Sometimes breaking the law is justified.

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More than 40 years ago, on the evening of March 8, 1971, a group of burglars carried out an audacious plan. They pried open the door of an FBI office in Pennsylvania and stole files about the bureau's surveillance of anti-war groups and civil rights organizations.

Hundreds of agents tried to identify the culprits, but the crime went unsolved. Until now.

For the first time, a new book reveals that the burglars were peace demonstrators who wanted to start a debate about the FBI's unchecked power to spy on Americans. And it's coming out at a time when the country is weighing the merits of surveillance all over again.

The plotters executed their break-in on a night when millions of people sat glued to their TV sets, watching Muhammad Ali square off against Joe Frazier for the heavyweight championship of the world. That 15-round bout was a brilliant distraction exploited by a group of anti-war activists who set out to burgle a small FBI office outside Philadelphia and expose some of J. Edgar Hoover's secrets.

Bonnie Raines was one of those activists, and she's talking publicly about what she did for the first time in 42 years.

"It seemed that no one else was going to stand up to Hoover's FBI at that time, and we knew what Hoover's FBI was doing in Philadelphia in terms of illegal surveillance and intimidation," Raines says. "And we thought somebody needed to confront Hoover and document what many of us knew was happening."

The Secret Burglary That Exposed J. Edgar Hoover's FBI : NPR