A murderous robbery, bomb factories, assassination lists. What more could there be?

There was more.

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A criminal support apparatus; multiple crimes

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Following these discoveries the FBI (forcefully) and the New York police (hesitantly) announced that a) the Brink’s robbery-murders were the work of organized terrorists with a like-minded support apparatus and b) the gang had carried out other crimes as well, i.e., it was a serious political/criminal conspiracy. (In a 1982 racketeering indictment, Federal prosecutors would charge that the gang had been in continuous operation since an armored car robbery in Pittsburgh in 1976. [8])

Regarding the gang’s alleged support apparatus: the October 23, 1981 Times reported that, in addition to Marilyn Buck’s apartments, police searched the Brooklyn flat of a woman named Eve Rosahn after learning that:

“a yellow Honda that police say was used as a getaway car in Tuesday’s attempted robbery of an armored truck in Nyack, N.Y., was registered to her.” [Note: The robbery was a robbery-murder, and it was not “attempted.” It was carried out, with $1.6 million stolen and three guards and two policemen shot; three died. The fact that some robber-killers were caught, either that afternoon or later, and that the money was retrieved, does not make it “attempted” – J.I.]

– “Role of Eve Rosahn in Protest Movement Surprises Neighbors,” The New York Times [9]

On October 29th, the FBI reported finding the fingerprint of jailed Weatherman David Gilbert on the rental contract of a van used in a $200,000 Brink’s armored car robbery in the Bronx on June 2, 1981, during which the thieves also gunned down a guard without warning. The Times interviewed Brink’s official Donald Payne, who investigated both crimes:

“‘The guns they used, the cold-blooded assassination, the disregard for human life in the Bronx case,’ he said, ‘all of these were very apparent at the Nanuet Mall,’ where the Rockland holdup and slayings occurred.”

– “Gang in Holdup in Nanuet Tied to Bronx Theft,” The New York Times [10]

Within a few months David Gilbert would be:

“linked by fingerprint or handwriting analysis to the rental of vehicles used in three armored car holdups that preceded Nanuet and to the prison escape in 1979 of Joanne Chesimard, a reputed Black Liberation Army leader who was serving a life term for the murder of a New Jersey state trooper in 1973.”

– “Behind the Brink’s Case: Return of the Radical Left,” The New York Times, February 16, 1982 [11]

Authorities not only suggested that the Brink’s gang had carried out a string of earlier crimes, but that the gang’s criminal support apparatus was broader than first reported: 

“And in two of the armored car robberies, in early 1980, the police are studying an apparent connection between the rental of the vehicles and personal identification supplied several months earlier by unsuspecting customers at Broadway Baby, an Upper West Side children’s wear shop that was managed by Bernadine Dohrn, a former [why former? – J.I.] Weather Underground leader. Miss Dohrn has not been publicly linked to the Brink’s case or any of the other robberies.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]

– ibid.

In fact, Dohrn was publicly linked to the gang’s crimes, at least twice. I will discuss this in Part 5 (“St. Bernardine of Arc, and Broadway Baby”).

On the evening of October 23rd, the news took a most disturbing turn.

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A Federal task force hunts for “black terrorists”

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On the 23rd a front page article in the Washington Post began:

“A massive manhunt expanded throughout the Northeast yesterday in the wake of a bloody Brink’s robbery in New York. Federal and local investigators focused on the possibility that the crime was committed by a fusion of a militant white Weather Underground gang and a black urban terrorist group implicated in a string of attacks on police officers.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]

– “Authorities Looking Into a Fusion of Weather Gang, Black Terrorists,” The Washington Post, October 23, 1981 [12]

(Notice that in the above text, the Post refers to the Weathermen or Weather Underground as “militant” but the black group as “urban terrorist.”)

According to ABC Evening News:

“The police dragnet has now spread to 3 states.”

– ABC Evening News, October 23, 1981[13]

The states were New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, with two thirds the area of the UK!

Reported ABC:

“This afternoon New York City police stopped a car in Queens, New York, which they suspected was used as a get-away vehicle in Tuesday’s Brink’s holdup. The suspects, both wearing bullet-proof vests, led police on a wild chase that ended in a gun battle. One suspect was killed, the other captured.”

– ibid.

The surviving suspect was Nathaniel Burns, aka Sekou Odinga.

“One of several Black Panthers indicted here [i.e.,  New York City – J.I.] in 1968 for a series of bombings, he had escaped prosecution by sliding down a drainpipe at his home as police approached.”

