this complex reputation. he had somebody who got rings done. said that was how lemay ended up running the b-29 operation. interesting thing about the air force, operated the b-29 was that willoughby said their air forces, fifth and others each had a commander. he maintained personal command of the, but his field commander is curtis lemay. when it came time -- when hap and didn't sequestered, one of the guys they brought in as part of their little group was curtis lemay. so he did have a respect for the

man's ability to cut through the craft and get this done. >> okay. thank you again. [inaudible] [applause] i'm sure you'd be happy to sign it. so if you want to grab those. you may have been wondering camilo be famous because it expands helping us today. i don't know when that will air, but stay tuned. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> now look at the life and political career of aaron burr

with our partner cox communications. >> burrell was probably the greatest of the known alleged conspirators and it led to what i think has been running for the prowl of the century but the former vice president of the united states on trial for preaching against the united states. >> host: who was aaron burr as a person? >> guest: his grandfather was jonathan edwards, great leader of the great awakening his claim to fame was his bone chilling sermon sinners and himself studied for the ministry for a while before he decided it was not for him. he then studied law under his famous brother-in-law tapping reeve who created the most famous law school in the united states at the time in litchfield, connecticut. he then stopped his study of law to serve in the continental army.

he was involved in the initial invasion of québec, which did not go well, it became a minor hero for helping extra treat the troops were not was a fairly famous officer in the army for the rest of the war and then begin to type this law in new york along with his friend and competitor alexander hamilton. they often collaborated and found themselves on different type. or is very capable, intelligent and quickly rose through the political ranks in new york, the chief united states senator and from there was a short step to becoming a vice presidential candidate in 1796 an actual vice president in 1801. >> host: why this aronberg considered a dark figure? >> guest: he's somewhat of a mystery. he very much kept in views to himself. he was not of his being a political intrigue or. he was not hotheaded. he was calm, a bit aloof, had a

great deal of personal magnetism. people have considered the possibility he's a sociopath. he was good at manipulating people, moving himself into positions of political power. but in the end, he apparently alienated everyone. he alienated the federalist political party, republican political party. he alienated most of the leading political factions in his state of new york and in the end, going down a friend and professional rival of his come alexander hamilton while he was the sitting vice president and from there moved on to these adventures in this output and accused of treason against his own country. >> why did he get into a duel with hamilton? >> guest: he got into a duel with hamilton in 1804 during his final year as vice president.

i think the thing that instigated that was his failure to win election as governor of new york and he believed hamilton had intrigued against him to keep them out of power. he knew he was not going to be reelected vice president. so he sees the pretense of hamilton having had some unpleasant, something described as despicable. so he deliberately chose to challenge hamilton on that. hamilton obfuscated. hamilton refused to explain himself and therefore challenged him to a duel. it's a bit of a mystery as to why he did that. even more of a mystery that he killed hamilton. he once referred to my friend hamilton whom i shot. but there is a great deal about burr it is inexplicable. many people have theories of their son ms. evidence to support most of them. >> host: what was he like as a person? >> guest: charming. obviously very interested in

what the person he is talking to to say. burr was also very capable at reading people and very capable of interact with people. one thing we always hear about or often hear about from people who no burr are his eyes. they are dark. they are incredibly intelligent eyes. you see over and over again people making reference to how striking his is. he has all that, of a sociopath. i think he is a sociopath, to some people he was a functioning sociopath. >> host: can you give an example? >> guest: this i.t. shop at his best friends in a duel and told a large number of lies about what he was doing in the west in order to attempt to raise money for whatever he actually was doing in the west. was he planning to invade

mexico? was he planning to send her the western part of the union from the rest of the 90s they? was he planning to march on washington and proclaim himself the new president? was he planning deadly to settle land in louisiana? he told many different people variations on all of these stories that couldn't all be true. obviously those stories were designed to manipulate people and a lot of them believe it. >> host: when he was charged with treason, what is the treasonous act he committed? >> guest: in the end he was acquitted in the turn-of-the-century. the problem is here told so many stories and so many groups on the frontier involved in so many different things. it is hard for president jefferson and prosecutors to find anything or have actually done. the act of prosecutors finally on took place on the ohio river

in the current day state of west virginia. back then it would've been virginia. him and his wife were wealthy irish settlers who had solid under per spell and used his island as an initial staging area. one night in december 1806, the ohio militia were about to the island because there were many men they are preparing to get in boats and go down extensively as part of birth expedition. the militia attempted to arrest some of the ringleaders they are and the other settlers pulled guns on them. that claimed prosecutors as the overt act of treason required by the constitution. burr himself was not there and ultimately the prosecution could not prove that burr himself had procured data, headed to gaited

it. based on the ruling of circuit judge, john marshall who is chief justice of the supreme court, but also serving as trial judge at this time based on marshall's definition of treason, the fact that burr was not there and not shown to procure that treason was enough to block any possible conviction of trained again. ..

