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 young women who crawled out of the rubble of the townhouse that morning, was ever convicted of anything. And the top three officials of the f. B. I. Were convicted, were ndicted for these, for these breakin. One had the charges dropped. Two others were convicted and Ronald Reagan pardoned them. So, i mean, the interesting thing about the f. B. I. , not only did they cheat but they ost. And not only that, one of the most frustrating things about this is i thought i would go into this as di on a book 10 years ago i would be able to tell this with documentary evidence. It turns out on weather at least, most of these groups, what you get is just junk because i talked to half a dozen fbi agents in the late 1970s who said after these investigations and scandals started, they were taking all the new york files where most of the work was done home and burning them in the fireplaces. There is just nothing there. As a result, i kind of had to take off my story hat and put on my old middle age newspaper reporter hat and start just tracking it down, and, you know, hi, my name is brian burrough. You dont know me. I dont happen to be radical but look, anyway, would you tell me about that building you bombed in 1972. Brian burroughs. So when i reviewed the book i said its so cinematic. Its like youve seen the movies that stuff was ripped from the headlines. Were talking about a member of a black revolutionary cell goes into an after hours joint where bad things that are bad for the people are going on. You know, and make everyone strip down naked, steal all their money, you know. The cops come. The cops says, what are all these people doing naked . And some guys like, some guy ripped us off but they are gone now and then another guy says, no, its right over there. On his clothes. A lot of these stories, one of the things i learned is if youre going to be a member of a violent revolutionary army and you get pulled over by the cop the first thing you want to do is roll down the windows. Roll down the windows. Thats what the black liberation taught to members. When the cops came some hide their heads, which they start shooting at the cop. And the glass would be flying and you dont want anyone to be hurt, right . And these guys all had medium to large afros and there is this one story about this particularly murderous guy, meyers, and the last quote on that after that shootout was our women were picking glass out of his hair all night. How many rounds of ammunition were involved in that final showdown, do you think . I dont know, but it was cut to pieces. November, 1973, the unofficial end of the black Liberation Army. The black Liberation Army was not prone to peaceful protest bombings. They were a spinoff of the panthers, black panthers. Exactly, as weather map was a spinoff of sds. At least nominally from the lack panthers, their world emissary, cleaver, who believed himself to be running sort of the government in exile of black america from a room in algeria, where he had like dr. Evil, he had a map with lights having all he revolutionary cells including the one based in china, whose chairman was guy named mao. I know. You cant make this stuff up. I know. He thought the bla was going to be this Guerrilla Army that would lead, of course, all of thats groups believed once they start committing violent about the people will rise up. Typically black oppressed will rise up and they are always so stunned when it never happens. Its so funny, when the head of the Sudanese Revolutionary army, i think the f. B. I. Might be on to us, lets find another black person, knock on their door, and see if they will harbor us. When the f. B. I. Was closing in the leader of the sla decided that they needed to move to a new place, they didnt know a new place so they started going doortodoor in their building saying, hi, im commander of the sudanese Liberation Army, can we move in and amazingly no one said yes, but no one turned him n. It was a strange time and the man was, as we know in chicago from fred hampton, cutting down black leaders in cold blood. So kind of made sense. There was a time when government, because of the 1960s, because of the corruption of the nixon administration, and the war in watergate, you know, the reputation of the f. B. I. And the National Government was, i havent lived long enough to say, at an all time low, but i dont know how many times it was lower. As i put it in my piece, if youre in the south bronx, and the heroin trade is run by the police, you know, joining a group like the black Liberation Army seems like a better strategy for change than voting for hubert humphrey, you know. Yeah. And it was mostly, the bla wasnt the purist outlet for black rage. Which had been rising since the 1950s through malcolm, through stokley, and finally after 10 years, of blacks calling for black power and black revolutionary and black revolution, and off the pig, finally somebody tried to do it. By and large they got cut to pieces. But they attacked a number of olice as well. Kind of a Delicious Movement where one of the dla soldiers says dont you understand, you know, were at war and the cop, hes cool. Hes like, if we were at war i would have shot you already. Would you not be handcuffed in the back of this patrol car, young man. Anyway, so let me ask you one more