– “1 Killed, 1 Seized by Police Seeking Brink’s Suspects; Police Kill Suspect in Brink’s Robbery,” The Washington Post, October 24, 1981 [14]

As for the man who was killed:

“Samuel Smith, 37, slain in the shootout in which Mr. Burns was captured; a former convict with a record of attempted murder, assault and armed robbery; a bullet-proof vest he wore was dented over a body bruise suffered in a recent shooting; ballistics tests determined that a .38-caliber slug in his pocket had been fired from the gun of one of the police officers slain in Nyack.”

– The New York Times, October 27, 1981 [15]

On October 28th the Times announced that two Weathermen arrested in the Bronx on an outstanding bomb-making charge were arraigned in New Jersey, and that officials in Mississippi  had arrested Cynthia Boston, suspected of involvement with the Brink’s gang, and were seeking her husband as well. Ms. Boston:

“was identified in arrest papers as the minister of information for the Republic of New Africa [sic!  Said organization used the spelling ‘Afrika’ – J.I.], described as a terrorist organization.  The arrest complaint said William Johnson, her common-law husband, who has eluded capture, was believed to be affiliated with the Black Liberation Army.”

– “2 New Brink’s Suspects Held in Mississippi and Manhattan,” The New York Times, October 28, 1981 [16]

Wrote the Times:

“The new names associated with the case also lent support yesterday to the view already advanced by the F.B.I. and the New York City Police Department that members of the Weather Underground had joined forces with members of black terrorist organizations.”

– ibid.

On October 30th, the Times reported that an FBI/police task force had been formed to pursue suspects still at large, including Ms. Boston’s husband and at least three other alleged members of the Black Liberation Army. [17]

Some have argued that the BLA was invented out of the whole cloth by the FBI and police and trumpeted by the media to spread fear of black people. I will discuss the media’s role in Part 6 of this series, but let me say here: if the Establishment was hyping the BLA to spread fear, it was helped by the accused and their defenders, who provided ample material from which the media could pick and choose. Case in point: during the New York State Brink’s trial, two defendants affirmed that they were BLA members and that the BLA and their white supporters (the Weathermen) were right to maim and murder people if they hindered ‘expropriations’ (robberies). [18]

In like fashion, speaking shortly after Cynthia Boston’s arrest, her attorney, Chokwe Lumumba, ‘defended’ her by saying that the so-called ‘provisional government’ of the Republic of New Afrika, of which she was part, was:

“not a clandestine offensive military formation. The BLA is. The provisional government [of which Lumumba was ‘Justice Minister’ – J.I.] has no control and no connection with the army. It shares with the army, however, a common determination to be free.”

[My emphasis – J.I.]

– “Bail Set at $250,000 for Cynthia Boston,” The Associated Press, November 3, 1981 [19]

(Notice that for Attorney Lumumba, the Black Liberation Army was “the army,” giving his disclaimer, that the “provisional government has no control and no connection with the army,” a coy ring.)

So, regarding the BLA: perhaps delusional; perhaps partly organized and/or led by agents provocateurs; not imaginary.

The FBI said the BLA was a “black terrorist organization.” The leading defense attorney said it was a “clandestine offensive military formation.” One might say, the alternative presented by the defense was not reassuring.

The extreme brutality of the robbery, confirmed and justified by the defendants, and the descriptions of the BLA made by the two supposedly opposing sides (“black terrorist organization” or “clandestine offensive military formation,” take your pick), could only spread fear of African-American men.

How did Obama react?

Based on what he has written and said, he didn’t.

==========================================

Obama dreams in black and white

==========================================

In his autobiographical Dreams from my father, despite spending sixteen pages writing about his three years in New York, Obama has not one word about the Brink’s affair.

Yet in the book, Obama presents himself as being concerned during this period – one might say, obsessed – with the question of black-white relations.

It is true that the Brink’s-Weatherman-BLA affair is not the only striking omission in Dreams. As the New York Times noted, Obama also did not write anything about his experiences at Columbia University, where the Times was told he was an outstanding student from Fall 1981 to Spring 1983.  The Times pressed Obama and his campaign organization for any details about Columbia and got this lame reply:

“‘He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life,’ said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman.”

– “Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs from What Others Say,” The New York Times [20]

He doesn't remember names?  He can't talk about what he did in school because he doesn't remember names?  (Keep in mind, Obama was studying international affairs at a time when the very well known Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski was teaching that subject at Columbia.) What is this, a presidential campaign spokesman responding to a request for routine background information from the New York Times, or a defense lawyer justifying his Mafia client's amnesia before a congressional committee?

Dreams does contain one useful clue.  Writing about his three years in New York, Obama states that, lying in bed at night, he would see:

“a series of images, romantic images, of a past I had never known. They were of the civil rights movement, mostly, the grainy black-and-white footage that appears every February during Black history month […] SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – J.I.] workers standing on a porch in some Mississippi backwater trying to convince a family of sharecroppers to register to vote. A county jail bursting with children, their hands clasped together, singing freedom songs. Such images became a form of prayer for me, bolstering my spirits, challenging my emotions in a way that words never could.”

