Days of Rage (85 page)

Bryan Burrough

Austin, Texas

Winter 2015

A NOTE ON SOURCES

I produced
Days of Rage
much the way I wrote and researched my previous books. Much of the information in these pages comes from one of three main kinds of sources: previously published books, contemporary newspaper and magazine articles, and personal interviews. Documents generated by the FBI and the NYPD, along with an oral history or two, were also used.

Like many history writers, I have made books written by other authors the foundation of my research. They’re the first items I collect, and are often the most authoritative version of public events. Some sections of
Days of Rage
, especially those dealing with Sam Melville, the SLA, and the Family, rely heavily on books written in the 1970s and 1980s. Other sections, especially chapters dealing with the Weather Underground, the BLA, the FALN, and Ray Levasseur’s group, rely much more on personal interviews augmented by contemporary news coverage. Below I’ve sketched out the principal sources of information for each chapter. Full details on the books I mention can be found in the bibliography.

Chapter 1
: The main sources for the story of Sam Melville and Jane Alpert are Alpert’s excellent 1981 memoir,
Growing Up Underground
, and Albert A. Seedman and Peter Hellman’s uproarious 1974 book,
Chief!
I also used
information from the three major New York newspapers and Melville’s FBI file, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. Jane Alpert declined an invitation to be interviewed.

Chapter 2
: To chart the rise of the Black Power movement, I relied on dozens of books. Probably the best single source of information was Peniel E. Joseph’s 2007
Waiting ’til the Midnight Hour
, a history of Black Power.

Chapter 3
: The story of Weatherman’s birth has been told in a number of books and memoirs, but perhaps the best account is one that few of them reference, Peter Collier and David Horowitz’s trailblazing 1981 article in
Rolling Stone
, from which I drew liberally. The best of the SDS books by far is Kirkpatrick Sale’s
SDS
. I’ve augmented these sources with contemporary news coverage and interviews of more than a dozen Weathermen.

Chapter 4
: The story of Weatherman’s initial ninety days underground is the first chapter derived largely from personal interviews, as are the following seven chapters. Among the most helpful interview subjects for this chapter were Howard Machtinger, Joanna Zilsel, Cathy Wilkerson, Jon Lerner, Paul Bradley, Mark Rudd, Ron Fliegelman, Brian Flanagan, Rick Ayers, Robert Roth, and Elizabeth Fink. Thai Jones’s book,
A Radical Line
, gives information on Jeff Jones’s introduction to the underground. Wilkerson’s memoir,
Flying Too Close to the Sun
, gives the best account of Terry Robbins and the Townhouse. The late Larry Grathwohl’s memoir,
Bringing Down America
, is an important source for the Midwest collective’s exploits.

Chapters 5
,
6
, and
7
: These three chapters, which constitute the story of Weatherman’s rebirth and most significant political actions, draw on many of the same sources as
Chapter 4
, including personal interviews with those mentioned above. William Dyson’s story is told in an oral history given for the Society of Retired Special Agents of the FBI. The story of Squad 47 is told in contemporary news accounts, by onetime federal prosecutors, and by retired agents. Marvin Doyle’s story is told in an unpublished monograph that Doyle shared with the author. Robert Greenfield’s biography of Timothy Leary provides details of Leary’s escape. Wesley Swearingen’s story is told in his memoir, FBI Secrets. The story of the FBI investigations leading to the Encirclement is told with the help of newly released FBI documents on file at
the National Archives, along with interviews of Dennis Cunningham, Max Noel, and William Reagan, among others.

Chapters 8
,
9
, and
11
: The story of the BLA was pieced together from a variety of sources, including FBI documents on file at the National Archives; copies of wiretapped conversations between BLA operatives and Algeria provided by Robert Boyle; NYPD reports shared by a retired New York detective; parts of several histories of the Black Panther Party; contemporary news accounts, especially those in the
New York Daily News
and
New York Times
; as well as personal interviews with Sekou Odinga, Cyril Innis, Dhoruba bin-Wahad, Oscar Washington, Thomas McCreary, Danny Coulson, Jim Murphy, and Bob McCartin. A New York–area detective still investigating old BLA cases was also interviewed extensively. Also helpful were copies of the BLA organ,
Right On!,
on file at New York University’s Tamiment Library. Assata Shakur’s background is related in her memoir,
Assata
.

Chapter 10
: This chapter draws on many of the same sources noted above. The story of the Cunningham-Mellis family’s involvement was provided by Dennis Cunningham; his daughter, Delia Mellis; Elizabeth Fink; Cathy Wilkerson; Paul Bradley; Marvin Doyle; and William Reagan.

Chapters 12
and
13
: The story of the SLA was principally derived from three histories of the group, especially Patty Hearst’s memoir, told to Alvin Moscow,
Every Secret Thing
, and
The Voices of Guns
by Vin McClellan and Paul Avery. Also helpful were contemporary news accounts and several long articles in
Rolling Stone
. The story of George Jackson and the radicalization of California prisons is told in several books, especially the superb
The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement
by Eric Cummins.

Chapter 14
: The sections on the SLA were derived from the sources cited above, and those on the Weather Underground from internal Weather documents as well as the author’s interviews. The opening section of the FALN story was first outlined to me by the retired FBI agent Richard Hahn. The FALN section in this chapter is largely derived from contemporary news accounts and extensive personal interviews with Don Wofford and Lou Vizi.

