In the second season of his podcast Snafu, Ed Helms revisits the news Betty Medsger broke more than half a century ago at the Washington Post after she received stolen files from a 1971 heist of a Delaware County FBI office, writes Kristin Hunt for the PhillyVoice. 

The news exposed J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance of anti-war protestors and college students, primarily Black coeds. 

Medsger’s job at the time was covering religion in several newspapers. The envelope with explosive documents that was stolen by a group of anonymous activists from the FBI office in Media ended up changing her life. 

Medsger quickly wrote the story on the FBI’s targeting of U.S. citizens, which later spawned more articles and a book she penned in 2014 titled The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. 

“This is a story that is so important because it’s about an act of resistance by completely unknown people that had an enormous impact,” said Medsger, who is an executive producer for the podcast’s second season. 

Read more about Betty Medsger’s Delaware County FBI office burglary case in the Philly Voice.

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