Judge Haley held hostage by James McClain:
Posted on 04/30/2008 7:43:26 AM PDT by gridlock
During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.
In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.
I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.
For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn’t have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck’s siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn’t fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed.
Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.
As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”
Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his “politics of change.” Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.
At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.”
Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I.
Timeline (notice that the acts of violence are not in the PBS timeline)
1969: Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark die in a Chicago police raid. The Weathermen form.
1970:
March: Three Weathermen are killed when bomb manufacturing goes awry. The organization becomes the Weather Underground as key players including Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Kathy Boudin go into hiding.
Bernardine Dohrn gives a tour of her underground hideout on the San Francisco Bay View Video
June: New York City police headquarters are bombed and the Weathermen take credit, issuing a communiqué from underground.
July: Thirteen Weathermen are indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to engage in acts of terrorism. A New York bank is bombed in retaliation.
September: Timothy Leary issues a statement from the underground after escaping from prison with the help of the Weathermen.
1971: 50,000 anti-war protesters march on Washington, D.C.
1973: Cease-fire accord in Vietnam.
1977: Weathermen Mark Rudd and Cathy Wilkerson emerge from years of hiding and surrender to the police, receiving two years of probation and three years in prison, respectively.
1980: Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers resurface from the underground, pleading guilty to bail-jumping charges from a 1969 anti-war protest. Dohrn is fined $1,500 and given three years’ probation.
1981: The unofficial end of the Weather Underground occurs when Kathy Boudin resurfaces to participate in an armed robbery in Nanuet, New York, which results in the shooting deaths of three men. Boudin is sentenced to 22 years in prison, and is released in 2003.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/weatherunderground/movement.html
Another story that will not be on this evenings news.
Ayres isn’t gong to do do jack s***.He is firmly ensconsed in the bourgeois life of a college professor,the type of person he would have called a “liberal pig” forty years ago.
My brother was there at that time also. He was sent there after serving in Viet Nam to do his stateside duty. Until you wrote this, I was unaware of the threat. Wow.
In 1982 Dorhn spent eight months in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury about the Brink’s robbery that involved Gilbert and Boudin.
This criminal STILL refused to testify against her murdering friends, as late as l982.
She and Ayrs have also named their kids after Black Panthers.
These are Husseins associates and fellow travelers.
bump
You are known by the company you keep. So far Obama is keeping company with America haters, Whitey haters, Israel haters, and people who would commit murder.
Obama says that words have meaning. Well, parse this, Obama:
“...a well-mannered young black man who DIDN’T SEEM angry all the time.”
Isn’t that quite different from a well-mannered young black man who WASN’T angry all the time”?
This country is in trouble now in large part because it doesn’t execute its traitors.
I’m not too stupid to read, I just don’t want to. Nor will I pick up Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf.’ I’m busy reading Unintended Circumstances by John Ross.
Keep those links coming, Jeff. They’re great.
I did not say you were too stupid to read. I even clearly stated that I was referring to the collective “we” when I wrote what I wrote.
With that explained (again), intellectually, I derive more from the writings of those with whom I disagree than those with whom I am in almost 100% concurrence. It keeps me “on my toes”, motivating me to think of new counter-arguments, new analogies and new ideas for presenting my opposition to their views.
Reading nothing but the thoughts of those with whom I agree is boring.
In particular, if a person who has a chance of being our president (and with whom I am in almost total philosophical opposition) has written an autobiography, I think it is my duty as a citizen to read that book so that I can better anylyze the person, assess the potential effects of thier presidency on this nation and determine what measures may need to be taken.
If fewer people had said “Nor will I pick up Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ “ prior to 1932 and more people HAD picked it up and taken the time to read it, a lot of trouble could have been avoided. Herr Hitler basically announced to the world what he intended to do if he ever came to power in Germany. The world either ignored him or convinced themselves that he didn’t mean what he wrote. It turns out he DID mean what he wrote.
Mr. Obama, in HIS words, not the words of some alleged proxy, has given us his philosophy on life and politics. Yet we prefer to discuss and argue about what Bill Ayers said or did and what Wright said or did or whether Bill Ayers “speaks for” Obama or whether Rev. Wright “speaks for” Obama. This misses the proverbial forest for the cliched trees.
Obama has “spoken” for HIMSELF via his autobiography; and what he has said is scary (to me anyway). We would be wise to pay attention.
Well written and poignant reminder of just who these people are.
God Bless John M. Murtagh and his family. I’m not too sure I’d let anyone know even generally where I live after his experience.
It was the ultimate in teen rebellion against their parents and what they considered their parents' 'stifling' lives.
Hah! I was thinking the very same thing! Maybe he was working hard to hide his true feelings, so he wouldn't worry them.
Literally, six months and degrees of separation, Mr. Murtagh.
My life changed on August 7, 1970 in a Marin County, CA courtroom when the Soledad Brothers murdered Judge Harold Haley. They blew his head off. My friend's dad was DA Gary Thomas, in that court room, that day. He was taken hostage by the thugs, shot and paralyzed via police fire.
Gary Thomas' family was one of the nicest, most decent of families I knew. I had thought Marin County one of the best places in the world to live. But from that single day forward, I saw that once patriotic County turn from sane to insane as the push for progressive values took hold.
And, unlike yourself, observed all this from a greater distance.
The police investigation determined that the shotgun used to murder Judge Haley had been owned by Angela Davis.
I have flashbulb memory of the day. I can recall where the sun was positioned, who was standing nearby, etc. when my parents came looking for me (I was at swim practice) to tell me about the shooting. You see, while I'd heard about the shooting and murder of Judge Haley on the news (via radio), I didn't know at the time, my friend's dad was also in that courtroom.
Thanks!
Judge Haley held hostage by James McClain:
In re the photo:
Photographer plays a small part in radical history
--snip
On the morning of Aug. 7, 1970, 20-year-old Roger Bockrath was mixing chemicals in the darkroom of the photography lab at the San Rafael Independent-Journal newspaper. He was listening to the police scanner when he heard the dispatcher announce a "code 33 in progress," which meant a dire emergency, a matter of life and death, was taking place.
Bockrath heard something about "an armed convict with hostages at the Marin County Civic Center." He grabbed two cameras - stopping only to turn up the volume of the scanner in the city room and interrupt an editor in mid-sentence by physically turning the editor's head toward the scanner - and ran down three flights of stairs to his car. He flew up Highway 101 to the Civic Center where four black revolutionaries were holding hostage a judge, an assistant district attorney, and three female jurors.
... Bockrath managed to station himself 30 or so yards from the building. As Jackson, McClain and the hostages moved out in a tight, scared little group, Bockrath was furiously shooting photos. He sought cover at the back of a CHP car, shooting the length of the vehicle through the back window and out the front.
"I tried to squeeze the shutter in between beats of my heart," Bockrath recalled. The dramatic photo he took shows McClain leading out the hostages, his right hand pointing a revolver at police, his left hand holding a shotgun taped around the judge's neck. Seconds after Bockrath squeezed off this shot, someone behind him slammed a car door and the convicts turned their attention toward the hapless photographer.
end snip
The above took place in August 1970.
Jimmie Hendrix died of a drug overdose in September 1970.
Janis Joplin died of a drug overdose in October 1970.
It was a summer of "revolution" and "revolutionaries".
Having lived in Marin County for over 30 years (including that damned period), I still have a dirty taste in my mouth...
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