Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence

618 Pages·2015·15.59 MB·English

by  Bryan Burrough

ALSO BY BRYAN BURROUGH
The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the
FBI, 1933−34
Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco (with John Helyar)
Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir
Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Edmond Safra

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“The True Import of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro (For Peppe, Who Will Ultimately Judge
Our Efforts)” from Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment by Nikki Giovanni. Copyright ©
1968, 1970 by Nikki Giovanni. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Photograph credits
ISBN 978-0-69817007-0
Version_1
For my mother
There’s a group of youngsters cropping up who is getting tired of this
brutality against our people. They are going to take some action; it
might be misguided; it might be disorganized; it might be
unintelligent; but they’re going to get a little action. And there are
going to be some whites who are going to join in along with them.
—MALCOLM X, 1964
At the end of the sixties or the beginning of the seventies, it seemed
like people were going underground left and right. Every other week I
was hearing about somebody disappearing.
—JOANNE CHESIMARD, AKA ASSATA SHAKUR, BLACK LIBERATION ARMY
And there’s some rumors going ’round, someone’s underground . . .
—THE EAGLES, “WITCHY WOMAN,” 1972
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Without a doubt, this book is the single most difficult project I have ever
attempted. During more than five years of research, I thought of quitting any
number of times. When I began work in 2009, I had no idea of the challenges
involved, or the complexities of dealing with veterans of the radical left. If you
said I was naïve, well, I couldn’t argue with you.
Eleven years ago I wrote a book called Public Enemies, in which I employed
a million or so pages of newly released FBI files to tell the story of the Bureau’s
pursuit of John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and a half dozen other Depression-
era criminals. In approaching this book, I assumed I would be able to draw on
similar resources to document the rise and fall of the 1970s-era underground
groups. Big mistake. FBI files, those the Bureau has made publicly available, are
almost useless to a historian. Only a fraction of the paperwork these
investigations generated has been issued, and almost all of it is dreck, either
highly redacted headquarters summaries or page after page of highly redacted,
and highly repetitive, “airtels” and telegrams. One could learn far more about the
underground from newspapers.
The existing literature was helpful, but contained gaping holes. Of the ten or
so books and films dealing with the Weather Underground, few contain much
detailed information on what interested me most: how the group actually
operated underground. There are two good books about the Symbionese
Liberation Army from the 1970s, but none on the Black Liberation Army, the
FALN, or the United Freedom Front. John Castellucci’s 1986 book about the
Family, The Big Dance, is packed with good information but so loosely
structured it is often hard to follow.
In the absence of fresh documentation, I was obliged to fall back on the basic
skills I learned as a young newspaper reporter many years ago: pounding the
pavement, hitting the phones. Veterans of the underground were easy enough to
track down. The problem was getting them to talk candidly about decades-old
crimes they had rarely if ever spoken of publicly, and which in some cases might
still be the subject of law enforcement interest.
During my first year of research, I cold-called any number of aging
underground figures. The conversation usually went something like this:
“Hello, my name is Bryan Burrough. You don’t know me from Adam, and I
don’t share your politics. Would you be willing to tell me about that building you
bombed in 1972?”
Click.
This became somewhat frustrating. A turning point came when, during the
course of people’s deflecting my questions, I was directed to their attorneys. The
group of radical lawyers who handled underground cases turned out to be
surprisingly small; maybe fifteen attorneys, almost all in New York, Chicago,
and San Francisco, handled just about every major case. A handful worked on
dozens of cases spanning multiple underground groups. With the help of several
of these attorneys—people motivated simply by a wish to accurately recapture a
piece of little-remembered American history—I was able to begin building
bridges to their clients, many of whom remain distrustful of anyone associated
with the mainstream media. Some interviews took months to negotiate. Even
once a veteran of the underground agreed to speak with me, it sometimes took
four or five meetings to begin earning something like the trust that is necessary
for someone to share secrets with a complete stranger. I am deeply grateful to all
those who did.
CONTENTS
ALSO BY BRYAN BURROUGH
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CAST OF CHARACTERS
PROLOGUE
1 “THE REVOLUTION AIN’T TOMORROW. IT’S NOW. YOU DIG?”
Sam Melville and the Birth of the American Underground 2 “NEGROES WITH GUNS”
Black Rage and the Road to Revolution
PART ONE: WEATHERMAN
3 “YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION”
The Movement and the Emergence of Weatherman
4 “AS TO KILLING PEOPLE, WE WERE PREPARED TO DO THAT”
Weatherman, January to March 1970
5 THE TOWNHOUSE
Weatherman, March to June 1970
6 “RESPONSIBLE TERRORISM”
Weatherman, June 1970 to October 1970
7 THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY
Weatherman and the FBI, October 1970 to April 1971
PART TWO: THE BLACK LIBERATION ARMY
8 “AN ARMY OF ANGRY NIGGAS”
The Birth of the Black Liberation Army, Spring 1971
9 THE RISE OF THE BLA
The Black Liberation Army, June 1971 to February 1972
10 “WE GOT PRETTY SMALL”
The Weather Underground and the FBI, 1971−72
11 BLOOD IN THE STREETS OF BABYLON
The Black Liberation Army, 1973
PART THREE: THE SECOND WAVE
12 THE DRAGON UNLEASHED
The Rise of the Symbionese Liberation Army, November 1973 to February 1974
13 “PATTY HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED”
The Symbionese Liberation Army, February to May 1974
14 WHAT PATTY HEARST WROUGHT
The Rise of the Post-SLA Underground
15 “THE BELFAST OF NORTH AMERICA”
Patty Hearst, the SLA, and the Mad Bombers of San Francisco 16 HARD TIMES
The Death of the Weather Underground
17 “WELCOME TO FEAR CITY”
The FALN, 1976 to 1978
18 “ARMED REVOLUTIONARY LOVE”
The Odyssey of Ray Levasseur
19 BOMBS AND DIAPERS
Ray Levasseur’s Odyssey, Part II
PART FOUR: OUT WITH A BANG