The Burglary (79 page)

The anonymous caller, Davidon, read a statement that later was mailed to news organizations:

Group members had spent several evenings at the field developing their plan. Their first and most important discovery was that the Navy used only a standard padlock on the gate in the chain-link fence near the planes. They hacked off the old padlock and replaced it with one exactly like the one in place but with a key only they possessed. After repeated observation of the field, they established the precise timing of the frequent patrol rounds made by security guards in a jeep that passed very close to the parked planes on each patrol. They decided they needed two cycles of rounds by the security
guards to accomplish their goals. That night, they waited for the jeep to pass, unlocked the gate, and ran to the planes, one of them armed with a can of red paint, the others ready to use the tools inside the planes. They hunkered down inside the cockpits so they couldn't be seen as the jeep passed. After the second time it passed, they jumped out of the planes, ran to the gate, locked the padlock, and ran to their cars. All was done, of course, while wearing gloves.

Between stripping threads on bombs in York and sabotaging planes in Willow Grove, on April 24, 1972, Davidon went for a canoe ride on Sandy Hook Bay in northern New Jersey. Not surprisingly, it was not just a pleasant outing. He and forty-four other Philadelphia antiwar activists in seventeen aluminum canoes and light rowboats rowed out to conduct what they called a blockade of the munitions ship USS
Nitro,
which was departing for the Atlantic to transfer ammunition to aircraft carriers bound for Vietnam.

From their tiny canoes, they yelled to the many sailors looking down at them from the
Nitro
and urged them to jump ship and refuse to go to Vietnam. It was just a symbolic action, but seven of the sailors accepted the invitation and jumped over the side of the ship and swam to the boats. All the Navy men were captured and returned to the
Nitro,
and some of the demonstrators were arrested.

The day after the sabotage at Willow Grove, the commanding officer of the 913th
Tactical Air Lift Command, which operated the planes, said a joint investigation of the sabotage was under way by the FBI and the Air Force Special Investigation Division. Once again, Davidon was never questioned by investigators. No arrests were ever made.

By the time the sabotage at Willow Grove was being investigated, Davidon had been avoiding arrest for break-ins and sabotage for three years. The only time the FBI got in touch with him and questioned him during the entire period of his protest was in July 1970, when they queried him regarding a surprise appearance by Daniel Berrigan when the poet-priest briefly emerged out of the underground, with help from Davidon, and gave a sermon at a Methodist church in Philadelphia. It took place just weeks before he was found by FBI agents on Block Island, Rhode Island, and taken to prison to begin serving his sentence for his Catonsville conviction. Davidon willingly talked with agents then, but he told them only what was already publicly known about Berrigan's appearance.

Beginning in 1977, however, the FBI was in touch with Davidon regularly—on his initiative. He took advantage, as any citizen could by then, of Congress's 1974 strengthening of the FOIA, one of the transparency
reforms set in motion after the burglary. He submitted a written request for his FBI file. Letters were exchanged between him and officials in the FOIA office of the FBI for at least four years.

He received only a few files initially, and they were not very revealing. He suggested there might be more. More trickled out to him. One of the documents he received noted that he was on the FBI's Security Index, the existence of which had been revealed in the stolen files. In a January 26, 1978, letter to
Allen H. McCreight, chief of the Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts Branch of the FBI, Davidon wrote, “The material you sent me on January 5 indicates that I was placed on a ‘Security Index' by the F.B.I., and I would like to know if such an Index is still maintained, what its significance is, and whether I am still listed on it. Thank you for your help.” Davidon does not remember receiving answers to those questions, and a search of the files he received does not include any.

On February 1, 1979, a letter to Davidon from
Thomas H. Bresson, the acting chief of the bureau's FOIA office, noted that pursuant to a phone conversation a few days earlier between Davidon and someone in the FOIA office, the investigative file of the burglary of the Media FBI office, the MEDBURG file, would be processed and eventually would be available for his perusal at FBI headquarters. Sometime later, he was notified that it was taking more time than expected to process the very large MEDBURG file—nearly 34,000 pages. The official apologized to Davidon for the delay and assured him he would be notified when the file was available. That the MEDBURG file had not been processed until Davidon requested it suggests that the first person who asked to see the MEDBURG file must have been none other than the mastermind of the burglary.

DAVIDON SEEMED
to be almost surprised by his realization years later that during his years of intense antiwar activity he “never thought through the implications” of his actions on his family. “In some vague sense I knew what the implications might be, but I did not give much weight to the possibility of getting caught or of having my life disrupted. I never made plans with regard to Ann and the kids in terms of anything long-lasting happening to me. I knew it was a possibility. I knew that was one of the things that could occur, but I did not plan on it.” Without thinking about it very much, he compartmentalized his life in ways that made it easy for him not to think much about how his actions might affect his family.

By the time he moved to Haverford, he and his first wife, the mother of
his oldest child, Alan, a future prosecutor in Phoenix, had been divorced several years. In 1963 he married
Ann Morrissett, who, like him, was active in the peace movement. She served on boards of various peace organizations and often attended rallies with Davidon and their young daughters—Ruth, who was born in 1964, and Sarah, who was born in 1967.

