July 24, 2024 • 33 mins
As Ali and Frazier go head-to-head in The Fight of the Century, Bill Davidon and his team aim to pull off the heist of the century. But at what cost?
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Last time on Snafu.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
We cased the place for at least two maybe three months.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
I just felt like I was living in the heart
of the dragon and it was just my job to
stop the fire. There were no cameras, there were no
alarms over the doors. I couldn't see any security measures whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Somebody wasn't me. Somebody suggested what about the night of
the Ali Fraser fight? And it was like a brilliant suggestion.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
In nineteen seventy one, Muhammad Ali was the most famous
athlete in the world. He was an undefeated boxing champion
who just happened to be facing jail time.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
How do you stand there with the possibility of going
to jail.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (00:50):
I'm just waiting in a day now.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
After refusing to serve in Vietnam as a conscientious objector
to the war, Ali had been stripped of his heavyweight
championship title. He had his boxing license revoked and was
banned from the sport by the Boxing Commission. He was
convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison.
He stayed out of prison while he appealed the conviction
to the Supreme Court. Ali being Ali wasn't going down
(01:17):
without a fight.
Speaker 7 (01:19):
White America right now spending thirty million dollars a day
in age of black and white boys are dying unjustly
for nothing, just to free somebody else. So why should
I worry about going to little old jail to free
my pole people who's been catching ail here for four
hundred years.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
While Ali was away from the ring, Joe Fraser had
taken the heavyweight title belt. But on the night of
March eighth, nineteen seventy one, a reinstated Ali would finally
have his chance to take it back.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
And the big fight is coming up Ali and Fraser.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Muhammad Ali Ak.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That's George Carlin on the Ed Sullivan Show. Of course,
the anti establishment icon had something to say about the
big fight. But it's good that.
Speaker 8 (01:59):
He's been allowed to work again. As you know, he
couldn't work for three years. Of course, he had a
strange job beating people up, but that was you know,
he is right, he could have that job. Govman wanted
him to change jobs.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Goubman wanted him to kill people.
Speaker 8 (02:17):
He thought it over and he said, no, that's where
I draw the line. I'll beat him up, and I
don't want to kill him, and the government told him, well,
if you won't kill him, we won't let you beat
him up.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
During his hiatus, Ali had become a vocal activist, a
hero to the anti war movement. Fraser, meanwhile, was embraced
by supporters of the war. Among Fraser's biggest fans, President
Richard Nixon. Before the fight, Fraser and Nixon even met
up at the White House and smoking Joe, Fraser promised
the President that he'd give his draft dodging rival a
quote good old beatdown. And so the Fight of the
(02:59):
Century kruscheted into something bigger than just a contest between
two athletes. Society at large turned it into a proxy
battle between those who supported the war in Vietnam and
those who opposed it. On March eighth, nineteen seventy one,
anti war activists prayed for an Ali victory, and on
that same night, one hundred miles away, John and Bonnie
(03:20):
Rains prepared for their own fight against the war.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
The kids had no reason to be suspicious that anything
that was.
Speaker 9 (03:30):
Not normal was going on. They had no reason to
suspect anything at all.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
It was just another meeting that mom and dad were
going to.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
But this wasn't just another meeting, because this time the
rains is new. They might not come back.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
We were very, very worried about what would happened to
our children if we were arrested put in prison, So
in planning for that possibility, we talked to John's brother
Bob and his wife and my parents about this jeopardy
that we were going to encounter. We had to have
(04:07):
them reassure us that the children would be taken care
of if we were in federal prison.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Through dinner, John felt sick to his stomach as he
contemplated the possibility that both he and Bonnie could be
arrested that night. He would later say that if Bonnie
had suggested that they drop out now, he would have agreed.
A part of him maybe even hoped that she would
back out, But Bonnie didn't waver, and now it was
time to leave. The babysitter arrived, John and Bonnie cleared
(04:39):
the table. They kissed their kids and told them good night.
They stepped out into the cool night air, got into
their old maroon station wagon, and drove off towards media.
Come morning, would they be back at the breakfast table
with their children as they hoped or locked away in
(04:59):
a I'm ed Helms and this is Snaffo, a show
about history's greatest screw ups. This is season two medburg
the story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI snaffoo.
It exposed this week. The burglary, a holiday inn off
(05:30):
an exit ramp two miles from Media, became the Citizens
Commission's command center for the night of March eighth.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
That was our base of operations. It had a phone
because you know, remember this was long before cell phones
and we didn't really think walkie talkies were secure.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
We have to be careful not to alert the hotel
people that there was you know, seven or eight people
in this room at that point, and there was a
lot of nervous tension, excitement.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
One final time, the eight burglars talked through their plans
for the burglary and each of their roles. There were
four phases to the heist. Phase one, the break in. Keith,
barely twenty years old and having mastered the art of
lock picking, would embark on his solo mission, putting his
assiduously owned lock picking skills to the test.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
My job was to get the door open by myself,
and then I leave and then the inside crew comes in.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Phase two belonged to the inside crew, which included Ralph
the graduate student, Sarah Schumer, the professor, Bob Williamson, the
social worker and jokester, and Judy Finegeld, the nineteen year
old professional pacifist. This foursome would enter the unlocked office
carrying empty suitcases. Once inside, their job was pretty simple.
