CHICAGO, Ill.—An underground “Declaration of War” purportedly issued by the Weathermen warns that the revolutionary group will “attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice” within the next two weeks.
The announcement came in a three-page typed statement said to be a transcript of a tape recording by Bernadine Dohrn, a leader of the Weathermen faction of SDS.
The statement arrived by mail at the New York Times bureau here and was said by radical sources to be genuine.
The statement said the third person killed in the explosion in a Greenwich Village town house last March was Terry Robbins, a Weatherman who was a radical leader at Kent State University in Ohio in 1968.
Three bodies were recovered from the ruins of the town house on East 11th street, believed to have been destroyed when bombs being assembled by a Weatherman group went off. Two were identified as Diana Oughton and Ted Gold, both Weathermen.
Although rumors have circulated for some months in radical circles that the third body was that of Terry Robbins, the remains were too mangled to permit identification.
“There are several hundred members of the Weatherman underground and some face more years in jail than the 50,000 deserters and draft dodgers now in Canada. Already many of them are coming back to join us in the underground or to return to the man’s army and tear it up from the inside along with those who never left.”
The statement, described as “A Declaration of a State of War” was said to be “the first communication from the Weatherman underground.”
Members of the revolutionary organization went “underground” early this year, following a conference in Flint, Mich. in late December. They have virtually disappeared from sight, severing their contacts with many other radical groups. Weathermen are reputed to be operating in small groups in several cities and are believed by many to be preparing for terrorist activity.
The statement says: “The 12 Weathermen who were indicted for leading last October’s riots in Chicago have never left the country. Terry is dead, Linda (Evans) was captured by a pig informer, but the rest of us move freely in and out of every city and youth scene in this country.
The statement added that “Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks. If you want to find us, this is where we are. In every tribe, commune, dormitory, farmhouse, barracks and town-house where kids are making love, smoking dope and loading guns—fugitives from Amerikan justice are free to go.”
“The hundreds and thousands of young people who demonstrated in the ’60s against the war and for civil rights grew to hundreds of thousands in the past few weeks actively fighting Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the attempted genocide against Black people.
“The insanity of Amerikan ‘justice’ has added to its list of atrocities six blacks killed in Augusta, two in Jackson and four white Kent State students making thousands more into revolutionaries,” the statement said, adding: “We will never live peaceably under this system.
“For Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins, and for all the revolutionaries who are still on the move here, there has been no question for a long time now, we will never go back,” the statement said, adding:
“Within the next 14 days we will attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice. This is the way we celebrate the example of Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown and all Black revolutionaries who first inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people.”