Introducing SNAFU with Ed Helms AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Slow Burn

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Introducing SNAFU with Ed Helms) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Go to PodExtra AI's podcast page (Slow Burn) to view the AI-processed content of all episodes of this podcast.

Slow Burn episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog

Episode: Introducing SNAFU with Ed Helms

Author: Slate Podcasts
Duration: 00:32:18

Episode Shownotes

While the Slow Burn team is hard at work on our next season, we are excited to share the first episode of the second season from our friends at SNAFU with Ed Helms: MEDBURG. In March 1971, Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger receives a mysterious envelope full of classified documents.

Soon, what's inside will change the way America sees the FBI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Summary

In this episode of SNAFU, hosted by Ed Helms, we explore the 1971 Medburg Heist in Media, Pennsylvania, where activists broke into an FBI office to expose the agency's controversial surveillance tactics. The narrative centers on Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger, who received classified documents detailing the FBI's extensive surveillance of anti-war protesters and civil rights activists. Despite pressures to suppress the story, Medsger's publication significantly altered public perception of the FBI, highlighting the crucial role of investigative journalism in fostering accountability and undermining the Bureau's crafted image under J. Edgar Hoover.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Introducing SNAFU with Ed Helms) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_06
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.

00:00:15 Speaker_06
Season two, 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.

00:00:29 Speaker_06
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.

00:00:38 Speaker_06
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.

00:00:44 Speaker_06
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.

00:00:59 Speaker_06
Now, keep listening for episode one of Snafu season two, Medburg, and then listen to the entire season wherever you get podcasts. ♪

00:01:11 Speaker_08
It's March 8th, 1971, and just about every human being on planet Earth is completely consumed by one single event.

00:01:19 Speaker_04
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.

00:01:29 Speaker_08
Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier, better known as the fight of the century.

00:01:37 Speaker_12
I want to tell you this is going to be a spectacular evening. The tension and the excitement here is monumental."

00:01:44 Speaker_08
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'd just returned from the moon.

00:01:56 Speaker_08
Ringside is a who's who of 70s icons — Ed Sullivan, Hugh Hefner, Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand — all here to see this guy. Ali, the former heavyweight champ, is battling to reclaim his title from current champ Frazier.

00:02:24 Speaker_08
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.

00:02:38 Speaker_08
Inside an arena in Chicago, an actual riot erupts when the projector breaks down right before the fight starts.

00:02:45 Speaker_11
Muhammad Ali in the red trunks. Joe Frazier in the green trunks. They appear very light.

00:02:57 Speaker_08
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.

00:03:10 Speaker_08
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 veteran's square.

00:03:22 Speaker_08
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?

00:03:38 Speaker_08
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.

00:03:51 Speaker_08
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.

00:04:11 Speaker_08
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.

00:04:44 Speaker_05
It was a Tuesday. That morning, I arrive, and as usual, I go to the mailroom first and pick up my mail.

00:04:53 Speaker_08
This is journalist Betty Medsker. That Tuesday was March 23rd, 1971, two weeks after the Ali-Frazier fight. It began like any other morning. Betty woke up in her apartment in Washington, D.C.

00:05:06 Speaker_08
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.

00:05:15 Speaker_05
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.

00:05:31 Speaker_08
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.

00:05:45 Speaker_08
Thick haze of cigarette smoke. Someone screaming, copy! Woodward and Bernstein running around shaking notepads at each other with their latest scoop.

00:05:55 Speaker_08
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.

00:06:06 Speaker_09
Is there any place you don't smoke?

00:06:08 Speaker_08
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.

00:06:22 Speaker_08
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.

00:06:35 Speaker_05
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.

00:06:51 Speaker_08
You worked in the SMERSH department.

00:06:53 Speaker_05
I worked in the SMERSH department.

00:06:56 Speaker_08
But that morning, Betty didn't have time for any smirching around. Like any good journalist who's just been sent a mysterious envelope, she was dying to know what was inside.

00:07:08 Speaker_05
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.

00:07:30 Speaker_08
We are making these copies... The letter went on to say that Betty had permission to make copies of the files and to publish their contents.

00:07:37 Speaker_05
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.

00:07:59 Speaker_05
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.

00:08:13 Speaker_08
Inside the envelope were 14 Xeroxed FBI files. It didn't take long for Betty to grasp that these documents were explosive.

