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