Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence

Prologue

The author introduces the forgotten history of 1970s domestic terrorism through the story of former Weatherman Cathy Wilkerson, now a grandmother and teacher, who built bombs for the Weather Underground.

• Cathy Wilkerson, a former Weather Underground bomb maker who survived the 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, has lived quietly as a math teacher for thirty years while keeping her radical past secret
  • Wilkerson is now a 68-year-old grandmother who taught in New York schools for nearly 30 years
  • She was one of two survivors who crawled from the rubble of the March 6, 1970 townhouse explosion
  • Her father lives four blocks away but they rarely speak
  • “It’s all so fantastic to me now. It’s just so absurd I participated in all this.”
• The 1970s witnessed unprecedented domestic terrorism that would be shocking by today’s standards, with hundreds of bombings occurring across America in a campaign that has been largely forgotten
  • Hundreds of young Americans formed urban guerrilla groups and bombed buildings from coast to coast
  • They struck the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol, courthouses, corporations, and a Wall Street restaurant
  • The violence included bank robberies, National Guard arsenal raids, police assassinations, and jailbreaks
  • “People always ask why I did what I did, and I tell them I was a soldier in a war. And they always say, ‘What war?’”
• 1970s radical violence was fundamentally different from modern terrorism in that it was far more widespread but much less lethal, with bombings functioning essentially as ’exploding press releases’
  • Between 1971-1972, the FBI reported more than 2,500 bombings on U.S. soil, nearly 5 per day
  • Less than 1% of 1970s bombings led to fatalities; the deadliest attack killed only 4 people
  • Most bombings were followed by communiqués denouncing American policies
  • Public resignation developed: “Oh, another bombing? Who is it this time?” one New Yorker said in 1977

“The Revolution Ain’t Tomorrow. It’s Now. You Dig?”

Sam Melville pioneered domestic protest bombings in 1969 New York, becoming the template for later underground groups through his transformation from aimless drifter to revolutionary bomber targeting symbols of American power.

• Sam Melville, a 35-year-old former plumbing teacher, became America’s first modern protest bomber after being radicalized by the 1968 Columbia University student protests and finding purpose in revolutionary violence
  • Born Samuel Grossman in the Bronx in 1934, he adopted the surname Melville after the author of Moby-Dick
  • Had a difficult upbringing with separated parents and drifted through his twenties as a draftsman
  • Quit his trade school teaching job on impulse after Columbia 1968 to deliver copies of the radical Guardian newspaper
  • “This country’s about to go through a revolution. I expect it to happen before the decade is over. And I intend to be a part of it.”
• Melville’s bombing campaign was inspired by George Metesky, the ‘Mad Bomber’ who planted 33 bombs around Manhattan between 1940-1957, and was preceded by his successful assistance in hijacking a plane to Cuba for two Canadian terrorists
  • George Metesky planted 33 bombs for Consolidated Edison, with 22 exploding at Grand Central, Penn Station, and Radio City
  • Melville spray-painted “GEORGE METESKY WAS HERE” around the city
  • In February 1969, he helped two Front de libération du Québec terrorists hijack National Airlines flight 91 to Cuba
  • The hijacking success boosted Melville’s confidence: “Those little bastards. They did it. They did it!”
• Melville’s first bombing target was the Marine Midland Bank on July 26, 1969, which he chose arbitrarily while walking Wall Street, injuring 20 people when the device exploded on a floor filled with keypunch operators
  • The bomb exploded at 10:45 PM on the eighth floor, creating an 8-foot hole and dumping debris to the seventh floor
  • About 50 people, mostly women data entry workers, were on the floor when it exploded
  • 20 people were injured by flying glass and debris, though none seriously
  • “No particular reason. I just walked around Wall Street till I found a likely-looking place.”
• The November 10, 1969 triple bombing of RCA Building, General Motors Building, and Chase Manhattan Bank marked an unprecedented escalation that forced police to create a special squad and prompted the FBI to use informant George Demmerle
  • Three bombs detonated at 1:00 AM at major corporate headquarters in coordinated attack
  • NYPD Chief Albert Seedman formed special 25-detective squad to find perpetrators
  • FBI informant George Demmerle had infiltrated Melville’s group after meeting him at Woodstock
  • The attacks generated 300 bomb threats the next day, with dozens of building evacuations
• Melville’s arrest on October 28, 1969, came when FBI surveillance teams caught him placing bombs at National Guard armory trucks, ending America’s first modern bombing campaign but establishing the template for future radical violence
  • Detective Sandy Tice followed Melville on foot to the armory where three army trucks were parked
  • Melville was caught with four ticking bombs in his knapsack set to explode at 2 AM
  • He was sentenced to 13 years federal and 18 years state charges
  • Died at Attica prison during the September 1971 rebellion, becoming a martyr to future revolutionaries

“Negroes with Guns”

The underground movement of the 1970s emerged from the evolution of black militancy from the 1950s through 1960s, as leaders like Robert Williams, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown progressively escalated calls for armed resistance that white radicals would later emulate.

• The radical underground of the 1970s was fundamentally motivated by supporting black Americans against police brutality and racism, not opposition to the Vietnam War, with every major group except the Puerto Rican FALN focused primarily on the black struggle
  • “We related to the war in a purely opportunistic way,” recalls Weather Underground leader Howard Machtinger
  • “Race comes first, always first,” says radical attorney Elizabeth Fink who represented underground figures
  • “Everything started with the Black Panthers. The whole thrill of being with them.”
  • All underground violence began with civil rights movement and blacks led while whites followed
• Robert F. Williams pioneered the concept of armed black self-defense in Monroe, North Carolina, in the 1950s, creating the intellectual framework that would inspire later militant movements through his book ‘Negroes with Guns’
  • Head of NAACP chapter in KKK stronghold Monroe, formed Black Armed Guard for “armed self-reliance”
  • Led defense in 1958 “Kissing Case” involving two black boys jailed for schoolyard game with white girl
  • Fled to Cuba in 1961 after kidnapping charges, wrote influential book and broadcast Radio Free Dixie
  • “We must be willing to kill if necessary” - established precedent for armed black resistance
• Malcolm X transformed from street hustler to Nation of Islam minister to become the most influential voice of black militancy, advocating violent revolution before his 1965 assassination made him a martyr to future radicals
  • Born Malcolm Little in 1925, became street hustler in Boston and Harlem before prison radicalization
  • Emerged as charismatic spokesman for Nation of Islam, building Mosque No. 7 in Harlem
  • Famous Detroit speech November 1963: “You don’t have a peaceful revolution… Revolution is bloody”
  • Assassination February 21, 1965 made him icon; Autobiography became mandatory reading for radicals
• Stokely Carmichael’s June 1966 cry of ‘Black Power’ in Greenwood, Mississippi, marked the decisive shift from civil rights to black militancy, inspiring a generation of radicals while horrifying white America
  • Twenty-four-year-old SNCC leader coined “Black Power” during James Meredith march
  • “This is the twenty-seventh time that I’ve been arrested. And I ain’t going to jail no more”
  • NAACP’s Roy Wilkins called it “the father of hatred and the mother of violence”
  • Life magazine featured story: “PLOT TO GET WHITEY: RED-HOT YOUNG NEGROES PLAN A GHETTO WAR”
• H. Rap Brown escalated black militant rhetoric to unprecedented levels in 1967, explicitly calling for guerrilla warfare and the killing of white people, setting the stage for the Black Panthers’ emergence
  • Replaced Carmichael as SNCC chairman in May 1967, immediately escalated violent language
  • Cambridge, Maryland speech: “This ain’t no riot, brother! This is a rebellion”
  • “Violence is necessary; it is as American as cherry pie”
  • “Don’t love him to death! Shoot him to death! You better get yourself some guns!”
• The Black Panthers, founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland in 1966, translated black militant rhetoric into organization and action, using theatrical armed confrontations with police to build national prominence
  • Founded October 1966 by Newton and Seale as Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
  • Famous ten-point program demanding full employment, housing, education, and end to police brutality
  • May 2, 1967 armed march on California State Capitol made them household name
  • Newton’s October 1967 shootout with police made him symbol and “Free Huey!” rallying cry
• Eldridge Cleaver’s leadership of the Panthers after Newton’s imprisonment escalated the group’s violent rhetoric to unprecedented levels, openly calling for police assassinations and creating the ideological framework for the Black Liberation Army
  • Ex-convict and rapist became “information minister” and intellectual equal to Newton
  • Under Cleaver, Black Panther newspaper coined phrase “Off the Pig” and supplied bombing tips
  • David Hilliard arrested for saying “We will kill Richard Nixon”
  • April 1968 shootout with Oakland police killed Bobby Hutton, made Cleaver hero and fugitive

Part One: Weatherman

“You Say You Want a Revolution”

The Weather Underground emerged from Students for a Democratic Society as apocalyptic revolutionaries led by figures like John Jacobs and Bernardine Dohrn, who believed the 1968 global uprisings signaled an imminent American revolution requiring violent guerrilla warfare.

• The 1950s culture of suffocating conformity and American righteousness created a generation of students who felt betrayed when television images of civil rights violence revealed the gap between American ideals and reality
  • 1957 Gallup poll found 96% of Americans rated themselves “very happy” or “fairly happy”
  • University of California president Clark Kerr predicted in 1959: “There aren’t going to be riots”
  • Television images of Southern blacks being beaten bloody felt like betrayal to young whites
  • America wasn’t land of equality but “all a lie” to idealistic students
• Students for a Democratic Society emerged from the 1962 Port Huron Statement as the intellectual center of the New Left, gradually evolving from protest to resistance as frustration mounted over the Vietnam War and slow pace of change
  • Tom Hayden’s Port Huron Statement became agenda for SDS and broader New Left
  • Greg Calvert coined slogan “From protest to resistance” in winter 1966-67
  • May 1967 New York Times quote about “guerrilla force in urban environment” marked escalation
  • Draft resistance movements and confrontational tactics replaced silent protests
• The global uprisings of 1968 convinced radical students that worldwide revolution was imminent and that American protesters were part of a single global struggle against imperialism
  • Students in France, Germany, Britain, Mexico, Brazil, China, Yugoslavia rose simultaneously
  • Study found 350,000 young Americans considered themselves “revolutionaries” by summer 1968
  • For apocalyptic revolutionaries, events bore “signs of the apocalypse”
  • Revolution became “inevitable result of everything that had happened” in the 1960s
• John Jacobs and Bernardine Dohrn emerged from the 1968 Columbia University occupation to lead Weatherman, with JJ developing the intellectual framework and Dohrn becoming the charismatic face of revolutionary militancy
  • JJ was “hyperintense, motormouthed Connecticut leftist” and “purest voice of apocalyptic revolutionary”
  • Dohrn was “strikingly attractive law student” who became “La Pasionaria of the Lunatic Left”
  • Columbia occupation made Mark Rudd the public face but JJ the driving intellectual force
  • Dohrn wore button reading “CUNNILINGUS IS COOL, FELLATIO IS FUN” and used sex for political alliances
• The Weatherman paper, written primarily by JJ in 1969, articulated the foco theory that small guerrilla groups could inspire mass revolution, positioning white radicals as allies of oppressed Third World peoples, especially American blacks
  • Named after Bob Dylan line: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”
  • Drew on Che Guevara’s foco theory and Régis Debray’s Revolution in the Revolution?
  • Argued white radicals must become “John Browns” fighting alongside black revolutionaries
  • “I think in our hearts what all of us wanted to be was a Black Panther” - Cathy Wilkerson
• Weatherman’s takeover of SDS at the June 1969 Chicago convention marked their transformation into a militant vanguard dedicated to armed struggle, expelling Progressive Labor and abandoning mass organizing for guerrilla warfare
  • Dohrn led walkout after Black Panther condemned Progressive Labor as “counterrevolutionary”
  • “We are not a caucus. We are SDS” - expelled PL by five-to-one margin
  • Elected Weatherman leadership: Rudd, Ayers, Jones as national officers
  • Possession of national office gave them control despite having minority support
• The Days of Rage in October 1969 demonstrated Weatherman’s isolation when only 200 people showed up for their promised mass uprising, leading to violent street fighting that convinced leadership they needed to go underground
  • Expected thousands but only 200 Weathermen appeared at Lincoln Park bonfire
  • “This is an awful small group to start a revolution” - participant observation
  • War whoops and chants of “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!” accompanied window-smashing rampage
  • Richard Elrod paralyzed when he charged Weatherman Brian Flanagan
• The December 1969 Flint War Council served as Weatherman’s final preparation for underground warfare, featuring increasingly violent rhetoric culminating in Bernardine Dohrn’s infamous praise of the Manson family murders
  • 400 Weathermen gathered in tumbledown dance hall in Flint ghetto
  • Dohrn praised Charles Manson: “First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room”
  • “Dig it! They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!”
  • Four-finger salutes represented fork shoved into pregnant Sharon Tate’s belly

“As to Killing People, We Were Prepared to Do That”

In early 1970, Weatherman began transitioning to actual guerrilla warfare with plans to kill policemen and soldiers, launching bombing campaigns on both coasts while Terry Robbins prepared the deadly Fort Dix attack that would destroy the organization.

