Introducing SNAFU with Ed Helms
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Hey there, it's Josh Levine, and this week I wanted to share an episode from a podcast I think you'll really like. Snafu is a show about history's greatest screw-ups, hosted by actor, comedian, writer, and bona fide history nerd Ed Helms. Season 2, Medburg, is a riveting heist story. It begins in 1971 when a group of citizen activists decide to break into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and steal every classified document in sight.

They hoped to prove that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI were up to no good, surveilling, disrupting, and even plotting to assassinate political opponents. I hope you heard my conversation with Ed about his time at The Daily Show for one of our slow burn bonus episodes this season. And if you want to hear more from him, then Snafu is a great choice because the story he tells this season is incredibly timely today. Plus, Snafu season three will be releasing in just a few months, so you'll want to catch up before it's available.

Now, keep listening for Episode 1 of Snafu Season 2, Medburg, and then listen to the entire season wherever you get podcasts.

It's March 8th, 1971, and just about every human being on planet Earth is completely consumed by one single event. Heavyweight boxers Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali meet in New York's Madison Square Garden. The richest fight of all time. At least 25 foreign countries will show the fight on TV. Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier, better known as the fight of the century. Listen to the roar of his crowd.

I want to tell you this is going to be a spectacular evening. The tension and the excitement here is monumental. A lucky 20,000 have scored tickets to watch the fight at Madison Square Garden. Anyone who's anyone is there. The VIPs include a couple of Kennedys, foreign dignitaries, astronauts who just returned from the moon,

Ringside is a who's who of '70s icons. Ed Sullivan, Hugh Hefner, Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, all here to see this guy. Muhammad Ali in the ring in a beautiful, beautiful red and white robe. Ali, the former heavyweight champ, is battling to reclaim his title from current champ Frazier. Joe Frazier, ladies and gentlemen. There seems to be a mingling of booms. As the opening bell nears, time stops around the world.

People rush to their TVs and radios. City streets completely empty out. In barracks across Vietnam, U.S. servicemen huddle around transistor radios. Inside an arena in Chicago, an actual riot erupts when the projector breaks down right before the fight starts. Muhammad Ali in the red trunk. Joe Frazier in the green trunk. They appear very light.

Which all means that some 100 miles south of New York City in a small Pennsylvania town called Media, the streets are even sleepier than usual. Downtown is deserted. There are no policemen on patrol, no locals out for an evening stroll, and no one keeping a close eye on the entrance of a four-story brick building that sits at one Veterans Square. ♪

So when the doors to that building swing open and two men and two women walk out, nervously carrying bulging suitcases and loading them into a car out front, no one takes notice. Those four folks with the suitcases? Well, they're not leaving for a trip. They're part of a team of burglars who decided this was the perfect night to do something unthinkable: rob the FBI.

break into their offices, steal every document in sight, and zoom off into the night with a trunk full of secrets.

I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. Last season, we told you all about Able Archer 83, the nuclear near-miss which could have ended the world as we know it. This season, we bring you Medburg, the story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI snafu it exposed. ♪ Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-

It was a Tuesday. That morning I arrive and as usual, I go to the mail room first and pick up my mail. This is journalist Betty Medsker. That Tuesday was March 23rd, 1971, two weeks after the Ali-Fraser fight.

It began like any other morning. Betty woke up in her apartment in Washington, D.C. She had her usual breakfast, a couple of pieces of toast, took the city bus to work, and arrived at the Washington Post offices at 10 o'clock. I'd been off for two days, and so there was a huge stack of mail. But this one stood out not only because it was a large envelope, but because of the return address, which was Liberty Publications Media, Pennsylvania.

Betty was a born Pennsylvanian, but she'd never heard of Liberty Publications. She took the envelope with her to the newsroom. You might have a picture of that Washington Post newsroom. Typewriters clacking away like machine gun fire. Thick haze of cigarette smoke. Someone screaming, "Copy!" Woodward and Bernstein running around shaking notepads at each other with their latest scoop.

