Days of Rage (96 page)

see also specific members

Weatherman bombings, 1, 2, 56, 79, 82, 92–105, 106, 113, 119, 132, 136–40, 149–51, 152, 154, 158, 159, 161, 168, 223–24, 234, 268, 287, 309–12, 315–16, 355, 356, 497

Ayers and, 96–99, 103, 123

in Berkeley, 95–97

bomb design and, 124–27

of buildings of symbolic importance, 122

at California Department of Corrections, 137–40, 223

of Capitol, 163–64, 231, 366

change in approach to, 223

Fliegelman and, 125–26, 136–39, 149, 151, 163, 391, 461, 480, 490

Fort Dix plan, 103–5, 106, 121–22

in Haymarket Square, 79, 149

at Marin County Courthouse, 150

at Murtagh residence, 100–101, 174

at NYPD, 127–31, 132, 164

of Pentagon, 230–33, 309

at Presidio military base, 136

Robbins’s ideas for, 82–83

routines for, 136–37

San Francisco plan, 127–28

Wilkerson and, 1–2, 124–26, 136

Webb, Robert, 187–90, 195, 196

Weed, Steven, 285, 286

Weems, Donald,
see
Balagoon, Kuwasi

Wells, Charles, 391

Wexler, Haskell, 366

Wexu, Mario, 452

Wheeler, Thero, 278–79, 281, 286

White, Anthony “Kimu,” 191, 237, 241

White, Avon, 237–38, 242, 243, 253

Whitehorn, Laura, 363, 544

Wilkerson, Cathy, 1–3, 68, 83, 88, 92–95, 100–105, 116, 122, 140, 141, 160, 219, 227, 228, 362, 366, 369, 371, 373, 496, 537, 538, 545

on achievements of the underground, 539–40

bombings and, 1–2, 124–26, 136

Fliegelman and, 126, 371

at summit meeting, 121

in Townhouse explosion, 1, 106–12, 115, 124, 545

Wilkerson, James, 101–2, 110

Wilkins, Roy, 38, 39

Williams, Jeral,
see
Shakur, Mutulu

Williams, Richard, 514, 516–19, 523–24, 533, 534, 536, 544

Williams, Robert F., 30–31, 38, 40, 43

in Cuba, 31, 34, 42

Wisconsin National Guard Armory, 481–82

Wisconsin State Journal,
148

WLIB, 176–77

Wofford, Don, 320–21, 323, 327–32, 382, 386, 392, 394–96, 463, 464, 483

Woodstock, 10

Woodward, Bob, 135, 497

Wolfe, Tom, 156, 183

Wolfe, Willie (“Cujo”), 276, 277, 291, 295, 303, 306

World Trade Center:

1993 attack on, 541

September 11 attack on, 5, 504
n

Wretched of the Earth, The
(Fanon), 43

W. R. Grace chemical factory, 436–38

Yippies, 10, 164, 228

Yoshimura, 333–36, 338, 339, 342, 344

Young, John V., 542

Young, Roger, 397, 402, 404–5

Young Lords, 449–50, 467

youth culture, 116–17, 121, 155–56

hippies, 26–27, 85, 116–17, 121, 156–57, 159

Weatherman and, 116–17, 121, 144, 146, 147, 158

Zebra Killers, 4
n

Ziegler, Ron, 150–51

Zilsel, Joanna, 99, 111, 117

Zimbabwe, 210

Zion, Sidney, 20–21

Zodiac Killer, 275

IMAGE CREDITS

Image 1
: Patrick A. Burns/The New York Times/Redux.
Image 2
: The New York Times/Redux.
Image 3
: Jesse-Steve Rose/The Image Works.

Image 4
: The New York Times/Redux.

Image 5
: David Fenton/Archive Photos/Getty Images.
Image 6
: AP Photo/Edward Kitch.

Image 7
: AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler.
Image 8
: AP Photo.
Image 9
: FBI.

Image 10
: © Corbis.
Image 11
: AP Photo.
Image 12
: The New York Times/Redux.

Image 13
and
Image 14
: © Bettmann/Corbis.
Image 15
: AP Photo.

Image 16
: AP Photo

Image 17
: Jack Manning/The New York Times/Redux.
Inset above left
: © Corbis.
Inset below left
: Courtesy of Sun-Times Media.
Inset below right
: AP Photo/New York City Police.

Image 18
and
Image 19
© Bettmann/Corbis.

Image 20
: © Bettmann/Corbis.
Image 21
: AP Photo.
Image 22
: unknown.

