Earlier this week, I wrote an extensive book review of former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger's The Burglary (2014, Alfred A. Knopf). This book chronicles a break-in at the Media, Pennsylvania, branch office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1971, and the subsequent release to the public of files proving the F.B.I. was spending something like 40 percent of its time spying on and harassing political groups and individuals that J. Edgar Hoover didn't approve of. The burglars, who operated under the name "Citizens' Commission to Investigate the F.B.I.," were never caught, despite a five-year F.B.I. manhunt involving more than 200 agents. None of the burglars had ever even been publicly identified before Medsger's book was published.

This was a historic burglary, to put it mildly. It was also the first time modern newspapers were faced with the ethical question of whether to publish news stories which had as their sole source stolen government documents that arrived anonymously in the mail. The Washington Post broke the story forty-three years ago this Monday, while both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times (the other two newspapers who received the files) missed the scoop.

Betty Medsger was the reporter at the Post to whom the stories were addressed. She recently decided that the history of the Media burglary was worth telling in more detail, so she tracked down seven of the eight people behind the burglary -- even though they had remained anonymous for four decades. Five of the burglars agreed to have their names and stories published, while two allowed interviews using pseudonyms (Medsger reports that one of the latter may eventually agree to being publicly named, "at some point"). As for the last burglar (who also appears in The Burglary under a pseudonym), Medsger reported: "I simply was not able to find her. I don't know where she is, even if she is alive."

The entire story is a fascinating one, which is why my book review was so long it had to be presented in two parts, and why I used what is quite possibly the longest headline I've ever written: "Before Snowden, Before WikiLeaks, Before The Church Committee, Before Deep Throat, Before The Pentagon Papers... There Was The Burglary." My headline points out that this story is not only historic, but also very relevant to today's political discussion over Edward Snowden and the N.S.A. -- especially as President Obama and Congress are now being forced to act to rein in surveillance programs, precisely because of stolen government documents leaked to the public through the media. This is also why the following interview is so extensive, because I felt it was important enough to present unedited and in full.

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[Program Note: What follows is the conclusion of my book review of Betty Medsger's The Burglary. It is quite a bit longer than the normal book review, for which reason it has been split into two parts. Please read "Part 1" before reading this. My apologies for the length, but the subject matter is both important enough and relevant enough to the current debate on national security leaks that I felt it was worth presenting in full. I highly recommend this book to all. Furthermore, on Wednesday I will be posting an interview with the author.]

Getting the word out

The Media files were made public in large part due to a few journalists (and a few brave editors) at the Washington Post who received them and reported on them. Attorney General John Mitchell personally called up the editors at the Post in a last-minute attempt to quash the story multiple times the day they arrived, but in the end the decision was made to go ahead and publish. Incredibly, at this time Mitchell didn't even know what was in the burgled files, and even though it was two weeks after the burglary, he had apparently just become aware of it. The event explored new territory in both journalism and in the legal world, because it was the first time secret documents had ever been provided to news organizations after having been stolen from the government. There simply were no precedents to follow.

In addition to the two members of Congress, three news organizations were on the conspirators' mailing list. The New York Times did not write about the story until the day after the Washington Post had reported it, and the Los Angeles Times ran the Post story from the wires the next day on their front page.

At the Washington Post, a young religion reporter was the addressee for the Media files. Betty Medsger, at the time, was working for what one editor had playfully named the "SMERSH" department (for "science, medicine, education, religion, and all that shit"). She had previously written about anti-war Catholics, which is likely what brought her to the Media group's attention. In the first story she wrote on the files for the Post (which ran exactly forty-three years ago today, under the headline "Stolen Documents Describe FBI Surveillance Activities"), Medsger exposed the shocking attitude the F.B.I. held on convincing leftist groups of the omnipotence of the agency, from a memo advising agents to "enhance the paranoia" and "get the point across there is an F.B.I. agent behind every mailbox."

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[Program Note: What follows is the start of my book review of Betty Medsger's The Burglary. It is quite a bit longer than the normal book review, for which reason it has been split into two parts. What follows is "Part 1," and I have posted "Part 2" on my own website now (rather than tomorrow), for those interested in reading it, in full, in one sitting. My apologies for the length, but the subject matter is both important enough and relevant enough to the current debate on national security leaks that I felt it was worth presenting in full. I highly recommend this book to all. Furthermore, this Wednesday I will be posting an interview with the author.]