(06:54):
Stuff every file they could get their hands on into
those suitcases. Oh yeah, and don't get caught. And if
there were cops out on patrol, Bonnie was standing by
ready with a distraction.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
They would have seen the hood up and just assumed
that I was a damsel in distress.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Phase three, the getaway. The inside team would exit the
building suitcases in hand and load them into the two
getaway cars. Then they'd drive to Swathmore College, where John
Rains would be waiting in the family station wagon.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
We would transfer the suitcases into our family station wagon.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Switching vehicles would create a smoke screen for anyone who
might be on their trail. Through all this, their fearless leader,
physicist and father of two, Bill Davidon, would stay stationed
at the motel, calling the shots from mission control, coordinating
departure times, answering calls, making any necessary snap decisions. Bill's philosophy,
(07:51):
keep it simple.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
Just sort of check on readiness of everything was the
rule that I played. I waded a car for the day.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Bill had booked the car rental using his own name
and real driver's license. He'd reserved the motel room under
his own name too. It was part of a strategy
to avoid a cloak and dagger vibe, which had the
potential to attract attention in and of itself. Last up
the final phase of any heist, counting the money, or
in this case, analyzing the documents, would they find just
(08:25):
a bunch of legitimate case files or records of nefarious
political surveillance? Start to finish, they estimated the job would
take about two hours. With this kind of meticulous planning,
what could possibly go wrong?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
We had picked a time to begin the action, timing
it to begin with the Ali Fraser fight.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
By eight o'clock in New York City, Manhattan was gridlocked,
with tens of thousands descending upon Madison Square gardenp with Mohammed.
Speaker 8 (09:06):
Today is my birthday and my maid's name is Clay.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I'm not on Fraser. The red carpet into the arena
was bursting with celebrities in zoot suits, mink hats, full
length fur coats. Remember it was the seventies.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Fight, Well, it's gonna be a great fight Ali.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
That prediction was courtesy of Diana Ross, just one of
twenty thousand fans squeezing into the arena. With the eyes
of the world focused on Madison Square Garden, Bill Davidon
gave the green light. Phase one of the media burglary began.
(09:52):
John departed for Swathmore to wait for the handoff. Keith
headed straight for the FBI office, lock picking tools in hand.
Inside Madison Square Garden, Muhammad Ali faced the cameras oh
a lot, dressed in an iconic red robe that would
(10:13):
later sell it auction for a million bucks. The hour
of truth also arrived for Keith, who pulled into media
wearing his five dollars second hand sport coat.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Keith joked that he had to get a haircut, and
Bill directed him to a thrift store on the Mainline,
where he got a Brooks Brother's sport coat for five dollars.
Speaker 9 (10:34):
He was very proud of that.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
The burglars understood they couldn't draw attention to themselves looking
like anti war hippies. They needed to blend in.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
It was March, so I had a trench coat and
then I could put some small tools in the pocket
of that without being obvious.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Keith arrived at one Veteran Square. He glocked his surroundings.
Not a soul in sight, accept the security guard at
the courthouse across the street. But that was perfectly normal.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
So I went in. I went through the front door,
went up the stairs.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
He was careful to tread lightly.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
The building manager lived in the apartment directly underneath the
FBI office.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Keith was relieved to hear sounds from what he assumed
was the fight broadcast emanating from downstairs.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
So I went to the door, mister confident, and there's
a second lock on the door that wasn't there like
two weeks before. I mean, I just about had a
heart attack. Not only was there a second lock, but
it wasn't a front door type lock. It was cylindrical
(11:52):
tumblr lock, which A it's much harder than a regular lock,
and B you can't do it with the kind of tools.
I had, special tool.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
And now Keith was feeling like a real special tool
for not bringing one.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
You know your mind, you always go to the worst
thing first. Either they know we're coming, and if they
know we're coming, the only way they can know we're
coming is if we've got a leak. So somebody's talk
if there's a leak.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Keith's mind went straight to Burglar number nine. No, no, no,
but no, the man who abruptly ditched the group a
week earlier. Could he have turned into an informant for
the FBI? Or was he won all along? Keith imagined
a brigade of armed agents right on the other side
of the door, waiting for him.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
I like took some deep breaths, and I'm like, all
we know is that there's a new lock on the door.
That's the only thing we know for sure. And the
only other thing we know for sure is that I
cannot pick this lock tonight. So I just turned around
and went out and I used a payphone to the room.
I would love to have a tape of that call,
(13:03):
because I'm not sure how much sense I made.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Since I was at the motel, I knew from Keith's
phone call that there were problems.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
That was one of the people on the call, and
he said something like we might have to cancel or
reschedule the event because we can't get in.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
It was like, oh shit, you know, this is just terrible.
It was a huge left down. I think there probably
was a few minutes when we thought we had to
had to give up.
Speaker 9 (13:37):
I mean, there was just no plan being.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The burglars were crestfallen. They looked to their leader, Bill Davidan.
He was not ready to give up. After all, there
was no conclusive evidence that the FBI was on to them.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
We've got this far and we're just not going to
give up. We're going to figure out something else. And
that's when I remembered the second door.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
She said, well, what about the other door, And I'm like, oh, yeah,
the other door. Did that have a high security lock
on it? No, just has the regular lock, And you know,
there's some cabinet or something on the other side of it.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
In fact, it was a ginormous filing cabinet. Bonnie had
seen it during her casing mission, and that gave.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Me the chance to see another door from the hallway
in that third office, and that the door was blocked
by this huge metal file cabinet.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
But now that door might be their only hope.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
So I go back. I go up to the second door,
and I could tell already before I even picked the
lock that there was a dead boll on the door.
I had a short sixteen inch Prie bar with me,
so that wasn't going to be a problem. But the
only thing that worried me is that I could hear
sounds coming from the room directly underneath me.
Speaker 10 (15:03):
A let's turn back to the instance. Like for I'm
gonna thirty.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Five inns, I used the crowd noise to my advantage
when I popped the dead bowlt, I waited for a
loud moment to do that. So I put the pride
bar in the jam and you know, snapped the dead
bowled off all at once. It seemed quite loud to me.
And then I just stood there and.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Listened, listening, listening, and thank god, not a peep from
the building manager.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
I pushed the door and it went like an inch
and stopped, and so I could feel that it was
the doorknob that was hitting something heavy. So I put
my pride bar in and tried to scoot it and
I couldn't get it to budge. It was like, oh shit,
now what am I going to do? And then I thought, well,
(15:57):
obviously I need more leverage, and I've got a jack
in the car. I put it in the door jam
and started to move it, and the whatever there was
on the other side started to tip over, and I
was like, oh shit, because if it fell, that would
have been the end, because it would have been loud.
