(5 of 6)
After the Weatherpeople went underground in February to escape police surveillance, they adopted a pyramidal organization. At the top was the Weather Bureau, a leadership council that included Dohrn, Jeff Jones and Bill Ayers, the group's theoretician and son of the chairman of Chicago's Commonwealth Edison Co. Through members acting as couriers, the leaders kept in touch with a nationwide network of four-or five-member cells which were constantly on the run. Known as "foco," the Spanish word for "focus" or "center," they each operated independently, recruiting new members and carrying out bombings and other terrorist acts that had been cleared in advance by the Weather Bureau. Says Grathwohl: "We were all paranoid as hell. We never parked cars closer than two blocks from where we were staying. We never left or came back in groups. If we had the slightest idea that we were being followed, we spent hours losing the tail by riding buses endlessly or dodging through big stores." For defense in case the police raided the cell, Grathwohl's foco was armed with two .38 revolvers, a .45 automatic pistol and a short-barreled shotgun.
Life underground for the 200 members was a grubby odyssey of communal apartments, petty theft and clandestine meetings. Supported by as many as 4,000 sympathizers, the hard-core members lived in "safe houses" that were typically located in rundown working-class neighborhoods or near campuses. In addition, several havens were provided in middle-class neighborhoods by wealthy sympathizers.
An average day began at about 10 a.m. Says Grathwohl: "We'd get up and start with physical exercise—push-ups, situps, that sort of thing. If there was anything to eat—and often we'd go for days with very little—we'd have a quick meal. The day's activities would vary. The women frequently were sent out to steal. If we were near a university, they would go into women's dorms and steal purses. If they managed to get an ID and a checkbook, they'd go out as fast as possible to kite the checks." Another technique was to comb birth records in city halls to find a child who had been born at about the same time as a cell member but who had died in infancy. The name and birth date would then be used in applying for a driver's license or for identification.
Planning a bombing required a "political struggle" session, usually at night, in which members debated tactics. Often the sessions evolved into heated and bitter "criticism-self-criticism" marathons, a Maoist technique to solidify political beliefs and reaffirm revolutionary commitments. Grathwohl was once badgered by other cell members for 16 straight hours for not showing enough interest in becoming a leader of the cell. Another time, cell members pressured a young mother to give away her four-year-old daughter because they thought that she interfered with her work. Was the woman into maternity or was she into revolution? Recalls Grathwohl: "She was weeping, the child was crying. But the next day she gave her up."