The Burglary Page 5

  It was not known at the time that Hoover’s plan to make these accusations public had alarmed his top aides so much that they had tried to convince him not to include the accusations against the Berrigans in his testimony. By taking this step, his aides risked the possibility of being transferred to unacceptable posts or, worse, being fired and blackballed from future work in any law enforcement agency. That had recently happened to one agent in retaliation for rather gentle criticism. But because his top aides thought that what Hoover was about to do was a serious mistake, they took the extraordinary step of violating his complete lack of tolerance of criticism.

  They knew Hoover had been told a few weeks earlier that the FBI and the Internal Security Division of the Department of Justice had investigated these allegations against the Berrigans and others and had decided that there was insufficient evidence to support them. Charles D. Brennan, assistant to the director, was so upset when he saw the accusations in an advance copy of the director’s testimony that he wrote a memo to Hoover urging that his remarks about the Berrigans be deleted. In his memo, Brennan told Hoover that his plea that the accusations not be made public had been endorsed by all agents in the Domestic Intelligence Division, the largest division in the bureau and the division that had investigated the allegations. William C. Sullivan, assistant director, third in command at the bureau, and in the bureau for thirty years by this time, also sent Hoover a memo advising him not to make the accusations against the Berrigans.

  It was an unprecedented instance of FBI officials banding together to oppose an action by Hoover. Instead of following their advice, he violated basic principles of due process and made sweeping public charges about accusations he knew had been determined to be without merit. In addition to whatever concerns his aides had about the unfairness of the accusations becoming public, they were concerned that by making these allegations the director would be violating the rule he considered most important and that he always had required adherence to by all FBI employees: Don’t embarrass the bureau.

  To many Americans, Hoover’s testimony probably seemed like just one more ominous indication that the antiwar movement was becoming more violent, a claim frequently made by the Nixon White House, even in the aftermath of the killing of students on the Kent State campus the previous May. That, plus the fact that the public did not know the unusual circumstances under which Hoover’s testimony was given, made it possible for Hoover to effectively recast the image of the Catholic peace movement that day from the nonviolent, pacifist organization it had claimed to be to a group of violent extremists who planned to kidnap and bomb. The very unusual image of priests and nuns engaged in bombing and kidnapping was the kind of sensational image that latched on to psyches.

  Hoover’s efforts that day were successful. In addition to creating a new public image of Catholic antiwar activists, he also received the money he wanted, $14.5 million, and a congressional authorization to hire a thousand extra agents to meet the new crisis caused by antiwar activists. Hoover probably never knew that among some people in the bureau these new agents quickly became known as “the Berrigan 1,000” in honor of the false story about the Berrigans the director had used to scare Congress into approving the special funding to hire them. Ironically, as a group they were resistant to spying on political dissidents and made it known that they were more interested in working on organized crime and other criminal cases.

  That Hoover’s testimony that day suddenly placed the FBI in a bright spotlight did not stop Davidon or even cause him to pause. In a strange twist of fate, the actions Hoover set in motion that day eventually threatened Davidon but later led to him being protected from the reach of the FBI.

  The second event that drew attention to the FBI at that time took place in reaction to Hoover’s congressional testimony. On December 9, 1970, less than two weeks after Hoover made his remarks to the two senators, he was criticized on the floor of the House of Representatives by Representative William R. Anderson, a World War II hero who had been much honored for his participation in eleven submarine combat patrol missions. Anderson was also celebrated for his role in 1958 as commander of the first underwater voyage under the North Pole, 8,000 nautical miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. In that pre–space travel era, Anderson and his crew on the USS Nautilus, the first atomic-powered submarine, were regarded as heroes throughout the world. Their accomplishment seemed like the stuff of science fiction. Grand parades were held in their honor in London and in New York, and Anderson was honored at a special ceremony at the White House by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had chosen him to make the historic voyage.

  In November 1970, just a month before he rose in the House chamber to speak about Hoover, Anderson had been elected to his fourth term in the House from his Tennessee district west of Nashville. He had received 82 percent of the vote, one of the highest margins of victory in Congress. Also notable was this World War II hero’s move from hawk to dove in the last two years, a change in which the Berrigans had unintentionally played a supporting role.

  A trip Anderson made to Vietnam in the summer of 1970 greatly increased his doubts about the war. He went there with Representative August F. Hawkins, Democrat from Southern California, and a congressional aide, Tom Harkin, who has been a Democratic senator from Iowa since 1985. Military officials tried to keep them from achieving the goal of their trip—touring what had become known as the “tiger cages” at the large South Vietnamese prison on Con Son Island, fifty miles off the coast of South Vietnam. Built by the French in 1862 as a penal colony, during the U.S. war in Vietnam the prison was managed by South Vietnam and supported and condoned by the United States.