– Dreams from my father, p. 134 [21]

Assuming for the sake of argument that Obama did indeed fall asleep to images of the Civil Rights movement, images that have great emotional impact on many people, including me, for I participated in that movement – and I say “assuming” because this is after all a book written about himself by a politician seeking high office, and such politicians have been known to drape themselves in emotionally powerful images – isn’t it obvious that media reports of the Brink’s affair, in which ‘the movement’ was presented as consisting not of those wonderful children, but of thieves using hollow nosed bullets [22] to shoot down Brink’s guards without even asking for the money – isn’t it obvious that this terrible news should have wrecked Obama’s visionary sleep? And then how would he have felt about those Weathermen whose ‘help’ did so much harm to ordinary black people, equating ‘black man’ with ‘homicidal maniac’ and ‘black activist’ with ‘racketeer’? And then why, when asked about Weatherman leader Ayers, would he tell the lie – the ‘I-was-only-8-lie’ – that he was too young to have had direct knowledge of the Weathermen? Why wouldn’t he say, ‘Don’t talk to me about the Weathermen.  During my three years at Columbia University in New York I watched what they did to that city.  I can find no words harsh enough for them.’

One thing is for sure: whether or not it ruined Obama’s sleep, the Brink’s affair did not ruffle the Weathermen, neither those openly involved, nor those supposedly not.  Quite the contrary.

On October 24, 1981 the wire service United Press International (UPI) published a dispatch arguing that the Weathermen arrested two days earlier were not Weathermen at all, they were ex-Weathermen. Aside from not making clear how one tells a present Weathermen from an ex (does one turn it upside down and look?), UPI quoted one unnamed ex making the following revealing comment about the Brink’s robbery-murders:

“‘It’s a dream we had for a long time, combining black with white,’ an ex-member said. ‘But the Brink’s holdup really has nothing much to do with Weather-politics as they were once upon a time.’”

[My emphasis – J.I.]

– “You Don’t Need A Weatherman…,” United Press International [23]

A dream!

Notice that the unnamed ex does not say “nothing,” he, or perhaps his wife, says “nothing much,” meaning ‘something,’ and “once upon a time,” meaning a decade earlier, at the time of Weatherman’s infancy, when such serious mayhem and such a devastating assault on black-white relations could only be “a dream.”  “Once upon a time,” as in a fairy tale, where dreams come true, as the Weathermen’s dream was coming true in the early 1980s with the Brink’s robbery and subsequent political storm, during which Weatherman founder Bernardine Dohrn got a chance to glorify thugs as committed revolutionaries, as her dream of hatred disguised as “combining black and white” came true in New York.

Continued in Part 5: “St. Bernardine of Arc, and Broadway Baby”

===========================================

Footnotes and Further Reading

===========================================

[1] Ayers has been getting top coverage (as discussed in TENC, for example on NPR and “Good Morning America”) even though wherever he appears, he says exactly the same things. He has even published a guest editorial in The New York Times. This cries out for a refutation, so I wrote one. It’s called “A Nightmare of Human Potential: Reply to Bill Ayers’ N. Y. Times Editorial,” and you can read it at
http://www.tenc.net/realbill.htm

[2] This claim is analyzed, with documentary links, in parts 2 and 3.  Obama campaign manager William Burton said it; Obama’s “Fact Check” opens by repeating it several times; and Obama  complained of having to keep repeating it, when interviewed on ABC TV.

[3] Later in this series, I will argue that the New York Times coverage of the Brink’s affair was slanted, with important facts downplayed or omitted to encourage some parts of the population to view the Brink’s criminals as having acted from laudable principles.

Below are the headlines of the Brink’s pieces the Times published on October 23, 1981. The third through the seventh are worded sympathetically, romanticizing the Weatherman. Notice that while the October 23rd New York Times gave every one of the five arrested or fugitive Weatherman his or her own personal article – in the New York Times! – the Times contained no comparable articles on the men they killed, Paul Paige, Edward O’Grady and Waverly Brown. As you can see, just looking at the headlines, the Weathermen are mothers, and/or have neighbors who care about them, and/or espouse causes, and/or are activists.  But the victims are nothing. Thus when discussing the Weathermen, the Times blunted outrage over the murders.

It is true that on the same day, the Times ran a short (and pretty good) editorial, “Up From the Underground,” attacking the Weathermen.  But in any newspaper, news trumps editorials, especially when the ratio is five to one. In any case, the Oct. 23, 1981 editorial, discussed in “A Nightmare of Human Potential: Reply to Bill Ayers’ N. Y. Times Editorial,” had the effect, if not the intent, of positioning the Times as officially condemning the Weathermen, thus heading off the criticism that they had run five articles the same day romanticizing them.

