HOW WEATHERMEN FANNED WINDS OF VIOLENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000201030006-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 28, 2010
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: November 7, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/28: CIA-RDP90-00845R000201030006-6
V
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE 9-----
HUMAN EVENTS
7November 1981
U.Nathnamn Fa
Sometimes you do need a Weather-
man to know which way the wind is
blowing.
A million-dollar robbery and
murderous shoot-outs involving
members of the Weather Underground
and other denizens of the violent left
are grim reminders of the point made
here a week ago-that political terror
does exist in the United States. Four
brutal deaths, appended to an already
considerable list, are gruesome
witnesses to its reality.
In a series of gun battles in suburban
New York, a Brink's guard, two
policemen and a robbery suspect were
shot to death. Arrested in the aftermath
were Katherine Boudin, Judith Clark
and David Gilbert, all members of the
Weather Underground and Nathaniel
Burns, a member of the violence-prone
Black Panthers. A dragnet inquiry led
to hideouts loaded with guns and am-
mo, the arrest of two more Weather-
peolil'e and assorted other suspects (see
story on page 5).
For Kathy Boudin,. it was a second
violent go-round in the headlines. The
last' time she was heard from was in
1970??-when a Greenwich Village
townhouse used as a Weatherpeople
bomb factory blew up, killing three of
its inhabitants.
The,. Weatherpeople, it may be re-
called . were a spin-off from the left-
wing youth group, Students for. a
Democratic Society. They wanted to
change American society through open .j
violence, in imitation of, Marxist ter-
rorists overseas.
""As . an early statement from the.
Weatherpe'ople put it, "we are adop-
ting-the classic guerrilla strategy of the
Vietcong and the urban guerrilla
strategy of the Tupamaros to our situa-
tion ~ here in the most technically ad-
vanced country in the world." Or, as
another h;d it, paraphasing Mao Tse= I
By M. STANTON EVANS
tung, "political power grows out of a
gun, a [Molotov] cocktail, a riot, a
commune."
As good as their word, the
Weatherpeople committed
numerous acts of violence, in-
cluding the so-called "Days of
Rage" in Chicago in 1969, in
which 270 people were arrested.
Most of all, as the townhouse.
blow-up suggests, 'they liked to
bomb things. Among the bomb-
ings credited to their account in the
early 1970s were attacks on the
U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the
State Department and two dozen
other government buildings.
As distinctive as the Weather Under-
ground 'commitment to violence has
been its commitment to foreign com-~
munism. In the '60s and early '70s,
SDSers who were to become,
Weatherpeople made numerous trips toj
Cuba, where they received revolu-:
tionary training and indoctrination,
and to other Communist strongholds;
such as North Vietnam, Hungary and
Communist China. According to SDS
chronicler Kirkpatrick Sale, the'
travellers became convinced "the col-
lapse of the U.S. government was im-
minent, perhaps a matter of months
rather than years, that the duty of every
revolutionary is to make the revolu
tion."
A comprehensive FBI report about
these contacts commented that "the
revolutionary who has committed his
destiny under the banner of Marx-
ism-Leninism establishes his identity
with a world center of revolution (in.
this instance Havana), develops his
fraternal ties with that center, and car-
ries out in practice those actions which
foster the international relation-
ship.... The enclosed material shows
]the Weather Underground] carrying
out the policies and purposes of the
Vietnamese... and the Cuban govern-
ment." -
Given all that, it is hardly surprising
the FBI believed the Weatherpeople
were a menace and took stern measures
-including electronic surveillance and
"surreptitious entry" of apartments
where they thought they could get the
needed information. For doing this, as
previously noted in this space, two FBI
officials were actually indicted by the
Jimmy Carter Justice Department (and
.convicted) while the FBI was placed
under crippling restrictions. that weak-
ened its powers to protect us from such
violence.
Even before these restrictions were
imposed, according to a le t-wince
magazine called Scanlan's the would-
be guerrillas had "found it a matter of
exultant amusement that the govern-
ment's intelii ence system has turned
out to be such a basket-case." The fact
that-the W'eathe eo le have been on
the loose for better than a ecade would
seem to confirm that sad assessment.
The spectacle of FBI officials Stan-
ding in the dock while violent radicals
are free to rob and murder tells us all we
need to' know about the "civil l_iber-.
ties" agitation, of recent * years.'
ears. The
Weathermen show it's way past time
for a decisive change of policy. ra
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/28: CIA-RDP90-00845R000201030006-6