• Weatherman’s leadership decided at Flint to kill policemen and military personnel as legitimate targets, contrary to later claims that they never intended to harm people, with this strategy representing solidarity with Black Panthers who hated urban police
  • “As to causing damage, or literally killing people, we were prepared to do that” - Howard Machtinger
  • “Cops were legitimate targets. We didn’t want to do things just around the war. We wanted to be seen targeting racism as well”
  • “In our hearts, I think what all of us wanted to be were Black Panthers” - Cathy Wilkerson
  • Military personnel also ruled legitimate targets in leadership discussions
• The February 12, 1970 Berkeley police bombing was Weather’s first attempt to kill officers, timed for shift change to ‘maximize deaths’ when the bomb injured Officer Paul Morgan but failed to achieve the intended massacre
  • Two pipe bombs placed in police parking lot at Hall of Justice during shift change
  • “We wanted to do it at a shift change, frankly, to maximize deaths” - Weather participant
  • Officer Paul Morgan struck by shrapnel, required six hours of surgery to save arm
  • “Others, yeah, were angry that a policeman didn’t die. That was what we were trying to do”
• The mysterious February 16, 1970 San Francisco police bombing that killed Sergeant Brian McDonnell with fence staples may have been Weather’s second attack, though members deny involvement in the unsolved case
  • Bomb packed with inch-long staples exploded at Park Police Station window ledge
  • McDonnell’s face shredded, jugular severed, died within two days from 22 wounds
  • Timed for 11 PM shift change like Berkeley bombing four nights earlier
  • FBI informant Larry Grathwohl later claimed Bill Ayers said Dohrn supervised attack
• Bill Ayers planned Detroit bombing of Police Officers Association headquarters, telling informant Larry Grathwohl that civilian casualties were acceptable collateral damage in revolutionary warfare
  • Target chosen during Wayne State meeting where Ayers guided discussion to association
  • “We can’t protect all the innocent people in the world. Some will get killed. Some of us will get killed”
  • Planned to bomb during meeting or social event “when the place is crowded”
  • 44 sticks of dynamite placed March 6 but found before explosion
• Terry Robbins emerged as Weather’s most violence-obsessed leader, taking control of the New York cell and planning the Fort Dix dance bombing that would have killed dozens of army officers and their dates
  • Small, dark, intense 22-year-old who was Bill Ayers’s best friend and “Weather’s doer”
  • Notebook filled with bomb designs: “pressure-trigger device, nipple time bomb, magnifying glass bomb”
  • Constantly talked about need for Weathermen to die for revolution, favorite movie ending was Butch Cassidy’s death
  • Planned to pack roofing nails into Fort Dix bomb “to do as much damage as possible”
• The Wilkerson family townhouse became Weather’s bomb factory in February 1970, where Robbins built the Fort Dix bombs while girlfriend Cathy Wilkerson worried about his technical inexperience and death obsession
  • Townhouse at 18 West 11th Street borrowed from Cathy’s radio executive father
  • Ron Fliegelman purchased 200 sticks of dynamite for $60 from New England Explosives
  • Robbins worked in basement with no safety training: “Terry had been told to do it a certain way”
  • “His fear, his courage, and his rage against injustice were feeding each other into a white heat”
• The March 6, 1970 townhouse explosion killed Terry Robbins, Diana Oughton, and Ted Gold while they prepared bombs for the Fort Dix attack, accidentally detonating when Robbins made a wiring error in the basement
  • Explosion at noon destroyed first floor and blew hole in brick facade
  • Cathy Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin escaped naked from rubble, fled to underground
  • Ted Gold found crushed with mouth open, Diana Oughton’s dismembered body studded with nails
  • Terry Robbins reduced to gray torso, identified two months later

The Townhouse

The March 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that killed three Weathermen building bombs for mass murder ended their plans for deadly violence, scattered the organization, and forced a traumatized leadership to abandon plans to kill people.

• The townhouse explosion instantly transformed Weatherman from a militant organization into a broken collection of traumatized fugitives, with hundreds of members disappearing and the group nearly ceasing to exist
  • “After the Townhouse, it was just complete chaos. There was no plan, no reality, zero” - Cathy Wilkerson
  • “Weather evaporated. It basically ceased to exist. Only later were some people contacted and brought back”
  • Leadership was “completely unresponsive for three or four weeks”
  • Entire collectives disappeared in Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle
• Detective Albert Seedman’s investigation uncovered the largest explosive device ever found in Manhattan - a basketball-sized globe of dynamite studded with roofing nails and blasting caps that could have destroyed an entire city block
  • Crane operator found “gray, basketball-sized globe” studded with nails and blasting caps
  • “The entire blob was made of dynamite—enough explosive to blow up the entire block”
  • 57 additional sticks of dynamite found deep in rubble with watches, fuses, and caps
  • Block evacuated and bomb squad worked through night to remove explosives
• President Nixon ordered J. Edgar Hoover to use ’everything possible’ to end the Weatherman threat, leading to illegal FBI break-ins and surveillance tactics that would eventually destroy the Bureau’s reputation
  • March 8 Oval Office meeting between Nixon, Hoover, and White House staff
  • Nixon feared Weatherman or other groups would try to assassinate him
  • William Sullivan secretly authorized illegal ‘black bag jobs’ without Hoover’s knowledge
  • New York’s Squad 47 formed with 30 agents dedicated to Weatherman pursuit
• Bernardine Dohrn and Jeff Jones regrouped in San Francisco, deciding to take control of Weatherman and abandon deadly violence in favor of symbolic bombings after warnings
  • “If Weather was to live on, changes were needed” - made three key decisions in Sausalito
  • Decided to gather remaining Weatherman signers and present new vision
  • “There, atop a houseboat in Sausalito, Dohrn and Jones had decided to take control of Weatherman”
  • Adopted hippie style with long hair, beards, and laid-back California vibe
• The May 1970 Mendocino meeting established Weatherman’s new direction under Dohrn’s leadership, expelling John Jacobs and embracing ‘armed propaganda’ instead of mass murder
  • Remote beach house 150 miles north of San Francisco provided healing setting
  • Dohrn argued against Terry’s Fort Dix plan as “very worst kind of politics”
  • Adopted Sam Melville model: bomb buildings after warnings when empty
  • “We decided to take violence out of the equation” - Cathy Wilkerson
• John Jacobs’s expulsion from Weatherman represented a ‘brilliant maneuver that successfully rewrote history’ by erasing the group’s original murderous intentions and creating the myth that they never planned to kill people
  • JJ accepted blame: “Someone has to take the blame” for the “military error”
  • Compared himself to Stalin-era purge victims who confessed “for the sake of the revolution”
  • “At least they’re not going to liquidate me. I’ll be back” - but he never returned
  • Wandered U.S. and Mexico as Wayne Curry, died forgotten in Vancouver 1997
• Ron Fliegelman emerged as Weatherman’s unsung hero by developing safe bomb designs after intensive study, preventing future accidents like the townhouse explosion
  • “Without him, there would be no Weather Underground” - Brian Flanagan
  • Son of Philadelphia doctor, fascinated with how things work since childhood
  • Studied explosives manuals and developed safety circuit with lightbulb test
  • “When you’re young and you’re confident, you can do anything. The timer is the whole thing”

“Responsible Terrorism”

From June to October 1970, the rebuilt Weather Underground launched its bombing campaign against symbolic targets while perfecting Ron Fliegelman’s safe bomb designs, achieving their goal of demonstrating operational capability without killing people.

• President Nixon’s June 1970 demand for an aggressive intelligence plan against ‘revolutionary terrorism’ led to the illegal Huston Plan, which J. Edgar Hoover blocked due to fears it would destroy the FBI’s reputation
  • Nixon told intelligence chiefs that “revolutionary terrorism” was greatest threat to American society
  • Huston Plan called for illegal break-ins, wiretapping, mail opening, and informants in classrooms
  • Hoover feared FBI would take blame if illegalities became public
  • Sullivan had already secretly authorized many tactics without Hoover’s knowledge
• FBI Squad 47 in New York pioneered illegal ‘black bag jobs’ against Weatherman supporters, conducting systematic break-ins to plant bugs and photograph apartments while targets were away
  • Squad 47 bought machine to steam open mail, conducted over 13,000 wiretapped conversations
  • Break-ins followed pattern: building supers provided keys, 20 agents involved per operation
  • “We knew they were doing it. Our mailman told us. They came and took our mail every two weeks”
  • Agents uncomfortable: “We were going to end up with FBI agents arrested”
• The June 9, 1970 NYPD headquarters bombing marked Weather’s successful transition to ‘responsible terrorism’ using Ron Fliegelman’s safe bomb design hidden in a hollowed law book
  • 15 sticks of dynamite and alarm clock hidden in law book, smuggled past security
  • Bomb placed in men’s room 125 feet from Police Commissioner’s office
  • Explosion at 6:57 PM blew 20x40 foot hole in floor, injured 8 people slightly
  • “Our problem is not the damage…it’s the feeling that if police cannot protect themselves, how can they protect anyone?”
• Weather’s July Presidio bombings served as experiments for West Coast operations, with Cathy Wilkerson building her first bombs under guidance from Ron Fliegelman’s designs
  • Twin bombings at Armed Service Police Headquarters and Nike missile model
  • Pipe bomb in trash can spotted but exploded before bomb squad arrived
  • Second bomb destroyed 25-foot missile model without detection
  • No communiqué issued, suggesting experimental nature of attacks
• Weather’s funding came primarily from radical lawyers and Movement sympathizers rather than family wealth, with the National Lawyers Guild serving as the most important financial network
  • “Money? It was the lawyers, all of it” - Ron Fliegelman
  • Dennis Cunningham: “I gave them money, sure, and I raised even more”
  • Elizabeth Fink: “we were revolutionaries in our hearts…they were our heroes”
  • Michael Kennedy emerged as most important supporter, close friend of Bernardine Dohrn
• The Timothy Leary prison escape in September 1970 became Weather’s most visible action, funded by LSD dealers and coordinated by Michael Kennedy, though it was controversial within the organization
  • Brotherhood of Eternal Love paid $17,000 for escape from San Luis Obispo prison
  • Jeff Jones picked up money in brown bag on Santa Monica Pier
  • Leary climbed cable over prison wall, met by Weather team led by Clayton Van Lydegraf
  • “A merger of dope and dynamite…more destruction to the American government than anything in history”
• Weather’s October 1970 ‘fall offensive’ demonstrated operational capability across the country with coordinated bombings ‘from Santa Barbara to Boston’ but failed to inspire broader underground movement
  • Five bombings in four days: Marin County Courthouse, University of Washington, Queens courthouse, Harvard
  • Destroyed rebuilt Haymarket police statue again on October 5
  • Communiqué promised series “from Santa Barbara to Boston” using youth culture language
  • New York Times editorial: “Every building bombed…horrifies and makes more angry the great majority”

The Wrong Side of History

From late 1970 to spring 1971, Weather Underground struggled with its irrelevance as America embraced cultural revolution while rejecting political radicalism, leading to the group’s ‘New Morning’ statement acknowledging failure and strategic retreat from violence.