The guy downstairs definitely would have heard that. You're not
going to come up with a cover story to cover
(16:18):
that one. So I quickly backed off.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Keep in mind any of the building residents could have
walked by at any moment.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
And so I laid down on the floor of the
hall and worked the jackstand in there against the bottom
of the thing and started moving it. And you could
only move it like a fraction of an inch at
a time. I was basically laying on the floor of
the hallway with my feet against one side of the hall,
(16:49):
you know, working on this lever and slowly moving it away.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
For what seemed like an eternity. Keith was sprawled across
the floor in the hallway outside the FBI office in
a position that can only be described as a cartoon
caricature of a cat burglar.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
At some point during the whole process, I heard a
banging noise inside, and that stopped me for a second.
I'm like, well, that was either the FBI or the
heating system, and there's only one way to find out which.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
We were all probably watching our watches because it was
taking so much more time than we expected it too.
I don't think I cried, but we were so worried
about about Keith.
Speaker 9 (17:36):
We were really worried about his safety.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
So just worked. It worked, at worked, at worked, it worked.
It finally got it enough that I could squeeze in.
So Luckily I'm not very wide.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
So.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
He squeezed through the door and immediately took in his surroundings.
The office was dark and, to his relief empty, There
was no crew of FBI agents with guns drawn.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
I taped the door so it wouldn't relock and pulled
it close and left. Then I called him and said
I am next.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Against all odds and a ridiculously large filing cabinet, Keith prevailed.
Speaker 11 (18:27):
I imagine myself in that situation, and I honestly do not
think that I would have risen to the occasion the
way that he did.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
There was this huge, huge relief, so I think we
had a little guardian angel on our.
Speaker 9 (18:42):
Side and Mary.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Next Phase two, the Inside crew enters the office. The
door of the FBI office was now open. It was
(19:06):
approaching eleven PM at Madison Square Garden, Ali and Fraser
were still slugging it out our burglars. In Media were
behind schedule, way behind. John Rains, sitting in a parking
lot in Swathmore, was starting to sweat. He wondered why
the hell they were taking so long.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
He thinks they've been busted. I mean, he's that's what
He's having a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Back in Media, the Inside crew was just arriving at
the office building.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
The men had suits and the women were dressed up.
Speaker 11 (19:40):
You know, we wanted to make it look like maybe
we were visiting or that we were going on a
vacation or something like that, and that's why we had suitcases.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I remember thinking, I'm not breathing, but I've got to
be breathing because I'm functioning. I can just imagine, you know,
some FBI guy sitting in the meet the office, right,
and he decides to work late because or maybe he
wants to watch the fight, and his wife won't want
to watch the fight, right, so he sit in the
(20:09):
office that we all break in, right, the four of.
Speaker 9 (20:12):
Us break in, He'll shoot us. What do you think
he's gonna do.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
He's got a gun.
Speaker 11 (20:17):
I remember the tight squeeze getting past the cabinet through
the door, but we all did that no problem.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Once we were in there, we shut the door.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I think the real sentament was like, holy shit, we
are really here, This is really happening, This is phenomenal
and in some ways unbelievable. It was like, let's get
the job done.
Speaker 11 (20:40):
I had a little flashlight, but we taped it up
with black electrical tape so that only a little pinpoint
of a hole was allowing light through.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
They gingerly crept through the office, opening every desk, drawer
and cabinet. They could find thousands of top secret and
confidential files just sitting there right for the taking.
Speaker 12 (21:05):
I think you were tre you right in the range
of twenty minutes inside.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
That's Sarah Schumer.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
The focus was on.
Speaker 12 (21:12):
Doing it as quickly as possible and making as little
noise as possible, and being as undetected as possible, and
to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Apart from one small safe they couldn't unlock. They cleaned
the place out, stuffing the suitcases until all the files
were removed. Periodically, Bob walked over to the window to
see if the guard at the courthouse across the street
was looking their way. He never was. With the files
packed up, it was time to get out of Dodge,
(21:45):
so they called the getaway cars, and just to add
a little insult to injury, they used the FBI off.
Speaker 11 (21:51):
His phone and there was just a one word thing,
like a pre arranged code.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Word to let them know were ready. So we knew
we had ten more minutes.
Speaker 11 (22:04):
Ralph saw this big teletype machine, giant machine that it
was a means of communication between that office and the
rest of the FBI system, particularly in Washington. I mean
it was a direct line to Washington. But the cord
on this thing was the biggest court I think I've
ever seen, and we had a pair of both cutters.
(22:25):
So he wanted to disable the machine by cutting the cord,
which was plugged into a live socket.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
And I was a little.
Speaker 11 (22:37):
Nervous about that. I tried to talk him out of it,
but he insisted. The sparks going all over the place.
It was quite a show there. For about five seconds.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
There was a photo on the wall of Hoover, and
one of the burglars slid the photo out of the
frame and took it with them for a souvenir.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Cut the communication cord and grab the portrait of the
head honcho on your way out the door. Now that's
how you leave a heist with style. Next phase three
the getaway down.
Speaker 10 (23:29):
I stand, the round fourteen and one another great round.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
It was.
Speaker 10 (23:32):
Now if you look over at joe'spoto, is something wrong
with his face?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
The Fight of the century was living up to its billing.
The first championship fight ever between two undefeated heavyweights had
become an epic, bloody slugfest. Then in the fifteenth round,
a jaw dropping turning point. There that gasp you here,
(24:00):
that's the sound of tens of thousands of fans who
can't believe what they just saw. A brutal left hook
from Fraser and Ali tumbling to the mat.
Speaker 12 (24:11):
They only go on the bike.
Speaker 10 (24:13):
Ahamad Ali was hot on his back, but he's a
welcome doesn't that late?