In recent years, Davidon has thought often, and sometimes with great sadness, about how he handled the potential impact of his resistance on his family. He finds it a perplexing dilemma, a balancing act, even many years later. On the one hand, he thinks it is very important for people who risk arrest in resistance to think about how their actions may affect the people closest to them. On the other hand, he thinks, as he did then, that perhaps they should not do so too much. He worries that too much time spent contemplating the possible painful impact of one's resistance on others could lead to refusing to take a risk. “In some sense,” he said, “it's like walking across a very narrow walkway over a high place. You don't want to spend too much time looking down at the ground twenty stories below. If you do, you won't go.” He recalls that he seldom looked down during his resistance years.

But now, in his eighties, he wonders if he did not think much about such matters because he may have “had too much confidence” in those days. After the first draft board raids were successful, he recalls no longer being very fearful. “That was foolhardy,” he says now, “given all the things that could have gone wrong.” He remembers that he never thought the Media burglary would not be successful. He never really thought anyone would be arrested. “I knew it was a possibility, but I didn't plan for it. At times, I thought about the possibility of going to prison. I thought that life in prison might take place for me, but I think I just pushed it aside.” He thinks now that that attitude was a mistake.

He doesn't recall being aware at the time that there were others in the group, especially John Raines, who were very fearful about what might happen to their families as a result of the burglary. “I think I was probably more irresponsible in that respect,” he says. “I know John and Bonnie did do a lot of thinking about these matters. I wasn't really thinking through the consequences of getting caught. I was assuming it wouldn't happen.”

Actually, Ann Morrissett said she did not want to talk with Davidon about his resistance activities. In an interview, she told me she paid as little attention as possible to that part of her husband's life. She regarded the burglaries with disgust, as an egotistical macho exercise. She was particularly disgusted by the burglary of the FBI office. Her rejection of such resistance
was evident at their home the morning after the burglary. When Davidon left for Media early the evening of the burglary, he reminded her that the break-in would take place that night and that he might not be home until the next morning. He arrived home about 6:30 a.m. He remembers telling Ann at breakfast that “everything went well last night.” Both of them think she may have said nothing in response. He had just experienced what was one of the most important accomplishments of his life, and it was not discussed. That was a stark contrast to the spirit of jubilation and relief the Raineses experienced as they sat at breakfast that morning with their children.

According to both Morrissett and Davidon, they had few heart-to-heart conversations about important matters, including Davidon's resistance activities. They had very similar worldviews but disagreed on some of the methods of accomplishing their goals. As Davidon has searched in recent years for an explanation of how he handled these matters, he has often been sad but also philosophical. “Families that are close share things naturally,” he said. “Some families don't have that kind of close relationship.…Too close an involvement of people who are not directly involved can in some situations interfere with what you really want to get done,” he says as he assesses why two people, he and Ann, who had very similar values, did not talk much about his resistance activities. “Building the warmth and closeness within the family is a crucial value but not the only value.” They were divorced in 1978 after fifteen years of marriage.

Interestingly, during that time, Davidon said, he got a glimpse of what a warm household could be like from some of the Catholic activists. The large Davidon-Morrissett home on the Haverford campus was strategically located midway between Washington, D.C., and New York, and several times small groups of the Catholic resisters stayed at the house on their way to those cities. Many years later, Davidon still remembers their visits warmly. When they were there, he said, the house would come alive with the “great life, great spirit of these people. It impressed me. I suppose because it was a contrast, both from the specifics of my life at home at that time, and also, I guess, from my personality.”

In 1987, Davidon and Maxine Libros, a psychotherapist, were married. They talked freely with each other about their pasts. Libros was proud of Davidon's resistance. She didn't know him at the time he was an activist, but she knew of him through her long friendship with his brother and sister-in-law. She admits that if she had been married to Davidon in 1971, she, like Morrissett, may not have had much enthusiasm for, or at least may have
been frightened by, the prospect of his burglarizing an FBI office. It was good, she said, to be in love with him and share his life many years after his resistance when she was free to admire his courage and accomplishments but not have the burden of worrying about the risks involved.

Davidon and Maxine Libros married in 1987. She did not know him during his resistance years, but she was proud of what he accomplished during that time. (
Photo by Betty Medsger
)

During their years together, Libros and Davidon often talked about the Vietnam War and resistance to it. One evening during a joint interview, as they discussed the Media burglary, Libros's pride in his role was obvious. She smiled warmly as Davidon described some of the methods of resistance he and others used. She admitted that she questioned the value of some of them. As she searched for the words to describe her reservations, he helped her. “You aren't quite sure that this was the best way to build opposition to the war?” he asked. She nodded yes. So did he. “Even I wasn't always sure this was the best way to build opposition,” he acknowledged. He paused as he contemplated what both of them had just said. Then he described the pained conclusion he reached years ago. Sure, he disliked some of the methods he had used, perhaps especially burglary, but he refused to let himself become frozen by such concerns. He was humbled, even troubled at times, but never frozen. She understood. Despite her minor reservations, she applauded what he did then.