C.I.Ayers

A good article at the Confluence notes that Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are blaming Hillary for the many blog posts linking him to Barack Obama. Well, Cannonfire published the ultimate guide to the Ayers controversy, and I've never received so much as a single email -- on any topic -- from the Clintons or from anyone connected to them.

In his recent "full" recounting of his history with Obama, Ayers neglects to mention the Annenberg Challenge. Silly Billy.

All of which brings us to today's theme:

Oh, he is so tortured and put upon. Poor Bill. He and a bunch of his wealthy, entitled friends managed to destroy Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in no time at all by creating the Weatherman group and advocating the violent overthrow of the federal government. They ruined the reputation of the peace movement too. Lots of people back then assumed the Weathermen were CIA infiltrators. Bill Ayers never spent a day in jail, and now he’s a tenured professor. In fact lots of the ex-weathermen are professors, and they’re all pretty wealthy. They aren’t exactly living up to their socialist ideals, are they?

"CIA infiltrators." Interesting thought, that. Although the CIA is not supposed to operate domestically, in the Vietnam era the Agency initiated a program called MHCHAOS, designed to spy on the anti-war left. The FBI, of course, had COINTELPRO, and the DIA had its own program, the name of which I forget.

Result: Paranoia. Many '60s student radicals will tell you that the perpetual game of spot-the-spook helped to cripple any attempt to get things done. But that game began because there really were spooks in the movement. ("Spooks" as in "spies": I don't want this blog to re-live the controversy depicted in The Human Stain.)

So how do you spot the spook? Look for three factors:

1. Infiltrators push for violent and illegal action.
2. They rarely or never serve time, even though everyone around them seems to get busted.
3. They somehow have plenty of cash.

Those three clues are the biggies. Perhaps Bill and Bernardine can think of other indicators.

Here's one reaction to Ayers' Truthout piece:

Ayers got off because his wealthy dad got him a phalanx of pricey lawyers. Others were not so lucky. Several Weatherpeople rotted in jail for most of their lives and at least one is still there. Dohrn and Ayers also discredited the rest of SDS with their arrogant and destructive terrorist tactics. Carl Oglesby's recent memoir paints an especially realistic of the despicable and arrogant Dohrn and what she was up to. Ayers should be in jail himself.

A number of years ago, I spoke at length with former SDS leader Carl Oglesby, who happens to be a superb writer. I'm a great admirer of his The Yankee-Cowboy War; it's one of those books that can forever change the way you look at American society. The Yankee-Cowboy theory no longer explains as much as it once did, now that the Bush family has done so much to erase or straddle those categories, but that Watergate-era work still provides a valuable insight into 20th century American politics.

Oglesby drifted rightward over time, although his politics have always defied conventional pigeonholing. Even in his SDS days, he always valued working within the system. That stance led various dunderheads within the student left to accuse him of being a sellout or worse.

This conservative (but insightful) review of Oglesby's memoir Ravens in the Storm -- which I have not yet read -- reprints a lengthy dialogue between Oglesby and Bernardine Dohrn. Although the dialogue is a reconstruction, and has been questioned, I think that this text probably comes close to what the participants actually said. Oglesby does talk that way. Since Ayers and Dohrn now like to portray themselves as lovable grandparents, we should pay close attention to this blast from the past:

Dohrn: Carl, you’re good on the war, but sometimes I’m not sure I know where you’re coming from.

Oglesby: Well, Ann Arbor, Kent, Akron, Kalamazoo

Dohrn: Then let me put it a little more plainly. Do you consider yourself a revolutionary or a failed liberal?

Oglesby: Isn’t that a distinction without a difference?

Dohrn: And here in your book, where you say that the New Left and the Old Right are morally and politically coordinate. I’m confused.

Oglesby: I mean that honest conservatives should oppose the war.

Dohrn: Where will your honest conservative be when the barricades go up?

Oglesby: Barricades?

Dohrn: Come on, Carl. You know what I’m talking about.

Oglesby: BD, I don’t have the foggiest.

Dohrn: Then let me help. Some of us are starting to wonder whose side you’re going to be on when, you know, we get down to the nitty-gritty, so I thought I should ask.

. . . .

Oglesby: BD, I was just trying to say that our threats of violence are really kind of frantic call for help. I was trying to say that nobody’s really planning to start making bombs.

Dohrn: That’s what you believe? Fair enough. So I’m asking: Where are you going to be when the bombs start going off?

Oglseby: What’s this about bombs going off? Isn’t that a metaphor?

Dohrn: When it comes to fighting real battles against the empire, where do you think you’re going to be?

Oglseby: Fighting? You mean like, what, bombs and guns? Blowing people up? Shooting people?

Dohrn: This is what you refuse to see. We can’t keep doing what we’re doing without at some point encountering the armed power of the state? Okay? If we mean to continue the struggle, we have to be willing to pick up a gun.

One hardly need apply much imagination to see this dialogue as an attempt by a government infiltrator to cajole a non-violent student leader into the kind of activity that could land him a life sentence.

Someone had it out for Oglesby. He told me that an unknown party spiked his drink with LSD just before he testified at the Chicago 8 trial. He recognized what was happening, but went ahead with his testimony nonetheless. I looked up the transcript; he did fine. Still, I wonder if he met with Bill or Bernardine beforehand...

Ayers and Dohrn never came up in my conversation with Oglesby. He'd probably dismiss my suspicions concerning those two. Come to your own conclusion.