Chicago Law Professor Linked to 70's SF Cop Killing

Chicago Law Professor Linked to 70's SF Cop Killing ---
tags: attacks on police, anti-war, domestic terrorism, bombing, vietnam war, domestic warfare

Feb. 16, 1970 Chicago Law Professor Linked to 70's SF Cop Killing  San Franciso policeman Brian McDonnell was sorting through bulletins on the Teletype machine at Park Police Station in the Upper Haight neighborhood of San Francisco when a bomb went off outside the window, and died of his injuries.  Larry Grathwohl was a U.S. Army veteran who was hired by the FBI to infiltrate the group in 1969. He heard from Ayers during a meeting of a Weather Underground cell in Buffalo, New York, that Dohrn “had to plan, develop and carry out the bombing of the police station in San Francisco.” Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Machtinger were all targets of a secret, federal, grand-jury investigation in 2003 into McDonnell’s killing. Another group of militants also claimed credit. In early 2009 conservative advocacy group America's Survival Inc  advocated for a murder charge against Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground and claimed "there are 'irrefutable and compelling reasons' that establish that Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, are responsible for the bombing."

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, America’s major cities were in something close to a guerrilla war. In 1972 alone, the FBI attributed 1,500 bombings within the United States to “civil unrest” from domestic radical groups.

*References

• Wikipedia: San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing In early 2009 conservative advocacy group America's Survival Inc. advocated for a murder charge against Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. In connection with a press release, the group released a letter from the San Francisco Police Officers Association endorsing an earlier allegation by Larry Grathwohl, a former FBI informant within the Weather Underground, that "there are 'irrefutable and compelling reasons' that establish that Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, are responsible for the bombing." [5] [6]

*Sources

An Investigation Into a SF Cop Killing Leads to a Chicago Professor Who Helped Launch Obama's Career | OC Weekly
The investigation into a San Francisco cop killing in the ’70s leads to a Chicago law professor who helped launch Barack Obama’s political career
On the night of Feb. 16, 1970, Brian McDonnell was sorting through bulletins on the Teletype machine at Park Police Station in the Upper Haight neighborhood of San Francisco. The respected 44-year-old sergeant was checking results from the recent union elections, in which he was running for station representative. Steady rain fell outside. At 10:45 p.m., a bomb planted on the ledge outside a nearby window went off.
McDonnell took the brunt of the blast to his body and face. The bomb was packed with inch-long industrial fence staples, which severed his jugular vein and lodged in his brain. He would die two days later without regaining consciousness.

http://www.ocweekly.com/2009-09-17/news/park-police-station-san-francisco-weathermen-underground/full/

rumors have circulated for the past four decades that the Weather Underground, a militant leftist group, was involved in the attack... National interest in the Weather Underground was revived during last year’s presidential campaign, when Republicans and conservative bloggers tried to smear Barack Obama for his ties to the group’s former leaders, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. A married couple now comfortably ensconced in the ranks of Chicago’s liberal intelligentsia, Ayers and Dohrn were early political patrons of Obama’s, hosting a campaign event for the future president in 1995 when he ran for the Illinois state Senate...

Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Machtinger were all targets of a secret, federal, grand-jury investigation in 2003 into McDonnell’s killing, according to San Francisco criminal-defense lawyer Stuart Hanlon, who has become familiar with the Park Station case while defending a client charged in another 1970s police murder. While indictments against the three were never issued, Hanlon said, “it was clear they were the targets. They weren’t called—other people were called about them.”

In sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 1974 and in a 1976 memoir, Bringing Down America: An FBI Informer With the Weathermen, Grathwohl asserted that he had heard from Ayers during a meeting of a Weather Underground cell in Buffalo, New York, that Dohrn “had to plan, develop and carry out the bombing of the police station in San Francisco.” But former Weathermen have long dismissed his story as a fabrication...

 he had one thought: Why didn’t they prosecute? It turns out law-enforcement officials had come much closer to pouncing on the Weather Underground than Reagan realized. According to another investigator familiar with the case, prosecutors came within a hair’s breadth of filing charges against the group in the 1970s based on Latimer’s testimony.