http://www.rightsidenews.com/200904234487/editorial/terrorists-on-tour.html
April 23, 2009
By Cliff Kincaid
Bill Ayers' terrorist associate Mark Rudd said on Wednesday that News
Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch paid him $50,000 ($25,000 in
advance and $25,000 on completion) to write his memoir about his days
as a member of the Weather Underground. But "Fifteen percent went to
my agent and the rest went up my nose for coke."
One of the members of Murdoch's board is Professor Viet Dinh, a
former Bush counter-terrorism official who had fled Vietnam as a
child when Rudd's communist comrades took over South Vietnam in the
wake of the U.S. military withdrawal.
In his talk, Rudd made it clear that his communist ideology had not
changed and reiterated his support for Communist Vietnam and Communist Cuba.
Some members of the small audience at Cal State East Bay in Hayward,
California, did not think Rudd, who appeared rumpled and disheveled,
was joking about his cocaine reference. The bizarre talk, which was
interrupted by barbed questions about Rudd's terrorist past,
concluded with Rudd professing his devotion to non-violence, truth and love.
During a previous appearance in Berkeley, California, at a left-wing
bookstore, Rudd had declared that the election of Barack Obama was a
major "advance" and provides an "opening" for the far-left to
continue making gains. Rudd serves on the board, with Ayers and his
wife, fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, of the "Movement for a
Democratic Society," which hopes to resurrect a "new SDS" on the
college campuses. The SDS was the predecessor of the Weathermen and
the Weather Underground.
Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois and Dohrn
teaches law at Northwestern University. Rudd said that he had been
teaching math at a community college in New Mexico but will be
returning to teach social activism.
Because of the presence at Cal State East Bay of about 10 critics of
Rudd, including this columnist, who passed out fliers about his
involvement in a group that killed at least four police officers,
university officials ordered seven members of the campus police to
stand by. Two police were actually in the room, which was in the
university library, and others were posted outside. But they never
had to intervene. In fact, the police seemed disgusted they had to be
there to protect someone who had specialized in calling police "pigs"
and whose organization bombed police stations and killed police officers.
Rudd is not the only terrorist on a speaking tour. His comrade Bill
Ayers is scheduled to be at Brandeis University in Massachusetts on April 30.
Michael Graham, the Boston-based talk show host who led the
opposition to Ayers' scheduled appearance at Boston College, is
spearheading criticism of the Brandeis event. The Boston College
appearance was cancelled after Graham highlighted the involvement of
Katherine Anne Power and Susan Saxe, two members of a Weather
Underground spin-off group, in the murder of Boston Police Officer
Walter Schroeder. Power and Saxe had attended Brandeis.
Rudd had been invited to Cal State by History Professor Henry
Reichman, who was part of the protests that Rudd led in 1968, after
visiting Castro's Cuba, which shut down Columbia University. It was
after this that Rudd went "underground" as a fugitive with Ayers and Dohrn.
Reichman, who claims to be an advocate of free expression, tried to
confiscate the fliers about the Weather Underground's history of
violence and terrorism before Rudd showed up to deliver his talk.
Because Rudd and Reichman are such close friends, Rudd did not charge
for his talk.
Rudd was labeled a murderer by several members of the audience who
were affiliated with the Campaign for Justice for Victims of Weather
Underground Terrorism.
At the end of the event, Rudd tried to shake hands with the critics,
but one, retired San Francisco Police Officer Jim Pera, refused,
calling Rudd a killer with bloody hands.
Rudd claimed not to know anything about the February 16, 1970,
bombing murder of San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell,
the subject of a news conference in San Francisco on Thursday. The
FBI has blamed the murder on the Weather Underground but no charges
have ever been brought in the case.
Under questioning, Rudd said that he had been contacted by the FBI
several years ago about terrorism-related matters. However, he
refused to cooperate with the FBI and now has a criminal defense
lawyer, Nancy Hollander of New Mexico, where he lives. There appears
to have been no follow-up by the FBI regarding Rudd's possible
knowledge of or involvement in the Park Police Station bombing case.
Incredibly, rather than interrogate Rudd under oath, Rudd was invited
to lecture on terrorism to the FBI Academy in 2005 by Special Agent
Andrew Bringuel.
Larry Grathwohl, a former FBI informant in the Weather Underground,
who was in the audience, was acknowledged by Rudd and got up to
repeat his sworn testimony that Bill Ayers had told him that
Bernardine Dohrn had planted the bomb, whose heavy metal staples tore
through McDonnell's head and injured nine other officers. The bombing
occurred at the Park Police Station near Golden Gate Park.
Grathwohl also described how Ayers had ordered the destruction of
police facilities in Detroit, using similar bombs.
There remains the possibility that other members of the Weather
Underground were involved in the Park Police Station bombing, along
with members of the terrorist Black Liberation Army. Both groups had
worked together.
Rudd claims in his book that he never met Grathwohl. But Grathwohl
said that was false and that they had met on several occasions. Rudd
conceded that his memory was faulty on that point.
Grathwohl questioned Rudd about his continued close association with
Dohrn, who at a national Weathermen conference had praised mass
murderer Charles Manson, whose drug-crazed followers killed pregnant
actress Sharon Tate and others and then ate dinner in a room with the
victims. Dohrn adopted a three-finger "fork salute" to signify the
forks used to eat dinner with the dead and had called Manson a "true
revolutionary."
Rudd appeared to get emotional, saying that he still regards Dohrn as
a "sister."
Grathwohl has said that leaders of the Weather Underground wanted to
impose a Communist dictatorship and had forecast that up to 25
million Americans who could not be re-educated would have to be eliminated.
Asked why his fingerprints had been found in an apartment in San
Francisco that the FBI labeled a bomb factory with bomb-making
paraphernalia, Rudd said he had only been living in the place for a
while. But in answering the question, he repeatedly referred to the
"apartment" as a "factory," only to catch and correct himself. Ayers'
fingerprints were also found in this location on Pine Street.
In his book, Rudd acknowledges his close relationship with David
Gilbert, a former Columbia student and mentor who was also a member
of the Weather Underground. Gilbert is now in prison for a 1981
robbery, conducted by the Weather Underground and the Black
Liberation Army, that left two police officers and a security guard dead.
Rudd also admits approving a bomb plot targeting a servicemen's dance
at Fort Dix, New Jersey. But the bomb prematurely exploded, killing
three Weathermen.
At a previous appearance at Moe's Bookstore in Berkeley, California,
Rudd gave his assent to a plan for a "Truth and Reconciliation
Commission" that would attempt to get Gilbert freed from prison.
The same event turned into an orgy of Israel-bashing, as Rudd
introduced his "Rabbi," a woman working with the Americans Friends
Service Committee, who was advertising a Sunday "Citizen Hearing" at
the Department of Health in San Francisco to examine "the use of US
weapons in the recent [Israeli] assault on Gaza." Rudd, who believes
Israel is doomed because of its association with the United States
"empire," prefaced the announcement by saying that he doesn't believe in God.
Rudd never commented on the irony of having his book published by the
chairman of the parent company of Fox News, a media group considered
too conservative by the liberal/left and which, during the campaign,
highlighted Ayers' and Dohrn's ties to then-candidate Barack Obama.
But Rudd did say that whatever financial proceeds he generates, over
and above what he spends on cocaine, will go to "peace and justice"
organizations.
--
Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be
contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org
.
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