Startling story that happened within our lifetime. His new book tomight we bombed the u. S. Capitol the explosive story of m19, americas first female terrorist Group Introduces us to home grown terrorist Organization Called m19. The only American Terrorist Group organized and led by women. Their operations which culminated in the shocking bombing of the capital in november of 1983 were documented in many sources including those in the custody of the National Archives. In a recent interview William Rosenau recalled days of going through federal Court Records, everything from transcripts to affidavits from fbi agents to grand jury testimony to evidence from the crime scene. Those trial records were invaluable to getting inside this group. Let us hear from the author himself, littleknown Domestic Terrorist Group in their campaign of violence. William rosenau is a senior policy historian at cna center for strategic studies and expert on the United States and International Military advisory roles and missions, International Police training, terrorist innovation and Political Warfare and his articles appear regularly in media and his books include acknowledging limits, Police Advisors in counterinsurgency in afghanistan, International Security assistance to south vietnam, insurgency, subversion is public order, before joining cna as political scientist at rand corporation, senior policy advisor in the office of counterterrorism at the department of state, the Security Studies program at Georgetown University at harvard, with the part of history and Research Coordinator for the national and Security Program at the john f. Kennedy school of government, please welcome William Rosenau. [applause] thank you very much for that kind introduction and thank you all for coming out today. I want to start off by giving a shout out to the National Archives and records administration. As archivist of the United States pointed out, the Court Records among other things that i had access to, thanks to professional men and women of the National Archives branches in boston, philadelphia and new york, i was able to delve deeply into this group. One of the fascinating things that i uncover many fascinating things, how it these Court Records are for understanding terrorism and Political Violence with prosecutions. Ive never gotten a solid answer to that but terrorism researchers tended to ignore the Court Records, far beyond transcripts. The items entered into evidence. With bomb making plans and incredible stuff. A tremendous honor to be at the National Archives, the professional backbone of this organization, most of you had a chance to read my book yet having just come out last week. I will read a few brief passages to set the stage and hopefully prompt your questions during the second half, president Ronald Reagan announced it was morning in america, declared the American Dream wasnt over, far from it but to achieve the dream the United States needed to lower taxes, shrink the size of government and flex military muscles abroad. Some call the program the reagan revolution. A band of welleducated extremists were working for a different revolution. They spend their entire adult lives in political struggles protesting against the vietnam war, fighting for American Liberation is opposing what they call us imperialism and military aggression, political domination and economic exploitation. Many were closed or involved in the violent far left seen in the late 196070s. They were part of the generation of 1968. The cohort embrace drugs, sex and revolutionary politics with equal enthusiasm. The journalist jeffrey tube and write in 1970s, they too cold in a substantial part of the american counterculture. That is almost unimaginable today but bomb became a common mode of political expression and the most notorious Group Operating on the far left fringes of the american Political Landscape was the Weather Underground, responsible for dozens of bombings of government buildings and targets during the 1970s. By the late 1970s it was defunct. The leadership exhausted from a decade on the run surfaced on the underground and those 1to1, the charges surrendered to be authorities. I was at columbia, as an undergraduate in 1970s. Of the time these weather people many of whom had been living on the Upper West Side started to surface and it was a huge news story. It got me fascinated to think i was standing in line with them, passing them in the street, where they hiding in plain sight and they probably were that sparked the interest in terrorism and Political Violence. Many other the mirror radicals called quit and return to graduate school, started careers, reentered ordinary American Life but pockets of militancy remained. In the bay area of california, chicago, austin, texas, and elsewhere, a revolutionary sensibility smoldered and sparked as one militant recalled. The Weather Underground was gone but these militants and a few others decided to continue the struggle and to do so by any means necessary. Is in a veteran radical recalled, quote, we lived in a country that loved violence, we had to meet it on its own terms. In 1978 militants created a new organization to wage a war against imperialism, racism and fascism. The main nineteenth communist organization derived from the birthday of ideological heroes, may 19th was unique, unlike any other American Terrorist Group before or since, may 19th was created and led by women many of whom were selfdescribed lesbians. I will talk about that later on. Women hit targets, did the planning and women made and planted the bombs. They created a new sisterhood of the bomb and the gun. They were intellectuals but also warriors with the purported silence of marxism, and leninism serving as their infallible guide. They believed women and men could bend the arc of history and usher in a world free of injustice and oppression. Their vision of what this would look like was a little hazy but one thing was certain, creating it would