The Burglary Read online

  “I don’t think there’s ever been a night like it,” John Condon, director of publicity at Madison Square Garden at the time, recalled years later. Everyone was standing or sitting on the edge of their seats from the time they arrived and throughout the fight. They screamed, they yelled, they gasped.

  That was exactly what the Media burglars hoped for: an event so engrossing, a crowd so loud and excited that the steady static from the fight would help them go about their work inside the FBI office without being noticed. They hoped fans—especially fight fans in Media, including police and FBI agents—would be glued to their radios and televisions. They didn’t know it, but that was happening all over the world. As the first stage of the burglary was taking place, in Buenos Aires the streets were deserted because so many people were watching the prefight events on television at home and in bars. In Europe and Africa, where it was several hours later, people were getting ready to waken their children so they could watch this historic fight. Fifty foreign governments, including that of Romania, purchased rights to broadcast the fight free to the general public in all of those countries. Translations were provided in twelve languages from ringside for the more than 300 million people who watched the fight around the world—still the largest number of people to watch a single sporting event as it took place.

  In the rice fields of South Vietnam, American troops gathered around radios, getting ready to listen to this fight between Ali, who refused to serve in Vietnam, and Frazier, who supported the war but who also had not served in the military. The promoters of the fight, who controlled all broadcast access to it, tried at first to extract a heavy price from the Pentagon for the right to broadcast it to troops. After a furious reaction from the Pentagon, the promoters relented and provided free radio access to the approximately 326,200 Americans then stationed in South Vietnam and on some U.S. Navy ships at sea. As the New York Times noted at the time, the Pentagon was particularly eager to broadcast the fight because it was having “global difficulties with respect to racial tensions” in the military.

  Remarkably, the televised fight was blacked out where the largest number of people wanted to see it—in the United States. The promoters, Jack Kent Cooke and Jerry Perenchio, had sold governments in those fifty countries the rights to broadcast the fight live, but to maximize their profits, the promoters prevented television networks in the United States from broadcasting either the fight or descriptions of it live as it happened on either television or radio. It was viewed live in the United States only by people who purchased tickets to watch the closed-circuit broadcasts shown by the promoters at three hundred theaters in various parts of the country. Those venues accommodated only a tiny fraction of the millions of Americans who wanted to see the fight.

  The promoters even went to court the day before the fight in an attempt to end the agreement that gave Mutual Broadcasting System access to broadcast summaries after each round. The promoters failed in that effort. Because the fight was blacked out in the United States, many millions of Americans prepared early that evening to huddle around their radios and televisions to listen and watch announcers give brief summaries of the fight between rounds. They listened to commentary and color stories about the scene inside and outside Madison Square Garden. It was a less than satisfying way to watch the fight, especially in light of the live access in much of the rest of the world. But Americans were so passionate about the Ali-Frazier fight that they were eager to tune in to it whatever way it was available. Even with windows closed against the cold in much of the country, streets were filled that night with the sounds of sports announcers breathlessly talking about the fight.

  IN MEDIA, 114 miles south of New York City, the contrast with the wild scene in New York—what the burglars hoped would be their decoy—could not have been greater. The initial steps of the burglary were sounds of silence. John Raines arrived at the dark parking lot at Swarthmore College. He continued to feel terrible. Afraid they would all be arrested that night, he tried to convince himself that because the burglary was very well organized, it should unfold smoothly and swiftly. It should, he told himself, all be over soon. It should take only a few seconds for Forsyth to break in. The burglary itself probably would take less than an hour. In less than two hours, Bonnie should show up, along with a portion of the files removed from the FBI office. He repeatedly convinced himself to be patient.

  Forsyth arrived in Media in just a few minutes and parked a short distance from the building where the FBI office was located. This was a big moment for him. He had been preparing for it with a great deal of dedication and intense work from the time the burglars first met in December. He still felt sure he would pick that lock and be inside the office in thirty seconds flat, his best speed during lock-picking practice.

  As he left the car, he carried a briefcase. In it were his homemade lock-picking tools. The smaller tools were in a pencil case tucked in a small inside pocket of his coat. His larger tools were covered by a few layers of paper so the paper, not the tools, would be seen first if the briefcase was opened in front of anyone. He had been meticulous in his preparations. Each of the metal lock-picking tools he had made was wrapped in foam rubber so they wouldn’t clank against each other as he walked. The briefcase looked appropriate for someone wearing a Brooks Brothers suit. “That was so important,” he says. “You can do anything you want in the United States if you wear a suit and tie … especially if you are white. That also helps.” And the briefcase added, of course, to his all-American busy-businessman-coming-home-late-from-the-office look. He wore leather gloves appropriate for a businessman. Underneath them, he wore tight-fitting rubber gloves. The leather gloves would hamper his dexterity, so essential to his task tonight, so he planned to remove them and put them in his coat pockets and wear only the rubber gloves so he could pick the lock with the dexterity of a surgeon.

