Dangerous and criminal as it was, the bombing amounted to a kind of guerrilla theater, a symbolic destruction of federal property to protest the disastrous military intervention in Vietnam. It would be wrong to give these events equal weight on the historical scale, to simply regard them as insurrections from opposite ends of the spectrum. The Washington Post’s editorial page lamented “the easy contagion of extremism in a time of dark frustrations and deep disillusionment.”įifty years later, we find the nation assessing the physical and psychic wreckage left by another Capitol attack, this one at the hands of the radical right. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Montana), called it an “outrageous and sacrilegious” hit on a “public shrine.” House Speaker Carl Albert (D-Oklahoma) said the bombing was “doubly sad” because it would likely lead to tighter security at the Capitol and less freedom for visitors. They hooked up a fuse attached to a stopwatch and stuffed the device behind a 5-foot-high wall. They slipped into an unmarked marble-lined men’s bathroom one floor below the Senate chamber. Now two of these self-described revolutionaries wandered the halls with sticks of dynamite strapped under their clothing. Since 1969, the radical left group had already bombed several police targets, banks and courthouses around the country, acts they hoped would instigate an uprising against the government. They were members of the Weather Underground. Which is why two young people who melted into the crowd of sightseers were free to scour the building for a safe spot to set their bomb. Capitol, it was still easy to stroll through without having to empty your pockets or show a driver’s license. The previous decade had been one of the most unstable in the country’s history, rocked by political assassinations, racial violence and explosions at public buildings. In the winter of 1971, you could still find vestiges of an age of innocence in Washington.
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