The Burglary by Betty Medsger Page A

SESSION in the attic, one of the burglars suggested they should use a crowbar to break into the office. Others agreed, but Forsyth said no. That would be much too noisy and take much too long. Instead, he told them, he would learn to pick the lock. They thought that was funny, but he was serious.
    Earlier he had gone to a public library and discovered there were several locksmith associations. He joined one of them. That made him eligible to buy books from theLocksmith Library. As with his research on the Vietnam War two years earlier, he now thoroughly researched locksmithing. He bought several books. “They were like training books you see advertised on the back of matchbook covers—‘How to be a locksmith in 10 easy lessons.’ That kind of stuff. I got it all from the Locksmith Library.” He took a correspondence course and soon was on his way to becoming the group’s in-house locksmith.
    He remembered what the lock on the FBI office main entrance looked like when he walked by it after Davidon first told him about his interest in burglarizing it. He recalls being amazed when he saw the lock on the door. “That’s really bizarre,” he thought. He knew there were several types of high-security locks available. The one on the FBI office door was not one of those. It was a simple five-tumbler lock, easy to pick. Easy, that is, if you are a bonded locksmith and therefore eligible to buy the tools needed to pick locks. “I said, ‘Screw that.’ ” Instead, he made his own tools so he would leave no traceable evidence. There would be no receipts traceable to a store that sold lock-picking tools, and there would be no salesperson to tell an FBI agent that, yes, a tall skinny guy came in one day and bought lock-picking tools.
    With a precise image of the lock on the FBI door in mind, he went to a hardware store and bought two locks that looked just like it—one to takeapart so he could figure out how to make picking tools to open it, and the other to pick again and again as he perfected his picking skills. Perhaps there were signs then of Forsyth’s future as an engineer. He took the lock apart, studied how it was constructed, studied the diagrams and instructions in the books from theLocksmith Library, and figured out how to build the lock-picking tools he needed. Then he went to a machine supplies store and bought the materials he needed to make the tools. To his delight, they worked.
    The burglars installed new sheetrock walls in the Raineses’ attic and hung a door on one wall so Forsyth could install and practice picking a lock he was sure was exactly like the one on the FBI entrance. Night after night up there in the attic, while the other burglars discussed discoveries made during casing and added details to the map of Media and the to-do lists, Forsyth contributed to those conversations occasionally, but most of the time he focused on improving his timing. He stood in front of the door and picked the lock—again and again and again and again. Like a runner, he was improving his speed. His dedication was impressive. It was as though he were preparing for the lock-picking Olympics. “It’s just like surgery or carpentry or any other manual skill,” he said years later. “It’s practice and touch. First time you try it, it takes ten minutes, next time five, next time three. Finally, you get it down to thirty seconds.”
    Given the interruptions he had to assume might happen—such as the possibility that a resident from one of the two floors above the FBI office might walk by him in the open hallway at any time while he was picking the lock on the FBI office door—he needed to be able to pick that lock as fast as possible the night of the burglary. He kept practicing. He was proud when he got it down to thirty seconds. He thought it would be a piece of cake that night. A few days before the burglary, he walked by the FBI office