• The FBI’s pursuit of Weatherman was hampered by complete lack of informants and useful wiretaps, forcing agents to rely on illegal break-ins and surveillance tactics of questionable effectiveness
  • After loss of Larry Grathwohl, FBI had “precisely one significant informant inside Weatherman: none”
  • “Can I put an informant in a college classroom? What can I do? And nobody had any rules”
  • Agents grew hair long and lingered at demonstrations but infiltration would take years
  • William Dyson: “Anything to get rid of these people. Anything! Not kill them, per se, but anything went”
• Weatherman’s post-Townhouse leadership enjoyed comfortable middle-class lifestyles in waterfront homes while rank-and-file members lived in poverty, creating internal resentment and questions about revolutionary commitment
  • Leadership lived in “big, glamorous house in Tiburon, with a beautiful deck, four bedrooms”
  • Cadres lived on $20 handouts: “I couldn’t afford a piece of bread, and they had butter!”
  • Rick Ayers lived in tent in LA park while leadership “always ate good food and slept between clean sheets”
  • “They would go to good restaurants that we could not afford”
• By 1971, America was experiencing a cultural rather than political revolution, embracing counterculture aesthetics while rejecting radical politics, leaving Weatherman on the wrong side of history
  • Charles Reich’s The Greening of America announced cultural “revolution of the new generation”
  • America wanted to “dress like Bernardine Dohrn…but didn’t want to hear a word she had to say”
  • Movement fragmented into women’s liberation, environmental movement, commune movement
  • “The main motion is in other directions, towards new lifestyles rather than new constituencies”
• The December 1970 ‘New Morning’ statement marked Weather’s public acknowledgment of failure and retreat from revolutionary violence, admitting their ‘military error’ and isolation from the Movement
  • “New Morning, Changing Weather” was longest and most mature document they produced
  • “The townhouse forever destroyed our belief that armed struggle is the only real revolutionary struggle”
  • Acknowledged “military error” and apologized for “glorification of the heavier the better”
  • Changed name from “Weatherman” to “Weather Underground” to reject sexism
• Weather’s silence in response to the Panther 21’s criticism revealed their abandonment of black solidarity in favor of personal survival, marking their definitive break with original principles
  • Panther 21 criticized Weather’s retreat from revolutionary violence and lack of material support
  • Letter forced Weather to choose between supporting black revolutionaries or renouncing violence
  • Dohrn and leadership responded with “complete silence” to avoid commitment
  • “That’s the moment when they abandoned the blacks…they decided they didn’t want to die”
• A series of close calls with FBI surveillance in late 1970 and early 1971 demonstrated Weather’s increasing carelessness and the Bureau’s improving intelligence capabilities
  • Rick Ayers fled Seattle farmhouse after being photographed at Vancouver train station
  • Donald Stang discovered in Standard Oil building restroom with heating system diagram
  • Judy Clark arrested at East Side movie theater while eating notebook pages
  • FBI discovered Weather was using dead infant birth certificates for false identities
• The March 1, 1971 Capitol bombing represented Weather’s most audacious attack, demonstrating their ability to penetrate high-security targets while dramatically altering Washington security procedures
  • Bernardine Dohrn and Kathy Boudin left bomb in first-floor men’s room on Senate side
  • Explosion at 1:30 AM caused $300,000 damage, first attack on Capitol since 1814
  • Led to installation of metal detectors, photo IDs, increased police force to 1,000
  • Guy Goodwin’s grand jury investigation became fiasco with Yippie protesters in gorilla suits

Part Two: The Black Liberation Army

“An Army of Angry Niggas”

The Black Liberation Army emerged in spring 1971 from the Black Panther Party’s violent split, as New York Panthers led by figures like Sekou Odinga and Dhoruba Moore went underground to wage guerrilla warfare against police, beginning with the assassination of four NYPD officers in May 1971.

• The Black Liberation Army was a real and deadly urban guerrilla force that emerged from the Black Panther Party’s collapse, representing the first and only black underground of its kind in U.S. history, though it has been largely forgotten or dismissed
  • “People always ask why I did what I did, and I tell them I was a soldier in a war. And they always say, ‘What war?’” - Sekou Odinga
  • Few academic papers or police procedurals constitute all known publications on the BLA
  • Mainstream press dismissed BLA as “ragtag collection of street thugs” unlike white Weather Underground
  • To rank-and-file policemen who hunted them, “there was nothing imaginary about the BLA”
• Sekou Odinga and Lumumba Shakur, boyhood friends from South Jamaica, Queens, became the BLA’s most important leaders after being radicalized by Malcolm X’s teachings while serving prison terms in the early 1960s
  • Born Nathaniel Burns and Anthony Coston in 1944 in middle-income black neighborhood
  • Met in assistant principal’s office at Edgar D. Shimer Junior High as troublemakers
  • Both joined gang called the Sinners, arrested for muggings and sent to Comstock prison
  • Shakur’s father Aba became spiritual guide: “People like me, Lumumba, Zayd…everybody was exposed to Aba”
• Tensions between California and New York Panthers escalated over cultural differences, with New Yorkers being more Afrocentric and streetwise while Californians were more focused on American community politics
  • “We had studied black history and African history. They were more into politics of communities in California”
  • “We were more African. They were more American” - Sekou Odinga
  • Oakland tried to ban dashikis and African names, leading to confrontation with Cleaver delegation
  • Compromise: “We agreed to wear black leather to BPP functions. The rest of the time, dashikis”
• Eldridge Cleaver established a Panther embassy in Algiers with sophisticated communications equipment and global revolutionary connections, but his relationship with the emerging BLA was complex and largely advisory
  • Algiers was “headquarters of world revolution” in 1969 with scores of revolutionary groups
  • Cleaver’s embassy featured giant world map with lights showing liberation struggles globally
  • “We don’t call it videotape. We call it voodoo. Because it has, like, magical properties”
  • “He was not a military man; he only thought he was” - decisions made by Donald Cox and Odinga
• The February 26, 1971 televised split between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver destroyed Panther unity, with only New York chapters following Cleaver while most remained loyal to Oakland
  • Live television call on A.M. San Francisco became disaster as both leaders talked past each other
  • Cleaver called Central Committee “inept” and demanded resignations, Newton refused
  • “It was less a split than a single-city secession. Only New York wanted to side with Cleaver”
  • Zayd Shakur told supporters they would take over Harlem headquarters on Seventh Avenue
• Robert Webb’s March 8, 1971 assassination in Harlem triggered the formation of the Black Liberation Army, as New York Panthers concluded the long-predicted war with Oakland had begun
  • Webb was Bay Area field marshal who became popular with New Yorkers, known as Coffee Man
  • Found dead with bullet in back of head outside Chock Full o’ Nuts restaurant
  • FBI memo credited COINTELPRO “activities” with causing Webb’s murder
  • “Right then, that’s when the BLA started. Certain people were told to go underground” - Cyril Innis
• Dhoruba Moore organized the first BLA cell around 757 Beck Street in the Bronx, beginning operations with robberies of heroin dealers before the May 19 and 21, 1971 police assassinations that announced the group’s existence
  • Moore was “rangy, motormouthed peacock and curbside intellectual” from Panther 21
  • Beck Street townhouse served as headquarters, hospital, and weapons depot with machine gun and grenades
  • “We started taking down heroin dealers. We were really rolling these motherfuckers”
  • May 19 attack on Officers Curry and Binetti followed by May 21 murders of Officers Jones and Piagentini

The Rise of the BLA

The Black Liberation Army emerged from the chaos of the 1971 Panther split, consolidating into two main cells that launched a series of deadly attacks on police officers in New York and beyond.

• After the violent spring 1971 Panther split, perhaps fifty to sixty Panthers went underground and coalesced into two main BLA cells by July 1971, one in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn, each operating independently as Eldridge Cleaver had ordained from Algeria
  • Blood McCreary recalls: ‘We had no idea—no idea—what we were up against. We were so young, we didn’t know what we were doing’
  • The BLA’s most pressing problem was lack of aboveground support, with barely a dozen people manning the Panthers’ Seventh Avenue storefront
  • FBI monitored calls between New York and Algeria, revealing tensions among supporters like Lumumba Shakur and Denise Oliver
• Twymon Ford Meyers emerged as perhaps the single deadliest revolutionary of the decade, a twenty-year-old former gang member whose talent for violence made him both feared and effective within BLA ranks
  • On August 4, 1971, Meyers burst into Thelma’s Lounge in Harlem, robbed thirty patrons of $6,000, then engaged police in a gunfight that killed a cabdriver
  • McCreary described him: ‘Twymon was political, you know, but he was really a gangster… He always told me, I will die before I go back in jail’
  • Meyers had a long juvenile record and spent much of his Panther time selling newspapers, but his real talent was violence
• John Thomas commanded the larger BLA cell with a dozen violent members, escalating from drug rip-offs to bank robbery before deciding New York was too dangerous and relocating his operation to establish a training camp in the South
  • Thomas was a burly thirty-eight-year-old army veteran who robbed his first bank in Queens on July 29, followed by a more successful $7,700 robbery at Bankers Trust on August 23
  • Security cameras recorded the unmasked robbers, leading both FBI and NYPD to search for them within days
  • Thomas announced they needed intensive training and decided to set up camp in the South where no one was looking for them
• The arrest of Anthony Bottom and Albert Washington in San Francisco on August 28, 1971 revealed that San Francisco Panthers had murdered New York policemen Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini in May, creating a multistate conspiracy that validated J. Edgar Hoover’s warnings about black militancy
  • During questioning, nineteen-year-old Bottom volunteered that he and Washington were among five San Francisco Panthers who had traveled east and murdered the two New York officers
  • Bottom’s information led to arrests of others including Herman Bell, who had fled to New Orleans where they began robbing banks
  • Hoover wrote on September 24: ‘I consider their potential for violence and disruption greater today than ever before… this Bureau must approach its investigation with renewed vigor’
• The BLA’s Atlanta training camp represented the largest single assembly of BLA members, with seventeen people gathering for weapons training, robbery instruction, and revolutionary education before launching their first assassination of a police officer
  • Thomas established the camp at a rented house on Fayetteville Road in DeKalb County, teaching weapons handling, mapmaking, and robbery techniques while Chesimard led first aid sessions
  • They built a sandbox model of the Fulton National Bank on Peters Street for robbery rehearsal, with Thomas drawing arrows and discussing each member’s role
  • After the October 7 bank robbery, Thomas selected the two youngest members, Twymon Meyers and Freddie Hilton, to prove themselves worthy by killing a policeman
• The November 3, 1971 assassination of Atlanta police officer James Greene marked the BLA’s first successful police killing, executed by teenagers Meyers and Hilton who shot the officer multiple times, tore off his badge, and took his weapon as a trophy
  • Officer Greene was eating a ham biscuit in his patrol wagon when Meyers and Hilton emerged from shadows and opened fire with .38-caliber pistols, striking him with three bullets
  • When they returned to the safe house, witnesses recalled them triumphantly brandishing the stolen police revolver and badge, announcing ‘We did it! We did it!’
  • Thomas was pleased and dispatched the pair to Chattanooga to hide while summoning other members for the next assassination
• The implosion of John Thomas’s cell scattered nearly twenty BLA militants across the Southeast after arrests, shootouts, and escapes, with some members reduced to picking tomatoes with migrant workers to raise bus fare back to New York
  • After Jackson’s arrest on November 7 and a shootout with deputy Ted Elmore in North Carolina that left the officer paralyzed, the cell began falling apart
  • Thomas and others fled to Florida, accused of robbing banks in Miami and gun stores in Tampa before a final confrontation at an Odessa hotel where Frank Fields was killed
  • Jackson and two others escaped from county jail and spent two months picking tomatoes alongside migrant workers to raise money for bus fare north
• The remaining New York BLA cells, motivated to show they remained viable after Thomas’s losses, embarked on multistate odysseys culminating in the gruesome assassinations of officers Greg Foster and Rocco Laurie on January 27, 1972
  • Ronald Carter led a cell that included Blood McCreary and used a hand grenade against police in Queens on December 20, 1971, prompting their relocation to Miami
  • The cell established safe houses across the Midwest in Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Kansas City while planning prison breaks
  • Foster and Laurie, two young patrolmen who had served together as marines in Vietnam, were shot multiple times in the back on Avenue B, then shot in the eyes and groin as they lay dying

“We Got Pretty Small”

The Weather Underground dwindled to perhaps ten to fifteen active members after the San Francisco Encirclement in March 1971, forcing the leadership to scatter and adopt new strategies while the FBI’s pursuit methods became increasingly desperate and illegal.