Speaker 12 (24:17):
However, it's real fired.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Meanwhile, in media, two men and two women strolled out
of an office building at one veteran square, each carrying
two full suitcases. He'th watched from his car. He looked
across the street and his heart stopped. Someone was looking
directly at the burglars leaving the building.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
The security guard in the courthouse. The front door of
the courthouse is glass, and he's standing right inside the glass,
looking directly across the street in our direction, just standing
there with his hands folded, looking right. And he is
a security guard, of course, so he's supposed to be
watching for stuff. And here comes the inside crew out
(25:12):
the door, each carrying two suitcases full of FBI files,
and the guy's watching them.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
For a tense moment. Keith watched the guard watching the burglars,
and then nothing.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
I used to joke to my kids, there's a very
important object lesson there. If you're a white man in
a suit, you can get away with anything.
Speaker 11 (25:32):
I just got in the backseat of the car and
just you know, breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
And we're all excited too, you know, in the car.
Speaker 11 (25:40):
Once we got in the car on the road, we're like,
at least I was just complete relaxation with some euphoria
along with it.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
The two ghetaway cars zoomed off in different directions, One
headed straight for the farmhouse, the other to Swapmore College,
where John Rains was starting to panic. The drop off
should have happened by now, it had been hours. John
was now convinced that something had gone horribly wrong and
that he and Bonnie wouldn't be back for dinner with
(26:14):
the kids for a very long time. Then suddenly headlights
emerged from the darkness. John held his breath. Was it
campus security? The cops. The car rolled up next to
his and the door opened. Bonnie stepped out and John exhaled,
relief washing over him. He jumped out of his car.
Speaker 9 (26:36):
We hogged and we'd laughed a little bit.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
They worked fast, transferring the suitcases from Bonnie's getaway car
to the Rains's station wagon. Then it was off to
the final rally point, the farmhouse.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I drove and we took back roads, you know, and
by then it was the middle of the night.
Speaker 9 (26:56):
I was really jacked up. Leave it. We pulled it
off without a single hitch.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I don't know, without a hitch might be stretching it
a little given the whole lock fiasco, but considering what
could have gone wrong, yeah, you bet.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
We were feeling incredibly relieved and also a lot of
adrenaline was flowing.
Speaker 9 (27:19):
A lot of adrenaline was flowing.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
It was nearing midnight, and inside Madison Square Garden it
was bedlong now ring it started to cloud up. The
fight was over. It was pandemonium. As the judges revealed
their decision. Anonymous for the first time ever in his
(27:47):
professional career, Muhammad Ali lost. His supporters around the world
were shattered.
Speaker 10 (27:54):
Oh here we are in metithisquat God, and the people
are still standing around. Nobody seems to want to go home.
I think everybody has been treated to one of the
greatest fighting evenings I've ever seen. The crowd is getting
to be very oddly now they're quieting down. For a
while there they looked like I'm going to tear the
place up.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
As the world processed Ali's defeat, the burglars and their
various cars were headed north. The drive took them through
suburban neighborhoods and along dark, winding country roads. The drivers
and passengers kept a wary eye on their rear view mirrors,
constantly glancing behind them, wondering if they were being followed.
(28:37):
It took an hour to reach their safe house.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
I was familiar with the farm just from knowing the
people there over the years.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
As part of a Quaker retreat conference center kind of
out in the country.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
I had made arrangements for the use of the farm.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Fellowship Farm was a meeting place for local activists. Martin
Luther King had even visited once it was isolated and
surrounded by woods. One by one, the cars pulled up
to the house. To their relief, no one had been
stopped on the way. All eight were safe and sound.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
Once I realized that everything was working okay and that
the other cars involved, we're okay, then there's a relaxation.
Speaker 9 (29:26):
I was just.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Certainly, I was relieved. You know, here we were, everybody
was there. There were no police.
Speaker 9 (29:40):
Oh my god, that was beautiful. I mean, you're in
the country.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
You put our sleeping bags down, and that It's not
that anybody slept. It was because we were all so
punchy and the adrenaline was just going. We were just
trying to come down, down and down from being up up, up,
up and hyped and feeling relieved that we were successful.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
After the fight in New York, Fraser fans and the
Warhawks celebrated President Nixon who watched the fight in a
private screening room at the White House, reportedly jumped up
and down, cheering the defeat of quote that draft dodger asshole. Meanwhile,
Ali supporters were devastated.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
And there's nothing to cry and complain about. You know,
I've been always handing out the defeat. So now I'm
defeated now, and see how the people felt. And when
I do come back, if I ever do, I'll have
a more of a hungred determination, which is.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Something The loss was crushing, not only for Ali but
also for his millions of fans in the anti war movement.
They had no way of knowing that about one hundred
miles away they might have just won an even bigger victory.
Speaker 9 (30:58):
Oh yeah, we had a little champag.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Then there was this tension about what we would actually
find in those documents.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
The citizens commissioned to investigate. The FBI had risked everything
to remove all the files from the media FBI office,
and now they were about to find out if it
had all been worth it.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
It didn't take long before someone in the other room said.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Holy Macro, you're not going to believe this.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Next time on snafoo, we had some idea that this
was pretty explosive.
Speaker 11 (31:34):
I went downstairs and my visitors were these two FBI agents,
and you know, they suggested that we go outside and talk.
Speaker 12 (31:43):
And then the next morning I got a phone call
from the FBI that they wanted to enterview me.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Snafoo is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and
Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
season of Snafoo is based on the book The Burglary,
The Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by
Betty Metzger. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Mike Walbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger.
(32:21):
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 Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Tory Smith is
our associate producer. Nevin Calla Poly is our production assistant.
Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
(32:43):
Sensitivity consult from oloakemi Ala de Sui, editing, sound design
and original music by Ben Chubg, Engineering and technical direction
by Nick Dooley. Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia Canny
and Jimma Castelli. Foley theme music by Dan Rosatto. Special
well thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and Ben Ryzak.
Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use
(33:06):
some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen
seventy one. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy Finegeld,
Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Rains, John Rains, Sarah Schumer and Bob Williamson,
Last time on Snafu.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
We cased the place for at least two maybe three months.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
I just felt like I was living in the heart
of the dragon and it was just my job to
stop the fire. There were no cameras, there were no
alarms over the doors. I couldn't see any security measures whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Somebody wasn't me. Somebody suggested what about the night of
the Ali Fraser fight? And it was like a brilliant suggestion.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
In nineteen seventy one, Muhammad Ali was the most famous
athlete in the world. He was an undefeated boxing champion
who just happened to be facing jail time.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
How do you stand there with the possibility of going
to jail.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (00:50):
I'm just waiting in a day now.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
After refusing to serve in Vietnam as a conscientious objector
to the war, Ali had been stripped of his heavyweight
championship title. He had his boxing license revoked and was
banned from the sport by the Boxing Commission. He was
convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison.
He stayed out of prison while he appealed the conviction
to the Supreme Court. Ali being Ali wasn't going down
(01:17):
without a fight.
Speaker 7 (01:19):
White America right now spending thirty million dollars a day
in age of black and white boys are dying unjustly
for nothing, just to free somebody else. So why should
I worry about going to little old jail to free
my pole people who's been catching ail here for four
hundred years.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
While Ali was away from the ring, Joe Fraser had
taken the heavyweight title belt. But on the night of
March eighth, nineteen seventy one, a reinstated Ali would finally
have his chance to take it back.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
And the big fight is coming up Ali and Fraser.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Muhammad Ali Ak.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That's George Carlin on the Ed Sullivan Show. Of course,
the anti establishment icon had something to say about the
big fight. But it's good that.
Speaker 8 (01:59):
He's been allowed to work again. As you know, he
couldn't work for three years. Of course, he had a
strange job beating people up, but that was you know,
he is right, he could have that job. Govman wanted
him to change jobs.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Goubman wanted him to kill people.
Speaker 8 (02:17):
He thought it over and he said, no, that's where
I draw the line. I'll beat him up, and I
don't want to kill him, and the government told him, well,
if you won't kill him, we won't let you beat
him up.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
During his hiatus, Ali had become a vocal activist, a
hero to the anti war movement. Fraser, meanwhile, was embraced
by supporters of the war. Among Fraser's biggest fans, President
Richard Nixon. Before the fight, Fraser and Nixon even met
up at the White House and smoking Joe, Fraser promised
the President that he'd give his draft dodging rival a
quote good old beatdown. And so the Fight of the
(02:59):
Century kruscheted into something bigger than just a contest between
two athletes. Society at large turned it into a proxy
battle between those who supported the war in Vietnam and
those who opposed it. On March eighth, nineteen seventy one,
anti war activists prayed for an Ali victory, and on
that same night, one hundred miles away, John and Bonnie
(03:20):
Rains prepared for their own fight against the war.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
The kids had no reason to be suspicious that anything
that was.
Speaker 9 (03:30):
Not normal was going on. They had no reason to
suspect anything at all.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
It was just another meeting that mom and dad were
going to.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
But this wasn't just another meeting, because this time the
rains is new. They might not come back.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
We were very, very worried about what would happened to
our children if we were arrested put in prison, So
in planning for that possibility, we talked to John's brother
Bob and his wife and my parents about this jeopardy
that we were going to encounter. We had to have
(04:07):
them reassure us that the children would be taken care
of if we were in federal prison.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Through dinner, John felt sick to his stomach as he
contemplated the possibility that both he and Bonnie could be
arrested that night. He would later say that if Bonnie
had suggested that they drop out now, he would have agreed.
A part of him maybe even hoped that she would
back out, But Bonnie didn't waver, and now it was
time to leave. The babysitter arrived, John and Bonnie cleared
(04:39):
the table. They kissed their kids and told them good night.
They stepped out into the cool night air, got into
their old maroon station wagon, and drove off towards media.
Come morning, would they be back at the breakfast table
with their children as they hoped or locked away in
(04:59):
a I'm ed Helms and this is Snaffo, a show
about history's greatest screw ups. This is season two medburg
the story of a daring heist and the colossal FBI snaffoo.
It exposed this week. The burglary, a holiday inn off
(05:30):
an exit ramp two miles from Media, became the Citizens
Commission's command center for the night of March eighth.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
That was our base of operations. It had a phone
because you know, remember this was long before cell phones
and we didn't really think walkie talkies were secure.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
We have to be careful not to alert the hotel
people that there was you know, seven or eight people
in this room at that point, and there was a
lot of nervous tension, excitement.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
One final time, the eight burglars talked through their plans
for the burglary and each of their roles. There were
four phases to the heist. Phase one, the break in. Keith,
barely twenty years old and having mastered the art of
lock picking, would embark on his solo mission, putting his
assiduously owned lock picking skills to the test.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
My job was to get the door open by myself,
and then I leave and then the inside crew comes in.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Phase two belonged to the inside crew, which included Ralph
the graduate student, Sarah Schumer, the professor, Bob Williamson, the
social worker and jokester, and Judy Finegeld, the nineteen year
old professional pacifist. This foursome would enter the unlocked office
carrying empty suitcases. Once inside, their job was pretty simple.