question before we open it up. You guys can line up to the cspan microphone. Etting the story. The reason i said this is so cinematic, if i were writing the screen play of days of rage, it would be about some guy who lives in texas and new jersey getting his story. And, you know, and tracking down all of these great people, but i get the sense it was pretty difficult and frustrating and you were almost at the end of your rope at a certain point. A couple of times. Its the most difficult thing i have ever done and im not sure i would do it again. It was almost six years, and for most of the first 18 months it was getting a lot of doors slammed in my face metaphorically. People arent going to tell you about that building they bombed in 1972. It was only when i realized, when i started reaching out to some of the lawyers, some of the defense attorneys, from back in he day, and found that the bar of radical attorneys was surprisingly small, maybe a dozen, 15 that mattered and i started making the argument, look, whatever my politics dont matter. I have a track record of telling this accurately. And the fact is, look behind me. There are a half dozen reporters lining up outside this door. Youre 75 years old. If you dont tell me these stories they are never going to be told. So when was that movement in you realized you might have a book that was on your own terms successful, in your hands . The first time i started hearing some of the stories what they used to tell us in journalism story, vomit your corn flake stories. The first time the bla guy told me about murdering a cop. The first time ron told me about building the weatherman bombs. The first time interviewed in prison told me about breaking johann out of prison, in 1979 and smuggling her to cuba. Once i got a couple of those stories i realized my great frustration here was i thought the book was uneven. I knew i had some amazing stuff. But its not amazing verywhere. You know, there are a couple of groups that i never talked to any of their people. The fln, i had to tell that story through the eyes of the fbi agents, who pursued them. But once i got a couple of those early stories, i realized, wow, this is amazing stuff. And then kind of had the bug. [inaudible] tried to shoot a cop at point blank range. She tried to do it many times. The one time we know for sure, what she got convicted of down the turnpike. Shes relevant because shes the most prominent fugitive still in cuba. What would you tell the kids, e in the black Student Union at berkeley, who are naming a building after her . Look, i did my best to play this right down the middle. To not make judgments. Especially political judgments. I have had people on the right say im glamour rising these people. I have had a lot of people on my left say youre not explaining enough about why they did it. But its difficult to stay down the middle when you get students today who want to Name University buildings, and this is not the first time it happened. It happened at, i think it was in the bronx, where they want to name buildings after the fln bomb maker. I understand that these people are potent symbols, but they tried to kill people and they tried to Kill Police Officers and families. And i just have a hard time, look, if you want to name your Community Center with private funds after anybody you want to fine, but kind of sticks in my crawl when people want to do that with public money. I can almost understand Willie Morales because he has the most strong will of any human being ive heard of. He blows up his fingers. He blew off nine of his fingers and half his face. Escapes the cops, escapes whats the story. He has one finger and what does he do with this one finger . Pipe bomb goes off in his hand. July 1978. Building a bomb in elmhurst, queens. Blows off nine of his fingers and half his face. And yet somehow he manages with the stubs of his hands to flush most of the documents from his apartment down the toilet. We know that because apparently the door closed behind him and there are these bloody stub marks. By the time the cops came he was passed out, his a head was the size of a balloon. Somehow he survived. He was taken to bellevue, put in a hospital ward and after several trips from a very helpful defense attorney, it suddenly, he suddenly came into possession of some wire clippings, big wire clippers and somehow with no hand, with one remaining finger, his attorney actually sued the city of new york saying that acting for possession of the fingers back that he went to sew them on and they said were getting to it, we just havent gotten to it. Somehow Willie Morales managed with help to tie a rope ladder outside his window, clipped his way outside the window, put down the rope ladder and it appears that he got about 10 feet from the third floor and then he fell because there was a massive on the air conditioner that he hit on the first floor and down there were an estimated five to 20 members of the fla, an africanamerican group called the family, who whisked him away first to east orange, new jersey, to milwaukee and ultimately to mexico and cuba. We need that kind of perseverance in our schools and college kids today. Thats why i think we should name a building after Willie Morales. Hes still in cuba. Every now and then hell give an interview on some obscure internet channel. Hes kind of been