• Weather’s numbers collapsed dramatically after the Townhouse explosion and San Francisco Encirclement, with Ron Fliegelman estimating the core group doing actual bombings shrank to just ten to fifteen people by 1971
  • Fliegelman recalled: ‘We lost most of the people after the Townhouse. After the Encirclement, we lost even more. I’m telling you, we were down to ten or fifteen’
  • Rick Ayers noted: ‘We got pretty small. A lot of people went up [aboveground]. We sent a lot of people up. That was actually a conscious decision’
  • The core group consisted of leadership plus the Cathys (Cathy Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin) and Paul Bradley, with many members becoming aboveground supporters
• The Weather leadership found refuge in a sunny bungalow in Hermosa Beach, California, which served as their informal West Coast headquarters for several years, while other cadres scattered to new cities and identities
  • Marvin Doyle described the hideout: ‘It was really cozy, you could hear the surf… The rooms were decorated in tasteful hippie. Bernardine had rococo tastes’
  • The Bay Area remained too important to abandon, so Paul Bradley established a secluded carriage house on Vallejo Street in Russian Hill as a secondary base
  • David Gilbert went to ground in Denver while others fled to Seattle, with Mark Rudd thoroughly alienated and resettling in Santa Fe
• The breakup of Bernardine Dohrn and Jeff Jones’s relationship led to a major reorganization of Weather’s leadership structure, with Jones relocating to a remote Catskills house while Dohrn began a relationship with Bill Ayers
  • Paul Bradley recalled: ‘It was a big deal. My memory is the three of them kept it pretty close to the vest until the last minute, when an announcement was made’
  • Jones drove cross-country with Eleanor Stein to a four-bedroom rental house on an acre of land in the Catskill Mountains near Delhi
  • Both couples that formed from this breakup—Dohrn and Ayers, Jones and Stein—would eventually marry and remain together forty years later
• Weather’s bombing strategy shifted from taking initiative to reacting to specific events, beginning with the August 21, 1971 killing of George Jackson at San Quentin, which prompted twin California bombings described as ‘a first expression of our love and respect’
  • Marvin Doyle and Paul Bradley bombed a Department of Corrections psychiatric clinic in San Francisco’s Ferry Building and a restroom at Sacramento headquarters
  • The communiqué marked a departure from previous Weather missives, becoming a lengthy diatribe about black prisoners: ‘Black and Brown people inside the jails are doing all they can—must they fight alone even now?’
  • This reactive approach continued with the September 13 Attica prison rebellion, prompting a bombing of New York corrections offices in Albany
• Weather began using children as cover for reconnaissance and bombings, with Dennis Cunningham’s estranged wife Mona bringing her four children, including eight-year-old Delia, to serve as ‘beards’ while accompanying Weathermen on actions
  • Delia Mellis recalled: ‘I knew what was happening, what they were doing, and why. I knew the FBI was all around, and it was dangerous. I never told a soul’
  • The children were trained in counter-surveillance, with Mona showing Delia how to watch for police at Golden Gate Park’s Conservatory of Flowers
  • Dennis Cunningham later realized: ‘They definitely wanted Mona out there, because I think what they wanted most was my kids, to use as beards’
• FBI agent William Reagan lived in the same building as Mona Mellis for six months, posing as a fugitive marijuana dealer while conducting surveillance, but never discovered her children’s involvement with Weather leadership
  • Reagan posed as ‘Bill Raymond,’ a fugitive Gulf Coast gambler working as an accountant for marijuana farmers, even accompanying Mona to lesbian bars
  • Despite growing close enough that Mona asked him to babysit her children—the same children traveling with Weather—Reagan never learned of their underground connections
  • Reagan didn’t learn about Dohrn’s relationship with the Mellis children until interviewed for this book nearly forty years later
• By 1972 Weather mounted only one significant action—bombing the Pentagon—using a woman scout who studied the building for months before successfully placing dynamite in a basement drain, representing their most audacious attack on America’s war machine
  • The female operative, called ‘Anna’ by Bill Ayers, visited the Pentagon most mornings wearing a dark wig and thick glasses, mapping the building from memory
  • She identified an isolated basement hallway in the Air Force section with a women’s restroom containing a suitable drain for the foot-long dynamite packet
  • The bomb detonated just before 1 a.m. as scheduled, demolishing a fourth-floor restroom and sending thousands of gallons of water cascading onto a shopping concourse below
• The FBI’s illegal surveillance and break-in campaign against Weather families intensified through 1972-1973 despite producing only one significant arrest, while internal confusion about legal authorities grew after J. Edgar Hoover’s death
  • Squad 47 agents joked about their failures with doggerel: ‘Weatherman, Weatherman, what do you do? Blow up a toilet every year or two’
  • When supervisor John Kearney retired, agents presented him with a clear plastic evidence envelope containing Bernardine Dohrn’s sister’s panties
  • A Detroit agent openly admitted illegal methods at a Quantico meeting: ‘We’re doing bag jobs, wires, and [opening] mail. What else can we do?’

Blood in the Streets of Babylon

The year 1973 marked the violent final phase of the Black Liberation Army, culminating in a series of police ambushes led by Joanne Chesimard that ended with the death of most remaining members and Chesimard’s capture on the New Jersey Turnpike.

• The BLA’s final chapter began with Anthony ‘Kimu’ White’s escape from the Manhattan House of Detention on October 23, 1972, the first escape from the Tombs since it opened in 1941, reinvigorating what remained of the organization in New York
  • Seven men sawed through steel bars, crawled across a thirty-foot gangplank, climbed a sixteen-foot wall, and dropped a bedsheet ladder to escape at 6:25 a.m.
  • White had been imprisoned since the Harlem shootout that helped give birth to the BLA in April 1971
  • The escape reinvigorated the New York BLA cell, which was down to about fifteen desperate members constantly on the move
• Joanne Chesimard, known as Assata Shakur, emerged as the unlikely field marshal of the BLA’s final phase despite being a small, quiet twenty-five-year-old who would become the most wanted female in New York history
  • The Daily News dubbed her ‘Sister Love’ while the NYPD called her the ‘heart and soul’ of the BLA, though later investigators questioned whether she was as important as portrayed
  • A longtime BLA attorney noted: ‘Assata was never this massively important figure the police portrayed her as… the police made up this mythic image of a super black woman’
  • She had been shot in the stomach during a March 1971 robbery, attended to wounded at 757 Beck Street, and distinguished herself as a medic
• NYPD investigations of the BLA were hampered by racial sensitivities and corruption inquiries until Lieutenant James Motherway consolidated eight separate investigative groups and gained permission for aggressive nighttime operations in Harlem
  • Detective Joe Tidmarsh complained: ‘We aren’t allowed to go into Harlem after dark… the Deputy Chief is afraid we’ll cause a riot or shoot someone’
  • Motherway found morale low among detectives and eight different groups hunting the BLA without coordination
  • After the deputy chief was replaced, detectives were allowed into Harlem at night and began aggressively pursuing leads
• The January 23, 1973 shootout at the Big T Lounge in Brooklyn, where detectives killed Woody Green and Kimu White, triggered immediate BLA retaliation as Chesimard convened a strategy meeting calling for immediate response to the ‘ceasefire violation’
  • Detectives Cleave Bethea and Philip Hogan were shot when they entered the bar to identify Green, leading to a massive gunfight that destroyed the lounge
  • According to captured BLA soldier Avon White, Chesimard argued for immediate retaliation at a Bronx safe house meeting that same night
  • The group agreed and immediately began planning the ambush attacks on the Imperato brothers two days later
• The BLA launched a coordinated series of police ambushes in January 1973, including attacks on brothers Carlo and Vincent Imperato in Brooklyn and Roy Pollina in Queens, using automatic rifles and leaving dozens of shell casings at each scene
  • On January 25, Melvin Kearney stepped out of a parked car and aimed an automatic rifle at Carlo Imperato’s patrol car, firing twenty-three rounds through the intersection
  • Two nights later the same trio ambushed Officer Roy Pollina in St. Albans, Queens, with Kearney in a phone booth, Hilton hiding a machine pistol, and Shakur carrying a shotgun
  • The attacks prompted Mayor Lindsay to hire 6,000 additional police officers at a cost of $13 million, calling it a ‘crisis situation’
• Police Commissioner Donald Cawley consolidated BLA investigations under Deputy Chief Harold Schryver, who introduced a Hazeltine 2000 computer to analyze evidence threads, representing a novel use of technology in counter-terrorism investigations
  • Cawley’s priority was clear: ‘The Black Liberation Army. Get the bastards. Louie, think big’
  • Schryver consolidated three detective squads and sent two detectives to training courses to operate the computer system
  • The technological approach was still being implemented when word came from New Jersey about Chesimard’s capture on May 2
• The May 2, 1973 shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike resulted in Trooper Werner Foerster’s death and Zayd Shakur’s death, with Chesimard wounded and captured, marking a turning point in the BLA’s final phase
  • Chesimard, Shakur, and driver Clark Squire were stopped for a faulty taillight just 200 yards from state police headquarters at 12:45 a.m.
  • Trooper James Harper testified: ‘Her eyes went wide open, her teeth were showing. She fired a shot. I felt the pain in my shoulder’
  • The incident led to contrasting funerals: 3,500 mourners and 500 police cars for Foerster, while hundreds filed past Shakur’s body in Harlem with fliers urging ‘Support the Black Liberation Army’
• The FBI finally secured an informant in spring 1973—a jailed BLA member’s girlfriend—whose tips led to the arrests of the last major BLA figures, including Freddie Hilton, Andrew Jackson, and the final elimination of Twymon Meyers
  • Agent Danny Coulson had Hilton in his rifle scope during the June 7 Brooklyn ambush: ‘Murph, put it out that he has a pistol in his waistband, left side, butt forward’
  • The arrest operation was complicated by friendly fire when responding officers shot Detective Williams Jakes in the stomach after mistaking SWAT officers for burglars
  • Twymon Meyers was finally killed on November 14 in a blizzard of bullets after opening fire with a 9mm submachine gun when Detective Kernal Holland tried to arrest him

Part Three: The Second Wave

The Dragon Unleashed

The Symbionese Liberation Army emerged from the intersection of prison radicalism and Bay Area leftists, led by escaped convict Donald DeFreeze who formed a bizarre cult-like group that would assassinate Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster and kidnap Patty Hearst.

• California’s prison system became a revolutionary crucible during the 1960s, with black inmates forming clandestine Marxist groups and studying bomb-making while white Bay Area radicals developed ‘convict cultism,’ viewing released prisoners as instant heroes
  • By 1968 black inmates were forming secret chapters of the Black Panthers and Black Guerrilla Family, with extensive political education including bomb-making courses
  • A House subcommittee identified the most popular inmate books as Malcolm X’s autobiography, H. Rap Brown’s ‘Die Nigger Die,’ and Cleaver’s ‘Soul on Ice’
  • Radical Betsy Carr described the phenomenon: ‘I was completely fascinated with [black inmates]—the glamour, the bizarreness. It was my Hollywood’
• George Jackson emerged as the messiah figure Bay Area radicals had been seeking, transforming from a violent San Quentin thug into an international literary sensation whose books ‘Soledad Brother’ and ‘Blood in My Eye’ called for bloody revolution in America’s streets
  • Jackson was ‘pound for pound the toughest guy’ in prison, earning forty-seven disciplinary actions in ten years while working as muscle for Mexican gangs and engaging in homosexual pimping
  • Defense attorney Fay Stender, who had a sexual relationship with Jackson, orchestrated his transformation into a cause célèbre with supporters including Jane Fonda, Pete Seeger, and Angela Davis
  • Jackson’s final book envisioned America ‘brought to its knees’ with ‘barbed wire, armored pig carriers crisscrossing the streets, soldiers everywhere, tommy guns pointed at stomach level’
• Donald DeFreeze, a troubled Cleveland-born ex-convict with a history of bizarre bomb-making arrests, became an unlikely revolutionary leader after reading George Jackson’s work and escaping from Soledad prison on March 5, 1973
  • DeFreeze had been arrested multiple times for carrying homemade bombs, including incidents in Newark (1965) and Los Angeles (1967), though no one understood his motivations
  • At Vacaville prison he joined the Black Culture Association and adopted the name ‘Cinque M’tume,’ losing himself in revolutionary fantasy and detailed escape plans
  • After his escape, his first words to Berkeley radicals were reportedly: ‘Looka here, you know, I’m here. Let’s start the revolution’
• The SLA recruited eight Berkeley-area radicals, mostly college-educated dropouts and Vietnam veterans who believed they could launch urban guerrilla warfare with the help of black prisoners, despite having no meaningful support from established radical groups
  • The recruits included Patricia Soltysik (DeFreeze’s lover), Nancy Ling Perry (English degree from Berkeley), Willie Wolfe (wealthy doctor’s son), and Vietnam veterans Bill and Emily Harris
  • Russell Little believed underground warfare was still viable because groups like Weather had failed largely because ’they were afraid to take lives’
  • The SLA sought to abolish ‘racism, sexism, ageism, capitalism, fascism, individualism, possessiveness, competitiveness and all other institutions that have made and sustained capitalism’
• The SLA’s first action was the November 6, 1973 assassination of Marcus Foster, Oakland’s respected black school superintendent, using cyanide-tipped bullets, an attack that drew universal condemnation rather than the revolutionary support DeFreeze expected
  • Foster was shot seven times as he left a school board meeting, with bullets drilled out and filled with potassium cyanide, while deputy Robert Blackburn was wounded by shotgun blasts
  • The attack was motivated by Foster’s proposals for student ID cards and police in schools, which radical Thero Wheeler denounced as fascist plots against black youth
  • Even the Black Panthers denounced the ‘brutal and senseless murder,’ with Bay Area radical groups offering no support for the unknown SLA
• The January 10, 1974 arrests of Joe Remiro and Russell Little during a Concord traffic stop led to the discovery and fiery destruction of the SLA’s Clayton safe house, revealing their extensive plans, weapons, and organizational documents to police
  • Officer David Duge stopped their van for suspicious behavior, leading to a gunfight when Remiro saw the bulge of Duge’s gun and opened fire with two shots
  • The SLA house contained thousands of pages of documents laying out ’the who, what, when, where, and how of everything the SLA had been doing’
  • Among Nancy Perry’s research notes was a numbered list including ‘That daughter of Hearst,’ indicating the group had already identified Patricia Hearst as a target

