The Burglary: The Discovery Of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
Just as my hero in World War II if it isn't FDR or Winston Churchill is Alan Turing, my hero in the Viet Nam War is not Sylvester Stallone, but Bonnie Raines, one of the Media burglars who broke into that branch agency of the FBI and stole the FBI files. That daring theft, that risked major jail time or even death when Nixon and Hoover were bloating about the danger to US security and lives that the burglary posed, opened the eyes of the American public to the destruction of our rights that had been going on under the direction of Hoover. Raines, her husband and five other men and women from all walks of life, made it possible for the Washington Post to uncover the espionage that every American protester could expect, illegal wiretapping, illicit breaking and entering and, in some key cases, the attempt to do bodily harm through dirty tricks. The villains abound in this book, from Hoover, who is clownishly laughable in his egotistical search for adulation, but is evilly committed to the destruction of the American right to dissent. The deification of Hoover by the spineless or evil politicians who come and go during his tenure makes me want to retch, but just when I'm ready to throw it all in, I realize that the US created a man like John Raines who risked everything to expose the attack on our Constitution. The book is thorough. It drags at times, but the details will provide a roadmap of what it was like to be a protester in the Sixties and Seventies and how close we were to a dictatorship by Nixon or Hoover's real buddy Ronald Reagan. When people ask me what I have against Ronnie, I give you this book. His chummy destruction of UC Berkeley with Hoover's little files tells you all you need to know about the man who trampled the Constitution while aiding the "freedom fighting" Contras. If you care about freedom, you should read this book and then reread it. If it weren't for the egregious typos ("fo" instead of "of" for example), I would give it 5 stars. This would make a good movie, and it's true! The author captured the era (late 60s/early 70s) well with her set up and background details. It was amazing to read how each burglar considered their participation, the potential consequences, and how they lived with the secret afterwards. It's a textbook case of peeps so committed to a democratic society in the USA that they were willing to act illegally in order to expose the government's secret (and illegal and/or unconstitutional) programs to reduce dissent. This primarily involved spying on USA citizens who had committed no violent acts.Throughout the well-told tale, the recent Snowden action to expose the government's secret programs (continued despite the late 70s reforms) came to mind and I started rethinking if Snowden belongs with these burglars as doing an enormous service to our democracy, or if he belongs at Guantanamo as some have suggested. I recommend this book to anyone who may not realize what the government did to undermine and harass civil rights leaders and pacifists during the last 60 years, and is likely now doing to Muslims, Tea Party members, who knows!I wish these burglars were always welcomed on planes early where those nearby could say "thank you for your service."
What do You think about The Burglary: The Discovery Of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI (2014)?
A fascinating detailed look into the F.B.I. during the 1970's. Well worth a read.
—wadudzf
It was ok, however I thought it was a little encyclopedic about the era.
—Lozenger