Where it all began

Forty-three years ago this month, an obscure branch office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation located in a Philadelphia suburb was burgled. All their files were stolen (being 1971, these files were all on paper) and whisked away to a secret hideout, then they were sorted and sent to the media. This criminal act set in motion the idea that our government should no longer operate in secret without any supervision. It was followed by the leak of the government's Vietnam War plans, a congressional investigation (the first ever of its kind) into the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., the resignation of a president brought about in no small part by leaks to the media, and eventually the modern-day document dumps of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. But while the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the Church Committee are at least somewhat well-known these days, few people (even few followers of politics, recent history, or the debates on the modern security state) recognize "the Media break-in" as where it all started.

Former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger is trying to change that with her new book, The Burglary (2014, Alfred A. Knopf). Medsger is the right person to do so, both for historical reasons and for the fact that she has produced a book that is both riveting and extremely readable. Not just an in-depth look at a moment in history, The Burglary is also extremely relevant to today's debates over national security, privacy, and the leaking of government secrets to journalists. Obvious parallels can be drawn between the Media burglary and the situation Edward Snowden finds himself in today, in fact.

The building in Media, PA, which housed the F.B.I. office on the second floor.
Photo Credit: Betty Medsger (used with permission of the photographer).

At its heart, the book chronicles a crime. A group of Americans conspired to break into a federal office in a town called Media, Pennsylvania, in order to steal information -- something that is very definitely against the law. This information was then disseminated to members of Congress and select journalists, in an effort to inform the public what was being done in their name. One of the documents revealed the existence of an F.B.I. program called "COINTELPRO," which would go on to have further political ramifications.

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Things have apparently gone too far for Chuck Todd of NBC News. After weeks of breathless lead-story coverage of the missing airplane -- with pretty much zero new facts to report -- Chuck finally expressed his feelings on Twitter:

Wait, so when did finding NOTHING get characterized as "breaking news"?

He followed this up with a few other thoughts, including:

Another day of "breaking news" based on finding nothing or in other words, "not breaking news"

Since we're beginning with parodying the mainstream media, we have to start by offering up a riff on a Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" sketch:

"Really, Chuck? Really? You're just noticing this now? I mean... really? Have you ever actually listened to Brian Williams?!? The man simply could not exist without at least twelve superlatives in every single sentence he reads on the air. Really!"

Ahem. Perhaps that was unseemly of me. Especially since I do agree with Chuck Todd's point. Apropos of nothing, I even think he would be a much better host of Meet The Press than David Gregory, just to show you I bear him no ill will. But Todd's right -- wasting the first five minutes of every news broadcast for weeks on end by saying "we still know nothing, folks" is one of the more tedious aspects of the "newsfotainment" industry. I get that. Believe me, I do. Keeping track of such idiocy is a thankless job, like the effort it took to create a complete list of why the Crimean situation is just the most recent of a long list of "the biggest test of Obama's presidency," for instance.

But it's really nothing new to point out the ludicrous nature of what is billed as "breaking news." In fact, I can end precisely where I began this rant. Back in its infancy in the 1970s, "Weekend Update" had a running joke parodying such "breaking news" idiocy. Chevy Chase would be handed a piece of paper (which just goes to show you how long ago this was) at his news desk, and he would glance at it and then report: "This just in... Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!"

What Chuck Todd is complaining about -- breaking news on television which is not breaking, nor news -- has been with us for quite some time. Sad to say, it's nothing new, and not news to me (pun intended).

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I am approaching a milestone of sorts, so for the fourth time ever I'm going to devote an entire column to me and my Twitter account. It's going to be nothing but navel-gazing today, in other words, just to warn everyone up front (if that headline wasn't indication enough).

The milestone I'm about to hit is sending out my one-thousandth tweet. Or, to be more Twitterlike, my 1000th tweet (or maybe even just "1K tweets!"). That seems like a lot of tweets to me, but then I wouldn't be surprised if that's a normal monthly count for some Twitter users. I'm hovering right around 450 followers, and this column is specifically written to each and every one of them.

Hello, Twitter followers. Thank you for following me. Don't think I've ever said that to you folks, so I'll start with my appreciation to all of you. Other than people I previously knew, I have only met one of you in person ever, when I was checking in to a Netroots Nation conference and you responded when I told you my name: "That name sounds familiar... oh, that's it -- I follow you on Twitter!" I think I was probably the more astonished, as it left me speechless other than to mumble a thanks. A follower? Never thought about meeting one before, so I had no idea what to say other than "thank you!" I should mention this was back when I had far fewer followers, so the idea of crossing paths with one had never even occurred to me.