>> thomas jefferson the president who blamed both for trying to steal the presidency prompted him into the election of 1800 and had a great deal of animosity for the actually pronounced or guilty before the trial took place. so you see the politics in all of its nastiness and we see the grant legal battles and personal battles and uc policy battles as well. you see a great deal of insecurity among these leaders and the fact that they are willing to do this at all. and it's really quite a plight of everything to criminal procedure to partisan politics and it tells us a lot about the other side in many different directions.

>> for more information on booktv to georgia and the other cities we have visited in our local content vehicle, go to c-span.org/local content. >> you're watching booktv. next, the story of the march march 1971 break-in at fbi offices in pennsylvania i ate activists from the group citizens commission to investigate the guy. the documents they stole revealed j. edgar hoover's counterintelligence program that targeted owners of the black panther party are not limited to that movement. this is a little over one hour. ♪ double mocha. >> in the spring of 1970, the

war in be a non-is raging. >> american deaths now number 40,142 in vietnam. at home, antiwar protesters were violently clashing. >> i felt it unfolding. and i talked about what was going on and i realized what was going on. >> on a range work at a daycare center. her husband taught religion at temple university and they were the very picture of a older couple. >> i had an 8-year-old and a six-year-old and a 2-year-old and we were family folks who also wanted to keep another track active in our lives, which was political activism. >> and attracted the attention of the fbi and its director and the powerful j. edgar hoover in the anti-were movement that

ranged is a threat to national security. >> at one rally i had one of my children on my back. not only did they take my picture but her picture as well. they became increasingly convinced that they were conducting a covert campaign against them. tapping their phones and infiltrating their phones. >> we knew the the fbi was trying to squash dissent come up and that is the lifeblood of democracy. reporter: the fbi was crossing the line. he reached out to the reagan ring family and six others come including a social worker and a grassroots student and keith forsyte. >> we agreed to meet somewhere we could talk and i look at him and i'm like, you are serious, aren't you and i was dealing in

my opposition to the war and i felt like it was not cutting it anymore to march up the street. and i thought, it's time to kick it up a notch. >> they decided to break up into a field office in pennsylvania. >> once i got over the shock of thinking that this is the money thing that ever heard in my life, i was like, this is a great idea. because we are not to make any allegations whatsoever. we are going to do to the newspapers. so let's see him argue with that. >> the team divvied up responsibilities and assigned tasks. they learn about the neighborhood and planned escape routes and they took extensive notes on the comings and goings in the building. >> i signed up for a correspondence course and that was my job. to give us practice several

times a week. >> bonnie was to find a job of going inside the office. >> i went to call the office and make an appointment as a student doing research on opportunities for women in the fbi. so they gave me an appointment and i try to tried to disguise myself as best as i could and i found out where the file cabinets were. >> she discovered that there was no alarm system and no security guard. she also found a second door leading inside. >> when she came back without this, we became convinced that yes, i think we can get this done. we had more to lose than anyone in the group because we have these things. >> we face the reality of being arrested. if we have that happen we would be imprisoned for many years. so we had to make some plans.

reporter: with a solid understanding of how they would conduct the break-in, they now needed to figure out when. >> march 8, 1971. they were filing for the championship should have the feeling that the cops could be a little bit distractor last. >> the crew raided a nearby hotel and forsyth arrived at the office alone. >> i pull up and walk up to the door as i just about had a heart attack and i could not pics outfox. >> at that point you know you're going to have to wing it. pick the lock on the 22nd. i had a short crowbar with me and i put the ordinary that

sucker out for one foreign i had heard a notice. and i said there's only one way to find out. i'm going in. >> the inside crew was going inside the businesses and they cleaned out file cabinets and made their way to the getaway car and drove off onerous. the group reconvened an hour's drive away and started unpacking. >> it was like oh, man, i can't believe this worked. we knew that there would be some gold in there somewhere. and then it's like, oh, oh, look at this one. >> the documents looked the most revealing, the burglars sent copies to journalists, including "the washington post" reporters tran-ones.

