The Spiral
Oddly, it was the most aggressive of the Weatherman leaders, Terry Robbins, whose New York collective was the last to mobilize. Obliged to serve a six-week jail sentence following a demonstration, Robbins didn’t arrive in Manhattan until late January, when actions proposed by the California and Midwestern groupings were well into the planning stages. Robbins, however, was determined that if his debut came last, it would be the splashiest. ...
The following day, after five of them had moved in, Robbins chaired a meeting around the kitchen table.* Everyone agreed that the weekend actions had been a failure. Firebombings would no longer cut it; every ROTC building in America, it seemed, had been the target of Molotov cocktails. The answer, Robbins announced, was dynamite. Dynamite was actually safer, he insisted. It exploded only with the help of a triggering device, typically a blasting cap. They could buy it almost anywhere in New England. He had learned how to safely make a dynamite bomb, Robbins said. It was the only way to create an action large enough to get the government’s attention. By that point, Robbins’s authority was unquestioned. No one raised any objections.
That night in bed Robbins and Wilkerson had a long talk. In private, both admitted their fears. Robbins was secretly intimidated by the technical difficulties of building a bomb. ...
What worried Wilkerson most about their talk was Robbins’s continuing fixation on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and its vision of young heroes going out “in a blaze of glory.” If they failed, he swore, if they couldn’t ignite a revolution, at least they would be symbols. Robbins was prepared to die for the cause. Wilkerson wasn’t. Neither, she realized, were many of the others she knew in Weatherman. Not for the first time, she felt herself being carried along in a rushing river, powerless to stop. ...
By Tuesday Robbins had decided on their target: the dance at Fort Dix. Dozens of army officers would be there with their sweethearts. ...
If Oughton was uncomfortable with the plan—an attack that, if successful, amounted to mass murder—she showed no sign. Neither did anyone else at the table. In fact, according to Cathy Wilkerson, there was no talk whatsoever about the decision to actually kill people. Years later she admitted that she had viewed those they planned to kill only as an “abstraction.”
There was, however, at least one naysayer. He will be called James. He was one of the Columbia alumni; he had been JJ’s roommate at one point. James was a member of the collective who did not live in the townhouse. According to a longtime friend, “the target had been bothering him for days. Finally, right at the end, he went nuts. This was the night before. He just went crazy, crying and screaming, ‘What are we doing? What are we doing?’ And you know what Teddy Gold told him? [He said,] ‘James, you have been my best friend for ten years. But you gotta calm down. I wouldn’t want to have to kill you.’ And he was serious.” ...
Someone asked if it would contain a safety switch, a way to test the bomb short of detonation. Robbins hadn’t a clue. “Terry had been told to do it a certain way, and he was too insecure in his knowledge to debate it,” Wilkerson remembered. “He cut off the discussion. He was the leader and he would take responsibility for how it was to be done. . . . No one else spoke up.” ...
Everything was happening so fast. To members of the collective, what mattered most was striking back, and striking back now. No one took much time to ponder repercussions.
(Then the bombs went off early -- in Wilkerson's father's house, which she'd 'borrowed' for the Weathermen.)
