By Tom Jackman
Anti-Vietnam War activists broke into a suburban Philadelphia FBI office in 1971, sparking revelations and reforms.
Outraged by the Vietnam War, 20-year-old Keith Forsyth dropped out of college in Ohio and moved to Philadelphia to join the vigorous antiwar movement there. He took a lock-picking course so he could help with late-night break-ins at local draft boards, where protesters stole or destroyed files to disrupt the flow of young Americans to Southeast Asia.
Bonnie Raines, a 29-year-old mother of three, was a veteran of the draft board raids. Then, in early 1971, one of the antiwar leaders suggested an escalation in tactics: burglary of an FBI office in the hope of finding documents that might prove the bureau was illegally spying on and harassing antiwar protesters. Raines agreed to join, and she went undercover as a “scruffy coed” to “interview” an FBI agent at a suburban resident agency in Media, Pa., while carefully scanning the office to note all doors, file cabinets and security measures.