>> cover letter was the citizens commission to investigate the ei. in the first was about the fbi agents were told to enhance the kernel to in the antiwar movement and create an atmosphere behind every mailbox. >> attorney john mittal said he asked them not to write about this document, saying that could endanger lives. >> called cheeky editors and try to him. reporter: for the post published a story and it was the first of several points and hold how agents told local police and letter carriers and switchboard operators were turned into conformance. >> very strong editorials on the fbi. >> another call was mysterious.

reporters tried to uncover its meaning and the fbi was desperate to find the burglars. the bureau put 200 agents in the investigation. the best lead was the college girl who visited their office. >> he said finally that woman. >> agents search for her, but there were many activists that fit her description. >> we could hide within thousands of people and there were so many of us who are active. >> two years later, carl stern figured out the meaning of that word. >> cbs documents said that j. edgar hoover ordered a nationwide campaign to disrupt the activities of the new left without telling any of his superiors about it. it was clearly illegal, burglaries, blackmail letters. >> the fbi initially defended him. >> the government would have

been wrong in its duty had not taken measures to protect the fabric of our society. >> but the bureau of techniques or worse in the targets were more far-reaching than the burglars ever imagined. >> government employees, forced figures, socially prominent persons, senators and others break the fbi at one time related that they thought martin luther king was talked into suicide. >> many americans have their footsteps and mailed in by the cia and the fbi and their tax returns used illegally. >> when william webster took over the fbi in 1978, his mandate was their. >> my primary focus is making her that intel pro is no longer one of the arrows in the quiver of the fbi and we were out of that forever.

>> they believed that the activities were out of bounds. >> you can say the information might be useful but the method is hardly justifiable. there is a way to take on the unjust law and deal with it in that way. you know, there were things happening that were flat out wrong. how you treat your fellow man. and we took a risk to try to do what we could to put a stop to it. >> the burglars were never caught. five years later with the statute of limitations running out, the fbi closed the case unsolved. >> on the last memo where they say who broke into the office, it was narrow down the seven people. >> for nearly 20 years betty medsger had no idea who the burglars were until one night an old acquaintance who's having

dinner with let it slip. >> my youngest daughter mary was there and i said, you ought to know better because she was the one that she sent all the documents to. >> i was absolutely stunned. >> betty medsger spent years tracking down the documents. the mastermind recently died. but he and four others are identified in the book called "the burglary: the discovery of j. edgar hoover's secret fbi." and in the new documentary, 1971, directed by johanna hamilton. >> we made this extraordinary story on a seemingly small event. >> exposure pushed government to rein in government surveillance and created a special court, the so-called pfizer court.

just how much it had grown, it was largely unknown until 2131 contractor edward snowden leak classified documents. >> they have to decide whether these programs or policies are right or wrong. >> u.s. government obtaining top-secret work orders, demanding that they turn over millions of information to the government surveillance agency iraq a lot of questions remain about privacy and security. >> i definitely see parallels between snowden's case in our case and it changed public opinion, which is why the laws were changed to get people arguing about what the nsa is doing now, i think that is a good thing ♪

♪ [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> hello, everyone. welcome. i have been asked to ask you to silence her cell phone and please refrain from flash photos. i wrote for the philadelphia evening bulletin number of years ago. [applause] [laughter] >> tonight i am honored to introduce betty medsger, the author of the burglary and the

discovery of j. edgar hoover's secret fbi. as well as the members of the courageous antiwar activist group the was their future to break into the fbi office in pennsylvania 43 years ago. [applause] during the following week after the burglary, while the fbi was looking frantically for the perpetrators, they moved 200 agents into the neighborhood where i think many all from this audience live. [applause] >> the group called itself the citizens commission to investigate the fbi photocopied and mailed out hundreds of the fbi's directives that prove beyond any doubt that the fbi

