Dupes
Page 70
54. Ibid., 2195–96.
55. Ibid., 2256.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., 2197–98.
58. Ibid., 2197–98, 2243.
59. In a letter written directly to Ho Chi Minh on August 12, 1966, Russell thanked the Communist leader “for your welcome contribution towards the cost of preparing the War Crimes Tribunal.” See Nicholas Griffin, ed., The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914–1970 (New York: Routledge, 2001), 590.
60. KGB defector Yuri Krotkov identified Burchett as a Soviet KGB agent. Himself a KGB agent, and a playwright, Krotkov did this in detailed testimony to a U.S. Senate subcommittee. Among others, see R. C. S. Trahair, Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), 37–38; and Robert Manne, Left Right Left (Melbourne, Australia: Black Inc., 2004), 53, 66.
61. “Investigations of Students for a Democratic Society,” Part 7-A, 2200, 2208, 2242. Other books held in POW prison “libraries” in Hanoi—not cited by Frishman—included Howard Zinn's Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, Townsend Hoopes's The Limits of Intervention, James Gavin's Crisis Now, and even Daniel Ellsberg's The Pentagon Papers. See Hershberger, Jane Fonda's War, 96.
62. “Investigations of Students for a Democratic Society,” Part 7-A, 2208.
63. Ibid., 2259–60.
64. Ibid., 2261.
65. Ibid., 2261–66, 2279.
66. Ibid., 2280.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., 2281.
69. Her mother, Elizabeth B. Boyden, was a supporter of America's role in the Communist World Youth Festivals of the 1940s. See “The Communist International Youth Festival,” a monograph prepared for the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate (Washington, DC: GPO, 1963), 45.
70. The material on Lamb in this section is drawn from those papers.
71. “Investigations of Students for a Democratic Society,” Part 7-A, 2281.
72. Ibid., xi–xii and 2281.
73. House Committee on Internal Security, “Subversive Involvement in the Origin, Leadership, and Activities for the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and Its Predecessor Organizations,” 37, 39, 43, 44, 57, 65, 67, 69.
74. See, for instance, Thomas C. Reeves, America's Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), 284, 287, 308–10, 327, 338.
Chapter 16: Radicals: Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, SDS, and the Weathermen
1. Different sources vary in some of these dates (even years) and titles. My source is the formal investigation of SDS done by Congress in October 1968. See “Subversive Involvement in Disruption of 1968 Democratic Party National Convention,” Part 1, Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, 90th Congress, Second Session, October 1, 3, and 4, 1968, 2254.
2. Horowitz, Radical Son, 105.
3. Ibid., 106.
4. For more, see Ibid., 165–68.
5. Ibid., 160.
6. Fonda reportedly said this (verbatim) at Michigan State University in November 1970 and also (almost verbatim) at Duke University in December 1970. On the first of these, see Lee Winfrey, “Jane Fonda—an LP Record with a Socialist Sermon,” Detroit Free Press, November 22, 1970. For an account by someone who is strangely skeptical that Fonda said these things, perhaps at least in part because a young, pre-senatorial Jesse Helms turned them into a TV commentary at the time, see Hershberger, Jane Fonda's War, 68–72. In fact, the Fonda quotes (reported almost verbatim here on two separate occasions by separate sources) are completely believable. She had very radical views at the time, fully consistent with those in her intimately shared political circles. Certainly, this was what Tom Hayden—her husband—believed.
7. Jane Fonda was in Vietnam from July 8 to July 22, 1971.
8. See Trahair, Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations, 37–38; and Manne, Left Right Left, 53, 66.
9. Bernardine's father reportedly changed the family surname when she was in high school.
10. I doubt that Dohrn lived there. The closeness is symbolic rather than literal. “Subversive Involvement in Disruption of 1968 Democratic Party National Convention,” Part 1, 2277–78, 2282–90.
11. “Subversive Involvement in Disruption of 1968 Democratic Party National Convention,” Part 1, 2254.
12. Ibid., 2254.
13. Ibid., 2371.
14. See “Investigations of Students for a Democratic Society,” Part 7-A, Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security, House of Representatives, 91st Congress, First Session, December 9–11 and 16, 1969, 2318, 2321; and “Investigations of Students for a Democratic Society,” Part 7-B, Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security, House of Representatives, 91st Congress, First Session, December 17–18, 1969, 2477–80, 2600–1.
15. Daniel J. Flynn, A Conservative History of the American Left (New York: Crown Forum, 2008), 313.
16. “Subversive Involvement in Disruption of 1968 Democratic Party National Convention,” Part 1, 2360.
17. Ronald G. Havelock and Mary C. Havelock, Training for Change Agents: A Guide to the Design of Training Programs in Education and Other Fields (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1973). This was a serious, comprehensive, academic work in the field of education, including a list of more than fifty contributing academics. It was done through the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
18. Boudin family biographer Susan Braudy writes, “Unlike nearly all his clients, Leonard never actually joined the party,” but did consider doing so at one point in the 1930s. He clearly had Communist sympathies, and at one point ideologically leaned in that direction. See Susan Braudy, Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left (New York: Knopf, 2003), 81–84, 399–400n. Some conservative sources state that Leonard Boudin was much worse than that, though I have not seen supporting evidence.
