Book Chapter: WEATHERMAN PLOT OR NOT?

- Chapter Opening: Weatherman Plot or Not? -

I noticed a Seinfeld episode that unintentionally captures my take on Weatherman, as a pack of brats who should be ridiculed.  My Fair Use (satire) edited version on YouTube appears in this post.  The book references a page on this blog that includes the same clips.

This chapter deals with the question of wether this set of bombs were part of a Weatherman action.  My view of Weatherman should be apparent, I do not want any reader to get the wrong impression about my thoughts, or of what the Weathermen really were.

I did find it necessary to include, because almost from the start the FBI linked this series of bombs to the Weathermen.

If you are looking for why the Weathermen chose their club name, look anywhere else but here.  That reference has been copied and pasted so many times, that no article about them is written without it (some writers actually rearranged the words a little, bully for them).  Except this one.

O

ne item that leans away from a Weatherman plot is where the bombs were planted. Nine bombs and not a one found in a bathroom!  Weatherman, Weathermen, Weatherpersons, Weatherpeople, Weather Underground,[1] no matter what their name of the month was, they had a thing for bathrooms.
Before I continue, if you are looking for yet another repeat of where Weatherman took their name, you will not find it here.  Every single story on this Soviet sponsored terrorist organization tells the tale of the minstrel and the song where these disaffected suburban youths got their club name.  What I have prepared is closer to reality, and it comes from “The Jacket” episode of Seinfeld.  A fair-use clip can be viewed here:
 http://timebomberbook.blogspot.com/p/weatherman-worlds-most-prolific.html and the relevant dialogue goes like this:

Alton Benes: “I don’t need anybody to tell me it’s gonna rain. All I gotta do is stick my head out da winda.”

Alton Benes: “All right, you boys get yourselves together. We’ll head out to the restaurant. I’ll leave a note for Elaine. I’m goin’ to da batroom.”

They blew up a bathroom in the Pentagon, they hit a couple bathrooms in the State Department, they got one in the US Capitol, and the list goes on. 

However, there were quite a few similarities.  The mention by the bomb-note writer of a “nearly silent” timing mechanism is interesting.  Electric clocks of the day had a faint hum, even the cordless variety hummed.  Electric watches had a hum too, but it was more faint, since a smaller motor equals less noise. 

If you want to hide a bomb well, you want the thing to be as quiet as possible, especially if you plan on taking a building “hostage” for months on end until your demands are met. In these bombs, there was no remote activation. Radio remote detonation did not come into vogue for a few more years,[2] and it is questionable if that technique would work with a bomb intentionally buried under tons of reinforced concrete. 

[1] They never used the name “Weathergirls,” but Paul Schaffer of The Late Show with David Letterman produced a singing group by that name a few years later.
[2] http://bit.ly/yHIqoe Cleveland Magazine, “The Bombing Business,” Edward P. Whelan, April, 1977.  Accessed June 28, 2013

Note: The footnotes in the book begin in chapter 1 and continue sequentially throughout.  They do not reset by chapter.