NOW THE URBAN GUERRILLAS HAVE A REAL PROBLEM - NOVEMBER 1976 THEY'RE TRYING TO MAKE IT IN THE MAGAZINE BUSINESS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100430036-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 30, 2004
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: November 1, 1976
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

1f Approved For Release 2004/09/03 : CIA-RDP88-01 1
16 MORE November 1976
h 'ey9re Trying To Make I
I ' "h Magazine Business
Most-wanted fugitives publish on the lam.
. is abolitionist guerrillas defeated it superior Force of
-1
Gabrielle ScharrK is t t w ~r~, Br w a 3R000100430036-9-
~ ' $ , I r f ~ 6 ' 9/03 ~ lif#e4 193
BY GABRIELLE SCHANG & RON ROSENBAUM Bookstore in lower Manhattan, carrying two heavy shopping
The people who bombed the Capitol are now in the maga- bags that she checked behind the sales counter. She browsed a
zine business. You could call them the most sought-after peo- bit, then walked out, leaving her shopping bags behind. Ten
ple in the media-three of them spent three years on the minutes later the cashier received a call. "Look in the shop-
F.B.I.'s Ten Most Wanted list. The editors are members of the ping bags," said the woman caller. "You'll find your copies of
Weather Underground Organization. They call their publish- the new Osawatomie." A clerk at Cody's bookstore in
ing venture the--Red-Dragon Print Collective and they call Berkeley received a phone message instructing him to "loek
their magazineOsawatomie.* The F.B.I. calls them interstate in the bushes across the street where we've dropped your new
fugitives from-usttiice,-armed and believed to be dangerous. copies of Osawatomie," At Modern Times bookstore in San
Somewhere in the United States-according to their own Francisco, personnel arriving early to unlock the doors dis-
account--the Weather fugitives gather together over a clan- covered neatly-piled stacks of the magazine leaning against
destine printing press to produce bi-monthly issues of the the storefront. About the same time, hundreds of individuals
magazine, collating the pages as they come off the press with and bookstores received plain manila envelopes with a rub-
gloved hands to avoid leaving fingerprints. ber-stamped fake return address, containing one or more of
Should Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Jeff Jones and the the latest issue.
other Weather fugitives who write and edit Osawatonrie be In the 15 months since the Ponce bank bombing, there has
captured in the middle of a press run, they would collectively been only one further bombing: the Salt Lake City headquar-
face years behind bars for acts of violence committed before ters of Kennecott Copper was hit on the September 1975 an-
they went underground. If convicted for the 25 bombings niversaryof Altende's downfall in Chile.But in that same 15
they've claimed credit for since then, each of them would months there have been eight further deliveries of
probably face life. This sort of thing can add a certain urgency Osawatomie.
to meeting deadlines. The shift from dynamite to printer's ink has not
The magazine project is a recent development in the seven- diminished the attention the Weather people have been get-
year history of the Weather Underground Organization ting from the F.B.I. The Bureau has dismantled, it claims, the
(WUO), although it is their second publishing venture (the now notorious "WeathFug" Squads. These were the special
first, a book of theory and history called. Prairie Fire,;also clan- government strike forces in large cities whose furious and
destinely printed, appeared in mid-1974)-.--In --the pages. of futile cross-country pursuit of the Weather fugitives from
Osawatwme, between the lines, in hints and asides, sometimes 1970 to 1974 involved multiple illegal break-ins, warrantless
directly, it is possible to get a shadowy glimpse of an identity searches, bugs and burglaries. Recent revelations of
crisis in the lives of the Weather fugitives, many of whom WeathFug excesses have led to criminal investigations of at
we're considered the best and the brightest leaders of Students least 75 agents and many of the F.B.i: s -top leadership from
for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960's. Consider the that period, including the former -number-two man in the
following juxtaposition. Bureau, Mark Felt. It was, then, particularly ironic for Felt to
On June 6, 1975, a nightwatchman in the Banco de Ponce hold up an issue of Osawatomie on "Face the Nation," be-
in midtown Manhattan received a phone call from a woman. cause in using it to justify WeathFug illegalities, Felt gave the
who told him to evacuate the building immediately. A power- Weather Underground the kind of network TV exposure they
ful explosion tore open the front of the bank building. In a couldn't get with just another bombing.
communique found in a nearby phone booth, the WUO Despite such setbacks for the Bureau,the hunt goeson.You
.claimed credit for. the bombing, in support of striking cement can follow it from the F.B.i.'s point of view in the pages of the
workers in Puerto Rico. Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Examiner where re-
A few days later, a woman walked into the Eighth Street
The name Osawaromie is derived from the 1856 Bauleof (Osawatorttie,Kansas,
 Approved For Release 2004/09/03: CIA-RDP88-01314R000100430036-$TAT
.With their. hefty circulation and lucrative advertising,
Boston's weekly `alternative' papers
are not yet Establishment but they are certainly establi
Approved For Release 2004/09/03 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000100430036-9