1971 is a documentary film which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014. The topic is human rights and civil disobedience in the US during the Vietnam war.
Here is some basic information about this film:
** Director: Johanna Hamilton
** Run time: 80 minutes
The time: 1970 and 1971
The place: Pennsylvania, USA
Eight dissidents come together and decide to form a small group called the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI.
The members of the group suspect that the FBI is harassing members of the peace movement and the civil rights movement and maybe other left-leaning groups in the US. But they cannot prove it.
In order to prove their suspicion, they would like to have some hard evidence. Preferably secret FBI documents. They discuss how they can get hold of this kind of evidence.
Media (Pennsylvania) is a small town located about 13 miles (or 21 km) west of Philadelphia. In Media, the FBI has a small field office. The members of the group have a plan. They are going to break into this office and steal some secret FBI documents. Once they agree on the plan, they have to find out how it can be implemented.
They realize that they are only going to have one shot at this operation. They have to be careful. They must get everything right the first time. They study the building. They notice who is coming and going. And they notice when they are coming and going. Is there a moment when no security guard is around? They do not want to hurt anyone during the break-in.
They have several practical questions:
# 1. How can you pick a lock and open a door?
# 2. How can you find your way around the building?
# 3. How can you find the most interesting documents in the office?
Over several weeks, they study these questions in great detail. After a while, they decide that they are good to go and a date is chosen: 8 March 1971. The film is named after the year in which the break-in takes place.
They are in luck: they manage to enter the office where they steal more than a thousand secret documents. They manage to get away undetected. So far so good.
Now they make a phone call to a news agency to explain what has happened: The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI has acted. The documents stolen will be studied and later they will be made available to the public.
A careful study of the documents reveals that the suspicion was correct. In fact, the truth is worse than the members of the group had suspected. The FBI has established a secret program called Counter Intelligence Program (abbreviated COINTELPRO).
The FBI is not merely watching dissident groups. Undercover agents are infiltrating these groups, urging them to commit acts of violence, hoping to discredit them and later use this fact against them.
The list of targets include the following:
** The peace movement
** The civil rights movement
** The Black Panthers
** The Socialist Workers Party
** The American Indian movement
** People who support independence for Puerto Rico
The people behind the break-in make photocopies of selected documents and send them to several newspapers. The New York Times declines to use them. But Washington Post is interested. Once the authenticity of the documents has been verified, the paper decides to run the story.
Soon, the story is out:
** The FBI is conducting a secret program to disrupt several dissident groups.
** The FBI is conducting an illegal war on political freedom in the US!
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is furious when the story is published. He orders his staff to find out who was behind the break-in. These people must be found at once and they must be punished severely for breaking the law and destroying public property.
FBI agents investigate, but they are getting nowhere. They cannot find out who is responsible. Hoover is deeply frustrated, but he cannot do anything about it.
In 1972, when he dies, the case is still unsolved. In 1976, the bureau quietly decides to close the investigation, because it is impossible to solve. And perhaps because it is an embarrassment for them.
Who were the members of the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI? The identity of the eight members remained a deep secret for many years. The truth was hidden until 2014 when five of the eight members agreed to come forward.
In that year, a documentary film about the case was released; the film which is under review here.
In that year, a book about the case was published. The title is The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s secret FBI.
The author is Betty Medsger. Back in 1971, when the story broke, she had covered the case for the Washington Post.
When the names of the members are revealed, it turns out that two of the eight members were also involved in the group called the Camden 28:
** Keith Forsyth
** Robert Williamson
The Camden 28 broke into a draft board in Camden (NJ) in August 1971. All 28 members of this group were arrested, because the FBI had an informant in the group.
In other words: The FBI had two of the eight people who were wanted for the break-in at the FBI office in Media (Pennsylvania) in custody, but the FBI did not know that, because the defendants never said anything about it. And therefore, nothing happened to them.
What do reviewers say about this film? Here are the results of three review aggregators:
73 percent = IMDb
73 percent = Meta
77 percent = Rotten Tomatoes (the audience)
97 percent = Rotten Tomatoes (the critics)
The ratings are quite good, as you can see. When you look at Rotten Tomatoes, you can see that there is a clear difference between the general audience and the professional critics. The critics offer a higher rating that the audience. This is a common phenomenon. In this case, I have to side with critics.
This film covers an important chapter of American history and it is covered very well.
I want to go all the way to the top with this product. I think it deserves a rating of five stars (100 percent).
PS. Several reviewers complain about one detail: the reconstruction of certain scenes which were made for the film. Apparently, the reconstructions are not appreciated, not even by viewers who like the film and offer a good rating.
REFERENCES
# 1. Books
** COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom by Nelson Blackstock (with an introduction by Noam Chomsky) (1976) (reprinted 1988)
** The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall (1990) (reprinted 2001)
# 2. Documentary films
** The War at Home (1979)
** The Camden 28 (2007)
** Hit & Stay (2013)
# 3. Articles available online
** Carrie Johnson
“The Secret Burglary That Exposed J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI”
National Public Radio (NPR)
7 January 2014
** Martin Oppenheimer
“How we found out about COINTELPRO”
Monthly Review, vol. 66, no. 4
September 2014
*****
The Burglary:
The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoovers' Secret FBI
by Betty Medsger
(2014)
*****
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