You can keep it going all year long to the tribunes premium book section fiction series and embership program. Also, feel free to download the books app. For more information to our for more information to our digital bookstore and finally, we love social media like anyone else so feel free to take pictures, post messages and upload them to twitter, instagram or facebook using the prls15. Before we begin please silence your phones, turn the flashes off your cameras and with that ill introduce our moderator, rick perlstein. [applause] i like a short but sweet introduction so ill give a short one for bryan burrough, although for research, in his most recent book, days of rage americas radical underground, the fbi, and the forgotten age of revolutionary violence, i joke that we should call him Bryan Burroughs yes, thank you. Im here all week. And i asked him how he wanted to be introduced, he said he writes for vanity fair and he writes book. The book for which hes best known other than this most recent one is barbarians at the gates which came out in 1990. Rjr reynolds, and nabisco, Food Services company. But his latest book is a profound accomplishment of research and moral inquiry. Its something we thought we knew a lot about because of the last 14 years and thats domestic terrorism but he shows us how to see this subject in a new light by taking story back to 1969 or so. And all the way up through kind and all the way up through kind of the middle of the 1980s, and one of the striking facts in the book is that the most fatal and dangerous year for domestic terrorism prior to the first world tray Center Bombing in the United States was 1981, which really makes you scratch your head and say, wow, maybe i should read this book, which you should. Ive read it very closely. I have a review coming out about it in the nation magazine next month. The first thing i would like for bryant to talk about is just the sheer scale of Political Violence in the United States during this period. My favorite example to get that across was a story you told about the evacuation of a movie theater. So maybe you can address that. Oh, this was just a small little item in the New York Times that i picked up, may, 970. Small puerto rican Independence Group set off a bomb in a theater in the bronx. I think it was lowes, during the liberation of l. Q. Jones and bombs were so prevalent by that time, so kind of blase, that according to the times account the next morning the police said when they tried to clear the theater, after they cleaned up the bomb, no one would leave. They refused to leave. They wanted to see the rest of the movie. There was no sense of continuing danger. It was like, were new yorkers, its a bomb already, lets get on with the movie, and the back score in the San Francisco chronicle. That was another one. San francisco had so many bombs during the 1970s that the chronicle began running an intermittent box score of how many there were and who was in the lead, but the scope of domestic violence, what we would call domestic terrorism today, i dont feel terrorism because by and large, these bombs were not intended to kill indiscriminately. Most are what i call protest bombs. That means bombs set off in, late at night. Courthouses, corporate headquarters. Exploding press releases. Exploding press releases, not intended to kill, intended to draw the media and police focus, to communicate, which would be typically go to the bottom of the pay phone, everybody remembers those, or sent to a Radio Station this type of thing but the sheer scale of it is what stunned me. The Senate Inquiry in the early 1970s counted, what was it, 2,500 bombings during the during an 18month period during 1971 and 1972, which is just amazing. If you go back, i remember trying to explain why the Weather Undergrounds first bombing in berkeley, which we disclose and describe in this book for the first time, why it was so little noticed and because its counted, i going to the major newspapers, 34 other significant bombings in the month of february around the country. Most of which injured far more people than the half dozen policemen that weather first attacked. The amazing thing is not only how widespread it was but how completely forgotten it is, that there is so little cultural and institutional memory. I lived through the 1970s, granted, i was 9, i remember atty hearst. So much of this was centered in new york, was centered in the bay area and thirdly in chicago. Media capitals. Yes. If you grew up like i did in a small town in texas or like my mother, in a small town in arkansas this was easy to miss. Even though, on one day in new york, in 1975, following uerto rican independence bombing, there were so many bomb threats phone into areas buildings, that a hundred thousand offers workers that day were evacuated, just Milling Around the suites of manhattan. The first time they ever evacuated the word trade enter. One of the striking things to me, which i think speaks kind of more highly of americans medal in those days than these days, was kind of a san qua. You talk about new yorkers saying this is new york, were calm, you dont talk about this particular event in the period and ive researched this period, too, and come across a lot of strange stories but in 1975, a man climb over the white house fence with a lead pipe, and the secret service doing what they do, when there is a physical threat to the actual ground, to the president s residence and office they shot him to death and there was like a three paragraph story in the New York Times about it. That was it. A one sentence wikipedia story. I compare that to this poor mentally ill woman, who rammed her car, no one knows why because she was turned into swiss cheese. She had her infant in the car. Not only was it Like National news for like a week but a hundred or so military and Police Personnel descended on her home with hazmat