  Anderson and Hawkins managed to force their way into the buildings that contained the tiger cages, five-by-nine-foot cells beneath a floor, each containing three to five prisoners, about four hundred prisoners in all, men and women. The only openings on the cages were the spaces between bars on their tops. Many of the prisoners were political prisoners, students who were imprisoned after being arrested during antiwar demonstrations in South Vietnam because they were suspected of being communists. Anderson and his companions observed firsthand that the prisoners were treated cruelly. The catwalks above the cages were lined with buckets of lime, which the guards periodically dumped through the bars onto the prisoners. They were frequently beaten severely, fed rotten food and rice mixed with sand, urinated on from the catwalk, and shackled for days at a time.

  Anderson, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, was appalled that his country condoned such treatment of prisoners by its allies. He also was appalled by his House colleagues’ reaction to the detailed report he and Hawkins submitted to them. Instead of acting on the report, many condemned them for conducting the inspection and refused to include more than a few lines of their report in a congressional committee document.

  As Anderson increasingly questioned the conduct of the war, he had read exhaustively about it from a wide array of writers. Among the books that impressed him most were ones written by Daniel and Philip Berrigan. Through them, he came to understand why some people who were strongly opposed to the war had resorted to resistance, such as the resistance the brothers had engaged in at the Catonsville draft board and for which they were serving time.

  Hoover’s accusations about the Berrigan brothers in testimony the day after Thanksgiving deeply disturbed Anderson. He found it difficult to believe that Philip or Daniel Berrigan could have contemplated, let alone planned, violent acts of protest, such as bombing and kidnapping. Three days after Hoover made his claims, Anderson drove from Washington to the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, to question the brothers about Hoover’s accusations. He believed their face-to-face claim to him that they were not involved in any such conspiracy and that they remained deeply committed to nonviolence. Reassured, in a letter to Hoover he expressed confidence in the Berrigans’ continuing commitment to nonviolence and questioned the fairness and veracity of Hoover’s accusations against th
em.

  “If there is any substance to your allegations,” Anderson wrote, “I respectfully submit that it is your duty to arraign them before a federal grand jury to seek an indictment. If on the other hand, there is no substance … then certainly we should expect an explanation, if not an outright retraction.” The matter at hand, Anderson wrote, transcended the Berrigans and added to “a growing tendency on the part of our executive branch to employ the tactics of fear and to be less than candid in dealing with the public.”

  A stranger to criticism, let alone such strong criticism, from a member of Congress, Hoover was angry. He was especially angry that Anderson had made his letter public. After chiding him for that in a December 2 letter, Hoover insisted that “you may be assured my testimony was predicated on the results of careful investigation. All information developed regarding this matter is being furnished to the Department of Justice which has the responsibility for initiating prosecutive action.”

  After this exchange of letters, Anderson, still convinced that the director’s accusations against the Berrigans were false, rose to speak on the floor of the House on December 9. He identified himself as a longtime admirer of Hoover and the FBI as he told the assembled members of Congress:

  “We have suffered many casualties in the Vietnamese war. Most of our domestic and international problems are either caused by this unwanted, undeclared war or are intensified by it. It is now distressingly evident that one of the most ardent, devoted and presumably unassailable public servants in the lifetime of our Republic is, in a sense, a casualty of that same war.” Anderson said he was speaking of J. Edgar Hoover. The director, in his recent testimony before the Senate committee, Anderson told his colleagues, had ignored the due process clauses of the Constitution; he had made his charges in public, through the Senate, rather than in the courts, where they belonged; and in doing so he had resorted to “tactics reminiscent of McCarthyism.”

  Some members of the House tried to force Anderson to stop speaking. Refusing to be intimidated, Anderson continued. His remarks were unprecedented public criticism of Hoover, especially in these chambers where Hoover always had been treated royally. In the heated discussion that followed on the House floor, ardent Hoover supporters rose to defend him. One of the staunchest defenders was Brooklyn Democrat John J. Rooney, the very powerful chair of the House Appropriations Committee, who had been hosting Hoover’s successful appearances before that committee and shepherding his budget increases for decades.

  A short time later, Hoover secretly began retaliating against Anderson in the way he had forcefully, and always secretly, done for years against the few people who dared to criticize him. Curt Gentry described Hoover’s smear campaign against Anderson in his 1990 biography J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. Call girls in Washington were shown a photograph of Anderson and asked if he had been one of their clients. None of them said they recognized him, but FBI agents in Nashville found a madam who, when she saw the photograph, said Anderson “might” have visited her place of business several years earlier. That was good enough for Hoover. With that “evidence,” he scribbled “whoremonger” on a memorandum about Anderson, put it in his secret files on members of Congress, and informed the Nixon White House that Anderson patronized prostitutes.

  It was a brutal attack. A former aide to Hoover years later told Gentry, “Anderson’s scalp was hung out to dry as a warning to others who might entertain the same notion.” Hoover succeeded. Not only did his attack discourage other members of Congress from questioning his accusations about the kidnap-bomb plot, but in 1972 the FBI’s smear campaign contributed significantly to Anderson, previously one of the highest vote getters in Congress, being defeated in his bid for reelection.

