My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

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Tuesday, August 18, 2020

A documentary - 1971 - about the anti-war movement and an incredible break-in at an FBI office

Johanna Hamilton's documentary from 2014 entitled 1971 is in the tradition of Thin Blue Line, as Hamilton blends archival footage, contemporary interviews, and scripted re-enactment to tell the strange story of a group of 9 anti-war leftists in the Philadelphia area who planned and successfully executed a break-in at an FBI field office (in Media, Pa.), during which they stole all of the FBI files and, over a period of weeks, mailed copies of selected files to various media outlets. Improbable as it may sound today, the files - rejected as criminal and unusable by some media outlets - did lead to a series of stories in the Washington Post, later picked up on by other outlets, culminating in Senate hearings on illegal FBI surveillance of anti-war activists (and others, notably the Black Panthers and several women's-rights organizations!) and a change in national police - a rare defeat for the FBI - that stood in place until the attacks of 9/11. The most amazing thing about the film is that none of the nine was ever caught or prosecuted; the statute of limitations has long expired, but who knows what might happen? Yet a few of the participants agreed to be part of the film, w/ no attempt to disguise their faces, though they're ID'd by first name only. Hamilton does a really good job capturing the look and mood of the era and conveying the extremely risky operation that could have gone dreadfully wrong in so many ways. There were many acts of sabotage and destructed aimed at various Draft Board offices across the country - but this action was apparently the only successful break-in at an FBI office; the planning was so daring that they got the layout of the office when one of the nine pretended to be writing a paper on opportunities for women in the FBI and made an appointment for an interview w/ one of the field agents. Incredibly brave, perhaps even reckless - songs from another era. 

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