Anti-war activist William Davidon sits on Navy target on Culebra in 1971

Here's a shot of physics professor William Davidon, organizer of the

much-publicized burglary of a suburban Philadelphia FBI office in

1971, seated on a Navy target on the Puerto Rican island of Culebra in

the same year. Davidon, who taught at Haverford College, passed away

in November of 2013. The raid on the Media, PA, FBI office by the

"Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI" revealed the bureau's

intensive and widespread program of surveillance and intimidation.

This reporter/photographer received a phone call from the group the

morning after the raid. The caller said copies of the stolen FBI

documents would be sent to the press Revelations in those documents

ultimately led to the reform of the bureau.

And here's a little bonus (I should have thought of this earlier): If you scroll down to the third row in this folder, there's an image at the right of an FBI agent following me as I walked a friend to her train at Philadelphia's Reading Terminal. He's the guy in dark glasses (yes, they did wear dark glasses) coming up the stairs. As I noted above, I got the call from the group that carried out the raid (the only reporter who did get such a call) and, as you can imagine, that made me a "person of interest" to the bureau. The constant surveillance didn't prevent me from making good use of the copied documents as I received them over the next few months...Regards, Bill

Hi

I graduated Haverford in '69, so although I never had any physics classes, I knew of Davidon - I didn't know he was such an activist- I guess he was the Snowden of his times. Was he ever  prosecuted- persecuted- for his actions?

Thanks for the history lesson.

G

Thanks for the note, Gregory. The FBI was never able to charge anyone with the Media, PA, burglary. The bureau closed the case after a massive, five-year hunt that involved 200 agents. William Davidon did occasionally find himself in custody as he took part in numerous anti-war and civil rights actions in the 1960s and early 70s. In 1965 he and other demonstrators were arrested while handing out leaflets outside a suburban Philadelphia military helicopter factory. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed the charges.  That same year Davidon took part in the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s march from Selma to Montgomery. And in 1966 Davidon joined five other pacifists on a mission to South Vietnam to demonstrate in Saigon against the war. South Vietnamese police apprehended the group as they approached the U.S. embassy carrying placards and leaflets. They were quickly expelled from the country. "My father was a protector of civil liberties," Davidon's daughter, Sarah Davidon, told the Denver Post. "He very authentically wanted to make sure we didn't have this eroded democracy."  Sarah Davidon, a member of the pediatrics faculty of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said that as a child, "my home movies were popcorn, hot chocolate and watching my father get arrested at the Pentagon."