The Fort Dix Five

The Fort Dix Five

http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2008/12/23/the-fort-dix-five/

by Ron Radosh
December 23rd, 2008

What is the difference between the five Muslim immigrants convicted
in a Federal court in Camden, New Jersey on Monday, and Bill Ayers
and his comrades in the Weather Underground?

The answer: not much, except for the outcome. The men were convicted
for conspiring to kill American soldiers in Fort Dix. They had taken
concrete steps to train and arm themselves. The government had taped
conversations about their plans between them and FBI informants;
propaganda videos, and proof of the purchase of machine guns. The
jury was evidently not impressed with the defendants' arguments that
they were not serious, and had been coaxed into making incendiary
arguments by the informants. If that was so, any sane juror realized,
it would not explain why they actually purchased the weapons for the
planned attack.

In the case of the Weather Underground, as Bob Owens recounts on his
blog today, the FBI had only one inside informant- Larry Grothwol.
Like today's informants, Grothwol had first hand knowledge of
terrorist plans of the communist cell, and of actual attacks they
carried out. But the Bureau didn't need this to find evidence- the
Weathermen group did it themselves when their home made bomb went off
prematurely, killing only themselves.

Despite this, the U.S. Government never tried Ayers and others for
their plans and their conspiracy, of which Ayers famously bragged to
David Horowitz and later in his book, that he was "guilty as hell"
but "free as a bird," adding sarcastically that "America is a great
country." Yet everyone knew years later, due to confession from
members of the group like Mark Rudd, that the anti-personnel bomb
they were building was meant for soldiers and their dates at a dance
in the very same Fort Dix.

Today's would-be terrorists are Islamic radical fundamentalists,
organized into the same kind of conspiratorial cells as the Weather
Underground was in the1960's and 70's. Yet, to this very day, Ayers
brags in his memoir that each year he and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn,
go to the site of the Greenwich Village townhouse on the anniversary
of the bombing, to lay flowers on the street. He even writes that
the time should come when like US soldiers who lost their lives are
remembered and honored, so should his comrades like his former
girlfriend Diana Oughton, who was killed in the blast, be honored as well.

At least we should be grateful that our government today is on top of
the actions of conspirators, and stops and convicts them before they
act on their beliefs. That, however, is small consolation for our
just anger at how Ayers and company got away with their conspiracies.

.