Well, that picture, immortalized in the classic book and movie All the President's Men, is actually pretty darn close. Especially, according to Betty, the cigarette smoke. "Is there any place you don't smoke?" But in the spring of 1971, Woodward and Bernstein were still nobodies. Watergate was still just a hotel. And the Washington Post hadn't yet become the crusading institution that took down the Nixon White House.

Betty herself was a young reporter who'd been at the paper for just a year. Her beat was religion, and she shared an office about the size of a walk-in closet with a motley crew of fellow reporters. There were six of us in there, and we were science, medicine, and education, and religion.

An editor made up a term. It was called SMERSH. Science, medicine, education, religion, and all that shit. So that's where I worked. You worked in the SMERSH department. I worked in the SMERSH department. But that morning, Betty didn't have time for any SMERSHing around. Like any good journalist who's just been sent a mysterious envelope, she was dying to know what was inside.

When I got to my office, I opened that envelope first. "Dear friend, enclosed you will find copies of certain files from the Media Pennsylvania Office of the FBI, which were removed by our commission for public scrutiny."

The letter went on to say that Betty had permission to make copies of the files and to publish their contents. "Your degree of public association or disassociation with our commission is entirely a matter of your choice. Sincerely, the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI."

I'm shocked. I think most people in the United States couldn't imagine that anybody would have the nerve to break into an FBI office and would have thought that such a place would have been the most secure place. Inside the envelope were 14 Xeroxed FBI files.

It didn't take long for Betty to grasp that these documents were explosive. The first one was pretty shocking. It was a document urging agents to increase interviews with dissenters and, quote, for plenty of reasons, chief of which are enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and further serve to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox. ♪

An FBI agent behind every mailbox. Sort of like Uncle Fester, but in wingtips. At first, Betty wondered if what she was reading was a hoax to enhance paranoia. Seriously? She kept reading. One of the things was a file on Swarthmore College, and it revealed that every black student

on the Swarthmore campus was under FBI surveillance. And this was being done by people who had been hired by the FBI as informers and included switchboard operators, letter carriers, the postmaster of Swarthmore, the local police chief, and some college administrators. And it didn't stop at this one liberal arts college. There was a pattern.

Files in the envelope showed the FBI was surveilling citizens all over Philadelphia. The subjects Betty was reading about in these files, they were anti-war protesters, civil rights activists, labor unions, and a noticeably high percentage were Black. The FBI was operating something that was very much like the Stasi was operating in East Germany.

What became clear was every document was telling a story about FBI power that was unknown to anyone outside the FBI. That brassy, jingoistic tune comes from a big-budget 1959 Hollywood production called The FBI Story, made in cooperation with the Bureau itself.

The movie spins through the greatest hits of agency cases, from the Osage Indian murders to the pursuit of communists. And it wouldn't be an all-American feel-good story without everyone's favorite leading man, Jimmy Stewart. Tell NY21, if and when Whitey passes the coin, arrest them.

Stewart played the quintessential FBI agent. He was conservative, level-headed, trustworthy, clean-shaven, well-coiffed, and of course, white. A government man. Or in the parlance of the day, a G-man. And G-men were American heroes.

FBI myth-making was pretty much its own genre of entertainment in the mid-20th century. It wasn't just movies. FBI agents were valiant heroes in comic books and radio shows. This is your FBI, the official broadcast from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And they were the stars of a TV show that, in 1971, was in its sixth season and at the height of its popularity. The FBI.

The FBI story was everywhere, and that didn't happen by accident. The story of the Bureau, familiar to most Americans, was crafted by one man. The ultimate G-man. America stands at the crossroads of destiny. It is a common destiny in which we shall all finally stand or fall together.