require nothing less than violent revolution. This vagueness about ultimate objectives is typical among terrorists. As Bruce Hoffman argues, groups as varied as al qaeda live in the future they are chasing but they only have a vague conception of what exactly that future might entail. May nineteenth had much in common with other ideological extremists in american history. The author katie martin in her book true believer, stalins last american spy concludes the soviet agent noel fields, quote, his commitment and submission to his cause was total and ultimately as destructive as those of todays isis recruits. Ideologies whether communist, fascist, nationalist, white supremacist, jihadist, can offer the promise of what martin calls a final correction all personal, social and political injustices. For the captured minds of may 19th, their variant of marxism, leninism was a pathway to total liberation. In 1979 just after the founding of may 19th, the great punk Newwave Group talking heads released a song called life during wartime, you might call it one of their bigger hits totally inspired by account terrorist groups such as the Red Army Faction. David burns, a driving, hallucinatory, firstperson prodigal of a hunted unnamed figure moving through an unspecified underground realm. I will read some of the x. Loaded with weapons, packed up and ready to go, gravesites on the highway, a place nobody knows, the sound of gunfire in the distance, getting used to it now, lived in a ground stone, lived in a ghetto, lived all over this town. This aint no party, aint no disco, aint no fooling around, no time for dancing or loveydovey, i aint got time for that now. May nineteenth, lived the bands lyrics and in real time so what brought me to this story in the first place . There are 3 or 4 reasons. First is the sheer audacity of their actions. I dont want to say nihilist qualities but the extremely violent and in some cases bizarre activities of the group so what about this . During the period 19791981, may 19th was very involved with other radicals most notably veterans of the plaque formation army, puerto rican separatist group and may nineteenth women participated in armored car robberies and Bank Robberies that netted 1 billion, 3 billion in todays dollars so some real money. May nineteenth was part of one of the most infamous armed robberies in american history. Im not overstating that. The notorious october 20th, 1981, brinks robbery that left two Police Officers dead and one killed as well. One of those bizarre turns, the one who was shot with an m16, his arm was nearly severed by the rounds continued to work for brinks and in 20 years and one month later he was in Lower Manhattan supervising the delivery or collection of 9 million in currency from wells fargo and he was in the basement of one of the twins hours and Police Ordered him out, he called his dispatcher and said i am told to get out and that is the last anyone ever heard of him. Not perhaps meaningful in any great sense but in interesting or sad irony. Two of the biggest prison breakouts, politically oriented prison breakouts of the twentieth century. Their first was in 1979. A man named willie moore alice, a bomb maker, had been working in his workshop, his bomb making workshop in queens doing what he loved most which is making bombs and he was making pipe bomb, it went off in his face, blue off half his face and nine of his fingers. Somebody called the police of course. They discovered something, i dont know what to call it other than a case of extreme revolutionary dedication or fanaticism. Apparently found blood on one of the knobs on the gas stove and the police concluded that he had dragged himself after being wounded to the stove and turn on the gas hoping to fill the apartment, to light a cigarette, was extremely formidable and militants, terrorist, allowing his digits to be sewn back on, he managed in the prison hospital, waiting for a pair of artificial hands. He just got tired of waiting. A plot was hatched involving his lawyer, and 18 people involved to spring him. This man, Willie Mireles got some bolt cutters smuggled in by his lawyer under the skirt. He was able to use his stumps to snip the screen, the fairly light screen, the present award room and able to lower himself out building, several stories with improvised rope made of ace bandage is. The bandage broke, he fell a story, hit the air conditioner and bounced off, got scooped up somehow, made his way to mexico with the help of may 19th and others, horribly disfigured. Tipped off the mexican authorities at one point, he went to prison for six years, got sprung, extradited back to the United States. He went to cuba where he lives to this day as a guest of the cuban government. The second big prison brink involved a woman named joann who is better known as srs a core, a member of the black Liberation Army, long forgotten terrorist group worthy of its own, made up of a faction of the black panther party, assassinated policeman, about 15 policeman. And the us attorney, described her as els mother hen. She was involved in a shootout on the jersey turnpike in 1973, she or her cohorts shot a state trooper with his own revolver at point blank range. She was convicted in 1973. By 1979 and was a plan to break her out. So again, may nineteenth, did a lot of the logistics, renting safehouses, securing weapons, getting fake id and expert printers and smuggled a gun into this prison, a more innocent time when there were no metal detectors. They basically took some guards hostages. May nineteenth, a car switch, they spirited her out, she wound up in pittsburgh. They got her to the bahamas and in 1984 she wound up in cuba being granted political asylum by the castro regime. She is still wanted by the fbi and there is a 2 million reward on her head from the federal government and various new jersey authorities. That is one piece of may 19th, the second piece of their Campaign Began in 1983. We heard from the archivists in