Billy Ayers: WeatherCop

September 11, 2001

              Life With the Weathermen: No Regrets for a Love of Explosives

              By DINITIA SMITH

                 " I don't regret setting bombs," Bill Ayers

                  said. "I feel we didn't do enough." Mr.

              Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in

              the Weather Underground, was sitting in the

              kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century

              stone house in the Hyde Park district of

              Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted

              poster are shorn, though he wears earrings.

              He still has tattooed on his neck the

              rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that

              appeared on letters taking responsibility for

              bombings. And he still has the ebullient,

              ingratiating manner, the apparently intense

              interest in other people, that made him a

              charismatic figure in the radical student

              movement.

              Now he has written a book, "Fugitive Days"

              (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers,

              who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat

              coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it

              is fiction. He writes that he participated in

              the bombings of New York City Police

              Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol

              building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. But

              Mr. Ayers also seems to want to have it

              both ways, taking responsibility for daring

              acts in his youth, then deflecting it.

              "Is this, then, the truth?," he writes. "Not

              exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me."

              But why would someone want to read a memoir parts of which are

              admittedly not true? Mr. Ayers was asked.

              "Obviously, the point is it's a reflection on memory," he answered. "It's true as I remember it."

              Mr. Ayers is probably safe from prosecution anyway. A spokeswoman for

              the Justice Department said there was a five-year statute of limitations on

              Federal crimes except in cases of murder or when a person hasbeen

              indicted.

              Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman

              philosophy as: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments.

              Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's whereit's really at," is

              today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at

              Chicago. And he says he doesn't actually remember suggesting that rich

              people be killed or that people kill their parents, but "it's been quoted so

              many times I'm beginning to think I did," he said. "It was a joke about the

              distribution of wealth."

              He went underground in 1970, after his girlfriend, Diana Oughton, and two

              other people were killed when bombs they were making explodedin a

              Greenwich Village town house. With him in the Weather Underground was

              Bernardine Dohrn, who was put on the F.B.I.'s 10 Most Wanted List. J.

              Edgar Hoover called her "the most dangerous woman in America" and "la

              Pasionara of the Lunatic Left." Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn later married.

              In his book Mr. Ayers describes the Weathermen descending into a

              "whirlpool of violence."

              "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon," he

              writes. But then comes a disclaimer: "Even though I didn't actually bomb the

              Pentagon — we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and

              claimed it." He goes on to provide details about the manufacture of the bomb

              and how a woman he calls Anna placed the bomb in a restroom. No one

              was killed or injured, though damage was extensive.

              Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12

              bombings, Mr. Ayers writes, and also helped spring Timothy Leary

              (sentenced on marijuana charges) from jail.

              Today, Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn, 59, who is director of the Legal Clinic's

              Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern University, seem like

              typical baby boomers, caring for aging parents, suffering the empty-nest

              syndrome. Their son, Malik, 21, is at the University of California, San Diego;

              Zayd, 24, teaches at Boston University. They have also brought up Chesa

              Boudin, 21, the son of David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, who are serving

              prison terms for a 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck in Rockland County,

              N.Y., that left four people dead. Last month, Ms. Boudin's application for

              parole was rejected.

              So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? "I don't want to discount

              the possibility," he said.

              "I don't think you can understand a single thing we did without understanding

              the violence of the Vietnam War," he said, and the fact that "the enduring

              scar of racism was fully in flower." Mr. Ayers pointed to Bob Kerrey, former

              Democratic Senator from Nebraska, who has admitted leading a raid in

              1969 in which Vietnamese women and children were killed. "He committed

              an act of terrorism," Mr. Ayers said. "I didn't kill innocent people."

              Mr. Ayers has always been known as a "rich kid radical." His father,

              Thomas, now 86, was chairman and chief executive officer of

              Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, chairman of Northwestern University

              and of the Chicago Symphony. When someone mentions his father's
              prominence, Mr. Ayers is quick to say that his father did not become

              wealthy until the son was a teenager. He says that he got some of his interest

              in social activism from his father. He notes that his father promoted racial

              equality in Chicago and was acceptable as a mediator to Mayor Richard

              Daley and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 when King marched

              in Cicero, Ill., to protest housing segregation.

              All in all, Mr. Ayers had "a golden childhood," he said, though he did have a

              love affair with explosives. On July 4, he writes, "my brothers and I loved

              everything about the wild displays of noise and color, the flares, the

              surprising candle bombs, but we trembled mostly for the Big Ones, the loud

              concussions."