had been waging an illegal and secretive, criminal war against political dissent and civil rights and equal rights activism and justice. the citizens commission sent the first batch of files to five people. the journalist and two members of congress. it shows how powerful j. edgar hoover's old lies. because some of those who received the file turn them over to the fbi. the one person did not was betty medsger, who was a reporter at "the washington post." [applause] truth of her story about the content of those documents and after "the washington post" had talked about it, it was a struggle for them because this

is not popular thinking. people didn't believe it unless it had happened to them. others picked up the story. that opened the floodgates of investigation that would unmask hoover and the fbi and open public's mind to the pentagon papers, watergate, and other activities of our government that were legal. for years we've never known the identity of these burglars. but now through betty medsger and her brilliant book, we not only get to go inside the burglary itself, but inside lives in the minds of the people who were committed. and at times it was so passionate with the escalation of the war, she really showed

what compelled these activists to take these risks to right the wrongs that they were seeing. and she was a perfect person to do this book. she has been working on it for 20 years. she not only worked as a journalist for "the washington post" and the philadelphia evening bulletin, but she became chair of the journalism department at san francisco state university, and she was the founder of the center for integration and improvement of journalism. in her research and this book is exhaustive. and the story is so compelling that it's hard to imagine how many documents you read and how many interviews she conducted over two decades to create this book. alone she read the 33,698 pages that the fbi had put out about burglary among other things.

on stage with her tonight will be three of the eight members of the citizens who were led by their hearts and their heads to take these risks for all of us. they have always been heroes because they knew what we were experiencing but have not had any evidence of the four and that was not necessarily believed. they have three young children at the time of the burglary and keith forsyth is now an engineer and he went to the school to learn how to pick the locks. john raines is a professor of religion and had been a freedom writer in 1960s when he witnessed the war.

and had been educated as a director of the day care center at the time of the burglary. in the missing person tonight [inaudible] he died this past november. so sadly is not here with us. but betty writes that the one of the public to know that despite the vast power, the giant goliath was honorable, especially when the david's join together. please join me in welcoming betty medsger, bonnie raines, and keith forsyth.

[applause] [applause] [applause] >> good evening. it is wonderful to be here near the home of the burglaries in the home of the investigation that was done by 200 fbi agents. in case you haven't seen him recently, you may have heard the names keith forsyth and bonnie raines and john raines. and it's especially nice to be

here in this immediate area and this is the neighborhood that bill and his wife lived in uris prior to her death in 2010. including coming here for events. if you are hearing and have this enthusiasm that you know a lot about the burglaries. and so i won't rehash the details except for some things out like to say. it really began in 1970 when bill had a very powerful idea. as you move from peace organization to peace organization that year, people kept telling him that they thought that there were spies and there met. he would not believe it.

he was not someone who speculated or to believe in conspiracies. as the time went on, he thought people were imagining things and people had such a sense of a lack of hope or depression about what they felt was their failure to stop the war. and so as he heard this more and more, and from a greater brave people, he decided that i think that this is true. and if it is true, if the government is officially part of this, this was a crime against democracy and a crime that needs to be stopped. and that idea was the origin of the questions that he then asked 10 people that he met with individually in late 1970 and asked what do you think of

burglarizing an fbi office. [laughter] now, not a question that many people would ask. he invited 10 people, one said no. and then there were none. and then not long before, but several days before the burglary, they abandoned the group. that person knew everything that was planned and these people and the other burglars didn't seem to be phased by that or a number of other obstacle is that i think most people would be phased by it. and they proceeded to plan and they seemed to have ended have the same resolve that bill had. it was hard for many of us to imagine.

how do you get evidence that the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country is also the most secretive and the most protected organization, i think most people would say that they would think that this is a problem that cannot be solved. they would say it's terrible and they would lament and bill was a problem solver and thought that this problem is not too big to solve. but it's so big that it must be solved. in that commitment and the others that join with him, this was born. it was a confirmation that the burglary had occurred. someone at the fbi said something about it as profound as to things missing and two weeks later they found out

everything was missing. in the dark the burglars have gone and they had removed every piece of paper that they found and they found about a thousand files. the documents shocked the american public. and again, it is so important to remember the type of person that he was in there was a file that said that enhance the paranoia and make people think that there's an fbi agent behind every mailbox. that was a devastating thing to discover about the top law enforcement agency in the country. people started calling major numbers of congress to call for an investigation of the fbi major newspapers and editorials called or an investigation of the fbi, including the