the title of my book suggests what happened november 7th, 1983, when they bombed the us capital outside of the majority leaders office. They bombed the field office and navy yard twice, other targets, the israeli aircraft Industry Association in new york, and the Patrolmens Benevolent Association of new york and this is to protest the us invasion of grenada, apartheid in south africa, occupation of the west bank in gaza and the us backing for the contras and the regime in el salvador. That was the first thing that drew me to this group, a range of violent and bizarre and audacious terrorist activities and the second thing that drew me were personal stories of the participants, the women themselves, there were a couple men in the inner circle and im going to mention three that i found that were particularly compelling. Marilyn buck was the daughter of a veterinarian turned priest in austin, texas where she was brought up, went to Saint Stephens private Episcopal School and was submitted to brown but decided to go to berkeley and came back to the university of texas. Wound up in a circus route to the west coast. The only weight member of the black Liberation Army and she was a quartermaster buying guns, a nice white episcopal gal from texas less likely to raise suspicion and was able to buy weapons in multiple states, got picked up in 1973 from buying 1000 rounds of ammunition using fake id. To mens federal prison in west virginia. Again, this is simpler and more innocent time, federal prisoners were allowed that, she got a furlough to visit her parents who moved to galveston, came back and in 1977 got a second furlough to visit her lawyer in new york, bolt cutters were smuggled into help more outs escape. She gets a 6day furlough, never comes back. She was not captured until 1985. A second person, Susan Rosenberg, a graduate of a private school attended barnard, a fascinating character in her own right. Memoirs came out a few the things that we terrorism researchers tend to be interested in. Interestingly, pardoned in 2001 and the last day of president clintons administration, the same day he pardoned a notorious fugitive financier, mark rich, got a pardon and due in part, one of the staunchest advocates who has been in the news many times, alan dershowitz, also jerry nadler. One of the strange coincidences, fascinating to go through these documents and the letters written on her behalf, white House Counsel and so on. The third person who peaked my inference was the most fascinating of all was judy clark. A red diaper baby, the communist party, and the warm embrace of the party which had social tons of social activities, she would go to these hootenannys in connecticut. She loved to party. Amazingly she spent the first few years of her life in moscow where her father was employed as the daily worker, the communist partys daily newspaper. The parents came back from moscow having looked into the yelloweyed pockmarked face of stalinism and decided they were done with party. Judy kept the faith and judy was extremely bitter toward her parents for having left the party. Her father who went on, remained a man of the left, democratic socialist. When judy was kicked out of the university of chicago 19681969, occupying and administration building, the literary critic irving how, in saul bella was a major presence in chicago to intervene with edward leavy at the university of chicago and future attorney general so below talks to rescind this, leavy said no, she is a bad one. 35 years in prison, sentenced to three consecutive, 25 yearlife sentences, not eligible for parole. That was until 2016 when andrew cuomo got an hour with her and decided to commute her sentence, and first time she was up she didnt get it. So after 37 years judy is a free woman. Just to wrap things up here i want to talk about this story, many other things. The fact that they saw as one member of the group, their lesbianism may be a better antiimperialist and recognized at an early age had a different Sexual Orientation and this created within her a feeling of kinship with other minorities and persecuted groups and the most important reason ultimately, a desire to excavate our own history, to recover our own past. They are quick to forget or never remember, the violence political extremism, 400 years as opposed to the american experience. How many of us have a different font to the terrorist attack, on april 19th, 1995, how often is that commemorated. By a pair of white supremacist killed 168 people including children, 680 more. The Younger Generation of historians helping us to understand, profoundly shaped, i will mention two of these authors who have done extending work. The first is beverly gage, a magnificent book ten years ago or eight years ago called the day wall street exposure, the story of america and its first age of terror, september of 1920 on the morgan Bank Building in Lower Manhattan and the second scholar i mentioned, her book is absolutely critical, on the white supremacist friend, kathleen blue at the university of chicago, the white power movement, historians have come around, putting my modest tail in the realms occupied by beverly. To read it, i certainly enjoyed that. I will bring my formal remarks to a close and open the floor for questions or comments. [applause] thank you for the talk. Just a couple things you could elaborate on as far as patterns. You talked about bombing prior to that, around different circumstances. What is unique is majoritywise, related to Sexual Orientation, if someone says im recruiting in berkeley, there are psychological things with these characters, psychiatric issues, abusive issues, is there a kingpin, going around specifically looking for here is my newspaper, looking for lesbians that are angry or Something Like that you could describe. With may 19th, the important thing to recognize as a terrorism scholar, mark bateman talks about many jihadist terrorists being a group of guys, a group of friends, it was a pretty