MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Patriots who have come in from the dark. The unraveling of FBI surveillance and suppression of dissent that began with the burglary of an FBI office in Media, PA, in 1971.John and Bonnie Raines, now senior citizens, were known as a model Philidelphia couple and parents in the early 1970s. They were also ardent anti-Vietnam War protesters.

In a video assembled by Retro Report (an online investigative documentary reporting site) for the New York Times, John Raines states simply of that period of large-scale anti-government protests, "We knew the FBI was systematically trying to squash dissent, and dissent is the lifeblood of democracy."

William C. Davidon, a professor of physics at Haverford College, recruited the Raines and five other activists against the war to carry off a daring 1971 burglary of an FBI outpost office in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philly. Their goal was to expose the FBI as an agency that was conducting surveillance upon and interfering in the lives of citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. As the NYT reports:

They were never caught, and the stolen documents that they mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters were the first trickle of what would become a flood of revelations about extensive spying and dirty-tricks operations by the F.B.I. against dissident groups.

The burglary in Media, PA, on March 8, 1971, is a historical echo today, as disclosures by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have cast another unflattering light on government spying and opened a national debate about the proper limits of government surveillance. The burglars had, until now, maintained a vow of silence about their roles in the operation. They were content in knowing that their actions had dealt the first significant blow to an institution that had amassed enormous power and prestige during J. Edgar Hoover’s lengthy tenure as director.

“When you talked to people outside the movement about what the F.B.I. was doing, nobody wanted to believe it,” said one of the burglars, Keith Forsyth, who is finally going public about his involvement. “There was only one way to convince people that it was true, and that was to get it in their handwriting.”

Five of the eight surviving original individuals who exposed the FBI's massive effort to suppress opposition to government policy have come forward in a new book by Betty Medsger, "The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI," a former Washington Post reporter who spent years following up on leads resulting from the documents seized that night in a northwest suburb of Philadelphia. The perpetrators of the burglary (long past the potential for being prosecuted due to the statute of limitations) were bold whistleblowers at a time when the media was less under the thumb of the government.

The theft of FBI papers led to the exposure of how the FBI turned police, switchboard operators and others into informants. Having just visited the former STASI headquarters in what was East Berlin, the STASI appeared to share many techniques with Hoover's efforts to stamp out protest against government policies. This included conducting covert actions to demoralize, discredit and entrap protesters. These were among the primary techniques of the STASI to keep dissent in East Germany and East Berlin under control in the last two decades of its existence.

The Hoover initiative to crush the First Amendment, that included extensive illegal activity, was formally known in the FBI as Cointelpro (Counterintelligence Program). Whether or not presidents of the United States knew about is not clear, but none of them did much to rein in Hoover. He, allegedly, had compromising files about most powerful politicians, which included presidents who all had skeletons of some sort in their closets.

For a time, the resulting fallout from the heist files -- and Nixon's ongoing illegal use of government agencies for covert action against "enemies" -- led to modest reform in the FBI -- along with Hoover's death opening up the possibilities for a revamped agency.

But, given the current revelations about the NSA, the national and local law enforcement suppresion of movements such as Occupy, the Obama administration prosecution and intimidation of whistleblowers and a Homeland Security Apparatus that integrates local and national law enforcement in the wake of the continued post-9/11 terror scare, it appears that the reforms -- given the overall context of contemporary government surveillance -- were shortlived.

In fact, ironically, the Media, Pennsylvania, action led to a series of legislative deliberations that established the FISA court, which was supposed to prevent arbitrary and capricious use of government monitoring of citizens. Obviously, that hasn't worked out as the surveillance state has made a reinvigorated post-Hoover comeback. What's worse is that given modern technology, you can't raid a satellite FBI office in PA to expose the massive violation of Constitutional rights.

It's all stored on computers now, which is why Edward Snowden shares much in common with the Media eight -- and why we need more citizens who are willing to put their freedom on the line to save our freedoms.

(Photo: Wikipedia)