philadelphia inquirer, which i don't think at that point had written anything but praise for j. edgar hoover and the fbi. so fortunately when i accidentally found two of the burglars, in 1989, fortunately they had agreed to come forward and tell their story. they first came forward on the day that the burglaries book was published. it was also about their story that will be shown here for the first time on may 28 that at the constitution center, it seems like a very appropriate thing at

the constitution center. and so things to this, that they would no longer be silent, this includes the significance of what they did and hope that it is remembered. i will start with a question that i think a lot of people ask and it was just asked of me by reporter today who is trying to figure out how we were able to do this. what made it possible for you to do such a radical thing. was it in your evolution at that time? how would you describe how it was possible? >> i think that that is probably harder for the younger people to understand and there were an

awful lot of things very wrong with our country at that time. not that it's perfect today. and so it didn't seem like a momentous decision at the moment. and no one whose job it is to do something is doing anything about it. and it just seems like, let's do it. i don't know how else to explain it. >> what about the evolution that you went through? you had done a lot of work and you have been a different person. >> yes, i come from the midwest in a small town.

but then i felt much about politics as a kid, but a relatively conservative environment is what i grew up in. and so certainly in those days i was never imagining doing something like that. and i think this happened is a lot of things. they gave me a small book about the history of vietnam. and at the time he gave me this book, i was uninterested in politics he was trying to convince me that i should be. and it turned my whole life upside down because this short book detailed the history of

american involvement in vietnam and documented very well why there was no reason for us to be there. it was about empire. not about democracy. all the things that i had been told by the media and society at large, we were over there and we were all alive area and so was quite a difficult thing to accept because this wasn't i just wasn't used to the idea of thinking that people were lying to me. but the quakers were in organization i had a lot of respect for. it came from a religious that ground. there was a process involved that i was convinced that they were right.

and so at that point i just felt like i had to do something about this. so i hope that answers your question. >> each of you describe this. >> i guess that i always felt that we are concerned about the underdog. and we are particularly aware of the children in east harlem. and the inequality that goes on there. then i moved on from teaching school in new york and joining

an enormous movement in protest against the war and there were many activists in philadelphia at that time and i was anxious to affiliate with those activists and look for ways to take action. and we did all of that to no avail and the war was escalating and i just became very very interested in protesting and that became an affiliation with the group at that time which was called the catholic left in the group was called east coast conspiracy to save lives. with that group we went in at

the middle of the night and removed files and store them but one of many who had that civil disobedience. and we were doing what we could to disrupt the system, but the war continued to escalate. therefore it became a compelling thing for me to find another way is a concerned woman to take action to begin to change systems in a serious kind of way. and that drew me into what was interested in something which is to break in and remove files and talk about hard evidence of what was going on at that time.

>> i think it's so important that we realize what they did. they had no idea. whether they would find any documents that they had in mind. edward snowden knew exactly what he was doing and he saw the evidence and they face the same risks if they had found empty forms, they would have faced the same thing if they had found a significantly. and john talked in the past about the evolution and what made it possible. >> i suspect that i'm looking at

people who are back in the 1960s and some of you were in the street with me. philadelphia was the center of this there were thousands protesting from 1965 all down through. i learned my burglary skills from priests and nuns and it was wonderful experience. and i got active and i was a freedom rider in little rock. and that began for me at an education in minneapolis, minnesota, private schools in elite schools.

all of that stuff. the education i got first, i didn't choose it. was a life lived from top-down and a world understood in an identity formed and shaped by inside privilege and power. so i didn't know what it was like to live in america, but only a little tiny bubble at the top. i got an education and my teachers were the gospel to me. they tell me taught me what it meant to be an american. and i learned the price you're willing to pay for freedom and i saw people lose their jobs and i

was standing behind a black woman in southwest georgia and she said it never come to my house and work again. and that changed my understanding of the meaning of the vote. it easy to have cynicism is about this. and all of that kind of stuff. but those teachers taught me what it's like when you have to struggle for freedom. and you have to struggle for dignity. that changed me. and i came back from the south with a different way and that is what i brought to the war in vietnam. and i knew what j. edgar hoover

wise. because he hated martin luther king and the civil rights movement. and he was not a good man. he has been the largest subversive in american history fighting subversion and subverting the freedom of this country. he was the most powerful man in washington. [applause] >> and he did get away with it for a half-century.

