Armstrong, anti-Vietnam War bomber, dies at 58
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By RYAN J. FOLEY
6/22/2010
MADISON, Wis. Dwight Armstrong, one of four men who carried out a
fatal bombing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to protest the
Vietnam War, has died. He was 58.
Hospital spokeswoman Susan Lampert Smith says Armstrong died Sunday
at UW Hospital in Madison after battling lung cancer.
Armstrong was a shaggy-haired high school dropout when he and his
older brother, Karl, and two others parked a stolen van packed with
2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and jet fuel next to Sterling Hall
and lit the fuse on Aug. 24, 1970.
The blast killed student Robert Fassnacht and injured three other people.
Armstrong spent years as one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives and
was finally captured in Toronto in 1977. He served seven years in a
federal prison.
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Dwight Armstrong, who bombed University of Wisconsin building in 1970
protest, dies at 58
By Ryan J. Foley
June 23, 2010
MADISON Dwight Armstrong, one of four men who carried out a fatal
bombing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to protest the Vietnam
War, has died. He was 58.
Armstrong, who spent years as one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives
after the 1970 blast, died Sunday at UW Hospital in Madison after
battling lung cancer, hospital spokeswoman Susan Lampert Smith said.
She said his family wanted the public to know he was a smoker because
"they wouldn't want anyone else to have to go through that."
Armstrong was a shaggy-haired high school dropout when he and his
older brother, Karl, and two others parked a stolen van packed with
2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and jet fuel next to Sterling Hall
and lit the fuse on Aug. 24, 1970.
Enraged by the Vietnam War, the bombers said they were targeting the
Army Math Research Center on the upper floors of the building. The
bomb exploded in the middle of the night when they thought no one
would be there.
But the blast killed Robert Fassnacht, a 33-year-old graduate student
who was working overnight on a physics experiment. Three others were
injured, and dozens of other campus buildings were damaged.
All four bombers are believed to have fled to Canada. Authorities
pulled over their vehicle in Wisconsin shortly after the blast but
released them. A vehicle carrying the Armstrongs was pulled over days
later in New York, but again they were let go.
Dwight Armstrong lived underground for years but was eventually
arrested in Toronto in 1977. He had been arrested in San Diego for
theft while living under an assumed name the prior year but released
before the FBI could learn of his true identity.
Fellow bombers Karl Armstrong and David Fine had already been
captured, convicted and sentenced to prison. The fourth, Leo Burt,
disappeared and his whereabouts remain unknown almost 40 years later.
Madison attorney Lester Pines, who was part of Dwight Armstrong's
defense team, recalls flying to Toronto to help negotiate his
extradition and plea agreement. Armstrong was sentenced to seven
years in federal prison and was among the last people imprisoned in
the U.S. for Vietnam-era protest activities.
Armstrong later expressed remorse for killing Fassnacht, but said the
bombing was well intentioned.
"I mean, something had to be done, something dramatic, something that
showed people were willing to escalate this at home as far as they
were willing to escalate it in Vietnam," he told The Capital Times
newspaper in 1992.
Some historians say the bombing caused anti-war protesters across the
nation to stop using tactics that had been growing increasingly violent.
Pines said the involvement of the Armstrongs was a shock to Wisconsin
politicians, who had blamed out-of-state agitators for campus unrest
that started in the late 1960s. The Armstrongs grew up in a
middle-class family in Madison.
He recalled Dwight Armstrong, who later worked as a cab driver in
Madison, as nice, easy to talk to and "very smart."
"But for the bombing, I don't know what Dwight might have
accomplished in his life," Pines said.
Armstrong said in 1992: "My life has not been something to write home about."
Armstrong is survived by his brother, who operates a juice stand in
Madison, as well as his mother, daughter and two sisters. Private
services will be held.
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