ONLY nine months ago, the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence was able to report that the U.S. "has experienced almost none of the chronic revolutionary conspiracy and terrorism that plagues dozens of other nations." To be sure, plots and skirmishes have footnoted American history, and bomb blasts sometimes provided the punctuation. But they were usually isolated cases tied to a specific labor dispute, racial confrontation or criminal feud. For many decades, the specter of the political bomber has been as alien and anachronistic as the caricature of the bearded anarchist heaving a bomb the size and shape of a bowling ball. Last week that specter took on ominous substance as the nation was shaken by a series of bombings that highlighted a fearsome new brand of terrorism.
Corrupt and Doomed. Taking their cue from right-wing racists who used to keep blacks down with TNT, whites and blacks of the lunatic left have begun using explosives to produce sound effects and shock waves in their campaign to unnerve a society that they regard as corrupt and doomed. Schools, department stores, office buildings, police stations, military facilities, private homes—all have become targets. So far, miraculously, fatalities have been relatively few. One small slip, however —or one bloodthirsty bomber—could run up a death toll that could easily rival a week's total in Viet Nam. If the bomb threat continues, that is almost certain to occur.
How slight is the margin of error has been demonstrated by the most recent bomb episodes. Two weeks ago, three explosions destroyed an elegant town house on Greenwich Village's West 11th Street. The basement had apparently been used as a factory for jerry-built bombs, one of which seemed to have accidentally exploded. Last week police found in the ruins the body of a young radical leader, a headless female torso, the remains of a third person so mangled that gender was still uncertain at week's end, and an arsenal of dynamite and homemade bombs (see box, page 10).
As demolition experts continued to probe the 11th Street wreckage for more explosives—and perhaps more bodies—bombs exploded at the Manhattan headquarters of Mobil Oil, IBM and General Telephone and Electronics. An organization that styled itself "Revolutionary Force 9" claimed responsibility. No one was hurt in the early-morning blasts, which were strikingly similar to three blasts in several New York office buildings last Nov. 11, but during the following two days news of the explosions triggered an outbreak of more than 600 phony bomb scares in a jittery New York. Three Molotov cocktails exploded in a Manhattan high school. There were scattered bomb threats elsewhere in the country, even at the Justice Department in Washington. One of them obliged Secretary of State William Rogers to leave his office. Mysterious nighttime explosions rocked a Pittsburgh shopping mall and a Washington nightclub. Another blast hit the Michigan State University's School of Police Administration, and someone threw a Molotov cocktail in an Appleton, Wis., high school.