“Patty Has Been Kidnapped”

The SLA’s February 4, 1974 kidnapping of Patricia Hearst transformed the group into a national media sensation, leading to unprecedented food distribution programs and ultimately Patty’s controversial conversion to revolutionary ‘Tania’ before the group’s fiery destruction in Los Angeles.

• Patricia Hearst was a wealthy but rebellious nineteen-year-old living with her graduate student boyfriend when three SLA members burst into their Berkeley apartment on February 4, 1974, kidnapping her in a violent assault that included rifle-butting her fiancé Steven Weed
  • Patty had been the only student at her private school who refused to wear uniforms and referred to farmworkers as ‘miserable fucking migrant people’
  • The attackers, believed to be DeFreeze, Bill Harris, and Angela Atwood, forced Patty into a car trunk after firing shots over neighbors’ heads
  • Back in Berkeley, Weed staggered to Cowell Hospital while police arrived, with Patty’s sister breaking the news: ‘Patty has been kidnapped’
• The SLA’s demand for a massive food distribution program to California’s poor created unprecedented logistical challenges and civic chaos, with Randolph Hearst establishing a $2 million foundation while critics like Ronald Reagan quipped about hoping for ‘an epidemic of botulism’
  • The SLA initially demanded $70 worth of food to anyone who needed it on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for four weeks, estimated to cost between $133-400 million
  • The February 22 distribution involved tons of groceries on rented trucks, with fights breaking out and people injured by flying frozen turkeys in East Oakland
  • By day’s end, only about 9,000 of the hoped-for 20,000 people received food, though later distributions went more smoothly
• During ten weeks in captivity, Patty underwent intensive political indoctrination in a fetid closet while SLA members bombarded her with lectures on revolutionary theory, eventually leading to her apparent conversion and announcement of joining the group as ‘Tania’
  • DeFreeze described the SLA as a vast army with training camps and global ties, promising Patty would not be mistreated unless she tried to escape
  • Between lectures they fed her and led her blindfolded to the bathroom, with formal interrogation lasting for days about her upbringing and family’s media holdings
  • When DeFreeze finally offered her the choice to ‘join us if you want to’ or ‘be released,’ Patty blurted without hesitation: ‘I want to join you’
• The April 15, 1974 Hibernia Bank robbery provided the first photographic evidence of Patty’s transformation, with security cameras capturing her calmly holding a carbine on customers while announcing ‘This is Tania Hearst’ during the $10,600 heist
  • Nancy Perry’s rifle clip fell out and clattered to the floor with bullets spilling everywhere at the start of the robbery, but the group recovered quickly
  • As customers Pete Markoff and Gene Brennan entered during the escape, Perry opened fire, wounding both men for no apparent tactical reason
  • The iconic bank photo of Patty holding a gun became one of the decade’s most recognizable images, sparking national debate about her motivations
• After the bank robbery intensified the manhunt, DeFreeze’s paranoid attempts to recruit new members by knocking on doors in their own building and neighborhood demonstrated the group’s desperate amateurishness despite their national notoriety
  • DeFreeze began ‘knocking on other doors in the building, introducing himself as General Cinque of the SLA and asking the occupants to join up’
  • When one woman slammed the door in their faces, DeFreeze realized recruitment in their building might be ‘a tad unwise’ but continued the door-to-door approach
  • They eventually found help from a Black Muslim woman who brought food and located a new apartment, leading to elaborate disguises with black theatrical makeup and Afro wigs
• The May 16, 1974 shoplifting incident at Mel’s Sporting Goods in Inglewood triggered a shootout when Patty opened fire with a carbine from a van, marking the first time she had fired a gun in anger and leading to the SLA’s discovery in Los Angeles
  • A security guard confronted Bill Harris about stolen socks, leading to a struggle where Emily jumped on the guard’s back before Patty began firing
  • Patty’s gunfire shattered the store’s front windows as the Harrises escaped, with Harris shouting ‘We’re from the SLA and we need your car’ to commandeer vehicles
  • The parking ticket found in their abandoned van led FBI to 833 West Eighty-fourth Street, then to the final safe house at 1466 East Fifty-fourth Street
• The May 17, 1974 siege of the house on East Fifty-fourth Street became a live television spectacle, with 127 FBI agents and 200+ police officers surrounding the building before the ensuing firefight and fire killed all six remaining SLA members
  • The LAPD used bullhorns eighteen times demanding surrender while DeFreeze and others had crawled into an eighteen-inch crawlspace beneath the burning house
  • Nancy Perry and Camilla Hall were shot and killed as they emerged from the crawlspace firing pistols, with Hall struck ‘flush in the forehead’
  • DeFreeze, Patricia Soltysik, Willie Wolfe, and Angela Atwood were found ‘burned to cinders, crushed, gas masks melted to their faces’ after the roof collapsed

What Patty Hearst Wrought

The SLA’s destruction paradoxically reinvigorated the underground movement, inspiring new bombing groups and the mysterious New World Liberation Front while Patty Hearst and the surviving Harrises continued their revolutionary activities during her ’lost year.’

• The SLA’s fiery destruction reinvigorated the underground movement rather than ending it, with radicals envying the SLA’s achievements including the food program, humbling of the Hearsts, and unprecedented media coverage that made armed struggle part of the national conversation again
  • Within two years, four significant new bombing groups would emerge, three whose founders either came from the Bay Area Left or had visited Berkeley to join the underground
  • Two new radical journals began publishing for the first time since Eldridge Cleaver’s ‘Right On!’ died, both devoted to chronicling underground bombings
  • Kathy Soliah told a Berkeley rally: ‘I am a soldier of the SLA… SLA soldiers, keep fighting. I’m with you’
• Kathy Soliah became the key figure linking the old SLA to new revolutionary activities, helping form the Bay Area Research Collective (BARC) and the journal ‘Dragon,’ while also saving the surviving SLA members by arranging their escape from California
  • BARC published ‘Dragon,’ which became ’the landmark paper for underground groups’ between 1975 and 1977, publishing bombing news and communiqués from most second-generation groups
  • Soliah had wanted to join the SLA but was rejected by Bill Harris as ’too flaky to be trusted with the SLA’s underground activities’
  • She arranged for radical sports writer Jack Scott to drive Patty and the Harrises to New York, beginning what the press called Patty’s ’lost year’
• The New World Liberation Front (NWLF) emerged as a mysterious umbrella organization that would eventually be credited with more bombings than any other underground group, initially responding to BARC’s invitation for radical groups to unite under one banner
  • The first NWLF bomb was a dud left outside a GM office in Burlingame on August 5, 1974, followed by another dud at a San Francisco GM dealership three nights later
  • By the end of 1974, eleven NWLF bombs had exploded, averaging every sixteen days, targeting Sheratons, ITT executives, and Berkeley meter-maid motorcycles
  • The NWLF would be credited with planting more bombs than any other underground group, more than twice as many as the Weather Underground
• The Weather Underground emerged from dormancy in 1974 with a new political manifesto called ‘Prairie Fire’ and plans for a grand scheme to resurface publicly while secretly controlling a new radical coalition
  • Between May 1972 and March 1974, Weather staged only two small bombings, leading the New York Times to call the group ‘dormant’ by October 1973
  • The 156-page ‘Prairie Fire’ was distributed on July 24, 1974, to alternative bookstores nationwide as Weather’s first major communication in years
  • The book declared: ‘We are a guerrilla organization… Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks’
• The Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN) launched the most sustained bombing campaign in U.S. history beginning October 26, 1974, with five simultaneous explosions in Manhattan’s Financial District that shattered windows up to eight stories high
  • The coordinated attack hit the Marine Midland Bank, Exxon Building, Banco de Ponce, Union Carbide Building, and Lever House between 2:55 and 3:10 a.m.
  • A communiqué found at Broadway and Seventy-third Street claimed responsibility for ‘Armed Forces of Puerto Rican National Liberation’ demanding release of five Puerto Rican political prisoners
  • The December 11 booby trap that permanently disfigured rookie officer Angel Poggi marked an escalation from property damage to targeting police personnel
• The January 24, 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing killed four men and wounded over forty others, representing the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 1920 and forcing the FBI to take the FALN threat seriously for the first time
  • The bomb, consisting of ten sticks of dynamite and a propane tank in a gray duffel bag, detonated at 1:22 p.m. during the lunch rush
  • Frank Connor, Alex Berger, Jim Gezork, and Harold Sherburne were killed, with the force of the explosion sending a single nail through a ceiling like a bullet
  • Young FBI agents Don Wofford and Lou Vizi were among the first on scene, with Wofford eventually leading the Bureau’s investigation named FRANBOMB
• The FALN investigation was hampered by new 1970s policing restrictions and the FBI’s bureaucratic structure, with the Puerto Rican Squad reduced to two young agents riding the subway while files on Puerto Rican radicals had been destroyed after civil rights complaints
  • Lou Vizi described the Puerto Rican Squad: ‘Half these guys had been in that squad since World War Two… We had zero resources, not a single radio, and one car the supervisor took home at night’
  • One detective complained to the New York Times: ‘We haven’t done any surveillance of Puerto Rican political groups in several years… we were completely unprepared for the FALN’
  • The San Juan FBI office refused to respond to New York’s inquiries, with their message essentially: ‘The bombs are going off in New York, not here. It’s your problem’

“The Belfast of North America”

Patty Hearst’s capture in September 1975 failed to end the New World Liberation Front bombing campaign in San Francisco, revealing a complex underground network that would mystify authorities for years while transforming the Bay Area into what one FBI agent called ’the Belfast of North America.’

