Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence

Abstract

Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence Bryan Burrough Penguin Press, 2015Bryan Burrough's book is especially pertinent now, as public officials and terrorism experts warn that the U.S. faces the "highest threat level" at any time in U.S. history. According to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the "radicalization" of young people via the Internet, and their recruitment into Islamic terrorist groups, constitutes a major security concern. The post-9/11 realities of an unsecured border coupled with the inability to track foreign nationals once they enter the U.S. seem to be noticed by some officials, but little is being done to rectify these problems. Several key recommendations from the 9/11 Commission, now more than ten years old, remain unimplemented to this day.The present focus is largely on foreign terrorists who get into the country and unleash deadly violence on Americans, such as the 19 Middle Easterners who carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and the Chechen-born brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose bombs at the Boston Marathon killed three people and injured another 264 on April 15, 2013. But what about the threat from American citizens, either immigrants who are resident aliens or naturalized citizens, or perhaps the second generation of naturalized citizens, who are U.S.-born, and are committed to revolutionary causes, seek to kill en masse U.S. citizens, and plot violent acts of terrorism?As Burrough shows, the threat of domestic terrorism is nothing new. The U.S. has experienced waves of terrorist acts in the past from bomb-wielding revolutionaries, anarchists, black militants, and sordid radical ideologues. Burrough chronicles a not-too-distant decade of violent mayhem in Days of Rage.The author describes a long-forgotten period that in some ways parallels the present-day concerns over terrorism and public safety that American citizens and officials must now confront. The big difference is that many of those who plotted and carried out numerous terrorist bombings two generations ago escaped prosecution, or received minimal prison sentences, and reemerged over the years to become teachers and professors who now lead relatively successful lives. In some cases these former underground fugitives remain unapologetic about their unlawful militant past, but have assimilated anonymously back into society.Burrough tells the sordid tale of this bygone era in a lively, engagingly descriptive account in the context of the times, but also with an eye on contemporary developments. Early in his book, the author revisits one terrorist plot that went fatally awry.Shortly before noon on Friday, March 6, 1970, an explosion destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse in New York City. After sorting through the smoldering debris, rescue workers discovered the partial remains of three bodies, which included a severed head. Initially the explosion seemed to be a telltale sign of a fiery blast from a gas leak, but investigators soon discovered the source of the explosion-the basement contained enough bomb-making materials to level the entire block. Five members of the Weather Underground, a violent faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), had planned to use the dynamite packed, nail-filled pipe bombs later that evening at an officers' dance at the Ft. Dix Army base in New Jersey. One, however, detonated prematurely, killing three members of Weather Underground's New York cell. The explosion thus claimed the lives of militant revolutionaries who had declared war on the U.S.The 1970s were marked by a widespread campaign of domestic terrorist bombings. During an eighteen-month period in 1971 and 1972 there were 2,500 bombings in the U.S., nearly five a day. Often the targets were federal installations, military bases, judges, government buildings, and various national landmarks including the Pentagon and U. …