One of the great strengths of the ever-evolving Tribeca Film Festival is its commitment to documentaries. Once again, the
festival is showcasing a generous number of nonfiction features
covering a wide array of subjects, from politicians like Ann
Richards and Barney Frank, to musicians like James Brown, Clark
Terry, Nas, Alice Cooper and Bob Weir, to human-rights abuses,
environmental concerns and the scourge of poverty.
Two eye-opening documentaries at this year’s fest zero in on the
FBI overstepping its bounds in two different eras: the height of
the Vietnam War and the post-9/11 age of intensified surveillance.
One focuses on anti-war activists who emerge as true American
heroes, the other on hapless dupes of a brazen entrapment scheme.
In both cases, you leave with a new perspective on the abuses our
government is capable of.
Johanna Hamilton’s 1971 provides an insiders’ look at the
March 8, 1971 break-in by anti-war activists at a local FBI office
in Media, Pennsylvania, a small town near Philadelphia. This
incident isn’t nearly as celebrated as the publication of the
Pentagon Papers a few months later or the 1973 Watergate hearings
that brought down the Nixon administration, but it’s a watershed
moment for its exposure of illegal spying on and intimidation of
dissenting citizens by the U.S. government.
The theft was the handiwork of eight ordinary citizens who hoped to
obtain damning evidence of government misconduct by targeting a
vulnerable FBI field office like the one in Media. Portions of the
documentary play like a suspenseful heist movie, with well-staged
re-enactments while the real-life conspirators appear on camera for
the first time to recall the details. Shrewdly, they picked the
night of the “Fight of the Century,” the momentous boxing match
between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, to conduct their caper, a few
hours when police and feds would likely be preoccupied. Prior to
the big night, activist Bonnie Raines had cased the office in
question by posing as an eager visitor interested in “opportunities
for women in the FBI.”
Bonnie and her husband John are the most intriguing of the group,
parents of three young children who risked the future of their
family unit for their ideals. The unofficial leader of the group
and mastermind of the Media scheme was Bill Davidon, a gentle and
brilliant scientist who sadly died just last year.
For any left-leaning member of the “Baby Boom” generation,
1971 is a reminder of just how courageous anti-war activists
could be, faced with a Federal Bureau of Investigation led by the
much-feared and seemingly invulnerable J. Edgar Hoover. The
potential consequences for the Media Eight were enormous and
devastating, yet they prevailed, eluded detection, and brought
national attention to abuses in a fashion that changed America…for
a time.
The festival debut of 1971 couldn’t be timelier in light of
the current controversy surrounding Edward Snowden’s revelations of
the National Security Agency’s surveillance of American citizens.
(In fact, Laura Poitras, who just shared a Pulitzer Prize for her
role in the NSA exposé, is credited as a co-executive producer of
1971). The Snowden case is arguably more problematic, but you can
draw a direct line from the pioneering activists of 1971 to
Snowden and the systematic invasiveness he’s revealed. More than 40
years later, those crusading Baby Boomers seem pretty damn
admirable. What will history say about Snowden?
No less revelatory is The Newburgh Sting, David Heilbroner
and Kate Davis’ account of the real story behind a foiled New York
terrorist plot that made headlines in 2009. The reports at the time
were shocking and unsettling: the arrest of four men midway through
a mission to bomb Jewish centers in the Bronx and shoot down a
plane. Muslim extremists had been on the loose in the depressed
town of Newburgh, 60 miles north of New York City!
What the news media failed to uncover was that this terrorist
scheme was entirely the fabrication of the FBI and its informant, a
shady Pakistani businessman who recruited one not-very-devout
Muslim small-time criminal and three of his buddies with the
promise of a quarter-million dollars if they joined his crazy plan
for jihad. There was no terrorist cabal at the unluckily
targeted mosque in Newburgh; the FBI created it, with impoverished
black men as their easy patsies. This wasn’t an appeal to radical
convictions, it was an appeal to make a big score—and it’s not
necessarily clear who was being played (or at least thought they
were doing the playing).
The clearly entrapped “Newburgh Four” are currently serving a
25-year prison term, recently lost an appeal, and may be headed to
the Supreme Court, where their prospects are none too bright. As
the entertainingly outspoken aunt of one of the four suggests, the
sentence should have been “five years for not having any common
sense.” And, when it comes to ruthless, opportunistic and fearsome
power, “there ain’t no gang like the government."
—Kevin Lally
No comments:
Post a Comment