Ayers was guilty of terrorism, he is an avowed terrorist and wishes he had done more to advance the causes he believes in.
But he was never convicted.
• Ayers and his co-authors freely brag about their bombings and other violent and illegal acts, and even provide a detailed list, most likely typed up by Ayers himself, of the crimes they had committed up to that point. Ayers' list, scanned directly from
Prairie Fire, is shown below. He may have escaped conviction due to a legal technicality (the prosecutors failed to get a warrant during some of their surveillance of the Weather Underground),
but this in no way means that Ayers was factually innocent of the crimes. As has been widely reported, after the case against him was dropped, Ayers decribed himself as "guilty as hell, free as a bird."
William Ayers' forgotten communist manifesto: Prairie Fire