"Calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the F.B.I., the burglars not only stole every file in the office, they also circulated the worst of them to journalists across the country. The reporter Betty Medsger received a batch in her mailbox at The Washington Post. Though nothing she read even remotely compromised national security, there was plenty of material guaranteed to embarrass the F.B.I. . . . The stolen material included the secret case histories of thousands of Americans. Much of it was malicious gossip about things like sexual deviance and race-mixing, two of Hoover’s favorite subjects."
—David Oshinsky, New York Times