in the news on the question of whats going to happen to fugitives in cuba with the new normalization of relations. Well, we dont want to have too much dead air while we wait for you guys to approach the microphone. I bet you guys have some interesting questions. Sir . When you were finally able to pry loose some of these stories of the bombings that took place 30 and 40 years ago, how were you able to get confirmation on the stories and how difficult was that . By and large, most one of the biggest problems i had was the fallibility of memory. They would at the time them incorrectly. Lets say famous bombing, first significant weather bombing was inside nypd headquarters in june 1970. And you know, i had the guy who built the bomb. I had a couple of other people who had been there. The facts didnt match all of the accounts because every newspaper had, you know, all the times and everything. Nd you just, you do what writers have done for decades. You just say, look, you thought it was at 5 00, the papers say it was at 6 30. Well, it probably was, i dont remember, it was 40 years ago. What you end up doing in most accounts is that the kind of dates and times and facts, you tend to go with what was generally accepted by the press and then the impressionistic, the quotes, memories, the emotions, and specific memories, thats where i become more comfortable bringing in human remembered accounts. Because humans just dont remember the basic facts 40 years later. They just dont. You dont have a lot of footnotes for people to follow up. Im going to ask you, im a historian. Youre right, i should have done more. What i dont do, look you have the website. I know, i know, i know, youre so good at it and im not. Look what i do is i footnote things where ive taken a specific fact and always a quotation from another source. By and large, a lot of my stuff comes from personal interviews nd unlike a lot of authors i ont footnote, this is from an interview done with mr. On february 18, 2011. I know i should. In fact, i just basically say, i talked to the guy, and he told me this. Do you have any instances where any of the bombers actually showed remorse or apology or did they take their original stance . It was justified, and a second question is, do you have do you discuss in your book instances on the University Campuses as well . Like wisconsin . Yeah. The first question first. Yeah, im always surprised when i get questions not meaning to comment on whatever politics you may have, sir, but often when i have questions from the right, they are always so stunned when people in the book or when i say people express remorse. Because many of them do. Not all. I would say roughly speaking, i would say 2 3 of the people that i spoke to did not express remorse. They expressed sadness that they lost. Hey expressed sadness that people dont understand the necessity in their mind or the severity of the circumstances that required them to do this. About a third of the people, i would say, especially those who have kind of gone into white collar jobs, many of the weathermen have gone on to be doctors, lawyers, and university professors. I did find a number of them. Mark speaks beautifully about the consequences. Mark rudd, one of the early leaders, later marginalized, went on to a career teaching at a Community College in new mexico. Very good on it. I would say probably 30 to 40 expressed some type of remorse. To your second question, i dont, because the main narrative of my book starts in the fall of 1969 and im primarily concerned with people who took explosives and radical violence from the campus out into mainstream america. I primarily deal with campus violence in a couple of background chapters early on. Showing, in essence, that the bombing and the domestic terrorism of the 1970s had its roots in campus violence, especially in the late 1960s. Especially 1968 and 1969 into 1970s. Almost all of these were molotov cocktails with the one exception that killed i believe it was, august, 1970, that was larger than any other bomb set off by any of these other groups that im writing about. And the significance of that bomb was not only the size, but that it went off and it was not when i say it was one off, just a group of students who did it one time and one time only and disappeared. There is a masterful book about that. Rad. But the decision of that is that weather was at a turning point at that point. They had been underground eight months. They were trying to get on to their feet and the madison bombing overnight changed the National Conversation from what was wrong in vietnam to these kids. Revolutionary underground violence was widely disavowed in the days and weeks that followed. I dont write a lot about campus violence but that would be the most significant bit at least in terms of what happened in the 1970s. Thank you ever so much for enemies, an excellent read. My question is, youve made it lear how difficult this book was to gather information on. O what would you say was the impetus or the reason for your decision to tackle it in the first place . What motivate you on this subject . Thank you. Thank you. I hop around. I have a short attention span, i guess. Die a new book and a new subject every five or six years. And i, by and large, i know how this must sound but issues and events are not the primary drivers in