That's J. Edgar Hoover, longtime director of the FBI. He was a small man, but terrifyingly intimidating. So buttoned up that he made Beaver Cleaver look like a Hell's Angel. Hoover was also a brilliant PR man, transforming a relatively obscure Bureau of the Justice Department into a nationally revered household name. That FBI TV show? Hoover was intimately involved in its production, often suggesting storylines.

As for that Jimmy Stewart movie, Hoover edited and approved the scripts himself. And he tasked FBI agents with investigating every person on set, even the gaffers. Careful with the lighting, guys, it's starting to look a little communist. As far as Hoover's message to the American people, it was simple: they could always count on the FBI. "I take humble pride in infinitely staying here tonight

that as long as I am director of the FBI, it will continue to maintain its high and impartial standards of investigation despite the hostile opinions of its detractors. - The vast majority of Americans revered Hoover. A Gallup poll in 1971 found that over 70% of Americans thought he was doing a good to excellent job. Only 7% had a negative view of him.

Hoover had been exempted from compulsory retirement in the 1960s, which essentially made him FBI director for life. His power across five decades was unquestioned. When someone suggested to John F. Kennedy that maybe it wasn't a great idea for one person to have all that power for that long, Kennedy, then the president, replied with resignation, you don't fire God. Hey God, sorry to bug you. You are fired. Dammit.

Furthermore, the FBI will continue to be objective in its investigations and will stay within the bounds of its authorized jurisdiction regardless of pressure groups which seek to use the FBI to attain their own selfish aims to the detriment of our people as a whole.

Back at the Washington Post offices, Betty Medsker was holding documents that did not jibe with the FBI America knew. The contents of the files were so shocking, so illegal, Betty was skeptical that they were actually real. She took the files to an editor. I explained that I've just received these files that were stolen from an FBI office and she stops me and she says, we just got a call from Ken Clausen.

Ken Clausen was a veteran reporter who was well-sourced inside the federal government. That morning, one of Clausen's government sources had reached out to him, asking if anyone at the Post had received stolen FBI documents. If the FBI was asking about them, then clearly the files Betty received were authentic. I start to confront within myself the significance and the danger involved.

I realized I needed to think about what I was doing. I needed to think about the personal implications of it. Betty knew that writing this story could make her an enemy of the FBI, something nobody wanted, as it could have very real consequences. I'm concerned about fingerprints on the files that I've received.

So I thought it was very important, even when I just thought of fingerprints, that I protect them as though they were people that I had faced and made a promise to. And so, despite knowing that it could create powerful enemies for this heretofore under-the-radar smirch reporter, Betty sat down to write her story. I just stayed on the office working and writing and rewriting the stories all afternoon,

Like any other story, I would simply write it and hand it in and it would be published the next day. But this wasn't like any other story. Betty finished the piece and turned it in at 6 p.m. I then learned that it might not be published the next day and might not ever be published. And that was a great shock. If Betty's story never saw the light of day, then the public might never know that the FBI was watching them.

Katherine Graham was very frightened by the situation. Katherine Graham was the publisher of The Washington Post. Graham is a journalism legend who received the loftiest honor you can imagine. Meryl Streep played her in a movie. Do you have the papers? Not yet. The movie The Post is all about Katherine Graham and her executive editor, Ben Bradley, and their decision to publish a batch of leaked federal documents known as the Pentagon Papers. But that was all yet to come.

On this day, March 23, 1971, no American newspaper had ever published government documents stolen by sources from outside the government. Graham and the Post leadership were in completely uncharted territory. It was not just that it was unprecedented and that the documents had been stolen. We had them by virtue of a crime being committed.

Betty would later learn that earlier that day, the Attorney General of the United States, John Mitchell, had repeatedly phoned the Post demanding that they not publish her story. It was the first time that the publisher had been asked by the administration to suppress a story. They didn't want the public to know.

The Attorney General claimed that the documents could damage national security. That sounded plausible. Except Betty and her editors, unlike the Attorney General, had actually read the documents. Did they threaten to embarrass the government? Absolutely. But there was nothing in those files that even touched on national security.

