On March 8, 1971 eight ordinary citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, a town just outside Philadelphia, took hundreds of secret files, and shared them with the public. In doing so, they uncovered the FBI’s vast and illegal regime of spying and intimidation of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.
On the night of the “Fight of the Century” boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, the activists, calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, picked the lock on the door to the small FBI field office. They took every file in the office, loaded them into suitcases, and walked out the front door.
Mailed anonymously, the documents started to show up in newsrooms. The heist yielded a trove of damning evidence that proved the FBI was deliberately working to intimidate civil rights activists and Americans nonviolently protesting the Vietnam War. The most significant revelation was an illegal program overseen by lifelong FBI director J. Edgar Hoover known as COINTELPRO – the Counter Intelligence Program.
Despite searching for the people behind the heist in one of the largest investigations ever conducted, the FBI never solved the mystery of the break-in, and the identities of the members of the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI remained a secret.
Until now.
For the first time, the members of the Citizens’ Commission have decided to come forward and speak out about their actions. 1971 is their story….
Archives for April 2014
1971, Johanna Hamilton, 2014
A Star Player [Jameis Winston] Accused, and a Flawed Rape Investigation by the Tallahassee Police Department and Florida State University
Walt Bogdanich, A Star Player Accused, and a Flawed Rape Investigation. The New York Times, 16 April 2014. “Early on the morning of Dec. 7, 2012, a freshman at Florida State University reported that she had been raped by a stranger somewhere off campus after a night of drinking at a popular Tallahassee bar called Potbelly’s. As she gave her account to the police, several bruises began to appear, indicating recent trauma. Tests would later find semen on her underwear. For nearly a year, the events of that evening remained a well-kept secret until the woman’s allegations burst into the open, roiling the university and threatening a prized asset: Jameis Winston, one of the marquee names of college football. Three weeks after Mr. Winston was publicly identified as the suspect, the storm had passed. The local prosecutor announced that he lacked the evidence to charge Mr. Winston with rape. The quarterback would go on to win the Heisman Trophy and lead Florida State to the national championship.”
The Resegregation of America’s Schools 60 Years After Brown v. Board of Education
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Segregation Now: The Resegregation of America’s Schools. ProPublica, 16 April 2014. “60 years ago [1954], the Supreme Court ruled that ‘separate but equal’ had no place in American schools. ‘Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments…. It is the very foundation of good citizenship.’ Brown v. Board, 1954. The ruling spurred years of protests, school closures, military intervention, and resistance across the South before a wave of court orders finally forced schools to integrate. Now, the South is seeing a resurgence of segregation. This is the story of schools in Tuscaloosa, Ala–where a series of backroom deals and difficult compromises have had devastating consequences.”
VA [Veterans Affairs] in crisis: The Arizona Republic investigation
Dennis Wagner, Deaths at Phoenix VA hospital may be tied to delayed care. The Arizona Republic, 10 April 2014. Winner of the 2014 IRE [Investigative Reporters & Editors] Award for Print/Online–Meduim. “IRE Judges’ comments: While the story of poor care for veterans has been told well by media outlets across the country, reporting by the Arizona Republic propelled this story into a national scandal with sweeping results. The team’s stories revealed that veterans were dying while waiting for basic health care services at the Phoenix VA. Meanwhile, officials were manipulating records to hide the long wait times. Writing more than 100 stories during the year [2014], the reporters told the stories of individual veterans whose pleas for treatment were ignored until it was too late. This skillfully reported series helped lead to national reform, investigations and resignations, including U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. The project demonstrates the benefits of solid beat reporting and not letting go of a story once the national media jumps in.”
ACLU’s NSA Documents Database
ACLU’s NSA Documents Database. 3 April 2014. “The public debate over our government’s surveillance programs has reached remarkable heights since the first set of NSA disclosures in June 2013 based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Since then, additional disclosures by both the press and government have illuminated our government’s vast and invasive surveillance apparatus. These documents stand as primary source evidence of our government’s interpretation of its authority to engage in sweeping surveillance activities at home and abroad, and how it carries out that surveillance. The ACLU hopes to facilitate this debate by making these documents more easily accessible and understandable…. We will update the database with new documents as they become available to the public.”