Continued from last week:
Mike Selby
“What do you think of burglarizing an FBI office?”
William Davidon, a mild-mannered physics professor, asked this question of nine people in the winter of 1970. All were shocked by the question, except for one — Keith Forsyth, who had only recently met Davidon after he dropped out of college and relocated to Pennsylvania.
Forsyth’s move was driven by the realization that his country had no legitimacy to be at war in Vietnam. Although this action was against everything he had been raised to believe, a thorough study of hundreds of books, starting with ‘Peace in Vietnam: A New Approach to Southeast Asia,’ had changed his mind and his life.
Davidon had come to the same conclusion through reading as well. A few years earlier, he got into a heated argument at an antiwar presentation at Haverford College where he taught. The speaker claimed the United States was dropping napalm on the Vietnamese, which was burning young children alive. Davidon shouted back at the speaker “Our government would never do that,” but the presenter assured him it was happening.
Angered at the lies being peddled by the antiwar presenter, Davidon went to the college library. Sadly, he discovered numerous books, articles, and even photographs that attested to this unwelcomed fact. No matter what, Davidon thought to himself, “I have to stop it.”
As a physicist, he was truly concerned about nuclear bombs being used in Vietnam, which was actually being considered by the Johnson and Nixon administrations. He soon travelled to Vietnam as part of peace delegation, and his concerns even granted him a sit-down with Henry Kissinger. All of it appeared to be futile.
He then read a book — ‘The Trial of the Catonsville Nine’ by Daniel Berrigen. The book told the story of how Berrigen (a priest) and his brother broke into a draft office, and then burned the draft records with homemade napalm in May of 1968. This type of direct yet nonviolent action changed Davidon’s entire way of thinking about ways to stop his government’s prolonged mass murder.
Working tirelessly within the circles of the numerous peace organizations (Quakers, Catholics, The Resistance, Veterans against the War, etc.), he scientifically narrowed a list of nine people who thought and felt pretty much identically as he did. He then approached each of them in the winter of 1970 and asked that fateful question: “What do you think of burglarizing an FBI office?”
Nervous laughter combined with thoughts of life behind bars raced through everyone he had asked. Only Forsyth agreed to help on the spot, the other eight all eventually agreed, after Davidon answered their most immediate question: “To do what?”
There was something odd about the peace movement, Davidon told them. Something sinister was happening from within. People engaged in legitimate, peaceful and legal protests found themselves on the wrong end of smear campaigns. Their careers often ended, family relationships were frequently destroyed, and some were wrongfully imprisoned. The peace movement appeared to be infiltrated with informers and spies intent on disrupting and discrediting it. Davidon believed (he turned out to be absolutely correct) that the government—through the FBI—was suppressing every American’s constitutional right to dissent. If he and his group could find evidence of this, they could hand it over to the press. All they would have to do was break into an FBI office and steal files.
All they would have to do…
This was J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI — and so far no journalist, court, or any of the eight presidents Hoover “served” was ever granted access to what Davidon was proposing. Hoover was one of the most powerful and feared men in the entire country. Only Lyndon Johnson seriously considered firing Hoover, but then thought better of it (telling the New York Times “It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”)
Breaking into an office of the most powerful law enforcement organization in the world was too much for one of the people Davidon approached, and they quit immediately. A team of eight still remained though (a religion professor, a daycare center worker, a college student, another professor, a social worker, a college dropout, and Forysth) whose “desire to stop injustice…was more important to them than their desire to lead a normal, uninterrupted life.”
On March 8, 1971, this most unlikely group of lawbreakers broke into an FBI office in Media Pennsylvania. They did indeed find what they were looking for. But it was what else they found, which would shock the country.
Continued next week.
Mike Selby is Information Services Librarian at the Cranbrook Public Library