Ayers grew up in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, attended Lake Forest Academy, a school for the privileged and earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan. His father, Thomas G. Ayers, was the CEO of Commonwealth Edison from 1973 to 1980. Ayers grew up rich and somewhere along the way developed a deep disdain for the United States. Perhaps he hated his father. I doubt that Ayers ultimately rejected the family wealth.
Ayers became involved in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Michigan and joined the radical terrorist offshoot of the SDS (The Weathermen) in 1969.The following year he went “underground”; this being a cute radical term for running from the law while assisted by like minded terrorist conspirators. This movement to the societal fringes was caused by three of his fellow conspirators being killed in an explosion while manufacturing bombs to attack the infrastructure of the United States. Ayers’ girlfriend was one of the terrorists who died in the blast. Ayers and his fellow terrorist Bernadine Dohm , his wife at the time, were purged from the group in the mid-1970s. Purged is a word not used much outside of terrorist or communist circles and usually those purged can be identified as they are dead, a quick example being the Shining Path Maoist terrorists in Peru. Ayers and terrorist wife Bernadine turned themselves in to the authorities in 1981. Ayers was really only a terrorist for twelve years, not like it was a serious commitment. The charges against him were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Why did Ayers go “underground’?
BY JOHN M. MURTAGH Wednesday, April 30th 2008, 4:00 AM
During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up "a gentleman named William Ayers," who "was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He's never apologized for that." Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama's answer: "The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George."
Obama was indeed only 8 in early 1970. I was only 9 then, the year Ayers' Weathermen tried to murder me. In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called "Panther 21," members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of Feb. 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn't leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: Free the Panther 21; The Viet Cong have won; Kill the pigs.
For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn't have to rent a limo for the senior prom: The NYPD did the driving. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn't fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own 9-year-old John Murtagh into bed.
Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family's life, there was never any doubt who was behind it.Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001, of all days: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire theyoung once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his "politics ofchange." Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends' and supporters' violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama's own beliefs, his philosophy and the direction he would take our nation.
At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: "I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire." Funny thing, Bill: One night, so did I.
John M. Murtagh is an attorney, an adjunct professor of public policy at the Fordham University College of Liberal Studies and a member of the city council in Yonkers. A longer version of this appears on www.city-journal.org.
In 2001 Ayers published FUGITIVE DAYS; A MEMOIR. This is a record of his twelve short years as a terrorist and holds the now famous quotes: “I don’t regret setting bombs.” , “I feel we didn’t do enough.” , and the ever popular “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”, when asked if he would do it all again. To commemorate the publishing of his great American success story, a picture of Ayers trampling the American flag was published in Chicago Magazine, also in 2001. Ayers conspired to kill a judge during a trial, not only the judge, but his entire family.
WHI IS WILLIAM AYERS ?
Clearly a great American.
