Diahann Carroll, Barbra Streisand, Buddy Rich, Andy Williams, former vice president Hubert Humphrey—who couldn’t get a ringside seat and was in the balcony—Senator Edward Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, Senator John Tunney—son of heavyweight champion Gene Tunney—Joe Namath, Sargent Shriver, and New York City mayor John Lindsay. Some new heroes were there—the three Apollo 14 astronauts who had returned from the moon just a month earlier—Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell. Shepard had charmed residents of planet earth less than a month earlier when he hit two golf balls on the surface of the moon. Now back on earth, these space heroes came to see the fight that preoccupied millions on planet earth the night of March 8.

  The 20,455 seats in the Garden were sold out within hours when they went on sale. An overflow venue was set up for 6,000 people, including Bing Crosby, twenty blocks north of the Garden at Radio City Music Hall. The fight was broadcast live there on a large screen with commentary provided from the stage by actor Burt Lancaster, sports announcer Don Dunphy, and retired boxer Archie Moore.

  At the Garden, Norman Mailer sat near the ring. He wrote Life magazine’s ma
in article on the fight. Ringside tickets were sold out by the time Frank Sinatra tried to buy one. Desperate, he asked the Life editors to give him one of the magazine’s highly coveted press tickets. They struck a deal: He could have a pass if he shot photographs for them. Not many days before the fight, Sinatra had appeared in the office of the Garden’s staff photographer, George Kalinsky, and said, “I hear you’re the greatest photographer. I want you to teach me all you know about photography in five minutes.” Over a three-hour lunch, Kalinksy taught him some basics and advised him to “make sure you feel the atmosphere.” Sinatra was at ringside early the night of the fight, ready with a wide-angle lens on his camera. The credits on the cover of Life the next week were unmatched, before or since: Norman Mailer and Frank Sinatra.

  Fashions in the Garden that night matched the exciting mood. Diana Ross wore black velvet hot pants. Hugh Hefner’s companion, Barbi Benton, wore black silk hot pants, a see-through chiffon blouse, and a monkey-fur coat. Someone wore a wolf coat with a matching hat that was rimmed with wolf tails. As Michael Arkush, writer of a 2007 book about the fight, wrote, “By comparison, Colonel Harland Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken, was almost drab in his traditional white suit.”