On March 8, 1971, the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into the bureau’s field office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole more than 1,000 classified documents. The files showed that FBI personnel were conducting covert surveillance and intimidation against First Amendment-protected groups, including Black college students, nonviolent Black activists, draft resisters, immigrants, and left-wing or liberal organizations. The documents also described the use of postal workers, switchboard operators, informants, provocateurs, and other intrusive techniques. The Washington Post verified the files and published a front-page account on March 24, 1971, after other outlets initially declined to report them.
The disclosures exposed COINTELPRO and helped prompt the Senate’s Church Committee investigation into illegal intelligence activities; COINTELPRO was subsequently ended, and the committee became a predecessor to the modern Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The FBI assigned as many as 200 agents to investigate the burglary but never identified or arrested the eight participants. The investigation closed on March 11, 1976, after the five-year statute of limitations expired. Five participants publicly identified themselves in 2014 through Betty Medsger’s book The Burglary; additional identities emerged in 2021 and 2024.
