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TIMETHE WEEKLY NEWSMAGALINE March 23, 1970 Vol. 95, No. 12 THE NATION • not have to fill in a lucky coupon, AMERICAN NOTES much less tell why he liked a deter- Stand at Isla Vista gent. Technicolor, Inc., his old employer, "At some time and in some place, was content merely that he serve as its Americans must decide as to whether public relations consultant after he went they intend to have their decisions, in- to the Senate five years ago. deed their lives, ruled by a violent mi- Unethical? Apparently not. Senator nority. We are but one bank, but we John Stennis, chairman of the Senate's have decided to take our stand in Isla Select Committee on Standards and Vista." Conduct, gave Murphy's arrangement That determined declaration by one his approval without even referring the of the nation's usually faceless financiers, matter to the members. Many men in Bank of America Chairman Louis B. Congress, after all, have outside sourc- Lundborg, may not rank historically with es of income, particularly from the prac- Martin Luther's challenge at the Diet tice of law. Still, few have such a of Worms: "Here I stand—I cannot do direct connection, and probably no oth- otherwise, God help me." It does in- er legislator is the employee of a com- dicate, however, that society is growing pany whose chairman, like Technicolor's grimmer as it confronts youthful rad- Patrick Frawley Jr., is a militant ad- icals and rioting students. The bank's vocate of right-wing causes. $275,000 Isla Vista branch was burned Question: What would Stennis, a con- to the ground last month during a ram- servative from Mississippi, have said if IBM OFFICES IN Murphy's boss were the 01, page that began on the Santa Barbara N.A.A.C.P.? Or campus of the University of California. the Black Panthers? Second question: Bank officials fear that they may smell What exactly does the Senator do as a Bombing: A Way of smoke again. Nonetheless, they decided public relations consultant? not to be intimidated, and workmen NLY nine months ago, the Na- erected a $55,000 prefabricated building Potato Bake in Idaho O tional Commission on the Causes next to the rubble. Last week the branch U.S. agriculture is still one of the and Prevention of Violence was able to was back in business, which is, iron- world's wonders—and its economics is report that the U.S. "has experienced al- ically, mainly that of serving students still a mess. Amid spectacular farm pro- most none of the chronic revolutionary at the university. So that they can stay duction and surpluses, some 15 million conspiracy and terrorism that plagues in school, some 1,600 students have Americans go underfed. Last week, in dozens of other nations." To he sure, taken $1,500,000 in loans from the bank. an attempt to drive the price of prize plots and skirmishes have footnoted Idaho potatoes up from about $2.50 a American history, and bomb blasts Questions in Technicolor hundredweight to $3.50, farmers burned sometimes provided the punctuation. But It sounded like a supermarket sweep- 5,000,000 lbs. of them in eastern Idaho they were usually isolated cases tied to stakes, the jackpot being $20,000 a year, in giant bonfires fueled by straw and ker- a specific labor dispute, racial confron- $260 a month toward the rent and use osene. If the price does not rise prompt- tation or criminal feud. For many dec- of a credit card. But California's Re- ly, say the farmers, they will destroy ades, the specter of the political bomb- publican Senator George Murphy did another 5,000,000 lbs. er has been as alien and anachronistic as the caricature of the bearded an- archist heaving a bomb the size and shape of a bowling ball. Last week that specter took on ominous substance as the nation was shaken by a series of bombings that highlighted a fearsome new brand of terrorism. Corrupt and Doomed. Taking their cue from right-wing racists who used to keep blacks down with TNT, whites and blacks of the lunatic left have be- gun using explosives to produce sound effects and shock waves in their cam- paign to unnerve a society that they re- gard as corrupt and doomed. Schools, department stores, office buildings, po- lice stations, military facilities, private homes—all have become targets. So far, miraculously, fatalities have been relatively few. One small slip, however —or one bloodthirsty bomber—could run up a death toll that could easily rival a week's total in Viet Nam. If NEW BANK BESIDE RUINS OF THE OLD the bomb threat continues. that is al- Growing grimmer in the confrontation. most certain to occur. LEONAllb 