(06:54):
Stuff every file they could get their hands on into
those suitcases. Oh yeah, and don't get caught. And if
there were cops out on patrol, Bonnie was standing by
ready with a distraction.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
They would have seen the hood up and just assumed
that I was a damsel in distress.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Phase three, the getaway. The inside team would exit the
building suitcases in hand and load them into the two
getaway cars. Then they'd drive to Swathmore College, where John
Rains would be waiting in the family station wagon.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
We would transfer the suitcases into our family station wagon.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Switching vehicles would create a smoke screen for anyone who
might be on their trail. Through all this, their fearless leader,
physicist and father of two, Bill Davidon, would stay stationed
at the motel, calling the shots from mission control, coordinating
departure times, answering calls, making any necessary snap decisions. Bill's philosophy,
(07:51):
keep it simple.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
Just sort of check on readiness of everything was the
rule that I played. I waded a car for the day.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Bill had booked the car rental using his own name
and real driver's license. He'd reserved the motel room under
his own name too. It was part of a strategy
to avoid a cloak and dagger vibe, which had the
potential to attract attention in and of itself. Last up
the final phase of any heist, counting the money, or
in this case, analyzing the documents, would they find just
(08:25):
a bunch of legitimate case files or records of nefarious
political surveillance? Start to finish, they estimated the job would
take about two hours. With this kind of meticulous planning,
what could possibly go wrong?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
We had picked a time to begin the action, timing
it to begin with the Ali Fraser fight.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
By eight o'clock in New York City, Manhattan was gridlocked,
with tens of thousands descending upon Madison Square gardenp with Mohammed.
Speaker 8 (09:06):
Today is my birthday and my maid's name is Clay.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I'm not on Fraser. The red carpet into the arena
was bursting with celebrities in zoot suits, mink hats, full
length fur coats. Remember it was the seventies.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Fight, Well, it's gonna be a great fight Ali.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
That prediction was courtesy of Diana Ross, just one of
twenty thousand fans squeezing into the arena. With the eyes
of the world focused on Madison Square Garden, Bill Davidon
gave the green light. Phase one of the media burglary began.
(09:52):
John departed for Swathmore to wait for the handoff. Keith
headed straight for the FBI office, lock picking tools in hand.
Inside Madison Square Garden, Muhammad Ali faced the cameras oh
a lot, dressed in an iconic red robe that would
(10:13):
later sell it auction for a million bucks. The hour
of truth also arrived for Keith, who pulled into media
wearing his five dollars second hand sport coat.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Keith joked that he had to get a haircut, and
Bill directed him to a thrift store on the Mainline,
where he got a Brooks Brother's sport coat for five dollars.
Speaker 9 (10:34):
He was very proud of that.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
The burglars understood they couldn't draw attention to themselves looking
like anti war hippies. They needed to blend in.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
It was March, so I had a trench coat and
then I could put some small tools in the pocket
of that without being obvious.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Keith arrived at one Veteran Square. He glocked his surroundings.
Not a soul in sight, accept the security guard at
the courthouse across the street. But that was perfectly normal.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
So I went in. I went through the front door,
went up the stairs.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
He was careful to tread lightly.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
The building manager lived in the apartment directly underneath the
FBI office.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Keith was relieved to hear sounds from what he assumed
was the fight broadcast emanating from downstairs.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
So I went to the door, mister confident, and there's
a second lock on the door that wasn't there like
two weeks before. I mean, I just about had a
heart attack. Not only was there a second lock, but
it wasn't a front door type lock. It was cylindrical
(11:52):
tumblr lock, which A it's much harder than a regular lock,
and B you can't do it with the kind of tools.
I had, special tool.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
And now Keith was feeling like a real special tool
for not bringing one.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
You know your mind, you always go to the worst
thing first. Either they know we're coming, and if they
know we're coming, the only way they can know we're
coming is if we've got a leak. So somebody's talk
if there's a leak.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Keith's mind went straight to Burglar number nine. No, no, no,
but no, the man who abruptly ditched the group a
week earlier. Could he have turned into an informant for
the FBI? Or was he won all along? Keith imagined
a brigade of armed agents right on the other side
of the door, waiting for him.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
I like took some deep breaths, and I'm like, all
we know is that there's a new lock on the door.
That's the only thing we know for sure. And the
only other thing we know for sure is that I
cannot pick this lock tonight. So I just turned around
and went out and I used a payphone to the room.
I would love to have a tape of that call,
(13:03):
because I'm not sure how much sense I made.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Since I was at the motel, I knew from Keith's
phone call that there were problems.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
That was one of the people on the call, and
he said something like we might have to cancel or
reschedule the event because we can't get in.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
It was like, oh shit, you know, this is just terrible.
It was a huge left down. I think there probably
was a few minutes when we thought we had to
had to give up.
Speaker 9 (13:37):
I mean, there was just no plan being.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
The burglars were crestfallen. They looked to their leader, Bill Davidan.
He was not ready to give up. After all, there
was no conclusive evidence that the FBI was on to them.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
We've got this far and we're just not going to
give up. We're going to figure out something else. And
that's when I remembered the second door.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
She said, well, what about the other door, And I'm like, oh, yeah,
the other door. Did that have a high security lock
on it? No, just has the regular lock, And you know,
there's some cabinet or something on the other side of it.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
In fact, it was a ginormous filing cabinet. Bonnie had
seen it during her casing mission, and that gave.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Me the chance to see another door from the hallway
in that third office, and that the door was blocked
by this huge metal file cabinet.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
But now that door might be their only hope.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
So I go back. I go up to the second door,
and I could tell already before I even picked the
lock that there was a dead boll on the door.
I had a short sixteen inch Prie bar with me,
so that wasn't going to be a problem. But the
only thing that worried me is that I could hear
sounds coming from the room directly underneath me.
Speaker 10 (15:03):
A let's turn back to the instance. Like for I'm
gonna thirty.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Five inns, I used the crowd noise to my advantage
when I popped the dead bowlt, I waited for a
loud moment to do that. So I put the pride
bar in the jam and you know, snapped the dead
bowled off all at once. It seemed quite loud to me.
And then I just stood there and.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Listened, listening, listening, and thank god, not a peep from
the building manager.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
I pushed the door and it went like an inch
and stopped, and so I could feel that it was
the doorknob that was hitting something heavy. So I put
my pride bar in and tried to scoot it and
I couldn't get it to budge. It was like, oh shit,
now what am I going to do? And then I thought, well,
(15:57):
obviously I need more leverage, and I've got a jack
in the car. I put it in the door jam
and started to move it, and the whatever there was
on the other side started to tip over, and I
was like, oh shit, because if it fell, that would
have been the end, because it would have been loud.