The government had the power to hurt the institution, and Katherine Graham had responsibility for protecting the institution. Hours passed. Finally, Betty's phone rang. At 10 o'clock, I get a call saying that the decision was just made. The decision was made to publish. Stolen documents describe FBI surveillance activities.

That was the headline plastered on the front page of the Washington Post, on newsstands and doorsteps all over America on March 24th, 1971. The story painted a picture of an FBI far different from the G-men Americans knew from their TV sets and radios. It described a vast surveillance network infiltrating college campuses, targeting black students and activists, and intentionally trying to create an atmosphere of paranoia.

The reaction to the story was tectonic. Soon, members of Congress were calling for an investigation into the FBI. And for the public, trips to the mailbox were never quite the same. Burglars hit an FBI resident office at Medea. FBI records stolen from the media. Stolen FBI records which have been made public include a letter...

Betty had seen just 14 files. The letter from the Citizens Commission to investigate the FBI implied that there were still more files in their possession. What Betty didn't know yet was just how many and how much more damning those documents would be. But for the time being, Betty was just thrilled to see her story published. I was very excited. And early that morning, I went, opened my apartment door and picked up my newspaper and was happy to see it there.

But the story didn't end there. Betty's article was highly embarrassing for the FBI, which, as she was about to learn, put her on J. Edgar Hoover's radar. The FBI entered my life very soon after that. I decided to call a friend in Philadelphia and share my excitement. I lifted the receiver on my kitchen phone, and a man spoke to me and said, What are you doing?

And this is a great shock to pick up your phone and somebody talking to you. And I said, who are you? What are you doing? And did not reveal who they were, but kept asking me, who was I trying to call? And why was I trying to call someone? Here I was, the reporter who had just written that the FBI agents are supposed to make people paranoid and feel as though there's an FBI agent behind every mailbox.

So here apparently was an effort to make me paranoid and know that there was an FBI agent behind my phone. Betty was never able to confirm that he was an FBI agent. But, I mean, who else could it be? And this wouldn't be the only time she would have an unnerving run-in that made her wonder, was the FBI now after her? Turns out that first batch of stolen FBI documents was just the beginning. The files kept coming.

Checking the mail each morning became a moment of high drama for Betty. So one Saturday I was at my desk and I had received more files from the more API files and I was sitting there reading, starting to read them. And this man I'd never seen came up and introduced himself.

and said, "I've been watching your mail and I see that you're getting these files from the FBI." And then he said, "I also see that your mother is writing to you from Johnstown, that you're occasionally getting mail from her."

And that's a sort of a strange thing for somebody to be saying, but it was even stranger than that because, yes, my mother lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, but she had never written to me at the Washington Post. She didn't even know the address of the Washington Post.

This was a downright freaky interaction. "Oh, hi there! Yeah, we've never met, but I'm keeping really close tabs on your mail, just FYI. By the way, how's your mom, whom I've also never met? Is she still getting her hair done at that same place on the third Tuesday of every month? Fantastic!" Betty was getting an object lesson in what it meant for the FBI to sow paranoia. Why was the Bureau going to such lengths to rattle her? Was this petty retaliation? Or were there more secrets yet to be revealed?

The anonymous packages had been mailed from Pennsylvania. Betty had previously worked as a reporter in Philadelphia, so she was well-sourced in the area. She reached out to a source she thought might know where the files were being kept, and even better, might be able to get Betty access to any remaining files. She was very open to the idea, and she said, let me pursue people that would seem like logical connections and get back to you.

So I was very excited. And as I walked back into the newsroom from that appointment, I walked past Ken Clausen's desk. You might remember Ken Clausen. He was the Washington Post reporter who had confirmed the authenticity of the stolen files on the day Betty received them. Clausen actually even shared a byline with Betty on that first story because of his contribution.