00:08:22 Speaker_05
The first one was pretty shocking.

00:08:23 Speaker_05
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.

00:08:46 Speaker_08
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.

00:09:03 Speaker_05
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.

00:09:15 Speaker_05
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.

00:09:34 Speaker_08
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.

00:09:43 Speaker_08
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.

00:09:55 Speaker_05
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.

00:10:22 Speaker_08
That brassy, jingoistic tune comes from a big-budget 1959 Hollywood production called The FBI Story, made in cooperation with the Bureau itself.

00:10:35 Speaker_08
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.

00:10:48 Speaker_11
Tell NY21 if and when Whitey passes the coin, arrest him.

00:10:54 Speaker_08
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.

00:11:13 Speaker_08
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.

00:11:24 Speaker_04
This is your FBI, the official broadcast from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

00:11:30 Speaker_08
And they were the stars of a TV show that, in 1971, was in its sixth season and at the height of its popularity.

00:11:37 Speaker_04
The FBI.

00:11:40 Speaker_08
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.

00:11:53 Speaker_10
America stands at the crossroads of destiny. It is a common destiny in which we shall all finally stand or fall together.

00:12:04 Speaker_08
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.

00:12:16 Speaker_08
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.

00:12:31 Speaker_08
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.

00:12:47 Speaker_08
As far as Hoover's message to the American people, it was simple. They could always count on the FBI.

00:12:54 Speaker_10
I take humble pride in emphatically stating 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.

00:13:17 Speaker_08
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.

00:13:33 Speaker_08
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.

00:13:43 Speaker_08
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.

00:13:55 Speaker_07
Hey God, sorry to bug you. You are fired. Dammit.

00:14:04 Speaker_10
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.

00:14:35 Speaker_08
Back at the Washington Post offices, Betty Metzger 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.

00:14:51 Speaker_08
She took the files to an editor.

00:14:53 Speaker_05
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 Claussen.

00:15:04 Speaker_08
Ken Klaassen was a veteran reporter who was well-sourced inside the federal government. That morning, one of Klaassen's government sources had reached out to him, asking if anyone at the Post had received stolen FBI documents.

00:15:17 Speaker_08
If the FBI was asking about them, then clearly the files Betty received were authentic.

00:15:25 Speaker_05
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.

00:15:42 Speaker_08
Betty knew that writing this story could make her an enemy of the FBI, something nobody wanted, as it could have very real consequences.

00:15:51 Speaker_05
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.

00:16:11 Speaker_08
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.

00:16:22 Speaker_05
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.

00:16:34 Speaker_08
But this wasn't like any other story. Betty finished the piece and turned it in at 6 p.m.

00:16:41 Speaker_05
I then learned that it might not be published the next day. It might not ever be published. And that was a great shock.

00:16:51 Speaker_08
If Betty's story never saw the light of day, then the public might never know that the FBI was watching them.

00:17:14 Speaker_05
Catherine Graham was very frightened by the situation.

00:17:18 Speaker_08
Catherine 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.

00:17:28 Speaker_00
Do you have the papers?

00:17:31 Speaker_08
Not yet. The movie The Post is all about Catherine 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.

00:17:46 Speaker_08
On this day, March 23rd, 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.

00:18:02 Speaker_05
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.

00:18:11 Speaker_08
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.

00:18:22 Speaker_05
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.

00:18:31 Speaker_08
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?

00:18:45 Speaker_08
Absolutely. But there was nothing in those files that even touched on national security.

00:18:51 Speaker_05
The government had the power to hurt the institution. And Catherine Graham had responsibility for protecting the institution.

00:19:01 Speaker_08
Hours passed. Finally, Betty's phone rang.

00:19:07 Speaker_05
At 10 o'clock, I get a call saying that the decision was just made. The decision was made to publish.

00:19:18 Speaker_08
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.

00:19:33 Speaker_08
The story painted a picture of an FBI far different from the G-Men Americans knew from their TV sets and radios.

00:19:40 Speaker_08
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.

00:19:56 Speaker_08
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.

00:20:06 Speaker_04
Burglars hit an FBI resident office. FBI records stolen from the media. FBI records which have been made public include a letter.

00:20:19 Speaker_08
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.

00:20:35 Speaker_08
But for the time being, Betty was just thrilled to see her story published.