material suits to make sure she wasnt part of some terrorist cell. This type of violence was so deeply woven into the 1970s, if you go back and read it, no one expressed any outrage unless someone was killed or hurt. It was so much a part of life in urban america in the 1970s, it was no big deal. My favorite quote in the whole probably is the legendary pete hammel. Oh, another bombing, who is it this time . Can you imagine anybody saying that day. Thats because coming after the 1960s, coming off watergate with all the multitude of awful things going on in new york and the country in 1970s, i dont think radical violence would have been in the top 10 things of what anyone was worried about. Do you think it says anything about us as a people or a country that were so scared of our shadow . Were scared of our shadow now because once we collectively forgot this period we were reintroduced to violence in a very different way. Suddenly out of nowhere, to a country that really didnt remember this stuff, we had 1993 and 9 11. And suddenly, now, when i say bombing to people, they shudder and they call these people terrorists. Interesting. It is totally, for me to write this book i had to get my head back before 9 11. Less than 1 of these bombs killed anyone. A few did. The fla and Puerto Rican Group detonated a bomb at a wall Street Restaurant that killed several people. Several of these groups killed half a does or a dozen peep. But the majority werent intended to kill. There were some truly awful laboratories. You mentioned fl liberating puerto rico, the puerto rico cant, arent they already liberated but the bombing that they undertook in the tavern in 1975, its kind of very much a new york tourist attraction, it was where George Washington said farewell to his troops, they did it with a lot of incidinary. Until lunch time. Killed six people . Four. Four people. They were half new york, half chicago. Their bombs were mostly 1974 to 1981. Its fully funny. The story, im fairly sure this is the first time ive read it in this detail. They came out of a high school in chicago. Most of them were counselors and teachers, and oscar lopez, lone one who remains in prison today was a community activist, who got roberto clemente. The interesting thing about that particular bombing to me was, also in counter distinction to violent political terrorists oday, these folks within the mainstream of the left or even the liberal mainstream had, you might say, supporters, you might say apologists. To me the most striking thing in the book and why the story is important, not so much for all the bombings, was because they had these sort of aiders and abetters, and to me, what was striking was the response of the Episcopalian Church in new york, when the f. B. I. Came to them and said, this puerto rican revolutionary group. Basically operating out of a basement. They had a puerto rican, mainstream social Services Group that was a front for a terrorist group. They proved to the episcopalian leadership that the communique was written on a typewriter in their base president and the woman who who was the response of the archbishop of new york . The episcopal diocese, episcopal government split into two alves. Those who were just kind of freaked out and concerned and progressives, who attacked the f. B. I. For overreaching. In chicago, there were do you have a you have a quote, going after politically active right. Hispanics. But it was very difficult for anybody to imagine then or prove until now that a revolutionary terrorist Bombing Group was using the National Headquarters of the Episcopal Church working out of the basement as a front and we can now prove it. The womans lawyer admits it in the book. There are just stories like this from the 1970s that have been forgotten. We remember patty hearst. We remember when weather blew up the townhouse. We remember when the was blown up on national tv in 1973, but there are so many great apostrophe and footnote stories like that. Lets talk about what these folks believe themselves to be accomplishing. Lets center the discussion around a group that has profound attachments to chicago, scs, into the weatherman, into the Weather Underground. Believe it started in 1968 or 969. Days of rage americas radical underground, the fbi, and the forgotten age of revolutionary violence tells the story of the half dozen most prominent underground groups of the 1970s, beginning with weather through the black Liberation Army and a couple of others. The one thing that all of these groups for all the different colleges had in common was they were born during the tumult of the 1960s. The underground of the 1970s is kind of a forgotten last chapter of all that happened in the 1960s. Obviously, what happened is, i always say that most of these people were unable to shape the dream of 1968. The dream of 1968 was that a worldwide revolution was sweeping the globe. It was inevitable that it was coming to the United States. The government would fall, and literally a new world order was upon us. Come 1969 it didnt happen. Nixon came in and started literally cracking heads, as seen by daily stormtroopers here in chicago and by late 1969 or early 1970 the hardest core of the militants including leadership of sds, which is dominant white protest group of the era began to talk seriously about going underground. About taking fight to the next level. And that was literally launching a kind of war against america. A declared war. As crazy as that sounds, they have a long track record of events that they could point to, to show that perhaps it wasnt that crazy. Mao started with, what, 35 people on a hillside in china. Cuba, like one day to the next. Weve all seen godfather part two. Ho chi minh started with 10 guys in vietnam. Another started with 25 on a leaky boat. They all ended up in control of the countries. Weather was the first of the groups and the most imitated, the