Chapter 15
: The story of the New World Liberation Front was pieced together from contemporary news accounts and the author’s interviews,
especially those with Tony Serra, Stockton Buck, and three retired federal and local prosecutors. A 1978 master’s thesis by Baron Lee Buck (no relation) contains the most detailed list of NWLF bombings.

Chapter 16
: The story of the Weather Underground’s demise was told largely via the author’s interviews with alumni of Weather and the Prairie Fire Operating Committee, especially Russell Neufeld, Jonathan Lerner, Howie Machtinger, Silvia Baraldini, Elizabeth Fink, Cathy Wilkerson, Paul Bradley, and Ron Fliegelman. The story of Squad 47’s demise and subsequent prosecution was assembled from contemporary accounts and personal interviews, especially those with Bill Gardner, Stephen Horn, and Donald Strickland.

Chapter 17
: The story of the FALN’s middle years was derived from contemporary news coverage and the author’s interviews, especially those with Don Wofford, Lou Vizi, Roger Young, Richard Hahn, and Elizabeth Fink. The story of José and Oscar López’s upbringing was adapted from a long essay written by José López and posted on the Internet.

Chapters 18
,
19
, and
23
: The story of Ray Levasseur’s group is derived largely from the author’s extensive interviews with Levasseur and Pat Gros Levasseur, augmented by contemporary news articles and voluminous court records kept at the National Archives branch outside Boston (since closed).

Chapters 20
,
21
, and
22
: The story of the Family is told in John Castelluci’s definitive book
The Big Dance
and augmented here by information contained in news accounts, court records, and the author’s exclusive interviews with Sekou Odinga and Silvia Baraldini.

NOTES

PROLOGUE

1
. Joseph P. Fried, “Eleven Hurt by Bombs in 2 Movie Houses,”
New York Times
, May 2, 1970.

CHAPTER 1: “THE REVOLUTION AIN’T TOMORROW. IT’S NOW. YOU DIG?”

1
. Jane Alpert, Growing Up Underground, p. 179.

2
. New York Times
, Nov. 16, 1969.

CHAPTER 2: “NEGROES WITH GUNS”

1
. Peniel Joseph, Waiting ’til the Midnight Hour, p. 17.

2
. Eldridge Cleaver, Target Zero, p. xiv.

3
. Curtis J. Austin, Up Against the Wall, p. 95.

4
. Nikki Giovanni, “The True Import of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro (
For Peppe, Who Will Ultimately Judge Our Efforts
),”
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968–1998
.

CHAPTER 3: ”YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION”

1
. Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, p. 335.

2
. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, “Doing It: The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of the Weather Underground,” Rolling Stone, Sept. 30, 1982, p. 87.

3
. Cited in Tim Weiner, Enemies, p. 284.

4
. Collier and Horowitz, p. 87.

5
. Ibid., p. 88.

6
. Ibid.

7
. Sale, p. 603.

8
. Collier and Horowitz, p. 91.

9
. Mark Rudd, Underground, p. 181.

10
. Collier and Horowitz, p. 91.

11
. Cathy Wilkerson, Flying Close to the Sun, p. 303.

12
. Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days, p. 179.

CHAPTER 4: “AS TO KILLING PEOPLE, WE WERE PREPARED TO DO THAT”

1
. Collier and Horowitz, p. 98.

2
. Larry Grathwohl, Bringing Down America, pp. 138−39.

3
.
New York Times
, Feb. 22, 1970.

4
. Wilkerson, p. 336.

5
. Ibid., pp. 338−40.

6
. Rudd, p. 194.

7
. Wilkerson, p. 343.

8
. Ibid., p. 344.

9
. Thomas Powers, Diana, p. 142.

CHAPTER 5: THE TOWNHOUSE

1
. Susan Braudy, Family Circle, p. 205.

2
.
New York Times
, Mar. 12, 1970.

3
. This version of the first minutes after the explosion has not previously been told. It results from a close reading of two sources. In his 1974 memoir,
Chief!
, Albert A. Seedman described the actions of Officers Waite and Calderone and included Calderone’s description of someone calling for “Adam.” However, Seedman believed that the two survivors, Wilkerson and Boudin, had already left the site; writing four years after the incident, when many details remained unknown, Seedman mistakenly assumed that the person calling for Adam must have been another, unidentified survivor. There were no other survivors. In her 2007 memoir, Wilkerson remembers calling for Adam. The Wilkerson and Seedman accounts agree that this happened immediately before a third and final explosion. The only conclusion to be drawn is that Wilkerson and Boudin were still in the wreckage when Calderone came to the back door. When they crawled free, no officers were present; Calderone was in the rear, and Waite had run for help. By the time officers returned to the front of the house, the women were gone. How differently events might have unfolded had the NYPD arrested Boudin and Wilkerson when, in those first few minutes, they had their opportunity.

4
. Seedman, p. 257.

5
. Ibid., p. 269.

6
. Ayers, p. 201.

7
. Thai Jones, A Radical Line, p. 219.

8
. Rudd, pp. 214−15.

9
. David Gilbert, No Surrender, e-book.

10
.
New York Times
, June 14, 1970.

CHAPTER 6: “RESPONSIBLE TERRORISM”

1
.
New York
magazine, Feb. 18, 1991.

2
. Rudd, p. 226.