determining what gets me to tackle a book. Im looking for a good story. Three books ago i wrote a book called public enemies, which was the story of the birth of the modern f. B. I. Chasing around six des parity criminal groups uring the 1930s. I wanted to go back and do something that had that feel of multiple groups kind of cops and robbery. But it had to be a situation where i thought i could break significant new ground. Otherwise, i have no interest in writing a book thats regurgitating other peoples stuff. I had a guy that came back and suggested the fdln. I looked at it and thought, wow, no one has written about them and certainly they are probably never going to talk to me, and then while candidly commercial considerations rarely factor into my decisions it was screamingly apparent that if i wrote a book about some forgotten Puerto Rican Group from the 1970s with no cooperation, i was going to get about 17 readers. They would be outstanding eader. Dedicated leaders. I looked at weather, i looked at others and none i thought rose to the significant, the importance that i wanted in a book and thats when it hit me, no, youre missing it. Its all of them. Its an era. Its an underground era. And yes, maybe these people were only numbered in the hundreds. But the scale and the breadth of the violence they perpetuated, i dont know how you call this not historically significant. The accounts of the weathermen that youve been able to interview are in flat contradiction to what chicagoans, brandi, dorian and bill ayers have said. Have they spoken publicly or to you or to people about these differences . They are in flat contradiction but i should point out that what bill ayers and others say is accurate about 80 of the Weather Undergrounds life. Its just not accurate about the first 90 days. About themselves. I tried to talk with them repeatedly and through emmisaries and to their attorneys for six years and i went back and forth, via email with bill ayers many, many times. Look, this guy is a talented writer. He has a career, communicating in his own voice and i dont in his own voice and i dont think candidly, kindest way for me to look at it was he didnt see the value in allowing someone else to tell the story that he felt more than qualified to tell himself. And whats howard doing, you referred to him as a ph. D. Candidate. Had he technically been admitted to candidacy . Good question. I dont remember. He was at the university of chicago. I believe he was working in the ph. D. Program at the time. He was a graduate student. I doubt that he was yet formally admitted to candidacy. A small point. How is he doing . Hes retired. Retired from what . Being a weatherman . He went on to a long career doing social work and teaching in the North Carolina schools. Thank you. There will be an asterisk, like, this gentleman, who i cant name, you know, has gone on to a distinguished career, whatever, an accountant, candlestick maker, you know, its pretty remarkable. Human drama. There were a number of the weathermen that, you know, that, one of then went on to be a tenured professor at duke. His specialty was narcotic addiction, and no one knew no one outside his family knew he had been in weather until his eulogy which was delivered by howie one of my sources, one of the most prominent sources in the book, thats not named, i gave him a pseudonym, was one of bernadines righthand man and after seven years underground, he turned himself in, he went to an Ivy League Law school and went on to 25 years to working at a new york law firm. And no one outside his family and his weather peers know what he did. Wow. So whats next . Weve got another question. My question is, with the increasing animosity we see in the political realm today, do you think that we may be in the next five, 10, 20 years, seeing another days of rage . Maybe i can speak to that. We have an enormous problem of right wing terrorism in america. We just dont hear of it spoken of as terrorism. In the first few years of the Obama Administration there, were plenty of people going after cops, and clinic bombings, and ll the rest. Its part of our political culture that really is not being reckoned with right now. Do you have any thoughts . Yeah, i just saw this piece, whose the guy that used to be at the times, craig, i forget his last name, hes got a new book out, trying to argue exactly that, that income equality and divided government has reached such a point that were seeing the seeds lane for what may be revolutionary movements, left, right, or otherwise, in the near future. I would have thought your answer would not be about right wing violence, but would have been about the progression in africanamerican and activists rhetoric, because the issues, at first, were exactly the issues that spawned, that furthered the panthers and spawned the in 1971, and yet, from ferguson onward until baltimore the activists were uniformly not only nonviolent but preached nonviolence. And it wasnt until baltimore that we started to see on eds and interviews with young activists saying, im tired of being in these protest protests. You start to hear less dr. King and more malcolm in their voices. I dont know if this goes anywhere but you look at that initially, when i saw those quotes from young activists saying, these peaceful marches arent getting us anywhere. Take things to