WILLIAM ARYES BOMBER

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND Bombing in protest of U.S. military in Laos — March 1, 1971 The U.S. presence in Vietnam led to a spate of bombings and violent attacks at a host of sites, including U.S. draft board locations as well as corporations, banks and educational institutions seen to be supporting the war effort. Leftist militants the Weather Underground claimed responsibility for a bomb placed in a men's washroom one floor below the Senate chamber on March 1, 1971. The group said the bombing was in protest of the expansion of the U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia, specifically to Laos. The bomb threat was phoned in overnight, 30 minutes before detonation. Given the time of day, no one was injured in the blast, but damage was estimated at $300,000 US. Early 1971 was a time of heightened tension in Washington, D.C. Police are shown trying to remove protesters on May 1, 1971, at a massive rally that occurred just weeks after a bomb was planted in a washroom below the Senate chamber. The bombing threatened to derail a peaceful protest planned for Washington in early May and heightened the response from Richard Nixon's administration, events detailed in the recent book by Lawrence Roberts, Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America's Biggest Mass Arrest. Those protests took place, and with pressure from the Nixon administration, D.C. police arrested 12,000 people, the largest mass arrest in U.S. history. Civil liberty groups unsurprisingly were appalled, however even some judges assigned to the cases were aggrieved and ultimately only a few dozen were convicted of various offences. Those wrongly detained became eligible for compensation in civil litigation settlement that followed for years afterward. While several members of the Weather Underground would serve prison time for other attacks and activities, no one was ever arrested for the 1971 bombing. As Roberts details, the incident helped spur the installation of video cameras, X-ray machines and regular baggage checks by security staff at the Capitol. https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/organizations/weatherman/