Students for a Democratic Society

A domestic terrorist group sent a note to The New York Times admitting to detonating a bomb in Queens.Nearly 50 years ago, on Jan. 29, 1975, a bomb exploded inside the State Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., damaging the building but causing no injuries. A bomb was discovered that same day at a federal office building in Oakland, Calif., and was safely detonated.The acts were part of a spree of violence by a far-left militant group, Weather Underground, a splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society, which opposed the Vietnam War. (The group took its name from lyrics written by Bob Dylan — “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” — in the song “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”) In a manifesto, the Weather Underground called for “the destruction of U.S. imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism.”In late 1970, about a year after the group’s formation, The New York Times received a cryptic letter dated Oct. 9. Painted across the note was a red, five-pointed star, a symbol for Communism. The letter was signed in large cursive letters: Weatherman.That letter is currently stored in the “morgue,” The Times’s vast clippings archive.The letter makes reference to “slave ships of the twentieth century” and says that “with rallies and riots, with marches and Molotovs, kids in New York City and around the country will continue the battle.”Most startling is that the group claimed credit for an attack in Queens: “Last night as part of an international conspiracy we blew up the Long Island City Criminal Courthouse,” the letter reads. The explosion, which occurred on the third floor, heavily damaged the interior of the gray stone building.The group would ultimately claim responsibility for more than 25 bombings, according to the F.B.I., including at the Capitol building in March 1971. The group eventually splintered as the Vietnam War came to an end, disbanding in the late ’70s.In a 2020 guest essay for Times Opinion, Mark Rudd, a community organizer who once belonged to the Weather Underground, described his time with the group. “We didn’t realize that the violence we claimed we hated had infected our souls,” he wrote. “At the time, I’m not sure we’d have cared.” More