00:20:40 Speaker_05
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.

00:20:48 Speaker_08
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.

00:20:59 Speaker_05
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?

00:21:24 Speaker_05
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?

00:21:41 Speaker_05
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.

00:21:53 Speaker_05
So here apparently was an effort to make me paranoid and know that there was an FBI agent behind my phone.

00:22:03 Speaker_08
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?

00:22:29 Speaker_08
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.

00:22:40 Speaker_05
So one Saturday I was at my desk and I had received more files from the, more FBI files, and I was sitting there reading, starting to read them.

00:22:49 Speaker_05
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.

00:23:01 Speaker_05
And then he said, I also see that your mother is writing to you from Johnstown, that you're occasionally getting mail from her.

00:23:12 Speaker_05
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.

00:23:25 Speaker_05
She didn't even know the address of The Washington Post.

00:23:30 Speaker_08
This was a downright freaky interaction. 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?

00:24:01 Speaker_08
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.

00:24:10 Speaker_08
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.

00:24:21 Speaker_05
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.

00:24:44 Speaker_08
You might remember Ken Klaassen. He was the Washington Post reporter who had confirmed the authenticity of the stolen files on the day Betty received them.

00:24:52 Speaker_08
Klaassen 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.

00:25:06 Speaker_05
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.

00:25:22 Speaker_05
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.

00:25:36 Speaker_08
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.

00:25:46 Speaker_05
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.

00:25:59 Speaker_05
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.

00:26:18 Speaker_05
He was saying it as though he had the power to give me an order, which wasn't true.

00:26:27 Speaker_08
So Betty reached out to her source and cancelled their rendezvous.

00:26:31 Speaker_05
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.

00:26:48 Speaker_08
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.

00:27:00 Speaker_08
And guess what he proudly displayed on his new White House desk?

00:27:05 Speaker_05
A large framed photograph that was signed to Ken with affection, J. Edgar.

00:27:16 Speaker_08
As it turns out, just as Betty suspected, the files she was receiving, well, they would just be the tip of the iceberg.

00:27:23 Speaker_08
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.

00:27:33 Speaker_03
The president's official spokesman claims creating fear, mistrust... ...has spread far out of control with its penetration of labor unions, college campuses... The FBI had under surveillance every political figure, every student activist, and every leader for peace and justice in this country.

00:28:00 Speaker_08
So who exactly was responsible for exposing the FBI's secrets? Who were these anonymous citizens who sent Betty those files?

00:28:10 Speaker_08
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?

00:28:20 Speaker_07
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.

00:28:30 Speaker_08
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?

00:28:47 Speaker_08
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.

00:29:05 Speaker_07
Obviously, I have to hear this.

00:29:08 Speaker_08
All right, Stephen, and listeners, get ready.

00:29:12 Speaker_08
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.

00:29:27 Speaker_01
We love to say that we learned our burglary skills from nuns and priests. We know they have our pictures.

00:29:33 Speaker_02
We know they're looking for us. We know they want us.

00:29:35 Speaker_09
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?

00:29:42 Speaker_00
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.

00:29:50 Speaker_01
I was just really angry. I was really. And I thought, here's something that might just make a great big difference.

00:30:00 Speaker_09
Holy shit, we are really here. This is dynamite stuff. There was no place to hide if they released their powers against you.

00:30:08 Speaker_11
Like, well, that was either the FBI or the heating system, and there's only one way to find out which.

00:30:15 Speaker_04
Many of the techniques were clearly illegal, but justified in the interest of national security.

00:30:21 Speaker_01
If it meant some risks that were involved, well, that's what citizens sometimes have to do.

00:30:36 Speaker_08
Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, FilmNation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio.

00:30:44 Speaker_08
This season of Snafu is based on the book The Burglary, the discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's secret FBI, written by Betty Metzger.

00:30:52 Speaker_08
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.

00:31:06 Speaker_08
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 Kalapali is our production assistant.

00:31:18 Speaker_08
Facts Checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Sensitivity Consult from Oluwakemi Ala Dasui. Editing, sound design, and original music by Ben Chugg. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley.

00:31:32 Speaker_08
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.

00:31:43 Speaker_08
Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary, 1971.

00:31:52 Speaker_08
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.

00:32:08 Speaker_06
Dum, dum, dum, dum La, la, la, la