  The Media FBI office was located on the second floor, near corner, of the County Court Apartments Building, across the street from the Delaware County Courthouse. (Photo by Betty Medsger)

  Acting as though he lived in the building, Forsyth opened the always unlocked front door, walked upstairs to the second floor, and went directly to the FBI office door. He felt slightly nervous but very confident.

  His confidence quickly evaporated.

  He could not pick the lock in thirty seconds. He could not pick the lock at all.

  As he faced the object of his many rounds of picking practice, Forsyth was startled. There were two locks, not one, on the main entrance of the FBI office. One was the simple five-pin tumbler lock that he remembered seeing and was prepared to pick, the same one Bonnie Raines remembered. But now there was a second lock, a much more complex one—a high-security lock that was extremely difficult to pick. Forsyth’s homemade tools were useless on this lock.

  “I freaked out. First of all, I can’t get in. Second of all, what does this mean? What’s the probability of this lock appearing by purely random chance just at the moment when I’m about to break through the door? It’s astronomically small. I was worried about the noise, because the caretaker of the building lived right underneath the FBI office.

  “So I’m standing over the guy’s ceiling. I’m thinking, ‘Wait a minute. They put this other lock on there. What does that mean? They know? How the hell do they know? We’ve been pretty goddamn careful. We haven’t said anything over the phone. We don’t even talk in the same room where there’s a phone because there are ways to listen to people’s conversations even when the phone is hung up. We’ve been really careful. I felt really sure about all of these individuals. There are no informers in the group. What the hell is going on?’ ” He doesn’t remember wondering then if the man who abandoned the group the previous week, might have alerted the FBI to the burglary. Forsyth thought there was a possibility that he had been so nervous both times he walked by the FBI office door, including just the previous week, that he didn’t see the second lock. Could that be? He could not answer the question. He coul
d not believe that he and Bonnie Raines both would have imagined there was only one lock. Finally, as he stood outside the door, he did not trust his memory.

  He asked himself, “If I pop this door open, am I going to get a welcoming party of ten FBI agents with guns pointed at me?” Perhaps, he thought, the whole thing needed to be canceled. He hated that thought.

  “So, I was not too happy. I had to collect my thoughts, so I left the building and went to the car.” No solution came to mind as he sat in his car thinking about this potentially disastrous situation. So much was at stake, and it all hinged on whether he could open that door. From the beginning, he had thought he could. He thought it was a matter of how fast he could, not whether it was possible. He walked to a phone booth about a block away, called the motel, and asked for Davidon’s room. When the phone rang, it resonated in everyone’s gut. The people in the hotel room had been wondering why Forsyth had not returned yet. Davidon answered. The others could tell from the look on Davidon’s face as he listened to Forsyth that the news was not good. Forsyth was telling Davidon what he had discovered. He suggested that maybe the burglary should be called off. He admitted he could not eliminate the possibility that maybe fear was playing tricks with his memory. He said that suddenly he couldn’t be absolutely certain about what he had seen before. But he was certain of what he had just seen: two locks, not one—one he could pick, one he could not pick.

  Even under these pressured circumstances, Davidon was calm. He listened to Forsyth and told him to come back to the motel. They would all consider the problem together, he said.

  As Davidon recounted what Forsyth had said, the burglars were astonished. They couldn’t imagine how things had gone so terribly wrong. When Forsyth arrived at the motel room, his fellow burglars looked confused and dejected. Some looked a little alarmed. That’s how he felt as he told them the details of his failed attempt to break into the main door, the one they had agreed after Bonnie Raines’s visit must be their way in. Anxiety took different forms among the burglars. Some of them were silent, almost frozen. Some were agitated. Whatever level of fear was in the room before was considerably higher now. Questions that could not be answered hung in the air. Did the FBI add another lock? If they did, why and when did they add it? Why would one have been added in the last two weeks? Did Bonnie Raines’s visit prompt them to add a more secure second lock? What reason could there be for another lock other than the possibility that the FBI knew about plans for the burglary? If that was the case, were the burglars fools not to abort the burglary now?

  There might have been a leak. What about the man who dropped out? He was the only person who might have informed on them. If he did, the burglary should be called off. But they could not know. They believed he would not turn them in, but now, faced with these unexpected circumstances, some of them thought of him. They were sure he was the only person other than the people gathered in that room—plus John Raines, who was still waiting in the Swarthmore parking lot with no idea what was happening—who knew about their plans. If the FBI knew the burglary was supposed to take place tonight, the burglars agreed with Forsyth that there might be armed agents waiting inside the office.

  All of the possibilities that came to mind were terrible.

  When he felt somewhat calmer, Forsyth closely questioned Bonnie Raines again about the details of everything she remembered about the second external door—the one she had strongly recommended they not enter, but that now seemed like the only way they could. She told them what she had seen: that it was barricaded on the inside by a tall double-door metal cabinet that she assumed was filled with paper. If that door had to be pushed open, she said now, it would have to be done extremely slowly and carefully in order not to topple it to the floor and cause a loud crash. But given the new situation, she reversed herself and said she thought they should enter through that door. She realized it would be difficult but necessary to do so.