19. Braudy, Family Circle, 78.
20. Among the more popular camps was the Indian-sounding Wo-Chi-Ca, which was an abbreviation for “Workers Children's Camp.” Among those who have written about their time at these camps is David Horowitz in Radical Son (pages 63–65).
21. Mishler, Raising Reds, 100–2; and Braudy, Family Circle, 40–42, 390n.
22. Mishler, Raising Reds, 100–2; and Braudy, Family Circle, 40–42, 390n.
23. See, among others, Romerstein and Breindel, The Venona Secrets, 233.
24. Braudy, Family Circle, 118.
25. Ibid., 132–33.
26. Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (New York: William Morrow, 2009), 13.
27. Ibid., 43.
28. Ibid., 14–15.
29. Ibid., 21.
30. Ibid., 22.
31. Ibid., 40.
32. Moreover, their wedding cake was inscribed with the Weatherman slogan “Smash monogamy.” The marriage lasted less than a year. See Horowitz, Radical Son, 175–76.
33. See Barbara Olson, Hell to Pay (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1999), 312–13; and Joyce Milton, The First Partner (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1999), 283–84.
34. Rudd, Underground, 41.
35. Ibid., 41–42.
36. Ibid., 41.
37. Ibid., 61–67.
38. Diana Trilling, We Must March My Darlings (New York: Harcourt, 1977), 113–14.
39. Quoted in Hollander, Political Pilgrims, 190.
40. The September 30, 1968, Newsweek showed a picture of Mark Rudd in a fracas with police on campus, with the short title “Confrontation at Columbia.”
41. Rudd, Underground, 110.
42. Ibid., 116.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., viii.
45. Ibid., 146.
46. Ibid., 154–59.
47. Kevin Gillies, “The Last Radical,” Vancouver Magazine, November 1998. J
acobs died in Vancouver in 1997, hence the profile (odd at first glance) in Vancouver Magazine.
48. Rudd, Underground, 154–59.
49. Flynn, A Conservative History of the American Left, 313.
50. See “Investigations of Students for a Democratic Society,” Part 7-B, 2477–78.
51. Rudd, Underground, 175.
52. See “Investigations of Students for a Democratic Society,” Part 7-B, 2472, 2477–78.
53. Ibid. This was not uncommon. FBI informant Larry Grathwohl testified on planning meetings for the National Action held not in Chicago but at places like St. John's Unitarian Church in Cincinnati, which was hosted by the “Weatherman collective in Cincinnati.” See Testimony of Larry Grathwohl, published in “Terroristic Activity: Inside the Weatherman Movement,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee of the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 93rd Congress, Second Session, October 18, 1974, 92.
54. See Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 158–60. Jacobs died of melanoma in October 1997, at the age of fifty. He was another Weather Underground onetime fugitive who never did a day of jail time, absconding to Vancouver, British Columbia. Today, his ashes lie in Cuba on the ground of a mausoleum to Che Guevara. A plaque commemorates Jacobs and his immortal political beloved: “He wanted to live like Che. Let him rest with Che.”
55. Varon, Bringing the War Home, 160
56. Rudd, Underground, 189.
57. Braudy, Family Circle, 197–200. Obscene as this may sound, it got much worse.
58. This quote has been reported countless times and is easily available for documentation. As horrible and unimaginable as it may seem, it is not disputed. For an example of it being reported very recently by one of the attendees at the War Council, see Rudd, Underground, 189.
59. Ayers has been asked to comment on this episode many times. He cannot escape the numerous testimonies from observers who have always insisted that Ayers's wife was “deadly serious.” The best face that Ayers has tried to put on the episode is to claim that his sweetheart was being “ironic” or had employed “rhetorical overkill” or was speaking “partly as a joke” (but never fully). Another radical from that period, David Horowitz, said: “In 1980, I taped interviews with thirty members of the Weather Underground who were present at the Flint War Council, including most of its leadership. Not one of them thought Dohrn was anything but deadly serious.” Source: David Horowitz, “Allies in War,” Front-PageMagazine.com, September 17, 2001.