  After these two events—Hoover’s accusations against the Berrigans and Congress’s circling the wagons to protect the director when Anderson raised questions about those accusations—it was evident to Davidon that Congress could not be expected to investigate whether the FBI was suppressing dissent. It seemed even more likely now that the documentary evidence needed in order to investigate the FBI could be gotten only by people willing to risk their freedom by burglarizing an FBI office.

  3

  The Team Is Formed

  DAVIDON MADE a list of people he thought would be willing to consider his question. He focused on those he had worked with on a draft board raid. He liked many of them. He especially liked John Peter Grady, the leader of several of the raids and the person most responsible for the move by some Catholic peace activists from symbolic actions to clandestine draft board raids.

  Grady stood out as a leader and as a personality. As Father Michael Doyle, a priest from Camden, New Jersey, who knew Grady well, said of him, “John’s personality was like a big fish in the pond. He created a lot of circles, a lot of energy, a lot of excitement, a lot of laughter, a lot of celebration.” Davidon enjoyed those qualities in Grady, but because security would need to be very strict for Media—more strict than it had been for any of the clandestine actions previously done by Catholic activists—he felt that quieter “fish,” ones that would not generate circles of excitement, were essential for the FBI project. For that reason, he decided Grady should not be asked to be part of the Media group. After the group was formed, the others agreed with Davidon’s assessment: Grady was a great guy and a person they respected, but not the right person for this project. This turned out to be an even wiser decision than they could have imagined. After the burglary, the FBI immediately targeted Grady as not only a participant in the Media burglary but as the leader of the group.

  The people who said yes to Davidon’s invitation to consider burglarizing an FBI office were diverse in various ways. They ranged in age from twenty to forty-four. They included three women and five men—a religion professor, a daycare center worker, a graduate student in a health profession, another professor, a social worker, and two people who had dropped out of college to work nearly full-time on building opposition to the war. Though all of them owed their awareness of burglary as an act of resistance to the Catholic peace movement, only one of them was a Catholic. Four were Jews and three were Protestants. They knew one another, but they were not close friends. Bonds developed among them as they tackled Davidon’s idea. Four of them were parents of young children. None of them had ever thought of doing anything as extreme as burglarizing an FBI office.

  DAVIDON FIRST POSED his question to John and Bonnie Raines. John was a veteran of resistance. He went south nearly every summer during the civil rights movement, beginning in 1961 when he was a Freedom Rider testing racial integration on interstate transportation from St. Louis to Little Rock and through Louisiana. His experience in the South and Bonnie’s experience as a teacher in East Harlem had transformed their lives.

  By the time Davidon asked them his unusual question, John Raines was a professor of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia, and Bonnie was the director of a daycare center and was studying for a graduate degree in child development at Temple University.

  They were stunned by Davidon’s question as they met with him one evening at his home. At first, they thought his question was strange and forbidding. So did Davidon’s wife, Ann Morrissett. She recalled years later that she thought Davidon was proposing another draft board raid. Then she heard him ask, “What do you think of burglarizing an FBI office?” She remembered being repulsed by the idea. “I couldn’t believe my ears.” She said, “Leave me out,” and quickly exited from the conversation in the living room and went to the kitchen. Morrissett regarded such a burglary with disdain, if not contempt. She thought the draft board raids were largely a macho exercise and that a raid on an FBI office was even more macho. She recalled years later that when she first heard the FBI mentioned, it occurred to her that “if they thought they could get away with burglarizing an FBI office, perhaps they are out of control.”

  As Davidon explained his rationale to the Raineses that evening, John and Bonnie found themselves agreeing
with him. They too had begun to think the FBI might be infiltrating the peace movement. But breaking into an FBI office? They thought it was impractical, could not be done. Besides, it was unlikely that significant records would be found there. Surely, they thought, important and sensitive FBI records, including ones that dealt with suppressing dissent, would be kept only in the FBI’s Philadelphia office or at bureau headquarters in Washington.

  Bonnie and John Raines decided shortly after they were married in 1962 that they would risk their freedom in order to oppose injustice.

  They made that decision at the same time they created a close-knit family, three children by the time of the burglary.

  For a week they discussed Davidon’s question with each other every evening after dinner as their three children—Lindsley, seven; Mark, six; and Nathan, one—slept upstairs. They thought about the commitments they had made to each other and to their ideals, and about their love for and commitment to their children. With deep anguish, they questioned how much they were willing to let their family’s future be threatened. Resistance, along with love, had been at the heart of their relationship from the beginning. Finally, they both agreed with Davidon’s conviction that a crisis existed if dissent was being killed. They decided they were willing to join him in searching for evidence of whether that was true. They called him one evening and told him he could count on them to help solve this problem. They still thought an FBI office probably could not be burglarized.

  A short time later, the Raineses met with John Raines’s brother Bob and his wife and asked them, in strict confidence, one of the most important and painful questions they had ever asked anyone: Would they raise Lindsley, Mark, and Nathan if the Raineses went to prison? They were immensely grateful for the promise that they would.