Image 23
: Boston Globe/Getty Images.
Image 24
: FBI.

Image 25
: The New York Times/Redux.
Image 26
: Paul Shoul.

Image 27
: © Corbis.
Image 28
: FBI.

Image 29
: © Corbis.
Image 30
: FBI.
Image 31
: unknown.

Image 32
: Shobha/Contrasto/Redux.
Image 33
: AP Photo/David Handschuh.
Image 34
: AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Marcus Garner.
Image 35
: Daniel Lynch/Financial Times REA/Redux.
Image 36
: AP Photo.

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*
These six organizations are the most significant of the modern underground era in terms of their longevity and the impact of their “political actions.” But they were not, by any means, the only radical groups that committed violent acts on U.S. soil during the 1970s and early 1980s. Probably the most important underground group not chronicled in this book is the George Jackson Brigade, which robbed at least seven banks and detonated twenty pipe bombs in the Pacific Northwest between March 1975 and December 1977. There are other groups that committed even greater mayhem but can’t easily be defined as underground organizations. One is the band of four Black Muslim men who carried out the so-called Zebra Murders, fourteen execution-style killings of white people in San Francisco during a six-month period in 1973 and 1974. Another was a squad of Croatian nationalists responsible for what at the time was the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since 1920, a bombing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport in 1975 that killed eleven people.

*
Allard and Charette remained in Cuba for ten years. Upon their return to Canada in 1979, both were arrested and served jail terms on old bombing charges. A U.S. effort to extradite the pair was denied in 1991.

*
“Jim Duncan” is a pseudonym.

*
“Paul Bradley” is a pseudonym for a long-serving member of the Weather Underground.

*
In the mid-1970s Grathwohl testified about Weatherman before a Senate subcommittee and subsequently wrote a book,
Bringing Down America
. Later he emerged as a kind of conservative gadfly who regularly appeared on Fox News and other cable channels to talk about Ayers and others he knew in the group. Grathwohl died in 2013.

*
The details of the Robbins group’s first actions are supplied by Wilkerson, who actually remembered that the Murtagh bombing happened on a different night from the other firebombings. However, newspaper articles at the time date them all to a single evening, February 21. Over the course of the next ten days, no other firebombings received mention in the New York press, suggesting that Wilkerson’s memory may be faulty and that all the Weather firebombings did happen on the same evening.

*
Five people were living in the townhouse that week: Terry Robbins, Diana Oughton, Cathy Wilkerson, Teddy Gold, and Kathy Boudin. At least a half-dozen more members of the collective, including Brian Flanagan, lived elsewhere.

*
At the time, the sale of firecrackers was illegal in New Hampshire. The sale of dynamite wasn’t. “You can buy dynamite easier than bananas,” the state’s attorney general complained in an interview with
the New York Times
.

*
In later years Gold’s Weather comrades would speculate that he had returned to the townhouse from the drugstore in time to be killed. In all likelihood, he hadn’t left yet. He was crushed beneath the basement’s concrete staircase.

*
Detectives sifting through the rubble that day also discovered an appointment card indicating that Kathy Boudin was scheduled to see her dentist Monday, March 9, three days after the explosion. Checking with the dentist later that week, they were amazed to find that she had kept it.

*
Two of the accused were later acquitted in a jury trial.

*
Gilbert claims that the bomb was discovered after Weatherman phoned in its whereabouts. Retired FBI agents recall that it was found by a shaken janitor later that year.

*
“Marvin Doyle” is a pseudonym. The author now works for a Washington-area think tank, where no one knows his history as a 1970s-era radical.

*
Michael Kennedy declined to comment for the record.

*
The statue would eventually be rebuilt yet again, this time inside a protected courtyard.

*
Reached at his Oakland-area home in 2013, Stang declined to discuss the incident, saying it was all “a misunderstanding.”

*
The lone disparity between versions of this incident involves what car was being driven. Jones remembers he was driving Suzie Q. Three FBI agents present that day recall he was driving a Volvo sedan.

*
Three weeks later Thomas, Mark Holder, Frank Fields, and Joanne Chesimard were indicted for the robbery. According to a BLA member captured and interviewed by the NYPD in 1973, the participants were Thomas, his girlfriend Ignae Gittens, Holder, Fields, Chesimard, and Andrew Jackson. Jackson was later tried and acquitted of involvement. Forty years later New York detectives who have extensively researched the BLA say they doubt Chesimard was present; they believe the second woman was another female BLA member.