important insight and industry with may 19th, these are people who have known each other for 10 or 15 years, these, there was nobody who was brought into the inner circle. I should mention may 19th had front groups, 700 people involved, things like john brown anticlan committee which was an early version of antifa. They had other front groups involved in fundraising for african independence movements and so on but people at the core knew each other. They were one of the guys in the group. A medical doctor named alan bergman had been involved in the Weather Underground. He knew judy clark and Laura Whitehorn from stf days. Everybody knew everybody else. That was the extent that there was recruiting going on among people who were known and trusted with ties of affectional kinship if that answers your question. I must have been out of touch. Did the bomb go off in the us capital, where was it . It went off on the second floor. It went off about 11 30 at night. The senate was not in session but it could have been. Interestingly it created 1 million worth of damage, a huge crater in the wall. This is one of the interesting ironies, interesting only to historians but it managed to shred the portrait of john c calhoun, the notorious theoretician of slavery and the confederacy who the great historian Richard Hofstadter referred to as the karl marx of a master class. It was an added dividend from this bombing, the group was able to unintentionally shred this portrait of an arch white supremacist. The college at yale was renamed the couple years ago. It definitely went off. It was a sophisticated device, it was powerful. At first when they issued a communique using the name of the armed resistance unit, they always had a communique after one of their actions and used a variety of different names. The guerrilla resistance, Armed Revolutionary unit and that was for two reasons, to throw off the authorities to make them think there were multiple groups but also to sort of as a way to suggest there is a Bigger Movement out there to the general public. It was only through the meticulous work of the fbi lab in quantico that they were able to figure out, picked up the scraps from all these bombs and eventually figured out there was a signature. I had to learn more than i ever want to know about explosives in writing this book, but bombmakers have signatures, the fbi was able to figure out basically one person had made all these multiple bombs so that was a key break in the case but it certainly went off. After trying for roughly a year and a half to reach the surviving members, and also people who were above ground, front groups, i was ultimately unsuccessful. I did has some correspondence with judy clark, but as she was up for parole she said i really cant say anything, which i understand. I tried the old reporters trick of this is a chance for you to tell your side of the story and to get your message out, you know, posterity, et cetera, et cetera. That went nowhere. The only other response i got was from the second mail, Timothy Blunk who was part of the inner circle, and he sent me this email. It said having read your biography, what in the world makes you think i would ever speak with you . Sincerely, Timothy Blunk. [laughing] i admired that. I dont think they wouldve had much to share with me and i think thats variety of reasons. I think they have given interviews, but always to very sympathetic academics and journalists and fellow activists. So im a pretty convinced that they saw me, you know, rand, cna, defense department, state farm, saw me as one of the bad guys. I tried to be fair in this book. I worked really, really hard. I dont have sympathy for m19 but i guess that empathy, if thats the right term. I tried hard to be fair and balanced and to weigh the evidence and to test different hypotheses. Pics i think i was fair. What wouldve happened, i was giving a talk in new york last week, and sort of davos style thing, and my interlocutors, Professor John jay, he asked me a great question. He said, well, if you could sit down with them and have a drink what do you think he would talk about . Good question. If they had agreed to talk to me i had the suspicion it would be a lot of the same stuff, the same kind of political discourse. Im very familiar with that. All of the imprisoned women, lots of writing, they were poets, artists. They wrote political tracks, gave interviews. I didnt really have any expectation that they would reveal anything of real value. I suppose if i were a professional writer of nonfiction i might have been able to create the scene where we were in the cafe and somebody smoking a cigarette and breaks out in a sweater whatever, and have those kinds of nice details. But ultimately in terms of interviews, my most valuable source, and again, its onesided, but where these fbi special agents who had worked in these cases. And yes, they had very strong opinions, but probably not as true nowadays, more digital, but when fbi special agents for nypd detectives, who i also interviewed, would leave their jobs and retire, but these guys were long retired, they would bring stuff with them. So they are photographs of the bomb sites. They had just incredible stuff to share with me. So that was also extremely valuable. But but a longwinded way of sag yeah, i didnt talk to them. I think, to the second part of your question, i think they are in touch with each other because some of the people i used some of the people who served, not proxies but entrees to the group, those people kind of suggested that the surviving members had sort of discussed this and then absolutely no interest in participating. Is there another question . But become since i have a few moments, let me ask a question of myself, and this is something that someone asked me during another talk, and the question was, what was the one question that you unable to answer during the writing of this book. Its a great one if you are ever interviewing a writer. And one