Frisco police union accuses Ayers of 1970 bombing

William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn may have another round in the media spotlight coming.  The police union in San Francisco has accused the radical couple and allies of Barack Obama of setting a bomb in 1970 that killed a police sergeant.  The union cites testimony from a former government informant (via The College Politico):

A San Francisco police union has accused former domestic terrorist William Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground, and his wife in a 1970 bombing that killed one sergeant, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The union, in a letter to a conservative organization lobbying for arrests in the case, accused Ayers and wife Bernardine Dohrn of bombing a city police station.

On Feb. 16, 1970, a bomb placed on a window ledge of Park Station killed Sgt. Brian McDonnell and injured eight other officers, the Chronicle reported.

The union said it had not been in contact with investigators nor did it have new evidence, but it cited Larry Grathwohl, who works with the conservative organization America’s Survival of Maryland and claims that he infiltrated Weather Underground as an FBI informant and heard Ayers confess, the Chronicle reported.

“There are irrefutable and compelling reasons to believe that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn … are largely responsible for the bombing of Park Police Station,” the Feb. 24 letter reads, according to the Chronicle.

Ayers and Dohrn deny any involvement in the Park Station bombing.  They dismissed Gratwohl as a “paid dishonest person”.  Obviously, the police union disagrees, and seem to be pushing harder to get this case re-opened.  If they can make a case, though, it would refute one of Ayers’ defenses — that the only people his group killed were their own members, referring to an accidental explosion when building a bomb in New York.

I’d say they’ll need more than this.  If Gratwohl heard Ayers confess, it would have been decades ago.  Why is he now just coming forward to talk about it?  And if Gratwohl did give this information to the FBI, why wouldn’t they have acted on it?  After all, they had to watch their case against Ayers go up in smoke for their own misconduct in investigating other Ayers crimes.  They would have loved an opportunity to go after Ayers again.

On the other hand, there also doesn’t seem to be much reason for the San Francisco police union to lie about it, either.  They’re not going to make themselves popular by accusing Ayers and Dohrn in that city.

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