at that time, the fbi in the 1970s would have never been investigated and none of the questions were then raised had it not been for this. despite all of the courage that you have and the willingness to go ahead, there also was a good deal of fear, and i'm wondering if you could talk about some of your experiences. first a very practical one from keith. there were a couple of times and had unexpected experiences. >> on average --

>> the lock picker olympics, which was the center of the planning laugh at. >> just want to correct a slight misstatement. i studied it to break into other things first. [applause] >> but you got your mission accomplished. [laughter] >> the fbi was kind of like the graduate school. [laughter] >> we were all dressed very well and those people did not need this from this perspective, but there were two of us the dead. so we got that and we were willing to sacrifice a lot. [laughter]

and so in addition to this, i had checked out this from the outside sometime before my way back there that night, it was different than before. >> and there was one more lock they thought there was? >> the memory was a little vague after all these years, but taking your pet, not a problem. and so don't worry. [laughter] and so one of the locks when i

arrived that night, it was a high-security type of lock see today on a bike lock and that takes a special techniques. so at that moment my heart sank because immediately i thought that i am incompetent because i've been through this before and i can't get through the door. so after reading some of the documents that turned out, at that point i completely lost my cool and i was not able to keep calm and think of a second plan. i freaked out and call back to headquarters. it probably wasn't a coherent at the time. i was very upset.

so that time i didn't get myself out of the fair. when you really want something very badly, and when you think you're not going to get it, you get very upset. so they said let's think about this and ill was the king of calm. and others quite a few people that knew bill and he just did not get flustered. and he's so analytical and we all talked about it so then i started to feel that much better. i only went about a quarter of

an inch and there is a double on the other side. so i can hear the radio of the building manager underneath my feet and he lived right beneath what i was working. so i thought, i wonder how long loud it will be one of the existing open with a crowbar and will he hear me. so i did and i try to make it as quick as possible. and apparently my theory was right because nothing happened. this is somewhere in this process of getting through the second door i heard a clicking sound. and at that point i was scared.

and i didn't know if it was the heating system or the fbi jost and furniture. so what are you going to do? you take a couple of deep breaths and you hope it goes okay. and it's something that you can't imagine giving up at that point. >> this is happening in a very public place. >> right. >> guesstimates taking place in an apartment building. >> you were going out to a well lit space and he went up the stairs and everything was open where people live.

and so people were concerned that residents might come by. what was planned to take about 30 seconds ended up taking quite a long time. >> yes, it took much longer. i got another half-inch stopped again there was a big file cabinet. [laughter] >> you had no choice. >> right. we forgot to move out while we were in there. [laughter] so i could tell by the way the door moved that the doorknob started pushing and it started tipping.

and it hit the ground because i know that would've awakened everyone in the building. and the floor was carpet and thank goodness this was 1971 and not 20 years later than they had real jacks and cars and got the jack out and so there was laying on the floor the whole way. >> working the crowbar about a millimeter at a time. i don't remember how long it took me. it seemed like 100 years was probably at least 20 minutes as he you couldn't move very far without tipping it over.

it would be pretty hard to explain but i finally got inside. >> with talk about a different kind of thing. he talked about fear and concern and john bunting had three small children at the time. >> right. bonnie was much more courageous after she went into the fbi and found that there was no security devices and then it became clear that we were going to do this.

that's when i started getting nervous. because i knew that j. edgar hoover do everything he could have cost and he did. they were everywhere. reported all over the place. so for the first five years i was scared and we were very lucky that we have had done this carefully. we were not regulus. and there were thousands of this and we could disappear. and to this sea of fellow activists with very little else to separate us from the other

dozen activists and it became impossible to respectively but are certainly looking over my shoulder every now and then. >> i think that we ca think thae realization that it's up to every citizen in a democracy to protect our rights in a democracy and if there is abuse, you can't just back and wait for someone not to either take action or look the other way.