The guy downstairs definitely would have heard that. You're not
going to come up with a cover story to cover
(16:18):
that one. So I quickly backed off.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Keep in mind any of the building residents could have
walked by at any moment.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
And so I laid down on the floor of the
hall and worked the jackstand in there against the bottom
of the thing and started moving it. And you could
only move it like a fraction of an inch at
a time. I was basically laying on the floor of
the hallway with my feet against one side of the hall,
(16:49):
you know, working on this lever and slowly moving it away.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
For what seemed like an eternity. Keith was sprawled across
the floor in the hallway outside the FBI office in
a position that can only be described as a cartoon
caricature of a cat burglar.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
At some point during the whole process, I heard a
banging noise inside, and that stopped me for a second.
I'm like, well, that was either the FBI or the
heating system, and there's only one way to find out which.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
We were all probably watching our watches because it was
taking so much more time than we expected it too.
I don't think I cried, but we were so worried
about about Keith.
Speaker 9 (17:36):
We were really worried about his safety.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
So just worked. It worked, at worked, at worked, it worked.
It finally got it enough that I could squeeze in.
So Luckily I'm not very wide.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
So.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
He squeezed through the door and immediately took in his surroundings.
The office was dark and, to his relief empty, There
was no crew of FBI agents with guns drawn.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
I taped the door so it wouldn't relock and pulled
it close and left. Then I called him and said
I am next.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Against all odds and a ridiculously large filing cabinet, Keith prevailed.
Speaker 11 (18:27):
I imagine myself in that situation, and I honestly do not
think that I would have risen to the occasion the
way that he did.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
There was this huge, huge relief, so I think we
had a little guardian angel on our.
Speaker 9 (18:42):
Side and Mary.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Next Phase two, the Inside crew enters the office. The
door of the FBI office was now open. It was
(19:06):
approaching eleven PM at Madison Square Garden, Ali and Fraser
were still slugging it out our burglars. In Media were
behind schedule, way behind. John Rains, sitting in a parking
lot in Swathmore, was starting to sweat. He wondered why
the hell they were taking so long.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
He thinks they've been busted. I mean, he's that's what
He's having a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Back in Media, the Inside crew was just arriving at
the office building.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
The men had suits and the women were dressed up.
Speaker 11 (19:40):
You know, we wanted to make it look like maybe
we were visiting or that we were going on a
vacation or something like that, and that's why we had suitcases.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I remember thinking, I'm not breathing, but I've got to
be breathing because I'm functioning. I can just imagine, you know,
some FBI guy sitting in the meet the office, right,
and he decides to work late because or maybe he
wants to watch the fight, and his wife won't want
to watch the fight, right, so he sit in the
(20:09):
office that we all break in, right, the four of.
Speaker 9 (20:12):
Us break in, He'll shoot us. What do you think
he's gonna do.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
He's got a gun.
Speaker 11 (20:17):
I remember the tight squeeze getting past the cabinet through
the door, but we all did that no problem.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Once we were in there, we shut the door.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I think the real sentament was like, holy shit, we
are really here, This is really happening, This is phenomenal
and in some ways unbelievable. It was like, let's get
the job done.
Speaker 11 (20:40):
I had a little flashlight, but we taped it up
with black electrical tape so that only a little pinpoint
of a hole was allowing light through.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
They gingerly crept through the office, opening every desk, drawer
and cabinet. They could find thousands of top secret and
confidential files just sitting there right for the taking.
Speaker 12 (21:05):
I think you were tre you right in the range
of twenty minutes inside.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
That's Sarah Schumer.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
The focus was on.
Speaker 12 (21:12):
Doing it as quickly as possible and making as little
noise as possible, and being as undetected as possible, and
to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Apart from one small safe they couldn't unlock. They cleaned
the place out, stuffing the suitcases until all the files
were removed. Periodically, Bob walked over to the window to
see if the guard at the courthouse across the street
was looking their way. He never was. With the files
packed up, it was time to get out of Dodge,
(21:45):
so they called the getaway cars, and just to add
a little insult to injury, they used the FBI off.
Speaker 11 (21:51):
His phone and there was just a one word thing,
like a pre arranged code.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Word to let them know were ready. So we knew
we had ten more minutes.
Speaker 11 (22:04):
Ralph saw this big teletype machine, giant machine that it
was a means of communication between that office and the
rest of the FBI system, particularly in Washington. I mean
it was a direct line to Washington. But the cord
on this thing was the biggest court I think I've
ever seen, and we had a pair of both cutters.
(22:25):
So he wanted to disable the machine by cutting the cord,
which was plugged into a live socket.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
And I was a little.
Speaker 11 (22:37):
Nervous about that. I tried to talk him out of it,
but he insisted. The sparks going all over the place.
It was quite a show there. For about five seconds.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
There was a photo on the wall of Hoover, and
one of the burglars slid the photo out of the
frame and took it with them for a souvenir.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Cut the communication cord and grab the portrait of the
head honcho on your way out the door. Now that's
how you leave a heist with style. Next phase three
the getaway down.
Speaker 10 (23:29):
I stand, the round fourteen and one another great round.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
It was.
Speaker 10 (23:32):
Now if you look over at joe'spoto, is something wrong
with his face?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
The Fight of the century was living up to its billing.
The first championship fight ever between two undefeated heavyweights had
become an epic, bloody slugfest. Then in the fifteenth round,
a jaw dropping turning point. There that gasp you here,
(24:00):
that's the sound of tens of thousands of fans who
can't believe what they just saw. A brutal left hook
from Fraser and Ali tumbling to the mat.
Speaker 12 (24:11):
They only go on the bike.
Speaker 10 (24:13):
Ahamad Ali was hot on his back, but he's a
welcome doesn't that late?
