David Gilbert took an axe, gave US war effort forty wacks, SDS, WUO, BLA…

If you watched the 2003 documentary about the 1960s radical antiwar anti-imperialist anti- racist activists turned 1970s nonviolent bombers The Weather Underground, you’re going to be thrilled to know David Gilbert, lone Weatherman behind bars yet irrepressible idealist, finally WROTE A BOOK!
 
I’ll begin with insight prompted by Gilbert’s recollections. In the 1970s, bombings were inseparable from bomb scares, and I remember thinking, who’d plant a bomb but divulge it beforehand with an anonymous phone call? Was it a change of heart, a betrayal, an informer? Eventually phoning in bomb scares was itself made illegal. That seemed imprudent. It turns out the expression “bomb scare” was a misrepresentation. The call wasn’t made to scare anyone, but to evacuate the building. If a bomb failed to detonate, as sometimes happened, the authorities could characterize the then-false warning as a “scare”. It didn’t make sense, until the behind the scenes accounts come to light from voices such as Bill Ayres and now Gilbert. The WUO bombings of government facilities and landmarks associated with America’s warmaking apparatus were not intended to kill people, and they didn’t, because the bombers always gave forewarning of when the timer was set to go off. (TO BE CONTINUED..)