FBI spy meddled with hated reporter

An FBI spy opened mail of a Los Angeles Times reporter and turned the contents over to J. Edgar Hoover's FBI without informing the newsman, according to a book by Betty Medsger, who, as a Washington Post reporter first broke the story of the bureau's bizarre surveillance priorities.

In The Burglary -- The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, Medsger relates that years after the sensational 1971 reports on files stolen by activists from a bureau office in Media, Pa., she found via the Freedom of Information Act that copies of the files sent to L.A. Times investigative reporter Jack Nelson had been intercepted by someone in his office and turned over to the FBI.

Nelson was astounded when he learned of the interception, telling Medsger that, upon learning of their existence, he had eagerly tried to get hold of copies. Medsger writes that Nelson's editors in Los Angeles also appear to have been kept in the dark.

Nelson's unflattering coverage of the FBI -- which under Hoover was accustomed to friendly coverage -- had earned Nelson the bureau's wrath, Medsger says. When the Times was the only major news organization left unaware that agents were poised to arrest Angela Davis, a fiery West Coast radical, the Times' Washington chief, David Kraslow, asked why.

Medsger writes that Tom Bishop, a top FBI press liaison, shouted into the telephone: "When you get rid of that son of a bitch" Nelson, the bureau would cooperate.

Intimidation in the newsroom

Medsger writes that one day as she started reading a new batch of just-arrived Media documents, "a tall white-haired man I had never seen before appeared at my desk," claiming he worked in the mailroom. The man remarked on the FBI files and then mentioned that he knew she was from Johnstown, Pa.

Thinking that an odd thing to say, Medsger relates that she asked how he knew that. His response: "I see all the letters your mother sends you." Yet her mother had never written her at the Post. She viewed the incident as a "ham-handed" attempt to intimidate her.