If a foreign power raided official U.S. government offices to remove sensitive information you would no doubt be concerned, if not outraged. And yet Co$ did exactly that the 1970s in an effort to purge unfavorable records about the organization and its founder. Their Office of Special Affairs (OSA) infiltrated 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organizations in over 30 countries.
Prosecutors at the subsequent trial said:
The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope previously unheard of. No building, office, desk, or file was safe from their snooping and prying. No individual or organization was free from their despicable conspiratorial minds. The tools of their trade were miniature transmitters, lock picks, secret codes, forged credentials and any other device they found necessary to carry out their conspiratorial schemes.
In 1979 Mary Sue Hubbard, the wife of Co$'s founder, and ten prominent Co$ executives were convicted in U.S. federal court of wiretapping and theft of official documents. They were sentenced to five years in federal prison.