we were thinking about the kind of society are children would grow up into and what was that going to be and what was it going to look like in terms of true democracy. and we wanted to try to guarantee the rights of all citizens as much as we could individually. so in some ways we need to be more responsible as we are investing in our children's future. and we were a political family. her children were hearing a lot about activism and they were beginning to understand the values that were so important to us and to our colleagues as

well. >> is still require fathers and mothers to take on jobs to protect and help the rest of us to put them in jeopardy. everyday policeman goes to work, he or she puts their kids lives on the line. climb the lae. climb the ladder and put their families in jeopardy and this includes mothers and fathers in the armed services overseas. so part of the single most important gift is not the education of the less important. but it is the children and grandchildren and that's the

most important gift that we give our kids. we did not stop j. edgar hoover, no one would. gorgeous women get done. >> i was just going to say what john had mentioned. >> one of the youngest members of the group at the time, do you e of the youngest members of the group at the time, do you remember? [laughter] >> you are a father now. [laughter] >> you remember when you saw those three kids running around? >> oh, absolutely. i thought these people are people with guts, meaning these two right here.

[applause] and i was very impressed. >> asking one more question before we turn to the audience. thinking of the aftermath, what you think is the most important discovery or lessen that emerged from the burglary and its impact? >> that you can get to the point where you can succeed and be done. [applause] >> i think that a life is tough but he's not impenetrable.

>> i think it has something to do with true, that you can get the truth out there and articulate the message that needs to go out and people take that seriously and change their expectations of their own government. and i learned how frightening that it is a one man and one institution can gather so much raw power to do what he did over five decades and that is frightening to me and hopefully will not ever happen again. that lesson was certainly there.

>> are very strong on the points and we talked about the importance of this and trying over and over again and checking out how many times this movement did fail. this one time we did succeed and how good it felt. >> we would like to take questions from the audience. >> there's a microphone coming. >> would you want to identify herself and that. >> yes, i spent a lot of years and there was a night on april 4 where we were planning the demonstration that would happen and we have been told there was

a chance that martin luther king would come to demonstration in the city basically gave the schedule and all this intended to be part of it. and i think he was really our leader and he was a great inspiration. john went to answer it and i think all of us were wondering about this. the battleship new jersey had been christened and so he couldn't talk and join over and john was just really upset.

but i understand there is a document where huber said we are going to have to use the drug strategy and there there was a total enemy going on here. >> so what about the one where king was talking about exporting jobs? >> we didn't know what that meant with the counterintelligence program on top of one of the documents. we didn't know what that was. it took about two or three years that worked with nbc, carl

stern. and one of those documents was the letter that was sent anonymously to martin luther king in 1964. ..

>> good evening and thanks for attending this. admitted to fbi files are where they are also cia files included? >> were there any cia files? now, no. the files we obtained during just two categories. one about 40% of them are related to criminal investigations and we didn't want to do anything with those because we didn't want to jeopardize witnesses, for example. about xt% of the documents were political in nature and not solely concentrated on and that's where we found some very incriminating pieces of information. there was nothing related to national security with the

weather. [inaudible] >> how did you form your group? who did you spend the documents to quiet >> so, starting with the last question, we sent out the document sort of in waves. the initials that went to betty, to scoop nelson at the washington bureau of "the l.a. times" to tom wicker to representative perry mitchell into senator george mcgovern. senator mcgovern and representative michel sent them back to the fbi. mitchell at least said there was disturbing material in it, which is further than mcgovern went.

so once that went to tom wicker went back to the fbi also. i don't think anyone knows for sure how that happened whether they were intercepted and returned, no one knows. once he went to scoop nelson, he went to his deathbed never knowing he could send the files is the mailroom person was an fbi informer and was reading all of his mail. inside the document sent to the fbi before he got them. locally was not high enough for the enemies is to have real private informer appears to the documents got through to her. later on they were sent to other people as well. as far as to get together, beatty described it accurately. bill decided who he thought was transferred to purchase one at a time that was how the group was organized. i saw that someone -- if defeat

at the returns would be the only hate to do. we agreed not to get together again after we finish distributing the rest of the documents for security reasons, which is also why we didn't keep everything that we found. we trashed a lot of it because it was basically evident. so we called the most important thing distributed characterize, counting of what we had but we didn't keep it and we didn't answer didn't stay at each other. we intentionally based equally avoided each other. >> i would like to add jack nelson. at that time, but 1971, there are probably only two reporters in the country who had written anything that raised questions about jay edgar hoover and the

fbi. the strongest one of those was jack nelson. what has been discovered later since then is at that that time, hoover had a very active campaign doing inside "the l.a. times" to get checked elsen fired. he filled out, but he succeeded in some ways by there being somebody inside the office to look at his mail and made sure he never got the mail. >> two questions. eddie, how long was it between the time you received the files in your first tory? >> i received files at 10:00 in the morning and by 10:00 at night katharine graham had decided to publish and they were in the next day's paper.