1:111-1LY PtIVMS hit the Michigan State University's years ago, when there were no more School of Police Administration, and than 20 bombings a year. New York au- someone threw a Molotov cocktail in thorities have accused 21 Black Pan- an Appleton, Wis., high school. thers of a conspiracy to blow up stores Like Tarzan. Two black militants were and railroad tracks and, during a hear- killed when their car was blasted to ing on those charges, five bombs were hits while they were riding on a high- set off around the city in one night, way south of Bel Air. Md. The dead three at the home of the judge. Last were Ralph Featherstone, 30, and Wil- July through November, a series of liam ("Che") Payne, 26. Featherstone, bombs exploded in government and cor- a former speech therapist, was well porate offices in the city; three left- known as a civil rights field organizer wing white radicals were arrested and and, more recently, as manager of the one is still sought. The San Francisco Afro-American bookstore, the Drum & Bay Area had an estimated 62 bomb- Spear. in Washington. Both were friends ings in the past year, Seattle 33. The of H. Rap Brown, whose trial on charg- es of arson and incitement to riot was scheduled to begin last week in Bel Air. Reconstruction of the car's speed- ometer indicates it was traveling about 55 miles an hour when it blew up. Police believed that Payne had been carrying a dynamite bomb on the floor between his legs and that it accidentally exploded. A preliminary FBI investiga- tion supported that theory. Friends of the dead men contended that white ex- tremists had either ambushed the pair or booby-trapped their car, perhaps try- ing to kill Brown. But police pointed out that Featherstone and Payne had MANHATTAN AFTER BLAST driven in from Washington without no- i Lice, cruised around Bel Air briefly and If seemed to be headed back. That us- f- Protest and Death „,, sassins could plot and move so quickly FEATHERSTONE defies belief. slight is the margin of error has How Although Featherstone had not been been demonstrated by the most recent known as an extremist, friends said that bomb episodes. Two weeks ago, three ex- he had grown markedly more bitter in plosions destroyed an elegant town house the past year. Police cited a crud on Greenwich Village's West 1 lth spelled typewritten statement found on Street. The basement had apparently *McTody: "To Amerika:* I'm playing been used as a factory for jerry-built heads-up murder. When the deal goes bombs, one of which seemed to have ac- down I'm gon be standing on your chest cidentally exploded. Last week police screaming like Tarzan. Dynamite is my found in the ruins the body of a young response to your justice." Brown, mean- radical leader, a headless female torso, while, was nowhere to be found. so mangled the remains of a third person The night after the Bel Air incident. that gender was still uncertain at week's a blast ripped a 30-ft. hole in the side end, and an arsenal of dynamite and of the Dorchester County courthouse homemade bombs (see box, page 10). in Cambridge, where Brown allegedly in- As demolition experts continued to cited the 1967 riot and where his trial probe the 11th Street wreckage for was originally scheduled. No one was more explosives—and perhaps more hurt in the blast, which occurred just GOLD bodies—bombs exploded at the Man- 100 miles from Bel Air. Police were seek- hattan headquarters of Mobil Oil, IBM ing a young white woman seen at the and General Telephone and Electronics. courthouse before the blast. An organization that styled itself "Rev- Haymarket Again. Last week's vi- olutionary Force 9” claimed respon- olence was only the latest in a fright- sibility. No one was hurt in the early- ening trend. Though the upswing in morning blasts, which were strikingly bombing is far from nationwide, it has similar to three blasts in several New occurred in widely separated parts of York office buildings last Nov. 11, but the country. New York and San Fran- during the following two days news of cisco, both areas of left-wing extremist the explosions triggered an outbreak of activity, have been particularly hard hit, more than 600 phony bomb scares in a but so have less electric cities, includ- jittery New York. Three Molotov cock- ing Seattle, Denver and Madison, Wis. tails exploded in a Manhattan high In New York, there were 93 bomb ex- school. There were scattered bomb plosions in 1969, police say, and an- threats elsewhere in the country, even other 19 bombs did not explode. Half at the Justice Department in Wash- the 93 are classed as political, a cat- ington.