RE: LeoThread 2025-07-13 23:00
You are viewing a single comment's thread:
Part 9/13:
The Media Breakthrough and Public Revelation
The turning point came when journalist Betty Medsger, inspired by her discovery of FedExed documents at her workplace, uncovered the cache of stolen files. Her subsequent reporting, aided by an unusual government slip-up—where officials falsely claimed the documents threatened national security—exposed the depth of FBI misconduct and surveillance programs.
In 1971, The Washington Post published a groundbreaking story titled “Stolen Documents Describe FBI Surveillance Activities,” igniting public outrage. The revelations shattered the myth of the FBI as merely a crime-fighting agency, exposing it instead as a judicially unchecked entity operating “on its own, answerable to no one,” as TIME magazine later described.