After the election, Bill Ayers, the left-wing extremist and leader of the Weather Underground, largely faded from the air waves. But he was not forgotten. As evidence against Bill Ayers continues to surface, and witnesses continue to allege that Ayers was involved in murder and attempted murder, some are trying to bring him back into the public spotlight.
On March 12th, the non-profit group America’s Survival, Inc., led by the group’s founder and the editor of Accuracy in Media, Cliff Kincaid, held a press conference headlined “Weather Underground Members of the Past Still Continue Radicalizing America: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn Escaped Justice.” The press conference focused on Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell, a San Francisco policeman who was killed in a bombing reportedly planned and carried out by Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. America’s Survival, Inc. seeks justice for this murder, and calls on major media outlets for support.
Two of the participants in the press conference were Larry Grathwohl and Herbert Romerstein. Grathwohl was recruited by the Cincinnati police to infiltrate the Weathermen in the 1960s following a tour of duty in Vietnam. After his cover was blown, Grathwohl testified publicly before several Federal Grand Juries against the Weather Underground. He has been active ever since, attempting to rebut the claims of Weather Underground members, fighting to see them brought to justice.
“Through the years I have often wondered why justice has not been found for Sergeant McDonnell,” Grathwohl said. “Thirty-nine years is an awful long time for a police officer’s death to go unsolved.”
Grathwohl also referred to a bombing in Michigan carried out under the direction of Ayers, and testified as someone with inside knowledge of the operation. Grathwohl said “Bill Ayers claims that the Weathermen were never intent upon hurting or injuring anyone, that they always called or gave warnings about their bombings. That the only thing they did was destroy property. That is simply not true. I can tell you that his intent in the Detroit bombing was to kill and injure, and he told us that that was the most important factor in placing those bombs.”
Grathwohl argues that he has been consistent in his testimony and opposition to Bill Ayers, and wrote a book on his experience as an undercover officer with the Weathermen called Bringing Down America.
Herbert Romerstein is known as a leading expert on Cold War subversion, and worked for the government for 25 years in various posts, including a period as head of the office to Counter Soviet Disinformation. Romerstein accuses Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of being communists, whose aim was to subvert the American political system, and inspire fear among the country’s citizens.
“They identified themselves as communists, not us,” Romerstein asserted. “They said they were communists and they proved it. They went to Cuba, they went to North Vietnam, they went to the camps in Lebanon, and these people received training in Lebanon.”
Romerstein continued his accusations, “The Weather Underground…were people in the United States working on behalf of foreign communist governments—the government of Cuba, the government of the Soviet Union and the KGB, the government, in more recent days, of Venezuela. And these people were receiving the experience and the training of terrorists in other countries.”
He explained that these facts are especially important because they are much more than just a history lesson. Ayers and Dohrn are now writing books, teaching students and increasing their political activism by spreading their message of subversion.
Cliff Kincaid punctuated his press conference with a plea to the media to report on the case against Bill Ayers. The case against noted Weather Underground operative Paul Rudd is still open, and evidence is still being collected against Bill Ayers. For the movement against these known terrorists to pick up renewed speed and for justice to be served, people need to hear and to care. The first step is for the media to take hold of the issue, and make it a topic of national discussion again.
You can obtain more information on these cases at www.usasurvival.org.
Daniel Allen is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
