Explosive Words and Deeds

Within the space of five days last week, explosions toppled the statue of a policeman in Chicago's Haymarket Square, ripped apart a courtroom in San Rafael, Calif., a Reserve Officers Training Corps building on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, and damaged an armory in Santa Barbara, Calif. A fifth blast rocked a courthouse in New York City. The Weathermen immediately claimed responsibility for three of the blasts, and it appeared that their boasts were not idle. Equally chilling was the threat from the radical organization of more to come.

The warning of a new outbreak by the dynamite extremists came just a day after the dust from the first explosion at Haymarket Square had cleared. Youth International Party (Yippie) spokesmen in New York produced a tape recording, reportedly sent from Chicago, claiming that the Haymarket blast was the beginning of "a fall offensive of youth resistance that will spread from Santa Barbara to Boston, back to Kent and Kansas." The speaker was identified as Fugitive Bernardine Dohrn, 28, who is accused of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for assault and participating in mob actions. She has been in hiding since last March. She admonished those who seek accommodation with society: "Don't be tricked by talk. Arm yourselves and shoot to live!" She called on American dissidents to emulate Palestinian commando terrorists. "Every militant woman," she said, "is a Leila Khaled."

Incredible New Breed. Three days later, the San Francisco Examiner and KCBS Radio received letters bragging about the San Rafael explosion. This same courthouse was the scene of the shootout in August between police and escaping San Quentin prisoners in which Judge Harold Haley, two convicts and 17-year-old Jonathon Jackson were killed. The notes dedicated the bombing to all political prisoners and to "an incredible new breed of freedom fighters, fighting where there is no place to hide." It was signed by "The Weathermen Underground," the same closing used on the Dohrn tape.

In New York, identification of the bombers was made by phone, as a self-proclaimed Weatherman called to alert both police and the New York Daily News to the impending explosion. The caller also implied that the bombing was in retaliation for the quashing of a prisoner takeover in an adjacent jail. The identity of the saboteurs in the other two explosions is not certain, but the tactics have all the earmarks of the Weathermen. In Seattle, as in New York and San Rafael, authorities were tipped off in advance of the bombings. The Santa Barbara arsenal serves as the staging point for the area's National Guard troops, the ones who frequently draw riot duty.

Since the Weathermen's Chicago Days of Rage in October 1969, few have failed to take the bomb-happy organization seriously. But the timing and breadth of the latest explosions lend an even more ominous tone to the desperate threats of Bernardine Dohrn's taped message. "It is our job to blast away the myths of the total superiority of the Man," she said. In pursuing that fantasy, the bombers are more likely to destroy whatever patience remains in a nation already too tense for its own good.

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