• The reconstituted SLA under Bill and Emily Harris devolved into a dysfunctional group plagued by sexual tensions, arguments over revolutionary strategy, and Harris’s violent leadership style during their time hiding in Sacramento safe houses
  • Harris was ‘a volatile martinet, forever screaming at Emily and the others over slights real and imagined’ while everyone engaged in musical sexual relationships
  • When Harris began sleeping with Kathy Soliah, Emily retaliated by sleeping with Steve Soliah, leading to confrontations where Harris threatened Steve with a gun
  • Jim Kilgore challenged Harris’s leadership during arguments: ‘What did the old SLA ever accomplish? You killed a black man, kidnapped a little teenaged girl and robbed a bank’
• The April 21, 1975 robbery of Crocker National Bank resulted in the murder of Myrna Opsahl, a forty-two-year-old church member depositing money when Emily Harris shot her with a shotgun, with Harris later dismissing the victim as ‘a bourgeois pig anyway’
  • Opsahl was carrying a heavy adding machine and hesitated rather than immediately falling to the floor when ordered, prompting Emily Harris to blast her with a shotgun
  • Years later Harris would claim the gun went off accidentally, but witnesses described a deliberate shooting
  • Hearst wrote that when someone wondered if the bleeding woman would live, Emily Harris snapped: ‘Oh she’s dead. But it really doesn’t matter. She was a bourgeois pig anyway’
• After returning to San Francisco, the SLA remnants began a bombing campaign under the New World Liberation Front banner, with Harris insisting they kill police officers to provoke a government crackdown that would spark revolution among oppressed minorities
  • Harris proposed walking into Miz Brown’s coffee shop in the Mission District ‘with guns blazing’ to kill a dozen off-duty police officers
  • When that plan was rejected, they turned to Weather-style nocturnal bombings using pipe bombs packed with gunpowder and concrete nails
  • Their communiqués threatened: ‘Remember, pigs. Every time you strap on your gun, the next bullet may be speeding toward your head, the next bomb may be under the seat of your car’
• The FBI breakthrough came through the Scott family connection and fingerprint evidence, leading to the September 18, 1975 arrests of Bill and Emily Harris during a jog, followed by Patty Hearst’s capture at 625 Morse Street where she was found ’like a rag doll’
  • Jack Scott’s brother Walter drunkenly revealed the Pennsylvania farm location to Scranton police, leading to discovery of Bill Harris and Wendy Yoshimura’s fingerprints
  • Agent Tom Padden burst through the Dutch door at 625 Morse Street to find Yoshimura in the kitchen and Hearst at the table, who froze when ordered
  • When asked her occupation at arraignment, Hearst famously replied ‘Urban guerrilla,’ while the others—Kathy and Jo Soliah, Mike Bortin, Jim Kilgore—disappeared underground
• Despite Hearst’s capture, NWLF bombings continued and even intensified, revealing that the group was larger and more complex than authorities had assumed, with mysterious figure Jacques Rogiers emerging as the public face of the organization
  • By Halloween 1975, three more NWLF bombs had exploded, including attacks on PG&E substations and Fort Ord, proving the SLA wasn’t the only NWLF unit
  • Rogiers was a thirty-seven-year-old ex-convict who had written for radical inmate newspapers and ‘appears not to have good contact with reality and is living a fantasy life’
  • After the November 16 sabotage of 400-500 parking meters with liquid steel, police spokesman noted the NWLF had targeted ‘a bunch in front of police headquarters’
• The NWLF escalated to targeting San Francisco city supervisors with ‘candy box bombs’ in January 1976, followed by attacks on the Hearst estates, demonstrating sophisticated operational capability and knowledge of high-value targets
  • Supervisor John Barbagelata’s daughters found a package that looked suspicious—‘Hey, this could be a bomb!’—leading to discovery of identical See’s candy boxes containing dynamite
  • An anonymous female caller explained: ‘A half stick of dynamite and a six-second-delay fuse constructed with great care demonstrates that this was not an attempt to kill’
  • The February 12 bombing of the Hearst estate at San Simeon caused $1 million damage, with bombers trekking miles through forest to plant explosives in the remote mansion
• The true identity of the NWLF remained a mystery involving at least three separate groups, with the core organization eventually revealed as the work of Ronald Huffman and Maureen Minton, marijuana farmers operating from a remote Bonny Doon compound
  • Huffman, known as ‘Revolutionary Ron,’ was a balding radical in biker regalia who operated elaborate marijuana farms with four enormous plots and plants up to ten feet tall
  • The couple had been engaged in underground activities since 1973, with their first known action being a communiqué about Weather’s ITT bombing
  • FBI agent Stockton Buck estimated the NWLF may have had six or seven members, but only Huffman and Minton were ever publicly identified despite seventy-plus bombings
• The NWLF campaign ended abruptly in 1978 after Huffman axe-murdered Maureen Minton on September 23, 1979, in a psychotic break where he believed she was possessed by demons and cut out a portion of her brain as he thought it had ‘magical powers’
  • Huffman became obsessed with ‘demon dogs’ and coyotes, calling their howling ’the voice of Satan’ while developing a list of complaints against Minton
  • After ordering Minton to kneel, he ‘slid a draftsman’s knife into her mouth’ then ‘swung [an axe] viciously down onto her skull, all but splitting her head in two’
  • Huffman drove away with $32,000 cash, ten bags of marijuana, and ‘a paper sack containing a portion of Minton’s brain’ before being arrested after attacking a hitchhiker

Hard Times

The Weather Underground’s attempt to secretly control the radical left through front organizations culminated in the disastrous 1976 Hard Times Conference, leading to the group’s expulsion by Clayton Van Lydegraf and the final collapse of the organization.

• Weather’s leadership conceived an audacious plan called ‘inversion’ to fool the radical left into returning them to positions of power by creating front organizations that would secretly be controlled by the Central Committee while appearing independent
  • The plan emerged from talks between Jeff Jones and Annie Stein, who argued that Weather had ‘squandered its ties to the Movement and needed to find a way to regain its leadership’
  • Cathy Wilkerson recalled: ‘The idea was, Weatherman’s leadership was going to take control of what remained of the Movement… We really thought we were the Chosen People’
  • The scheme involved creating the Prairie Fire Distribution Committee as a front group, with five close allies secretly selected to run it while denying Weather connections
• The Prairie Fire Organizing Committee successfully recruited over one hundred members across multiple cities despite many people’s suspicions about Weather’s involvement, with participants like Silvia Baraldini admitting they ‘fell for it’ due to Weather’s ‘mystique’
  • Russell Neufeld constantly faced questions: ‘I was constantly being asked whether this was a front for Weather… I kept saying, I really can’t talk about that’
  • Baraldini recalled: ‘I was stupid. I fell for it… We didn’t realize their leadership had already abandoned any pretense at being true revolutionaries’
  • PFOC chapters were established in Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago, with the Brooklyn Assata Shakur Defense Committee joining en masse
• The January 1976 Hard Times Conference at the University of Illinois Chicago campus, intended as Weather’s vehicle to lead a unified radical coalition, collapsed when over two thousand delegates rejected the white organizers’ agenda and accused them of racism
  • The conference drew impressive turnout from dozens of groups including the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, American Indian Movement, and Republic of New Afrika
  • A Black Caucus formed and spent ’nearly an hour excoriating the organizers as racists and demanding that any new radical coalition be run by blacks’
  • Neufeld remembered the aftermath: ‘My pushback [to Jones] was to respect the process, that people had opinions, that they couldn’t be ordered around’
• Clayton Van Lydegraf, the aging communist expelled from Weather during the Prairie Fire writing process, launched a Stalin-like purge of the PFOC that exposed Weather’s manipulation and ultimately led to the expulsion of the entire Central Committee
  • Van Lydegraf emerged as ’the PFOC’s avenging angel,’ conducting interrogations with ’everything but the bullets’ to expose Weather’s secret control
  • Baraldini recalled: ‘We heard there was a huge confrontation between Clayton and Annie Stein… Everyone was outraged’ at Weather’s arrogance
  • The purge culminated in a tape recording where Dohrn admitted engaging in ’naked white supremacy, white superiority, and chauvinist arrogance’
• The Weather Underground’s collapse led to mass surrenders beginning in 1977, with most members receiving only probation and small fines when they turned themselves in to Chicago prosecutors, demonstrating how thoroughly America had moved beyond 1960s radicalism
  • Robbie Roth and Phoebe Hirsch were the first to surrender, appearing unannounced at a Chicago courthouse where ’the officer on duty told them to come back the next day’
  • Paul Bradley, Howie Machtinger, and others all received probation, with Mark Rudd generating the most media attention but finding that Columbia students no longer knew his name
  • Bradley recalled Dohrn’s apology: ‘She said, I’m really sorry, who’d have thought it’d end up like this. I said, Forget it, it’s been great. How else could I have lived in San Francisco for seven years?’
• The final irony came when Clayton Van Lydegraf attempted to revive Weather’s bombing campaign with a new underground group, only to be arrested by FBI agents who had finally infiltrated the organization through undercover agents Richard Giannotti and William Reagan
  • Van Lydegraf’s group conducted weapons training with BB guns and tin cans in the Barstow desert, plus go-cart training for ‘high-speed car chases’
  • The FBI’s infiltration was aided by Van Lydegraf’s roommate ‘Ralph’ and friend ‘Dick,’ who turned out to be undercover agents
  • When the Bureau arrested all five members in November 1977 for planning to bomb a state senator’s office, it marked the final end of Weather’s attacks on ‘Amerika’
• The FBI’s Squad 47 was destroyed by Justice Department prosecutors led by Bill Gardner, who discovered the Bureau’s illegal break-ins and surveillance through misfiled documents and launched prosecutions that culminated in unprecedented indictments against senior FBI officials
  • Gardner accidentally discovered Squad 47’s illegal activities when Weather Underground files were mistakenly inserted into Socialist Workers Party files he was reviewing
  • The April 7, 1977 indictment of supervisor John Kearney prompted 300 FBI agents to gather on courthouse steps in protest—‘an assembly unprecedented in FBI history’
  • The investigation ultimately led to indictments of Acting Director L. Patrick Gray, Associate Director Mark Felt, and Assistant Director Ed Miller

“Welcome to Fear City”

The FALN emerged from Chicago’s Puerto Rican community under Oscar López’s leadership, using support from the Episcopal Church’s National Commission on Hispanic Affairs while conducting increasingly sophisticated bombing campaigns against corporate and government targets from 1976 to 1980.

• The FALN’s sophisticated bombing operations were secretly funded through the Episcopal Church’s National Commission on Hispanic Affairs, led by Maria Cueto, who paid FALN members as board members and provided resources for their terrorist activities
  • Maria Cueto served as “the quartermaster of the FALN” according to her attorney, arranging money, travel, and meetings at church facilities
  • The church had purchased the same Gestetner copy machine used to produce FALN communiqués in 1974, months before the first bombings
  • NCHA paid thousands of dollars to Carlos Torres, Oscar López, and other FALN suspects through their board positions
  • Church officials were “appalled” and felt “stampeded into this charity stuff by their own guilt” according to FBI agent Lou Vizi
• The FALN’s bombing campaign escalated dramatically in 1977 with the deadly Mobil Oil attack that killed Charles Steinberg and wounded seven others, marking the group’s transition to more lethal tactics
  • Marie Haydee Torres planted the umbrella bomb at Mobil Oil headquarters on August 3, 1977, leaving her fingerprint on a job application form
  • The coordinated August 3 attacks caused massive evacuations of over 100,000 office workers across Manhattan
  • “This is an outrageous act of terrorism,” said Mayor Abraham Beame as he walked through the bloodstained glass at the bombing site
  • The attacks came just days after the Son of Sam murders, adding to New York’s sense that “civilization appeared to be disintegrating”
• FBI agent Roger Young made an unprecedented offer to exchange unstable FALN dynamite for replacement explosives containing tracking devices, but the imprisoned FALN supporters rejected the proposal out of suspicion
  • Young realized the aging Heron Dam dynamite from 1967 could accidentally explode and kill innocent families, especially after four bombs failed to detonate in October 1977
  • The FBI lab was secretly developing fake dynamite and GPS tracking chips to insert into replacement explosives
  • Young met with imprisoned FALN supporters at Metropolitan Correctional Center, offering stick-for-stick replacement of dangerous explosives
  • “You don’t have to say a thing. Just listen,” Young told the prisoners, but they remained silent and suspicious of the offer
• Willie Morales’s accidental bomb explosion in July 1978 provided the FBI’s first major break in the FALN case, revealing the group’s bomb-making techniques and safe house locations despite Morales’s attempts to destroy evidence
  • The explosion blew off nine of Morales’s fingers and destroyed his face, but he still managed to flush FALN documents and turn on gas to kill pursuing police
  • Morales had been building pipe bombs using the same design as Weather Underground bombs, with wristwatch timers set to detonate when the minute hand struck “9”
  • The apartment contained 66 sticks of dynamite, weapons, and bomb-making materials, plus correspondence linking him to other FALN members
  • “Fuck me?” Detective Valentine asked the hospitalized Morales. “It’s you that are fucked, pal. You’ll be wiping your ass with your elbows”
• The FALN’s final major operations included coordinated attacks on presidential campaign offices in 1980, demonstrating their ability to strike simultaneously in multiple cities while maintaining operational security
  • Four masked FALN members took over George Bush’s Manhattan campaign headquarters, spray-painting “STATEHOOD MEANS DEATH” while holding seven workers at gunpoint
  • Oscar López simultaneously led a team that raided Carter-Mondale headquarters in Chicago, stealing voter registration lists and issuing threats to delegates
  • The raids targeted Puerto Rico’s movement toward statehood, with threatening letters sent to 150 delegates warning against supporting statehood
  • FBI agents felt “a sense that these guys might go on doing this, the bombings, literally forever” due to their inability to penetrate the group

“Armed Revolutionary Love”

Ray Levasseur’s journey from a troubled French Canadian mill worker to leader of the Sam Melville Jonathan Jackson unit illustrates how personal grievances, political awakening, and revolutionary ideology combined to create one of the era’s most persistent bombing groups.

