In less than the blink of an eye, the blast of eight tightly-bound sticks of dynamite shattered the brittle wooden shell of the building hastily constructed during the Second World War, adding jagged splinters and rusting nails to the shrapnel that ripped through cheap tables and chairs, taffeta and chiffon, uniforms, and flesh.
Before the concussive shock waves reverberated off nearby buildings, half a dozen human beings closest to the outside wall of the NCO Club became mist.
The roof, lifted skyward by the explosion and suddenly absent a supporting wall as it returned to earth, crashed down on the dead and dying. Leaking bottles from the shattered bar fed the rapidly spreading flames, and deafened, dazed and bleeding survivors crawled or stumbled towards escape in ones and twos.
As soldiers from nearby buildings ran to help the bleeding and burned, a carefully-crafted 12″ pipe-bomb studded with roofing nails hidden in a nearby trash can went off, turning rescuers into additional victims.
Just outside Fort Dix confused onlookers sat in stunned amazement, as a pair of nondescript young women nervously laughed and counted ambulances for a half hour before losing count and heading back to the townhouse in Greenwich Village. The message had been sent.
Though he would have no way of knowing it at the time, the Weatherman’s attack on the non-commissioned officer’s dance would stand as the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil for 25 years, 1 month, and 13 days, until Timothy McVeigh drove into Oklahoma City and infamy.
Of course, that isn’t how history unfolded.
Instead of counting ambulances as a measure of their handiwork on the night of March 6, 1970, a dazed and panicking Kathy Boudin was running from police, and the remains of Diana Oughton were scattered in the rubble of the townhouse basement, as the bomb she was helping build went off, killing her, Terry Robbins, and Theodore Gold.
A careless movement, inadvertent twitch, poor design, or perhaps an act of God stopped the Weathermen from carrying out their attempt to dramatically and lethally escalate their war against the United States. Until that point the group led by radical activists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn had carried out mostly symbolic terrorism, with attacks against buildings that symbolized the power of the war-mongering American government they so despised.
The attack planned on Fort Dix was an entirely different animal, as authorities carefully sifting through the rubble would eventually discover.
Four 12″ pipe-bombs stuffed with dynamite, using roof nails as shrapnel designed to add lethality to the blast, were recovered in the remains of the basement bomb factory. So were more than 50 sticks of dynamite, some of it fused in eight-stick bundles that could level entire buildings. Had these bombs not detonated hours before in a Greenwich Village basement, the attack imagined above could have easily come to pass. In fact, the terror attack described above would have used less than half of the bombs built by Bill Ayer’s Weathermen.
Most Americans alive today are unfamiliar with what the Weathermen attempted in 1970, and that is not by accident.
Any plausible link between a Republican presidential candidate and someone like Eric Robert Rudolph or Timothy McViegh would unleash a torrent of feverish reporting from the mainstream media, detailing every nuance and every possible shadowy link between them. The New York Times, however, stubbornly sits on a treasure trove of their original reporting that captured the facts and circumstances of the leftist bombs that exploded in a Greenwich Village bomb factory 38 years ago.
They have spent an untold amount of time, money, and resources to send reporters to the other end of the continent to report every possible thinly sourced or blatantly fraudulent rumor about Sarah Palin and John McCain. But The Democratic nominee for president has close personal ties to a well-known terrorist and they can’t be bothered to send an intern down the hall into their own archives to develop a report about Barack Obama’s partner, Bill Ayers.
The New York Times and many other news organizations have dropped even the illusion of objectivity in their reporting this electoral cycle. They are more than willing to regurgitate Barack Obama’s tale of terrorist leader and reputed bomb-builder Bill Ayers as just a guy in his neighborhood who did some bad things when Obama was a child.
It seems they do not care that Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, Barack Obama’s original fundraisers, are unrepentant, bloodthirsty terrorists who led an organization that declared war against the United States and attempted to carry out the largest terrorist attack in American history.
Charlie Gibson has the time to find a doctored quote to attribute accusingly, and Brian Ross and the ABC News investigative team has an entire microsite dedicated to Tasergate, but none seem to have ever heard of Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, and their shared involvement on the board of the Woods Fund.
CNN can dispatch Roland Martin and other commentators in defenses of Obama’s incendiary pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but can’t seem to find anyone willing to examine Obama’s long-term association with a man who designed incendiary devices.
As for the very real possibility that Obama and Ayers conspired together to funnel $160 million dollars of Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant money and matching funds into programs designed for radical left wing indoctrination instead of education — in effect, stealing the future from an entire generation of Chicago school children — CBS, NBC, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times simply don’t care.
That the current Democratic nominee has an extensive and politically lucrative 21-year relationship with a man that led a terrorist organization that formally declared war against the United States, killed law enforcement officers, bombed public government buildings, and plotted the most massive terrorist strike in the first 194 years of our nation’s history should be the dominate story screaming from every network newscast, 24-hour cable news channel, newspaper headline, and opinion page.
That it isn’t, simply underlies how far our media has fallen.
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