in_the_media
The retired Temple professor who helped expose Hoover's FBI
Posted Jan 7, 2014 -- hjh
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More than 40 years ago, a group of burglars pried open the door of an FBI office in Media, Pa., and stole files about the bureau's illegal surveillance of antiwar groups and civil rights organizations. The crime went unsolved—until now. “We called ourselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI,” says John Raines, a recently retired professor of religion at Temple and former Freedom Rider. “[J. Edgar Hoover] was an icon—nobody in Washington was going to hold him accountable. He could get away with doing whatever he wanted to do with his FBI, and it was his FBI, nobody else’s.”