When Ed Helms received a book from his aunt as a Christmas gift in 2014, it didn’t just sit on his shelf. The actor, writer and comedian was captivated by the book, “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI,” by former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger, who was friends with Helms’s aunt.
“It was a heart-stopping thriller of this beautifully executed, high-stakes heist, and these citizens who realized that the only way to hold this government institution accountable was to break the law and put themselves at great risk,” Helms said in an interview. “There’s enormous passion and sacrifice in their actions, and it was deeply moving the more you know about this moment in American history.”