              The love affair seems to have continued into adulthood. Even today, he finds

              "a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,"

              he writes.

              He attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Ill., then the University

              of Michigan but dropped out to join Students for a Democratic Society.

              In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from

              the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore

              thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in

              Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: "Dig it! Manson killed

              those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they

              shoved a fork into a victim's stomach."

              In Chicago recently, Ms. Dohrn said of her remarks: "It was a joke. We

              were mocking violence in America. Even in my most inflamed moment I

              never supported a racist mass murderer."

              Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the

              more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and
              charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of

              Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight — antiwar militants

              accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National

              Convention.

              In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn

              failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers

              went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later

              that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for

              crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that

              for "conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings." Those

              charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct,

              including illegal surveillance.

              During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names

              of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He

              describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X

              and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara's picture in the bedroom; fermented

              Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated

              by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand

              over a century.

              He also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried

              to "smash monogamy." The Weathermen were "an army of lovers," he says,

              and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male

              friend.

              "Fugitive Days" does have moments of self-mockery, for instance when Mr.

              Ayers describes watching "Underground," Emile De Antonio's 1976

              documentary about the Weathermen. He was "embarrassed by the

              arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew

              the way," he writes. "The rigidity and the narcissism."

              In the mid-1970's the Weathermen began quarreling. One faction, including

              Ms. Boudin, wanted to join the Black Liberation Army. Others, including

              Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers, favored surrendering. Ms. Boudin and Ms.

              Dohrn had had an intense friendship but broke apart. Mr. Ayers and Ms.

              Dohrn were purged from the group.

              Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers had a son, Zayd, in 1977. After the birth of

              Malik, in 1980, they decided to surface. Ms. Dohrn pleaded guilty to the

              original Days of Rage charge, received three years probation and was fined

              $1,500. The Federal charges against Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn had already

              been dropped.

              Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn tried to persuade Ms. Boudin to surrender

              because she was pregnant. But she refused, and went on to participate in the

              Brink's robbery. When she was arrested, Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers
              volunteered to care for Chesa, then 14 months old, and became his legal

              guardians.

              A few months later Ms. Dohrn was called to testify about the robbery. Ms.

              Dohrn had not seen Ms. Boudin for a year, she said, and knew nothing of it.

              Ms. Dohrn was asked to give a handwriting sample, and refused, she said,

              because the F.B.I. already had one in its possession. "I felt grand juries were

              illegal and coercive," she said. For refusing to testify, she was jailed for seven

              months, and she and Mr. Ayers married during a furlough. 

              Once again, Chesa was without a mother. "It was one of the hardest things I

              did," said Ms. Dohrn of going to jail.

              In the interview, Mr. Ayers called Chesa "a very damaged kid." "He had real

              serious emotional problems," he said. But after extensive therapy, "became a

              brilliant and wonderful human being." .

              After the couple surfaced, Ms. Dohrn tried to practice law, taking the bar

              exam in New York. But she was turned down by the Bar Association's

              character committee because of her political activities.

              Ms. Dohrn said she was aware of the contradictions between her radical

              past and the comforts of her present existence. "This is where we raised our

              kids and are taking care of our aging parents," she said. "We could live much

              more simply, and well we might."

              And as for settling into marriage after efforts to smash monogamy, Ms.

              Dohrn said, "You're always trying to balance your understanding of who you

              are and what you need, and your longing and imaginings of freedom."

              "Happily for me, Billy keeps me laughing, he keeps me growing," she said.

              Mr. Ayers said he had some of the same conflicts about marriage. "We have

              to learn how to be committed," he said, "and hold out the possibility of

              endless reinventions."

              As Mr. Ayers mellows into middle age, he finds himself thinking about truth

              and reconciliation, he said. He would like to see a Truth and Reconciliation

              Commission about Vietnam, he said, like South Africa's. He can imagine Mr.

              Kerrey and Ms. Boudin taking part.

              And if there were another Vietnam, he is asked, would he participate again in

              the Weathermen bombings?

              By way of an answer, Mr. Ayers quoted from "The Cure at Troy," Seamus

              Heaney's retelling of Sophocles' "Philoctetes:" " `Human beings suffer,/ They

              torture one another./ They get hurt and get hard.' "

              He continued to recite:

              History says, Don't hope

              On this side of the grave.

              But then, once in a lifetime

              The longed-for tidal wave

              Of justice can rise up

              And hope and history rhyme.

              Thinking back on his life , Mr. Ayers said, "I was a child ofprivilege and I

              woke up to a world on fire. And hope and history rhymed."