Betty Medsger is an investigative reporter, author, photographer, producer, media critic and educator.

In March 1971 as a Washington Post reporter, Medsger was one of five recipients – three journalists and two members of Congress – of copies of FBI files stolen by a group of anonymous individuals called the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI. Medsger was the only recipient to make the files public. In contrast, journalists at The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times returned the files to the FBI, as requested, as did Sen. George McGovern (Democrat of South Dakota) and Rep. Parren Mitchell (Democrat of Maryland).

The first FBI files to ever become public, they revealed unprecedented FBI spying on students, academics, antiwar and civil rights activists, African American individuals and organizations and other Americans. One of the stolen files revealed the existence of one of the FBI’s deepest secrets, a series of programs, most of them illegal, known as COINTELPRO (for Counter Intelligence Program). The programs utilized a range of methods to disrupt American political organizations, including using disinformation to destroy people FBI director J. Edgar Hoover disliked, setting up violence between individuals and organizations, having FBI agents and informers giving false trial testimony under oath that led to false convictions and even, in at least one instance, setting up murder.