Speaker 12 (24:17):
However, it's real fired.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Meanwhile, in media, two men and two women strolled out
of an office building at one veteran square, each carrying
two full suitcases. He'th watched from his car. He looked
across the street and his heart stopped. Someone was looking
directly at the burglars leaving the building.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
The security guard in the courthouse. The front door of
the courthouse is glass, and he's standing right inside the glass,
looking directly across the street in our direction, just standing
there with his hands folded, looking right. And he is
a security guard, of course, so he's supposed to be
watching for stuff. And here comes the inside crew out
(25:12):
the door, each carrying two suitcases full of FBI files,
and the guy's watching them.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
For a tense moment. Keith watched the guard watching the burglars,
and then nothing.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
I used to joke to my kids, there's a very
important object lesson there. If you're a white man in
a suit, you can get away with anything.
Speaker 11 (25:32):
I just got in the backseat of the car and
just you know, breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
And we're all excited too, you know, in the car.
Speaker 11 (25:40):
Once we got in the car on the road, we're like,
at least I was just complete relaxation with some euphoria
along with it.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
The two ghetaway cars zoomed off in different directions, One
headed straight for the farmhouse, the other to Swapmore College,
where John Rains was starting to panic. The drop off
should have happened by now, it had been hours. John
was now convinced that something had gone horribly wrong and
that he and Bonnie wouldn't be back for dinner with
(26:14):
the kids for a very long time. Then suddenly headlights
emerged from the darkness. John held his breath. Was it
campus security? The cops. The car rolled up next to
his and the door opened. Bonnie stepped out and John exhaled,
relief washing over him. He jumped out of his car.
Speaker 9 (26:36):
We hogged and we'd laughed a little bit.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
They worked fast, transferring the suitcases from Bonnie's getaway car
to the Rains's station wagon. Then it was off to
the final rally point, the farmhouse.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I drove and we took back roads, you know, and
by then it was the middle of the night.
Speaker 9 (26:56):
I was really jacked up. Leave it. We pulled it
off without a single hitch.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I don't know, without a hitch might be stretching it
a little given the whole lock fiasco, but considering what
could have gone wrong, yeah, you bet.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
We were feeling incredibly relieved and also a lot of
adrenaline was flowing.
Speaker 9 (27:19):
A lot of adrenaline was flowing.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
It was nearing midnight, and inside Madison Square Garden it
was bedlong now ring it started to cloud up. The
fight was over. It was pandemonium. As the judges revealed
their decision. Anonymous for the first time ever in his
(27:47):
professional career, Muhammad Ali lost. His supporters around the world
were shattered.
Speaker 10 (27:54):
Oh here we are in metithisquat God, and the people
are still standing around. Nobody seems to want to go home.
I think everybody has been treated to one of the
greatest fighting evenings I've ever seen. The crowd is getting
to be very oddly now they're quieting down. For a
while there they looked like I'm going to tear the
place up.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
As the world processed Ali's defeat, the burglars and their
various cars were headed north. The drive took them through
suburban neighborhoods and along dark, winding country roads. The drivers
and passengers kept a wary eye on their rear view mirrors,
constantly glancing behind them, wondering if they were being followed.
(28:37):
It took an hour to reach their safe house.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
I was familiar with the farm just from knowing the
people there over the years.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
As part of a Quaker retreat conference center kind of
out in the country.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
I had made arrangements for the use of the farm.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Fellowship Farm was a meeting place for local activists. Martin
Luther King had even visited once it was isolated and
surrounded by woods. One by one, the cars pulled up
to the house. To their relief, no one had been
stopped on the way. All eight were safe and sound.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
Once I realized that everything was working okay and that
the other cars involved, we're okay, then there's a relaxation.
Speaker 9 (29:26):
I was just.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Certainly, I was relieved. You know, here we were, everybody
was there. There were no police.
Speaker 9 (29:40):
Oh my god, that was beautiful. I mean, you're in
the country.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
You put our sleeping bags down, and that It's not
that anybody slept. It was because we were all so
punchy and the adrenaline was just going. We were just
trying to come down, down and down from being up up, up,
up and hyped and feeling relieved that we were successful.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
After the fight in New York, Fraser fans and the
Warhawks celebrated President Nixon who watched the fight in a
private screening room at the White House, reportedly jumped up
and down, cheering the defeat of quote that draft dodger asshole. Meanwhile,
Ali supporters were devastated.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
And there's nothing to cry and complain about. You know,
I've been always handing out the defeat. So now I'm
defeated now, and see how the people felt. And when
I do come back, if I ever do, I'll have
a more of a hungred determination, which is.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Something The loss was crushing, not only for Ali but
also for his millions of fans in the anti war movement.
They had no way of knowing that about one hundred
miles away they might have just won an even bigger victory.
Speaker 9 (30:58):
Oh yeah, we had a little champag.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Then there was this tension about what we would actually
find in those documents.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
The citizens commissioned to investigate. The FBI had risked everything
to remove all the files from the media FBI office,
and now they were about to find out if it
had all been worth it.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
It didn't take long before someone in the other room said.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Holy Macro, you're not going to believe this.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Next time on snafoo, we had some idea that this
was pretty explosive.
Speaker 11 (31:34):
I went downstairs and my visitors were these two FBI agents,
and you know, they suggested that we go outside and talk.
Speaker 12 (31:43):
And then the next morning I got a phone call
from the FBI that they wanted to enterview me.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Snafoo is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and
Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This
season of Snafoo is based on the book The Burglary,
The Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by
Betty Metzger. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Mike Walbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger.
(32:21):
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 Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Tory Smith is
our associate producer. Nevin Calla Poly is our production assistant.
Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
(32:43):
Sensitivity consult from oloakemi Ala de Sui, editing, sound design
and original music by Ben Chubg, Engineering and technical direction
by Nick Dooley. Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia Canny
and Jimma Castelli. Foley theme music by Dan Rosatto. Special
well thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and Ben Ryzak.
Additional thanks to director Joanna Hamilton for letting us use
(33:06):
some of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen
seventy one. Finally, our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI, Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy Finegeld,
Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Rains, John Rains, Sarah Schumer and Bob Williamson,
Host
Ed Helms
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