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Title: The Burglary

Subtitle: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI

Author: Betty Medsger

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot, Betty Medsger

Format: Unabridged

Length: 25 hrs and 36 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-06-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 295 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

The never-before-told full story of the history-changing break-in at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, by a group of unlikely activists - quiet, ordinary, hardworking Americans - that made clear the shocking truth and confirmed what some had long suspected, that J. Edgar Hoover had created and was operating, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, his own shadow Bureau of Investigation.

It begins in 1971 in an America being split apart by the Vietnam War. A small group of activists - eight men and women - the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, inspired by Daniel Berrigan's rebellious Catholic peace movement, set out to use a more active, but nonviolent, method of civil disobedience to provide hard evidence once and for all that the government was operating outside the laws of the land.

The would-be burglars - nonpro's - were ordinary people leading lives of purpose: a professor of religion and former freedom rider; a day-care director; a physicist; a cab driver; an antiwar activist, a lock picker; a graduate student.

Betty Medsger's extraordinary book re-creates in detail how this group of unknowing thieves scouted out the low-security FBI building in a small town just west of Philadelphia, taking into consideration every possible factor.

At the heart of the heist - and the book - the contents of the FBI files revealing Hoover's "secret counterintelligence program" COINTELPRO, set up in 1956 to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups, a plan that would discredit, destabilize, and demoralize groups, many of them legal civil rights organizations and antiwar groups that Hoover found offensive - as well as black power groups, student activists, antidraft protestors, conscientious objectors.

The Burglary is an important and riveting book, a portrait of the potential power of non-violent resistance and the destructive power of excessive government secrecy and spying.

Critic Reviews:

"[I]mpeccably researched and elegantly presented.... The current debate in America over government surveillance of its citizenry has a long and controversial history. It didn't begin on 9/11, and it doesn't need technological wizardry to succeed. For those seeking a particularly egregious example of what can happen when secrecy gets out of hand, The Burglary is a natural place to begin." (The New York Times)

Members Reviews:

Important book for us all - despite its flaws

I was completely enthralled with the beginning half of this book - the author wove a good story and kept me entranced with true events about a disturbing time. I found myself suggesting this to many other "boomers" who might, like I, have protested the Vietnam War in the 60s, didn't know the clear response to people like us from the FBI and have been intrigued by the despotism of J. Edgar Hoover.

It is a good read but not all the way through. I got bogged down with the level of detail that Betty Medsger used and found that her story telling ability didn't continue through the second half of the book.

Like a former reader, I also found it puzzling why a man read the book when it is written by a woman.