* America fought a war in Vietnam

* This war was deeply unpopular. Many people protested these in groups

* The head of the FBI at the time, J Edgar Hoover, was immensely powerful. He decided to crush the dissident groups by ordering FBI agents to infiltrate them. According to the article, he is the bad guy (I personally agree with this)

* John Raines and a few friends (the good guys) broke into the FBI office, stole the documents and sent it to newspapers.

* A serious investigation into the FBI's practices was the result of this publication.

* The good guys were never caught.

Seems like in the 70's this guy, his wife, and six other people pulled off a daring robbery of an FBI office. They broke in by picking the lock, then stole a bunch of files. They relied on the people in the office being distracted by a boxing match, and they were.

The burglars then went over their files, and found what seem to me to be pretty silly things, like FBI agents being instructed to create the perception that the organizations they were investigating had many FBI informers and agents in them.

They passed on the files to a reporter anonymously. Reporters and later investigations by Congress revealed more details about the FBI's cointelpro project, wherein the FBI committed illegal sabotage against groups they were investigating.

Who are the good and bad people? Well, the FBI is bad for committing illegal sabotage. The burglars are good for getting important information, but bad for doing it by stealing random boxes of files - which might've hindered legitimate investigations. The reporter is good for publishing her story. Congress is good for investigating further but bad for doing nothing effective to curtail abuses by American federal intelligence agencies.

In case it makes you feel better, I'm a native English speaker and I had to read the first seven paragraphs - which are very poorly written, I would say - twice before I really understood what was going on. Probably if you knew the context and had heard of this man it would have instantly made sense, but it certainly didn't to me.