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Has it really been a whole year since the Republican Party put out their "post-mortem" document, which tried to identify why they got shellacked so badly in the 2012 election? Since it's not a big date on my political calendar, the one-year anniversary kind of snuck up on me, I'll admit. But since the Republican National Committee used the term "post-mortem" in the first place, I guess it's now time for a post-mortem on the post-mortem (insert your own zombie or "dead man walking" joke here, if you must).

The R.N.C. actually did a whole lot of soul-searching when they came up with their original document last year. It offered up many suggestions for improving the party's chances to win national elections. Some of these have been aggressively implemented and others have been altogether ignored. The implemented ones are mostly structural party changes, and the ideas that have been ignored are mostly suggested policy changes. This makes sense, because the party machinery controls (or has direct influence) over the structure of the party, but policy itself is more in the realm of what already-elected Republicans can agree upon.

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A scientific study just received permission from the federal government to go forward. This really shouldn't even be news, but it is indeed newsworthy because it is a milestone achievement. It is the first time anyone can remember that the beneficial medical effects of marijuana have been allowed to be legally studied. The group trying to do the study has been requesting permission to do so for over two decades, just as one measure of how monumental a breakthrough this may be.

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Program Note: Saint Patrick's Day kind of snuck up on me this year, exacerbated by the fact that it falls on a Monday this time around the calendar. So I decided to just punt and re-run a column I wrote a few years ago. No, it's not the one about the snakes (although there is a link to that one, at the beginning, if you'd like to read that story, too). It was written two days before Paddy's Day as well, so ignore the "wee bit early" language. Oh, and the Irish Times links now seem to be behind a paywall, but you can ignore them and read the other links to still get the full story. In any case, have fun today, and we'll be back on our regular schedule starting tomorrow.

Originally published March 15, 2012

I realize I'm a wee bit early for a Saint Patrick's Day column, but tomorrow is our regularly-scheduled Friday Talking Points, and Saturday I will be hoisting a pint of Sir Arthur Guinness' fine product, so we'll just have to make do with today.

Being pressed for time, I thought I'd just re-run my explanation of what "Saint Patrick banishing the snakes from Ireland" actually means, as it is an entertaining story to tell down at your local pub this weekend, full of rich Irish history that will amaze your sozzled friends. If you can remember the story, at the time, of course.

But that was before I had read the story of Nike putting "its foot in it" (as the Irish Times summed it up) with a mis-branding faux pas for the ages. We'll get to that in a moment.

Before we do, I have a piece of advice for all American tourists who ever find themselves in Ireland. Be it on Paddy's Day, or be it any other day of the year, the advice I have to give will still be sound. Because you'll arrive in Ireland starry-eyed with the magic of the Emerald Isle, and will immediately want to explore the nearest quaint pub and drink deep of the... ahem... flavor of the local life, not to put to fine a point on it.

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Today is 3/14, therefore a happy Pi Day to all! Next year will be even more fun, though, since it'll be 3/14/15....

Moving right along... a lot happened in the world of politics this week, including Democrats being disappointed in a special House election down in Florida and the president appearing between two ferns (which caused some underwear-bunching on the right, so to speak). We'll get to all of that later, though. First, let's take a run around the rest of the news from the week, shall we?

Setting a level for hypocrisy usually not so blatantly shown by Democrats, Senator Dianne Feinstein is hopping mad that the government spied on her computers. The irony is so thick you can spread it on toast. Previously known as a champion for pretty much any spying the N.S.A. felt like doing, on every American, Feinstein doesn't have a whole lot of moral high ground to stand on, no matter how much high dudgeon she's currently showing. Edward Snowden immediately called Feinstein onto the carpet for her hypocrisy.

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Attorney General Eric Holder today called for shorter sentences to be handed down for non-violent drug offenses, which would reduce prison time for many people caught with drugs. By doing so, he has taken another step in the right direction: away from the worst aspects of the "War On Drugs," and towards a more sane federal policy. The Obama administration -- Holder in particular -- has been charting a new path for the past year or so on this subject, and it is a welcome change. The new changes won't go far enough, though. Much more work needs to be done. How much of that will happen in the next year is open to speculation.

The biggest question is probably how long Holder will continue in his position. He seemed to indicate in a recent interview that he will probably step down sometime this year, after he's accomplished the work he's set out for himself. Since that interview, the subject of Holder stepping down has been walked back by the Justice Department, though, so it's anyone's guess when Holder might be thinking of leaving.

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