of the questions was, how far were they willing to go ultimately in the use of violence . Now, during the brinks robbery they didnt pull triggers but they were getaway car drivers and deeply involved as participants in that deadly failed tank robbery. And in their communique after the capital bombing on november 7, 1983, they said explicitly well, tonight we chose not to kill any senators. We decided to attack an institution of imperialism, but im paraphrasing here dont think that you are safe. Okay . Ultimately didnt go on to conduct lethal bombings, but my question to myself was, how far could they have gone farther . You start looking into their reading, and elections, they are constantly writing, writing tracks and screeds, which is probably pretty bad terrorist tradecraft, but they put a lot down on paper, like 20 page, single spaced documents, which made for difficult reading sometimes. But toward the end they i came across a couple of documents where they talked about how the time was right for selective assassination of prosecutors, of policemen, of politicians, of henry kissinger. And you can say, well, these people are all in a hothouse environment, you know, churning out these papers, and this is just, this is all rubbish. But the thing that is interesting, the sort of counter narrative to that is when Susan Rosenberg and Timothy Blunk were captured, and when alan berkman, doctor berkman, and betty ann duke, another member who also is still at large, she jumped bail in 1985 and the fbi still wants her. She is on the fbis website. They were wearing disguises. They had ninemillimeter pistols fully loaded, chamber in round, and they had storehouses that were uncovered during, after the arrest they were sort of storage lockers and things like that. So what did they have in these lockers . Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of tnt, which was in pretty bad shape, ive learned more about hercules dynamite than i ever expected. Nitroglycerin was weeping out and extremely dangerous, but thousands of rounds of ammunition, detonation cord, blasting caps and dozens of small arms, fully automatic uzis, lots of ninemillimeter pistols, as i said thousands of rounds of ammunition, and thousands of blank Social Security cards, drivers licenses, dea cards, fbi cards. So you have to ask, well, why do they have all this stuff . This isnt just a couple of sticks of dynamite and cords. These are major arsenal, to the point where the dynamite that was found in cherry hill, new jersey, just across the river from philadelphia, the bomb squad, philadelphia bomb squad came in to remove it and they started to load all this all tp into one truck, when one of the bomb technicians said, you might not want to do that because if this thing goes off it could drop a bridge going across the franklin bridge. But i would still i was left with a questionable to me of how far would they have gone . They only stopped when they were caught. Nobody gave up. Nobody defected. Nobody surrendered. Everybody was always well armed. I dont know. I dont think i could i dont think that question could be answered except by the participants, and they are not talking. I think we have another question here. Yes, sir. Did you find any links or similarities to european terrorist groups that pretty much operate during the same time . You mentioned in italy, for example,. Absolutely. You are spot on with that. They were almost exact temporaries with the Red Army Faction, and certainly with the others, and when the fascinating little sort of excursions i took, i wasnt able to develop it as much as i wouldve liked, is apparently members of the Red Army Faction actually visited the United States and met members of m19. They had a couple of sessions together. This is according to fbi documents. I know independent medications but a couple of different document talk about this. Its interesting, Red Army Faction which definitely was more lethal certainly in the 1980s, but also a tiny band of people who were alienated from even the extreme left of german politics. I mean, people on the far left did want anything to with these crazes and it was the same deal with the may 19. 19th. May 19 in the intro documents kind of bitching and moaning periodically about how the leftwing groups is now sporting event and not getting behind it and what about our prisoners. So the thing i found sort of amusing is the Red Army Faction people came over and they apparently had a couple of sessions, and the r. A. F. Giveaway very unimpressed with may 19 command, that their understanding of theory and practice was certainly subpar by the high standards that the r. A. F. Set. So i think in less the art of the questions, unless there are other questions will bring this to a close. I want to thank you all for coming out. I want to thank the National Archives and the archivist for this great opportunity and this great privilege of speaking to you about my book. Im going to be signing copies outside afterwards upstairs one floor, and i hope you find it a good read. So thank you very much. [applause] you are watching a special edition of booktv airing now during the week while members of congress are in their districts to the pandemic. Tonight we look at foreign affairs. Enjoy booktv now and over the weekend on cspan2. The president just released in paperback from Public Affairs presents biographies of every president organized by the ranking in a much cited president ial historian survey. Visit our website and order your copy today wherever books are sold. Karen armstrong argued religion tax has been misused by fundamentalists through narrow in a literal readings. Its the subject of her book the lost art of scripture. [applause] thank you very much and welcome. Good evening. I am the literary director for the library, and its a joy to welcome you here this evening. How many of you are at the library for the first time tonight . Well, double welcome to you. How many of you attended the library of