• Ray Levasseur’s transformation from an aimless, violent youth into a revolutionary began with his Vietnam War service and exposure to civil rights literature, which gave him a political framework for his anger at French Canadian discrimination in Maine
  • Levasseur grew up facing prejudice as “frogs” and “niggers turned inside out” in 1950s Maine, where French Canadians were seen as “docile and dumb”
  • After Vietnam, he met Jan Phillips, a civil rights organizer who introduced him to works by Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, and Fidel Castro
  • His reading of “The Diary of Che Guevara” was transformative: “he downed it like a starving dog” and became entranced with the idea that small groups could topple governments
  • Prison time for marijuana charges in Tennessee deepened his radicalization as he befriended black inmates and was labeled a “racial agitator”
• Levasseur’s involvement in Maine’s prison reform movement at the Statewide Correctional Alliance for Reform (SCAR) provided the organizational base and radical contacts that eventually led to his underground activities
  • He led successful protests that removed Principal Fink from Tuley High School and got Roberto Clemente’s name on a new school building
  • SCAR became his platform for teaching classes in jails and organizing around prisoner grievances, operating from George Jackson Hall
  • His relationship with Cameron Bishop, a Ten Most Wanted fugitive, pushed him toward armed action: “This was my opportunity. This was everything I had been waiting for”
  • The discovery of alleged police death squad targeting radical activists convinced Levasseur that violent self-defense was necessary
• The group’s evolution from idealistic activists to armed bank robbers was driven by practical necessities rather than revolutionary strategy, as they needed money to survive underground while maintaining their bombing campaign
  • Their first bank robbery in Portland yielded only $2,000 but established the template: “We didn’t get much, a few thousand dollars. It was mostly checks”
  • Linda Coleman’s $150,000 trust fund initially financed the group, creating tension over whether her money had “strings attached”
  • Levasseur insisted on ideological justification for robberies: “Expropriation is only justified if it’s a large company that’s already ripping the people off”
  • The Waterbury bank robbery netted over $55,000, allowing them to establish separate family and operational lives for the first time
• Levasseur’s philosophy of “armed revolutionary love” attempted to reconcile his commitment to family life with his dedication to violent struggle, creating internal contradictions that would plague the group throughout its existence
  • In a letter to Pat Gros after their first child’s birth, he wrote: “Armed love means picking up the gun with one hand and reaching out to the oppressed people and fellow comrades with the other”
  • He justified potential civilian casualties as “collateral damage” in their war against fascism, despite the women’s objections to violence
  • The group’s children were integrated into underground life from birth, with fake identities and constant moves disrupting their education and social development
  • “I was scared shitless,” Pat Gros recalled of their first bombing. “I was just so in love with him, I had to show I was willing to be part of that armed struggle”

Bombs and Diapers

Ray Levasseur’s group struggled to balance family responsibilities with revolutionary activities while evading increasingly intensive FBI manhunts that turned them into some of America’s most wanted fugitives during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

• The killing of New Jersey State Trooper Philip Lamonaco on December 21, 1981, marked a turning point that transformed Levasseur’s group from bombing suspects into cop killers facing the largest manhunt in New Jersey history since the Lindbergh kidnapping
  • Richard Williams, struggling with heroin addiction, likely fired the eight bullets that killed Lamonaco during a routine traffic stop
  • The murder triggered a massive manhunt involving “more than two thousand police” at Lamonaco’s funeral and formation of the FBI’s “Bosluc” task force
  • Levasseur realized the stakes had changed: “It was one thing to be wanted for protest bombings that hurt no one. It was quite another to be sought for murdering a cop”
  • The FBI began targeting the group’s children in wanted posters, with nine-year-old Jeremy Manning’s photo released to the press in January 1982
• Jaan Laaman’s recruitment brought both additional manpower and new vulnerabilities, as his insistence on bringing his family underground added three more children to an already unwieldy group of fugitives
  • Laaman refused to go underground without his girlfriend Barbara Curzi and her three children: “You guys got families. Why can’t I have mine?”
  • Levasseur objected strenuously: “Three kids with the kind of heat we’ve got? No way. This is crazy! Absolutely fucking crazy!”
  • The group now consisted of seven adults and nine children living underground, requiring massive resources from bank robberies just to survive
  • A shootout at a Massachusetts rest stop left Kazi Toure in custody and forced the entire extended family to relocate to Albany apartments
• The group’s bombing campaign resumed in 1982 with attacks on corporate targets like IBM and General Electric, but their communiqués attacking corporate wrongdoing were largely ignored by media and public alike
  • They renamed themselves the United Freedom Front and carried out ten bombings between 1982 and 1984 across suburban New York
  • Targets included IBM offices, army recruiting centers, and defense contractors, but “there were newspaper articles after each but no great hubbub”
  • Levasseur felt increasingly like “a long-haul trucker” driving constantly between safe houses in Ohio, Virginia, and New York for operations
  • By 1984, even CBS Evening News coverage couldn’t generate public interest in their revolutionary message
• FBI Agent Leonard Cross’s innovative “Operation Western Sweep” used computer analysis and systematic canvassing to identify the geographic area where the UFF was hiding, leading to their eventual capture through a storage locker discovery
  • Cross mapped every UFF bombing and bank robbery with colored pushpins, identifying a circular “safe zone” where “a pig never shits where it eats”
  • The operation involved 200 agencies checking schools, pharmacies, and pediatricians across 101 towns in four states
  • Connecticut trooper Mike Nockunas traced a 1978 furniture catalog to the “Jack Horning” identity, leading to discovery of Pat Gros’s car accident report
  • The storage locker in Binghamton containing Levasseur’s revolutionary literature and bomb-making materials provided the crucial breakthrough
• The final arrests on November 4, 1984, captured Ray Levasseur and Pat Gros with their three daughters during a routine trip to a birthday party, ending their eight-year underground odyssey in an Ohio farmhouse driveway
  • Over fifty armed officers surrounded their van as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” played on eight-year-old Carmen’s boom box
  • Levasseur’s defiant response when arrested: “Do you know who you’re looking at? You’re looking at a fucking revolutionary!”
  • Pat Gros told her daughters being taken away: “Give the men Grandma’s number. Don’t let your sisters out of your sight. Stay together. And be brave”
  • Carmen rolled down the squad car window and yelled “I’ll be brave, Mommy” as she was driven away with her sisters

Part Four: Out With A Bang

The Family

Mutulu Shakur built an unlikely alliance between black revolutionaries and white radical women through Lincoln Detox clinic in the South Bronx, creating “the Family” that would execute daring prison breaks and bank robberies while being corrupted by cocaine addiction.

• Lincoln Detox clinic in the South Bronx became an unlikely revolutionary headquarters where radical politics were prescribed as treatment for heroin addiction, funded by New York City while serving as a base for underground operations
  • The clinic was established after Young Lords militants seized Lincoln Hospital in 1970, demanding better treatment for Puerto Rican patients
  • Treatment combined methadone with political education classes using an 86-page pamphlet claiming “armed revolution could cure heroin addiction better than methadone alone”
  • The clinic drew volunteers including Weather Underground members like Brian Flanagan and Jennifer Dohrn, creating a network of radical contacts
  • Mutulu Shakur rose to power at the clinic, becoming a doctor of acupuncture while secretly organizing armed robberies
• Sekou Odinga’s return from Algerian exile in 1973 provided the Family with its most experienced revolutionary, a Black Panther veteran who had carried out multiple bank robberies while building a legitimate African jewelry business
  • Odinga returned to the U.S. through Mexico or Canada when “security wasn’t like it is now” and could use “any small airport”
  • He robbed “at least ten” banks before 1976 with partner Larry Mack, including returning twice to the same Queens bank where the guard recognized him
  • Odinga initially resisted helping Mutulu Shakur, believing “the military stuff, that wouldn’t work out” for the former drug counselor
  • He operated a legitimate business selling African jewelry with the fathers of murdered BLA members Zayd and Lumumba Shakur
• The “white edge” of radical women led by Silvia Baraldini and Marilyn Buck provided the Family with crucial logistical support, believing they were supporting a genuine Black Liberation Army revival while being manipulated by Shakur
  • Baraldini helped Shakur with “small favors” like renting cars and providing money before being drawn into actual bank robberies as getaway driver
  • Marilyn Buck was revered as “the white girl of the BLA” after serving four years for illegally purchasing BLA ammunition
  • The white women believed they were “rectifying a long history of white people using black people” and supporting black nationalism
  • Elizabeth Fink observed: “These people were driven crazy by their commitment to the blacks. It was like a cult”
• Mayor Ed Koch’s closure of Lincoln Detox in November 1978 eliminated Shakur’s legitimate income source and organizational base, accelerating the Family’s turn toward more frequent and violent bank robberies
  • Koch was “sick and tired of radicals abusing city resources” and called Detox staff “thugs” who “ran it like Che Guevara was their patron saint”
  • Police surrounded Lincoln Hospital and physically evicted staff while administrators fired director Luis Surita
  • Baraldini noticed “an acceleration” in robbery requests after the closure: “The requests never stop. What help you could give, you give it”
  • The Livingston Mall robbery in December 1978 netted $200,000 and established the template for major armored car heists
• The Family’s successful escape operations, including Willie Morales from Bellevue Hospital and Assata Shakur from a New Jersey prison, demonstrated sophisticated planning while establishing their reputation as the era’s most audacious prison breakers
  • Morales cut through his cell window grate using wire cutters smuggled by his attorney, then rappelled down Bellevue’s wall using medical bandages
  • The Assata Shakur escape involved multiple teams, getaway cars, and license plate changes, executed in under ten minutes without detection
  • Silvia Baraldini drove the getaway car thinking “God, give me the strength to shoot if I have to” while police cars raced past toward the prison
  • Both escapes embarrassed authorities and demonstrated the Family’s ability to operate inside maximum security facilities

Jailbreaks and Captures

The FALN reached its peak operations in 1979-1980 with sophisticated attacks on political targets and successful armored car robberies, but their eventual capture at Northwestern University revealed the limitations of their revolutionary strategy.