One thing worth mentioning here, it just so happens Clausen had written a glowing story on Hoover for the Post just a few months earlier. I just spontaneously just stopped and I said, "Ken, I just had the most wonderful thing happen." I told him what had happened and that there was a possibility that I would be able to go someplace and see all of the stolen files.

And his eyes just came alert and then hardened and he said, "I'm going with you." In that moment I knew that I had made a terrible mistake.

Betty thought back to that fluff piece that Clausen had written on J. Edgar Hoover months earlier. Maybe it was best not to let Clausen be Woodward to her Bernstein. And I said, "Well, no, Ken, these are confidential sources of mine, and there's no way that they would let me bring somebody else along." And he said, "No," he said, "I will have to go with you." And at that point, I somehow graciously got out of the conversation.

About a half hour passed and he, I looked up and there was Ken and he said in very stern language, "I am going with you when you go to see those files." He was saying it as though he had the power to give me an order, which wasn't true. So Betty reached out to her source and canceled their rendezvous.

I had to make that assumption that he was so close to the FBI that if we went and actually found where the documents were, that the FBI might be there too. Betty never learned for sure why Clausen was so weirdly aggressive that day. But a year later, he left the Washington Post for a job at the White House as Richard Nixon's communications officer.

And guess what he proudly displayed on his new White House desk? A large framed photograph that was signed to Ken with affection, J. Edgar. As it turns out, just as Betty suspected, the files she was receiving, well, they would just be the tip of the iceberg. The full picture was going to upend everything the American public thought they knew about the FBI.

and would knock a revered American hero off his throne. President's official spokesman claims creating fear, mistrust, and suspicion... ...has spread far out of control with its penetration of labor unions, college campuses, church schools... The FBI had under surveillance every political figure, every student activist, and every leader for peace and justice in this country.

So who exactly was responsible for exposing the FBI's secrets? Who were these anonymous citizens who sent Betty those files? And how the hell did they successfully break into the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency, all under the cover of a huge boxing match? Hang on a second. That plot is actually sounding kind of familiar. On a fight night, like the one, two weeks from tonight, the night that we're going to rob it,

150 million without breaking a sweat. Oceans 11, one of my all-time favorite heist movies from master of the heist himself, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. Speaking of Steven. While you were making Oceans, did you know about this actual real-life burglary that took place on a fight night? No, I didn't. I have so many questions. I do too, Steven. I do too.

I'm excited for you to learn more about this story. Well, here's the thing. I have never listened to a podcast before. Obviously, I have to hear this. All right, Stephen and listeners, get ready.

This season, you'll hear how J. Edgar Hoover embroiled the FBI in one of the worst intelligence snafus of all time. The daring heist that exposed it all and the staggering fallout that sent shockwaves through America. We love to say that we learned our burglary skills from nuns and priests. We know that

One day he came up to me and he said, would you like to be part of a small group where we're going to go after the FBI? I just felt like I was living in the heart of the dragon and it was just my job to stop the fire. And this seemed like a way to do it. I was just really angry. I was really...

And I thought, here's something that might just make a great big difference. Holy shit, we are really here. This is dynamite stuff. There was no place to hide if they released their powers against you. I'm like, well, that was either the FBI or the heating system. And there's only one way to find out which. Many of the techniques were clearly illegal, but justified in the interest of national security.

If it meant some risks that were involved, well, that's what citizens sometimes have to do. - "Snafu" is a production of iHeart Radio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This season of "Snafu" is based on the book "The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI," written by Betty Metzger.

It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Valbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Producer is Stephen Wood. This episode was written by Albert Chen, Sarah Joyner, and Stephen Wood with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms.

Tori Smith is our associate producer. Nevin Kalapalli is our production assistant. Facts Checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Sensitivity Consult from Ola Wakemi Aladasui. Editing, sound design, and original music by Ben Chugg. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia Canney, and Gemma Castelli-Foley. Theme music by Dan Rosato.

Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak. Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary 1971. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy Feingold, Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Raines, John Raines, Sarah Schumer, and Bob Williamson.

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