[applause] that was not a simple thing though. she did not want to publish. it was the first time that a journalist editors the secret government files from someone out that the government in contrast to an inside whistleblower. so that reset the political questions in the insight count also opposed publication. the two editors commend ben bradley strongly pushed for publication and changed her mind. this is also the first time the nixon administration had pressed her to not publish a story. she had much practice with that later on this e-mail. >> the second question is for the group. are there any files till out there?

how did you destroy them click >> well, with the criminal files i think we just heard them. we just redone. the political files resent all of them off that we had. >> we photocopied them first. >> that was interesting, too. bill took half of the files to a copying machine and i took the other half. how many people are from tampa? [laughter] on the weekend when the office was closed, i wiki to get in. i took half of the files to a judge. last night we didn't realize that every xerox machine has a

fingerprint. you can trace back a given document copy to a particular machine. we didn't know that at the time. after two weeks, the story broke. i was in my office monday and i saw a xerox car pull up the curb, guy get out, came into a xerox machine, remove the drum and left. the great mystery as he was that guy? i mean, the files that i can't beat could've been traced right to that office, but it never happened. >> he was interdisciplinary. the physics department, and they are xerox machine is heavy duty. let's see, yes. be nice so i am sure they keep

saying echoes of yourselves and edward snowden, although what he did was slightly different. we seen a lot of outrage over the information is public and not a lot of action. in your opinion, what do we do next? >> well, make demands of citizens. we knew something about the f. b. i. to intimidate, not to investigate. the safe political action. nasa and cia want us to be afraid. in some strange way, nasa and the cia run on this day of gasoline as the terrorist. the terrorists want us to be afraid to go into public space that we share in common that we must take for granted. we can't get on the bus and

think this guy might be a terrorist. we have to take it for granted. the cia, nsa, and they want us to be afraid. they need us to be afraid. there are thousands and thousands and thousands of shots depending on us continuing to be afraid, really think we have to have dozens and hundreds of thousands of people out there protecting us. we give each other the gift of safety every time i walk out of the door in the morning. we are the ones who provide a safe environment for all of us. i am not downplaying terrorism. i'm just saying there's some kind of strange ideology. you need us. don knotts this question. be afraid. be afraid. well, look out.

some of us won't be afraid. [applause] >> i just want to say something really direct related to the question. i think that, you know, there has been most of the people who commented in one way or the other about what we did in our recent coming out has been favorable. you know, editorials in the favor and comments on the internet and so on and so forth. if this had been 30 or 40 years ago, i bet the proportion of favorable comments would have been an awful lot less. the reality wouldn't have been different, but the opinion would have been. i think we see a little bit of that with edwards noting. there was an hilarious on "the daily show" by him getting pardoned a sun president 300 years from now. you know, it is funny because it

is sad and because it's true. i am grateful people are in favor of revealing government illegitimate secrets by whatever means necessary. in some ways it's more pertinent to ask what can we do about what's happening today. i don't know if the answer to that is. we have to figure it out and do something. >> hi, my name is bob smith, which was formed in media just a few years after the break and. i am not partial to using the term burglary since i've been charged with a poor civil disobedience action. but i did want to ask a couple

of things. many times over the years and we felt on average on the anniversary of the march 8 break-in on international women's day that we saw the celebration there that would connect very much for the currently truth telling and for resisting the fear. i would just like to hold a of course you mentioned a very close friend of many of ours, but to remember philip perry can have taught us to break through the fear into john peter grady, who many of us now as part of the east coast conspiracy. anyway, so i would just like to invite you all and anyone here on march 80 at an end to come

out to media were going to have immediate meet up in front of the dover county courthouse at veteran square and front street, which is right across the street from where the county court apartment building, where the fbi and the select service office is located just 10 feet from their there was the subject of many acts of civil disobedience, which the fbi go with an anything but nonviolent faction and against a few of us. anyway, to invite everyone, and amy to talk about -- with you all, to come out to media on march 8, saturday march 8 at noon for what we are calling immediate meet up for the common civil liberties and