So we’re supposed to breathe easier now that Bill Ayers says he wouldn’t have assassinated a secretary of defense.
The former Weather Underground leader gave this answer during an NBC interview in which he was flogging yet another memoir. As usual, it was attached to a self-serving whitewash in which he claimed Weathermen hurt only property, not human life.
Let’s start with a fact: When you play with bombs, you are putting human life in peril.
The Weathermen lost three of their own members when a bomb they intended to explode at a Fort Dix dance for officers and their dates blew up on themselves.
Or ask John Murtagh.
Three weeks before that Greenwich Village blast, the Weathermen set off gasoline bombs at his Manhattan home. His dad was targeted because he was the judge presiding over the trial of Black Panthers accused of plotting to blow up city landmarks. On the sidewalk out front was a message: “Free the Panther 21; the Viet Cong have won; kill the pigs.”
We will not repeat the litany of Weathermen bombings. But we will say this: By Ayers’ admission, he is worse than an assassin. An assassin at least narrows the target to someone with direct responsibility.
By contrast, the bombs the Weathermen planted were indiscriminate, meaning they could kill anyone who happened by.
Put it this way: It doesn’t take a Weatherman to know that if you plant bombs outside a family home in a residential neighborhood, there’s no telling who might get killed.