• The FALN operated as a disciplined guerrilla cell from multiple safe houses, with Oscar López directing operations from Milwaukee while maintaining strict security protocols including code names, dead drops, and masked planning sessions
  • López lived in Milwaukee with Willie Morales and Lucy Rodriguez while Carlos Torres operated from Jersey City with his family
  • Planning sessions required all members to wear pillowcases with eye slits, “giving the gatherings an eerie, Klanlike feel”
  • They built a firing range and explosives workshop in the Milwaukee house basement, using Fliegelman’s Weather Underground bomb designs
  • López compiled dossiers on millionaires including the Hunts and Rockefellers for potential Patty Hearst-style kidnappings
• The FALN’s botched attempt to rob the Wisconsin National Guard Armory in January 1980 demonstrated both their ambition to acquire military weapons and their operational limitations when facing unexpected resistance
  • Six FALN members in battle fatigues stormed the Oak Creek armory seeking automatic weapons and bazookas that “would keep the FALN in guns and ammunition for months”
  • Lieutenant Lawrence Gonzales couldn’t open the weapons room because he didn’t know the combination, forcing López and Torres to hack at the door with a fire axe
  • López had to threaten a janitor trying to call for help: “Get your ass back in there or I’ll blow your head off”
  • They left empty-handed after an hour of failed attempts, taking only “a rifle and some explosives manuals”
• The FALN’s coordinated raids on presidential campaign headquarters in March 1980 showcased their ability to strike simultaneously in multiple cities while demonstrating their opposition to Puerto Rican statehood
  • Four masked raiders took over George Bush’s Manhattan headquarters, demanding voter registration lists and spray-painting “STATEHOOD MEANS DEATH”
  • López simultaneously led a Chicago raid on Carter-Mondale headquarters, stealing voter lists and threatening delegates with “Watch out for the bomb”
  • The operations targeted Puerto Rico’s first-ever Republican primary victory, which radicals saw as advancing statehood
  • FBI investigators felt “a sense that these guys might go on doing this, the bombings, literally forever” due to their operational success
• The FALN’s final capture at Northwestern University on April 4, 1980, resulted from their preparation for an armored car robbery that was foiled by alert campus police and careful surveillance by Evanston officers
  • Nine FALN members were caught in two vans with fake mustaches, multiple weapons, and disguises while preparing to rob a Northwestern armored car delivery
  • Sergeant Jerry Brandt and his team pretended to inspect their car engine while watching the suspects transfer weapons between vehicles
  • The arrests led FBI agents to safe houses in Milwaukee and Jersey City, finally revealing the scope of FALN operations
  • Carlos Torres declared at arraignment: “I am a prisoner of war! Viva Puerto Rico Libre!” while supporters chanted outside court
• The subsequent FALN trials under seditious conspiracy charges resulted in sentences of 30 to 90 years each, while López and Morales remained at large and continued bombing attacks that killed airline worker Alex McMillan at JFK airport
  • Prosecutor Jeremy Margolis won approval to use the obscure seditious conspiracy law previously used only against 1950s Puerto Rican nationalists
  • All defendants refused to mount a defense, with Carmen Valentín threatening: “some of you will be walking on canes and in wheelchairs!”
  • The May 16, 1981 JFK bombing killed 20-year-old Pan Am handyman Alex McMillan when he discovered a bomb in an airport restroom
  • López was finally captured in a routine traffic stop in Glenview, Illinois, on May 29, 1981, ending the FALN’s most violent phase

The Scales of Justice

The early 1980s brought trials for FBI officials who had pursued the Weather Underground illegally, surrenders by Weather leaders who received minimal punishment, and the Family’s descent into cocaine-fueled violence culminating in the deadly 1981 Brink’s robbery.

• The 1980 trial and light sentencing of FBI officials Mark Felt and Edward Miller for illegal break-ins during the Weather Underground investigation highlighted the irony that law enforcement faced more punishment than the revolutionaries they pursued
  • Felt and Miller were convicted of approving illegal “black bag jobs” against Weather Underground associates and supporters
  • They received only fines of $5,000 and $3,500 respectively with no jail time, suggesting judicial skepticism about the prosecution
  • President Reagan pardoned both men in April 1981, while Felt later revealed he had been “Deep Throat” in the Watergate investigation
  • The light sentences contrasted sharply with the lengthy prison terms being sought against radical activists
• Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers’s surrender in December 1980 resulted in minimal punishment after ten years underground, with Dohrn receiving only probation and a $1,500 fine that she paid by check
  • The couple had been living as “Christine Douglas” and “Anthony Lee” in Manhattan, with Ayers working at a health-food bakery
  • All federal charges had been dropped due to FBI misconduct, leaving only minor state charges from the 1969 Days of Rage
  • Dohrn told reporters: “Resistance by any means necessary is happening and will continue within the U.S. as well as around the world”
  • FBI agent Don Strickland complained: “We end up being the villains! And these Weatherman scumbags end up being the fucking Robin Hoods!”
• Cocaine addiction corrupted the Family’s operations, with Mutulu Shakur secretly using drugs while his acupuncture clinic lost money and weapons disappeared from their safe to fund his habit
  • FBI wiretaps recorded “eighty-three separate drug purchases during a single four-week period” at Shakur’s BAAANA clinic
  • Baraldini didn’t realize the extent of drug use: “I thought they were just on like a high metabolism. I didn’t know”
  • Shakur and his associates began robbing drug dealers and UPS trucks to fund cocaine purchases without telling Odinga or the white women
  • The clinic treated patients for free when they couldn’t pay, losing money while much of the income went for drugs
• The Family’s murder of Brink’s guard William Moroney on June 2, 1981, marked their transition to deadly violence and triggered a massive NYPD investigation that began closing in on their operations
  • Tyrone Rison inexplicably opened fire with an M16, killing 59-year-old Moroney, a 38-year Brink’s veteran, and wounding his partner
  • The murder was “a turning point for the Family” that “provoked an unprecedented revolt among the white women” who had opposed violence
  • NYPD assigned fifty officers from Major Case Squad and published sketch artist drawings that closely resembled the gunmen
  • Baraldini and other white women demanded a meeting to “confront these issues” but were ignored as the men scattered to Georgia
• The October 20, 1981 Brink’s robbery in Nanuet resulted in the deaths of three men and the capture of key Family members, effectively ending the era of revolutionary bank robberies despite netting $1.6 million
  • Sekou Odinga had refused to participate, calling it “nothing but sure death” due to the single escape route and rush hour timing
  • The robbery team killed Brink’s guard Peter Paige and wounded Joe Trombino, then murdered police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady at a roadblock
  • Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert were captured when their U-Haul truck was stopped, with Boudin appearing “panic-stricken” and “babbling”
  • The arrests led to the discovery of Marilyn Buck’s detailed records, exposing the entire Family network within 24 hours

The Last Revolutionaries

Ray Levasseur’s United Freedom Front represented the final phase of 1970s radical violence, continuing bombing and bank robbery campaigns into the mid-1980s before sophisticated FBI investigation techniques finally brought them to justice.

• The United Freedom Front expanded operations in 1981-1982 despite having nine children among seven adults underground, requiring constant bank robberies to fund their basic survival needs including food, diapers, and housing
  • The group now included “seven adults and nine children” living underground after Jaan Laaman brought his girlfriend and her three children
  • Money from bank robberies had to cover “everything from beer and food to diapers and baby formula and lunch boxes” for the extended families
  • They hit banks in Vermont ($61,000) and Syracuse ($195,000) to fund their move to Cleveland and establish new safe houses
  • The children had to be given new identities and enrolled in schools, with the oldest beginning to understand their parents were criminals
• The UFF’s renewed bombing campaign between 1982 and 1984 targeted corporate offices and military installations but generated minimal public attention, illustrating the irrelevance of revolutionary politics in Reagan-era America
  • They detonated ten bombs at IBM, General Electric, Motorola offices and army recruiting centers, with “no one seriously hurt”
  • Despite the bombings making newspaper articles, there was “no great hubbub” and Levasseur’s communiqués were “largely ignored”
  • Levasseur felt like “a long-haul trucker” constantly driving between Ohio, Virginia, and New York for operations
  • Even CBS Evening News coverage featuring Dan Rather couldn’t generate public interest in their revolutionary message
• FBI Agent Leonard Cross revolutionized domestic terrorism investigation by creating the largest manhunt in FBI history, using computer analysis and systematic canvassing to identify the UFF’s geographic safe zone
  • Cross mapped every UFF bombing and bank robbery with colored pushpins, identifying a circular area where “a pig never shits where it eats”
  • “Operation Western Sweep” involved nearly 200 agencies checking schools, pharmacies, and pediatricians in 101 towns across four states
  • The operation covered western Massachusetts, southern Vermont, northwestern Connecticut, and eastern New York but found “not a single hard lead”
  • Cross had to admit after two weeks: “We haven’t come up with anything that sounds really exciting”
• The breakthrough came from analyzing a storage locker containing Levasseur’s revolutionary literature and bomb-making materials, leading Connecticut State Trooper Mike Nockunas to trace a six-year-old furniture catalog to an active mail drop
  • Auctioneer Andy Walker found shotgun parts, wiring, alarm clocks and “dozens of books and pamphlets, almost all devoted to radical politics”
  • Cross discovered a 1975 Dragon magazine diagram showing “exactly how to build a bomb” matching Levasseur’s devices
  • Nockunas traced a 1978 furniture catalog addressed to “Jack Horning” in Derby, Connecticut, to Pat Gros’s car accident report
  • The accident report revealed Gros had used “Judy Hymes” identity, leading to discovery of active mail drop in Columbus, Ohio
• The November 4, 1984 arrests captured Ray Levasseur declaring “You’re looking at a fucking revolutionary!” while his three daughters were separated from their parents, ending eight years underground but illustrating how anachronistic revolutionary politics had become
  • Over fifty armed officers surrounded their van while Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” played on Carmen’s boom box during a routine family trip
  • Pat Gros told her daughters being taken away: “Don’t let your sisters out of your sight. Stay together. And be brave”
  • Carmen, age 8, rolled down the squad car window and yelled “I’ll be brave, Mommy” as she was driven away
  • Levasseur’s defiant revolutionary rhetoric seemed absurd in Reagan-era America, making him “a spitting, snarling anachronism”

Epilogue

The 2010 memorial service for Marilyn Buck revealed the continuing reverence among aging radicals for their underground past, while assessment of the movement’s legacy shows it achieved little beyond inspiring modern activists and demonstrating the lengths passionate Americans would go to confront injustice.

• The 2010 memorial service for Marilyn Buck at the Malcolm X Center in Harlem demonstrated how former underground members still romanticized their revolutionary past while avoiding acknowledgment of the violence they had committed
  • Two hundred attendees including Ray Levasseur, Kathy Boudin, and Cathy Wilkerson celebrated Buck as “a poet, as a friend, as a comrade”
  • “In more than an hour, no one said the words ‘bombing’ or ‘bank robbery’ or ‘murder’ once” despite Buck’s 25-year prison sentence
  • Wilkerson and her attorney left early, saying “This movement is dying, and no one here seems to know it. These people are just deluded”
  • The event illustrated how “those who pursued ‘armed struggle’ might best be compared to German ‘Werewolf’ guerrillas” fighting a war that was over
• Former underground members admit their revolutionary strategy failed completely, acknowledging they were “way out in front of the people” without popular support and achieved no lasting political changes in American society
  • Sekou Odinga concluded: “It was all a mistake. People weren’t ready. People weren’t ready for armed struggle”
  • Silvia Baraldini questioned whether “armed struggle necessary? Not necessarily” while insisting “we thought so at the time”
  • Elizabeth Fink called the underground “a cult” driven by sixties-era craziness: “By ‘74, ‘75, when the war is over, you should have said, ‘What the fuck? The revolution isn’t happening’”
  • The movement’s only tangible legacy appears to be “metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs” rather than political transformation
• Joseph Connor, whose father died at Fraunces Tavern, argues that underground members were “murderers first, revolutionaries second” and criticizes the media for creating a “soft view” of leftist terrorists compared to other forms of terrorism
  • Connor was nine years old when his father Frank was killed in the FALN’s Fraunces Tavern bombing in 1975
  • He argues the underground figures “appointed themselves my father’s judge, jury, and executioner” based on their political beliefs
  • Connor criticizes how “America thinks none of this ever happened” and blames liberal media for letting leftist terrorists “off the hook”
  • He insists they were “terrorists. Flat-out terrorists” whose crimes are minimized because they held leftist rather than rightist politics
• Most Weather Underground alumni successfully reintegrated into mainstream society as educators and professionals, with several achieving distinguished careers while keeping their underground past secret from colleagues and students
  • Leonard Handelsman became “a full professor at Duke University” and “medical director of the Duke Addictions Program” with obituaries celebrating only his psychiatric career
  • One unnamed alumnus became “an accountant at a Big Four accounting firm” while another “heads a children’s charity in Ohio”
  • Bernardine Dohrn has been “a clinical associate professor of law at Northwestern University for more than twenty years”
  • Bill Ayers remains “perhaps the most visible veteran of the underground struggle” as an active author and lecturer signing books for young activists
• Many underground veterans remain in prison decades after their crimes, while others like Assata Shakur live in exile, and several cold cases from the era remain unsolved despite recent prosecution attempts
  • Prisoners still serving include “Mutulu Shakur, Judy Clark, David Gilbert, Oscar López, Tom Manning, Jaan Laaman, and Herman Bell”
  • Assata Shakur “still lives in Cuba” 37 years after her escape and was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list in 2013
  • Recent prosecutions had mixed results: Fred Hilton was convicted for the 1971 murder of Atlanta officer James Greene, but charges against the “San Francisco Eight” were largely dropped
  • “A number of deaths linked to underground groups, most notably the murders of Sergeant Brian McDonnell and Officers Rocco Laurie and Greg Foster, remain unsolved”