60. Rudd, Underground, 189.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid., 191–92.
63. Among other sources, Larry Grathwohl provided testimony to the U.S. Senate in October 1974, where he listed names of Weatherman radicals who had actually trained in Cuba. See Testimony of Larry Grathwohl, published in “Terroristic Activity: Inside the Weatherman Movement,” 108–10. Another source of information on this are FBI reports, some of which are now posted at www.usasurvival.org. These top-secret documents were declassified (with redactions) for use in the trial of FBI officials Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller, who had been charged with breaking the law in their attempts to apprehend Weather Underground fugitives. According to these documents, Mark Rudd and other visitors to Cuba “received specific instruction from Cuban officials,” and the Rudd-led uprising at Columbia may have been “planned in Cuba.” Cliff Kincaid, who posted these documents at usasurvival. org, says that they were entered into evidence on behalf of the defense in the Felt-Miller trial and were not disputed by the prosecution. (Source: E-mail correspondence with Cliff Kincaid, November 6, 2009.) If this is indeed the case, then the “liberals” who joined Rudd and crew in these demonstrations had yet again been duped by the international Communist movement—by some genuinely bad guys. These documents are posted and available for viewing at www.usasurvival.org/docs/declassified_docs.pdf. One report published by Kincaid's group, written by Herb Romerstein, includes pages (specifically, pages 125 and 126) of one of the FBI reports, which noted that the Cuban government had been “cultivating such groups as the VB [Vencemeros Brigade] and allowing them to travel to Cuba.” As Romerstein notes, SDS had been instrumental in creating the Vencemeros Brigade, with certain SDS members working directly with the Cuban government on the effort. Romerstein references a reported November 1969 trip to Cuba that included “numerous” SDSers among the 216 travelers. Based on the FBI's investigation, Romerstein lists Mark Rudd's trip to Cuba (just prior to the Columbia riots) as February 1968. See Herbert Romerstein, “What Was the Weather Underground?” 8–10, 13, posted at the website of www.usasurvival.org. See also Horowitz, Radical Son, 160; Ron Radosh's recollections of visits to places like Cuba, told at length in his memoir Commies; and “Hearings on Restraints on Travel to Hostile Areas, H.R. 1594 … ,” Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security, House of Representatives, 93rd Congress, First Session, May 9–10, 1973; and Larry Grathwohl, Bringing Down America: An FBI Informer with the Weathermen (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House Publishers, 1976), 108–9, 115–16.
64. See Grathwohl, Bringing Down America; No Place to Hide: The Strategy and Tactics of Terrorism, a 1982 documentary directed by Dick Quincer and written by G. Edward Griffin; press conferences with Grathwohl available at www.usasurvival.org and available on DVD; Tamara Barak Aparton, “Police Union Targets ’60s Radical,” San Francisco Examiner, March 12, 2009; and Demian Bulwa, “S.F. Police Union Accuses Ayers in 1970 Bombing,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 2009.
65. Testimony of Larry Grathwohl, published in “Terroristic Activity: Inside the Weatherman Movement,” 106–7.
66. The officers came together in March 2009 to issue a statement and talk to the media. For press coverage of the event, see Bulwa, “S.F. Police Union Accuses Ayers in 1970 Bombing”; and Aparton, “Police Union Targets ’60s Radical.”
67. The targeting of Fort Dix was a major revelation that came through in the classic Rolling Stone article by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, “Doing It: The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of the Weather Underground,” which was a seminal early profile of the Weather Underground done shortly after its members were free, published in the September 30, 1982, issue. Horowitz wrote about it again in his memoirs, Radical Son, and Rudd himself divulged the Fort Dix revelation ten years later in his own memoirs, Underground.
68. Braudy, Family Circle, 118–19.
69. Ibid., 205–7.
70. Rudd, Underground, 195; and Braudy, Family Circle, 205–7.
71. Rudd, Underground, 199.
72. Braudy, Family Circle, 206–7.
73. See Grathwohl, Bringing Down America, 108, 140–41, 167; and Testimony of Larry Grathwohl, published in “Terroristic Activity: Inside the Weatherman Movement,” 106–15.
74. No Place to Hide. More recently, this interview has been excerpted on YouTube. It was widely viewed during the 2008 presidential race, when Ayers, Dohrn, and the Weathermen reemerged from the shadows. Various transcripts are also posted on the Internet.
75. In the video, Grathwohl does not give the date of the meeting, but it may have been the Weathermen's War Council held in Flint, Michigan, December 26–31, 1969.
76. There are several transcribed versions of this interview available on the Web today. Most I've seen are very good, with almost no variation. The differences are based largely on things like paragraph breaks.
77. Rudd, Underground, 214–15, 232, 280.
78. Ibid.
79. Horowitz, Radical Son, 334.
80. Braudy, Family Circle, 353–55.
81. See Scott Shane, “Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look into Crossed Paths,” New York Times, October 4, 2008, A1.
82. Rudd, Underground, 305–8.
83. See Shane, “Obama and ’60s Bomber.”
84. Rudd, Underground, i
x.
85. This, of course, is a very well-known quote. I believe it was probably first sourced by David Horowitz, who interviewed a freed ex-fugitive Ayers early on for the classic September 1982 Rolling Stone piece that Horowitz and Peter Collier wrote together. For a full, more recent account by Horowitz, see Horowitz, Radical Son, 333–34.
86. An account of this conference was published in the National Guardian on August 5, 1967.
87. Rudd said this at an April 22, 2009, press conference on his book release. See Cliff Kincaid, “Terrorists on Tour,” Accuracy in Media, www.aim.org, April 23, 2009.