Check out the headlines from the third one on. My emphasis – J.I.

* “Police Raid Apartments to Gather Evidence on Killings in Rockland,” Section A; Page 1, Column 3

* “Up From the Underground,” Section A; Page 30, Column 1; Editorial Desk

* “For Katherine Boudin, Furtive Life as Mother,” Section B; Page 4, Column 1

* “David J. Gilbert’s Trail: Activist and a Fugitive,” Section B; Page 4, Column 2;

* “Judith Clark’s Espousal of Causes Traced To ’69,” Section B; Page 4, Column 5;

* “Marilyn Buck: A Fugitive and Long a Radical,” Section B; Page 5, Column 1

* “Role of Eve Rosahn in Protest Movement Surprises Neighbors,” Section: Section B; Page 5, Column 1

[4] “Police Raid Apartments to Gather Evidence on Killings in Rockland,” The New York Times, October 23, 1981, Friday, Late City Final Edition, by Robert D. McFadden, Section A; Page 1, Column 3; Metropolitan Desk, 1975 words

[5] “Marilyn Buck: A Fugitive And Long A Radical,” The New York Times, October 23, 1981, Friday, Late City Final Edition, by Joseph B. Treaster, Section B; Page 5, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk, 666 words

[6] UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. MARILYN BUCK, Defendant; No. 84 Cr. 220-CSH; UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK; 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18579; October 24, 1986, Decided and Filed; REVERSED March 10, 1987

[7] “Police Raid Apartments to Gather Evidence on Killings in Rockland,” The New York Times, October 23, 1981, Friday, Late City Final Edition, by Robert D. McFadden, Section A; Page 1, Column 3; Metropolitan Desk, 1975 words

[8] “4 Indicted by U.S. in Escape of Joanne Chesimard in ’79,” The New York Times, November 19, 1982, Friday, Late City Final Edition, by Josh Barbanel, Section B; Page 3, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

[9] “Role of Eve Rosahn in Protest Movement Surprises Neighbors,” The New York Times, October 23, 1981, Friday, Late City Final Edition, by Ronald Smothers, Section B; Page 5, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk, 499 words

[10] “Gang in Holdup in Nanuet Tied to Bronx Theft,” The New York Times,  October 30, 1981, Friday, Late City Final Edition, by Joseph B. Treaster, Section B; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk, 1151 words

[11] “Behind the Brink’s Case: Return of the Radical Left,” The New York Times, February 16, 1982, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition, by M.A. Farber, Section A; page 1, Column 2

[12]“Authorities Looking Into a Fusion of
Weather Gang, Black Terrorists,” The Washington Post, October 23, 1981, Friday, Final Edition, by Kathy Sawyer and Joyce Wadler, First Section, A1, 1162 words

[13] “Weather Underground and BLA Thought to Have Merged,” ABC News Transcripts, October 23, 1981

[14] “1 Killed, 1 Seized by Police Seeking Brink’s Suspects; Police Kill Suspect in Brink’s Robbery,” The Washington Post, October 24, 1981, by Kathy Sawyer and Joyce Wadler

[15] “People Linked to Holdup,” The New York Times,
October 27, 1981, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition
Section B; Page 6, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk, 581 words

[16] “2 New Brink’s Suspects Held in Mississippi and Manhattan,” The New York Times, October 28, 1981, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition, by Leslie Maitland, Section A; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk, 1453 words

[17] “Gang in Holdup in Nanuet Tied to Bronx Theft,” The New York Times, October 30, 1981, Friday, Late City Final Edition, by Joseph B. Treaster, Section B; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk, 1151 words

[18] “Witness Calls Brink’s Killings, Justified,”, The New York Times, September 13, 1983, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition, by Robert Hanley, Section B; Page 2, Column 1; metropolitan Desk, 917 words

[19] “Bail Set at $250,000 for Cynthia Boston,” The Associated Press, November 3, 1981, Tuesday, PM cycle, Domestic News, 642 words

[20] “Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs from What Others Say,” The New York Times, October 30, 2007, by Janny Scott, at
http://nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html

[21] See p. 134 in Adobe Digital Edition of Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, Crown Publishers, New York, 2004

[22] “3 Killed in Armored Car Holdup,” The New York Times, October 21, 1981, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition, by Josh Barbanel, Section A; Page 1, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk, 1399 words

[23] “You Don’t Need A Weatherman…” United Press International, October 24, 1981, Saturday, AM cycle, by Bruce Olson, Domestic News, 902 words

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