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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Sun Feb 28, 2021, 10:23 AM Feb 2021

When the Left Attacked the Capitol


Fifty years ago, extremists bombed the seat of American democracy to end a war and start a revolution. It did neither, but it may have helped bring down a president.

By LAWRENCE ROBERTS

02/28/2021 07:00 AM EST

In the winter of 1971, you could still find vestiges of an age of innocence in Washington. 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. But at the U.S. Capitol, it was still easy to stroll through without having to empty your pockets or show a driver’s license. No metal detectors or security cameras. You didn’t need to join a tour. 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.

They were members of the Weather Underground. 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. Now two of these self-described revolutionaries wandered the halls with sticks of dynamite strapped under their clothing. They slipped into an unmarked marble-lined men’s bathroom one floor below the Senate chamber. They hooked up a fuse attached to a stopwatch and stuffed the device behind a 5-foot-high wall.

Shortly before 1 a.m. on March 1, the phone call came into the Capitol switchboard. The overnight operator remembered it as a man’s voice, low and hard: “This is real. Evacuate the building immediately.”

It exploded at 1:32 a.m. No one was hurt, but damage was extensive. The blast tore the bathroom wall apart, shattering sinks into shrapnel. Shock waves blew the swinging doors off the entrance to the Senate barbershop. The doors crashed through a window and sailed into a courtyard. Along the corridor, light fixtures, plaster and tile cracked. In the Senate dining room, panes fell from a stained-glass window depicting George Washington greeting two Revolutionary War heroes, the Marquis de Lafayette and Baron von Steuben. Both Europeans lost their heads.

more
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/28/when-the-left-attacked-the-capitol-471270
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padfun

(1,780 posts)
1. This author wants to blame the entire left?
Sun Feb 28, 2021, 10:28 AM
Feb 2021

It was just a small left group, not "The Left."

this kind of BS belongs in the trash.

padfun

(1,780 posts)
3. I read the excerpt, wasn't going to go to the site.
Sun Feb 28, 2021, 10:46 AM
Feb 2021

Wouldnt dare give them another click.

And the excerpt did blame the left.

enough

(13,235 posts)
6. Fascinating long detailed article. I remember at the time thinking these violent actions
Sun Feb 28, 2021, 11:49 AM
Feb 2021

were horribly self defeating.

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