Justice for Victims of the Weather Underground

Yours truly will be speaking at this event in Washington DC.

Excerpts from Cliff Kincaid's latest Accuracy In Media column:

The bombing was listed by the FBI as the work of the Weather Underground, but Ayers and Dohrn, two of its top members, never claimed credit for the blast.

A live version of “Forensic Files” hits Washington, D.C. on March 12, as pressure mounts for an expanded probe of Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and their alleged roles in the 1970 bombing murder of a San Francisco policeman. Ayers and Dohrn, now university professors, were members of a communist terrorist gang called the Weather Underground during the 1960s and 1970s whose aim was to support communist regimes and anti-American movements around the world and destroy the United States. The group received terrorist training in Communist Cuba and was advised by Soviet and Cuban intelligence agents.

A former FBI informant, a retired San Francisco policeman, a veteran congressional investigator, and an internationally-renowned researcher into extremist movements will be appearing at the National Press Club to urge federal authorities to get to the bottom of what really happened on February 16, 1970, when a bomb filled with heavy metal staples exploded and ripped through the body of San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell at the Park Station police headquarters. McDonnell was in the hospital for two days, bleeding from his wounds, before he finally died.

The bombing was listed by the FBI as the work of the Weather Underground, but Ayers and Dohrn, two of its top members, never claimed credit for the blast. They have tried to insist over the years that their bombs never hurt or killed anyone, except their own members. However, the consistent testimony of former FBI informant Larry Grathwohl, who participated in meetings with Ayers, has been that Ayers told him that Dohrn planted the bomb.

What’s more, the bomb that killed three of their own members when it accidentally exploded in a New York townhouse was an anti-personnel device intended for an Army dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Mark Rudd, another member of the Weather Underground, reveals in a new book that he was in favor of planting the bomb, saying that he wanted “this country to have a taste of what it had been dishing out daily in Southeast Asia…” What the U.S. had been trying to do was prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam.

One might think that a case as old as the McDonnell killing would never be solved. But those familiar with real-life crime shows, such as “Forensic Files” on the TruTV cable channel, know that law enforcement authorities don’t like to give up, and that advances in forensic science have greatly improved the ability to solve the “cold cases.”

To prove the point, in 2007, members of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) were indicted for the 1971 killing of another San Francisco Police Sergeant, John Young. The BLA worked with the Weather Underground...

At the March 12 news conference at the National Press Club, former congressional investigator Herbert Romerstein will release a detailed report on how the Weather Underground waged a campaign of violence and murder that targeted police and the public. Former FBI informant Grathwohl will repeat his calls for further investigation and justice in the case of Sergeant McDonnell, and Jim Pera, a retired San Francisco police officer who worked with McDonnell and was one of the first on the scene of the bombing, will describe the devastating effect of the blast. Ground-breaking international blogger Trevor Loudon and I will release a report examining how a new “student movement,” under the direction of Ayers and Dohrn and others of their ilk, is emerging on college campuses...