the next level. I didnt roll my eyes but i was like, read your history. Its not going anywhere good. Well, i think, you know, like now compared to 1968, its just one cvs compared to three miles of madison street burned to the ground. The scale is just not the same. I get on radio shows and people say baltimore had such violence, how can you say we dont have violence like that today. Im like, wait. Baltimore was good in 1966. In 196. There is no comparison. Dont let the amplification, the artificial amplification of social media and cable lead you to believe that this is more significant than it is. And the rioting in the 1960s did lead to things like hiring black cops, and not just cops like they had in harlem and chicago where the black cops would compete to see who could, you know, beat up the black suspects, or prove that they were down with the rest of the thin blue line. So the whole ecology is very, ery different. The fact that there was no africanamerican professional class to speak of, like the one we have now, you know, the Los Angeles Times basically had to send out, you know, practically they didnt have black reporters, you know. So things are serious now. I wouldnt want to downplay the anger. Its also true that American Police departments have gotten much better at saying all the right things that are necessary to temper down feelings. Even if their officers arent doing all the right things, by and large you dont get hard faced Police Chiefs up there talking about these crazy kids in the streets. The ferguson, city after city, after bad acts, you had professional administrators that grew up on rodney king and diallo, and they at least know how to say the right things and thats led to some of the lessons compared to chief parker in 1965, in the water riots. He recruited his cops from mississippi and then after the riots, he said, well, its like in the zoo, one monkey throws a rock and they all throw a rock. Those were the kind of people running the Police Departments in 1965. Clarence. Thanks for calling on me. Just a couple of clarifications rom an old boomer. The Los Angeles Times, it was a guy in the classified Ad Department actually. Who was given a dime and told, would you please go to the Watts Community and take some notes and call on pay telephone, i dont know if you guys can emember that or not. The other thing is, the guy you called sing k was named after sing q call himself sing q not having taken french, i guess, but anyway, thats just gulf street in chicago. Guilty. Guilty. Please get it right. Anyway. Its an honor to be corrected by you, clarence. Thank you, its so seldom we old guys get any respect from you young people. [laughter] i appreciate both you and your books. I just marvel you. Get to get the last word. I marvel that you did such a great job of recounting the period. One thing, i dont find so much of, is the flavor of the period. I want to speak up for fred hampton and other black panther leaders who denounced the Weather Underground, who denounced bill ayers, who are both friends of mine, but denounced them as being cutistic. You got it, thank, and that they were i would love to get together over your favorite beverage sometime and remember the coliseum convention here, but anyhow, it sounds like these were all part of some vast radical left wing conspiracy but there were a lot of divisions. The bla was a real fringe on a fringe group. Did you get a sense of what drives people, whether right or left what drives them to that sort of extreme, where they believe, i think jfk quoted, those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable. Thats what took people over the edge to making bombs, et cetera, and most other members of my generation didnt go that far, and, in fact, as you also allude to when violence got serious most backed off and said, none of that. Most, almost all. Well take your answer off the air, because weve been cut off by cspan. Over your favorite beverage, clarence. You got it. Ladies and gentlemen, brian burrough. [applause] once again, i would like to thank all of you. He will be signing books in the lobby right now. This is American History tv on cspan 3. Each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nations past. Each week American History tvs reel america brings you films that provide context for todays Public Affairs issues. You can watch films in their entirety on our weekly series reel america. Saturday at 10 00 and sunday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern here on American History tv. Pete lynn was 33 years old, married and had two children when he received a draft notice in march, 1944. Eight months later he died in a fierce battle in a german forest. Up next, a conversation with chris hartey about his book the lost soldier. The ordeal of a world war ii grimbings the homefront to the forest. Using diaries and official war records, they tell the story of pete lynn and his wife rooth and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the National World war ii exam for what was going to be a discussion about what of the harshest battles of the war. On Vice President of Education Access at the National World war ii museum, and its a pleasure to have either with us this morning. I also like to welcome our viewers at home who are watching on the
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