Press Conference to "Spill The Beans" On Ayer's and Dorhn Tomorrow

The San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing occurred on February 16, 1970, when a pipe bomb filled with shrapnel detonated on the ledge of a window at the San Francisco Police Department's Golden Gate Park station. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Investigators in the early '70s said the bombing likely was the work of the Weather Underground, and not the Black Liberation Army,"but the crime was never solved. Brian V. McDonnell, a police sergeant, was fatally wounded in its blast; Robert Fogarty, another police officer, was severely wounded in his face and legs and was partially blinded.

No one was ever charged with the crime although six years the FBI was close to indicting Ayers wife and fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn around six years ago.

Tomorrow Larry Grathwohl, former FBI informant in the Weather Underground will be holding a press conference to tell what he knows about the bombing. What follows is what he prepared as his "Opening statement"

They tried this several years ago. Hope it works this time!

From November 10, 2003:

30-Y.O. Unsolved SF Murders Reopen
[Weather Underground, Black Liberation Army, Ayers, Dohrn]

BAY AREA (KRON) -- The unsolved murder of two San Francisco police officers has languished as cold cases for 30 years until now. A federal grand jury has been looking into the murders. Many of the people now under investigation both as potential targets and witnesses in this case are scattered across the country. Many of them are now in their 50s and 60s. Investigators believe the crimes were politically motivated and committed by militant radical groups.

On August 29, 1971, sergeant John Young is killed in a barrage of gunfire when two men walk into the Ingleside police station and begin shooting at officers sitting behind the glass partition. It is the second unsolved police killing in 18 months.

On February 16, 1970, officer Brian McDonnell is killed when a bomb explodes at Park Police Station. Attorney Joe O'Sullivan, at the time was a young police officer. "It was just bedlam. I don't think we were able to get into the station. I think it was cordoned off. Nobody really knew the exact nature of the devastation," he says.

For three decades, the police murders remained unsolved. Evidence from the two crime scenes sat in the police property room.

KRON 4 News has learned that three years ago, San Francisco police secretly re-opened the case. Armed with new forensic technology and with State and Federal agencies helping, SFPD investigators began to work full-time on the murders.

And now, sources tell us, those investigators have identified potential suspects: former members of two militant groups in the '60s and '70s -- the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army, people who've been out of the spotlight for decades. The most prominent among them is Bernadine Dohrn, a former leader of the Weather Underground and now a law professor at Northwestern University in Illinois.

30-Y.O. Unsolved SF Murders Reopen [part 1 of 3]
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1519460

Patriot Act Used to Reopen Murder Case? [part 2 of 3]
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1521312

Survivor of Old Murder Case Speaks Out [part 3 of 3]
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1523015&nav=5D7lJ5fb

______________________________________________________________________________

The following from wikipedia is well documented.

Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell

"In a bombing that took place on February 16, 1970, and that was credited to the Weathermen at the time,[19][20] a pipe bomb filled with heavy metal staples and lead bullet projectiles was set off on the ledge of a window at the Park Station of the San Francisco Police Department. In the blast, Brian V. McDonnell, a police sergeant, was fatally wounded while Robert Fogarty, another police officer, received severe wounds to his face and legs and was partially blinded.[21]

Weatherman leader Bernardine Dohrn has been suspected of involvement in the February 16, 1970, bombing of the Park Police Station in San Francisco. At the time, Dohrn was said to be living with a Weatherman cell in a houseboat in Sausalito, California, unnamed law enforcement sources later told KRON-TV.[22]

An investigation into the case was reopened in 1999,[23] and a San Francisco grand jury looked into the incident, but no indictments followed,[22] and no one was ever arrested for the bombing.[23]

An FBI informant, Larry Grathwohl, who successfully penetrated the organization from the late summer of 1969 until April 1970, later testified to a U.S. Senate subcommittee that Bill Ayers, then a high-ranking member of the organization and a member of its Central Committee (but not then Dohrn's husband), had said Dohrn constructed and planted the bomb. Grathwohl testified that Ayers had told him specifically where the bomb was placed (on a window ledge) and what kind of shrapnel was put in it. Grathwohl said Ayers was emphatic, leading Grathwohl to believe Ayers either was present at some point during the operation or had heard about it from someone who was there.[24]

In a book about his experiences published in 1976, Grathwohl wrote that Ayers, who had recently attended a meeting of the group's Central Committee, said Dohrn had planned the operation, made the bomb and placed it herself.[25] In 2008, author David Freddoso commented that "Ayers and Dohrn escaped prosecution only because of government misconduct in collecting evidence against them", Freddoso wrote.[24][26]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)#Anti-personnel_bomb_set_on_window-ledge_in_San_Francisco

SOURCES:

[19] http://www.lapismagazine.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=110&Itemid=59

[20] Former Weatherman Larry Grathwohl's October 18, 1974 testimony to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee

[21] http://www.sfpoa.org/journal/journals/20070201.pdf
(SAN FRANCISCO POLICE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION)

[22] http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1519460

[23] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/17/BAGPRO6J7J1.DTL&type=printable

[24] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Barack_Obama

[25] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0870003350

[26] http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ODVlZTZlM2M5NTMxMzllMjJkODVkNzQ3YTFjMTY0NzE=

Thanks for clarifying. I thought for a moment that you might be doubting the informant's story, because the article someone linked to later in the thread (from the left-wing San Fransisco Chronicle) makes it seem like it's all a 'right-wing conspiracy'. They say things like Larry Grathwohl "asserts he infiltrated the Weather Underground as an FBI informant", etc. And "Ayers has denied any involvement in the bombing and, in January, called Grathwohl a 'paid dishonest person' in an interview with The Chronicle." Larry Grathwohl was indeed an FBI informant. He even testified before congress.

Excerpt from the San Fransisco Chronicle:

"The union leveled the charge in a letter to a conservative organization lobbying for arrests in the case, but said it had not been in contact with investigators and had no new evidence related to the bombing, which killed Sgt. Brian McDonnell.

Instead, the union cited information from a former Bay Area resident, Larry Grathwohl, who is working with the conservative group, America's Survival Inc. of Maryland. Grathwohl asserts that he infiltrated the Weather Underground as an FBI informant and heard Ayers confess to a role in the bombing.

Ayers has denied any involvement in the bombing and, in January, called Grathwohl a 'paid dishonest person' in an interview with The Chronicle."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/11/BATK16DHA4.DTL&tsp=1
_______________________________________

Maybe the San Fransisco Chronicle feels a need to stick up for Bill Ayers because of things like this...

From the New York Times, September 11, 2001: "He [Bill Ayers] also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to 'smash monogamy.' The Weathermen were 'an army of lovers,' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend"

Source: New York Times, September 11, 2001: No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

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