largest and most influential of the groups that sought to make that happen in america. And there is a great untold story about how they failed utterly to do so. Right. And to connect it to chicago, one of the guys who was the leader of this, bill ayers, who is name surfaced in 2008, he still goes around giving speeches, about this great antiwar movement, i point out in my book, bill ayers was not an antiwar activist. He was a war activist. He declared war on the United States and i tell the story in my review about a great socialist friend of mine, jimmy weinstein, a publisher of americas first socioist newspaper in decades, in these times. Now a great left wing magazine, and his cousin was in the eatherman. And i said, what would you do if your cousin, whose name is j. J. And was an absolute very, very vociferous, basically advocate of murderous revolutionary violence, what would you do if he knocked on your door today . He said i would turn him into the f. B. I. Because he destroyed the left. They didnt do the left any favors certainly. Right. One of the interventions that you make to this story is that you demonstrate that, yes, after this terrible accident that happened in a townhouse in lower manhattan, in march of 1970, several members of the Weather Underground blew themselves up accidentally, you point out that that moved the Weather Underground to a policy of only undertaking bombings that would only damage property and not people. But that prior to that, they had a very different idea in mind. Thats been the central myth of the Weather Underground for the last 45 years is they never intended to hurt a soul because after the townhouse, thats the path that they embarked upon for six years. They did fairly conventional protest bombings. Issuing in bathrooms. The f. B. I. , after a while, began to take them less seriously and called them the terrible toilet bombers, because bathrooms was where most of these bathrooms were placed because in the public building they were the one place where you were given some privacy you could close the door and do the wiring and things that you needed to do. But important thing and one of the more important points in the book is that whats forgotten by apologists like bill ayers and many weather alumni what they want to cover up is the fact there were two phases to the Weather Underground. The longest one, yes, was, in fact, protest bombings. For the first 90 days they actively tried to detonate bombs to kill policemen and military officers. They did so in their first action, disclosed in the book in berkeley, seriously injuring one officer and lightly injuring a bunch of others. There was an action in detroit in which bill ayers group attempted to detonate two bombs at a police function, and the third was the one in the townhouse, march 6, 1970 where the new york collective led by a young man named Terry Robbins was building a series of very large bombs that they intended to detonate at an officers dance at fort dix, new jersey, that night, as luck or however you want to look at this would have it, terry knew a lot about politics, a lot about poetry but not enough about building bombs. The bone went off in his hands, killed him and two others. Brought the entire townhouse down upon him. And convinced the rest of the leadership that they had to disavow murderous violence. Other groups later went on and did it including the black Liberation Army but from there on out, bernadine and jeff jones, new principal leaders, along with bill ayers, chartered what they called one letter write to a berkeley paper, called it responsible terrorism. And that was, what i call protest bombing. Bombs not intended to kill. Now, bill ayers told terry gross that they never tried to kill any cops. How did you get the story and how confident are you that they were behind this Berkeley Police bombing . My source, the young man that built the bomb and placed it. There is every reason in the world that bill ayers doesnt want the world to know this but others who resent his notoriety and his fame, there is a large segment of the radical left out there to whom bill ayers is not very popular. Lot of them came forward in the book because they, i think, frankly felt like why is bill ayers the only underground figure that most of america has ever heard of. The young man, for instance, who built 198 of the Weather Underground bombs, who went on to a long career teaching in the Public Schools in new york comes out for the first time in our book and is identified and tells his story. I feel certain that part of it is ron realizing he had a part in this history too, and they also, many of them including the one who talks about building and placing a bomb in berkeley that night, feels like bill is not telling the true story. The true story is uglier than they want people to remember. How did they get away with it . How about the f. B. I. . I love the f. B. I. Today. The loyalty and professionalism. Ive come to know a lot of people who work there but the 1970s was not their finest hour. Hey had very little history in infiltrating, successfully infiltrating radical groups. There are all of these hilarious memos that you can get back in the old files how these people live like rep pro baits. Their hair is dirty and they have drugs. No one in the movement would talk to the f. B. I. So very quickly, even though hoover, in something many people on the left dont want to believe or remember, he had forbade illegal burglaries in 1966 and by and large, i think that was, that was moved away from, the weather squads, especially squad 47 in new york brought back black bag jobs, and illegal mail opening and every conceivable thing you can do in spades to going after weather and the long story short, one of the great ironies of the era, in the end, exactly one weatherman of the primary group as opposed to cyber, exactly one weatherman, one of the two y