Ripping Off the FBI

Disclosure of this information could endanger the lives of or cause other serious harm to persons engaged in investigative activities on behalf of the United States. Disclosure of national defense information could injure the United States and give aid to foreign governments whose interests might be inimical to those of the United States.

The statement, issued by U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, reflected his deep concern--and considerable embarrassment--over a serious breach in the FBI's security measures. On the night of March 8, a group calling itself the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into the bureau's unguarded two-man office in Media, Pa., and stole at least 800 secret documents. Copies of 16 of these documents, which deal primarily with the bureau's surveillance of radical black and student groups, were forwarded to places where the thieves thought they would do the most good--or harm, as it were, to the FBI. Among the recipients: liberal Columnist Tom Wicker of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, South Dakota Senator George McGovern and Congressman Parren Mitchell, a black Democrat from Maryland.

Suspect Boy Scouts. There was a strong suspicion that the theft was in some way connected to the case of the Berrigan brothers, the Catholic priests accused of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and blow up Government property. The Media office is part of the FBI's Philadelphia division, which is handling the Berrigan investigation. Three days after the theft, Haverford Professor William Davidon, named as a co-conspirator in the Berrigan case, revealed the name of the raiding group before a gathering of clergymen and gave his unabashed approval of the theft.

Beyond that, one of the stolen documents dealt with a Moscow, Idaho, Boy Scout leader named Thomas Ingerson who had requested visas from the Soviet embassy for his troop to make a Russian tour this summer. Another file contained a directive from FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, saying in part: "Increased campus disorders involving black students pose a definite threat to the nation's stability and security and indicate need for increase in both quality and quantity of intelligence information . . . [concerning such] groups which are targets for influence and control by the violence-prone Black Panther party and other extremists."

Although a harsh critic of FBI surveillance techniques, Senator McGovern quickly returned his copies to the Justice Department, saying he refused to be linked with "this illegal action by a private group" and adding that the burglary hampered "reasonable and constructive efforts to secure appropriate public review" of bureau activities.

The newspaper editors involved were faced with a stickier problem: how to handle the stolen information. Inevitably such documents can contain inaccurate, outrageous "raw" data based on unchecked hearsay. Attorney General Mitchell's statement was a direct plea to the press to suppress the information at hand. Yet the Washington Post, quickly followed by the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, decided to publish accounts of the theft as well as the general contents of some of the documents. Said Ben Bagdikian, the Post's national editor, after a telephone call from Mitchell: "We thought it was a significant matter of public controversy, and once we confirmed that the documents were authentic, we decided to go ahead. It was an insight into something the public needs to know." Accordingly, a Post editorial stated that this particular revelation of "FBI activity in the name of internal security seems to us extremely disquieting," and suggested "an appropriate committee of the Congress ought to look much more thoroughly at what the bureau is doing."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.