  From the time Forsyth returned to the motel until a decision was made, the intense discussion of alternatives lasted not more than fifteen minutes. Bonnie Raines recalls that it “was an extremely tense moment.” After Forsyth described his failure to pick the lock and worried aloud about the long time, plus noise, it probably would take to pry the other door open, the burglars responded with a few questions and much empathy. Bonnie Raines answered his questions about the second door. When there seemed to be no more questions, Davidon summed up what they did and did not know. Then he said something like, “We’ve gone this far. There is no evidence we have aroused any suspicion. Everything else seems to be okay.” He didn’t think the doubt about whether the lock had been added should stop them. There were no other signs, he said, that they were being watched. Very calmly, but also urgently, he said they needed to make a decision quickly.

  When he stopped speaking, the burglars searched one another’s faces. There was total silence. Bonnie Raines remembers realizing that a consensus had been reached. “Suddenly,” she said, heads began nodding affirmatively. “Everyone agreed to go ahead. I don’t know what would have happened if one or two people had just said, ‘Forget it, I’m outta here.’ ” But that didn’t happen. Instead, everyone agreed to begin again. Whatever their risk originally, they realized the decision they had just made might have exponentially increased it.

  Davidon’s effective leadership was keenly evident during the anxious minutes in the motel room after the burglars absorbed the bad news from Forsyth. Recalling years later how Davidon imparted calmness and courage in those crucial minutes, Bonnie Raines is moved, as she was then, by the quality of his leadership. “We needed his great spirit. Without his spirit, we wouldn’t have done it.” The others agree. Every burglar who has been interviewed expressed that same view: Davidon’s courage and his confidence in the plan they developed and in their being able to carry it out, despite what had just happened, made it possible for them to agree again to move forward. His calm words and clear thinking during those crucial minutes, they say, made it possible for them to find confidence despite their increased fear.

  Forsyth drove to the FBI office. Again.

  As his accomplices waited at the motel, they were, to put it mildly, very worried about what they had just agreed he should do. Small talk did not come easily among them after he left. There was a lot of pacing. The Ali-Frazier fight in New York may have been distracting the world at that hour, but it was not distracting them. They were preoccupied by fear that their elaborate plans might be spinning out of control—the opposite of the smooth operation they hoped all their weeks of planning would make possible.

  The burglars didn’t know it, but thanks to Forsyth’s delay in breaking in, the timing of the burglary now aligned almost precisely with that of the Ali-Frazier fight. The burglars had assumed the fight would start about 8 p.m. and therefore so should the burglary. Actually, the Ali-Frazier fight did not start until 10:40. Consequently, in New York the noisiest part of the pre-event ceremony was just getting under way about the time Forsyth returned to the FBI office to start his second round, as it were. Whatever helpful sound the fight could provide this evening, the loudest noise would happen at just the right time.

  AT 10:30 in New York, the ring announcer calmed the crowd enough to introduce great boxers from the past, all of whom came into the ring: James J. Braddock, Rocky Graziano, Willie Pep, Jack Dempsey, Archie Moore, Jack Sharkey, Sugar Ray Raineson, Billy Conn, and Joe Louis. There was a huge ovation as Louis climbed into the ring.

  By that time, the excitement in New York was extreme. As it built, the sportswriter Dave Kindred wrote nearly thirty years later, “Such a night had never been seen in the history of sports. For here came two of the greatest fighters ever, both young and strong and nearly as good as they’d ever be, both to be paid $2.5 million … both certain they would leave the ring as he entered it, champion now and forever.…

  “I don’t remember breathing all night long,” Kindred recalled.

  What international tennis champion Arthur
Ashe later described as “the biggest event in the history of boxing” was about to begin. “No fight ever transcended boxing,” he later wrote, as that one did “throughout the world.”

  The excitement had been building to a high crescendo since eight o’clock. After the past greats were introduced and left the ring, the excitement was palpable. It was time. “The eyes of the world were focused on a small square of illuminated canvas, which had become one of the great stages of modern times,” Thomas Hauser wrote of the extraordinary atmosphere as the fight was about to begin. The stars of the evening—in whom millions all over the world saw the reflection of their own values, hopes, and dreams—were at last coming down the aisle. Ali came first, followed by Frazier. Ali wore a white satin robe, red trunks, and white shoes laced with red tassels a fan had sent from Germany. On the back of Frazier’s robe, the names of his five children were embroidered in gold between his first and last names. He was wearing green satin trunks.

  In the seconds before the fight started at 10:40, the roar from the crowd was unlike anything Larry Merchant, longtime boxing reporter and analyst, says he ever heard before or since that night:

  “There was this guttural roar. It came straight up from the stomach, from a place that went beyond the heart, that the heart could not control, much less the mind. People could hardly believe the fight was going to happen.”

  At 10:40 the bell rang. The fight started.

  FORSYTH ARRIVED at the FBI office about that time. The thirty-second break-in plan now long gone, breaking in now seemed like it would be more like a small demolition job than a swift lock-picking exercise. Of course, he had no idea that the fight schedule and his revised break-in schedule might mesh, let alone whether it would matter. The fight was not on his mind.