The Weather Underground | Smolder | 3

It's March 1970 at a cabin in the woods outside of Detroit.

25-year-old Bill Ayers sits at a kitchen table, a blank notepad in front of him.

His eyes are fixed forward, but everything is out of focus, as if he's in a trance.

Behind him, his comrade Rachel splashes rubbing alcohol on the counters and wipes them down with a rag.

The smell makes Bill's nose twitch.

The front door slams shut as another friend David bursts inside.

He rushes into the kitchen, looks at Bill and hesitates for a moment.

Then he's off again, running toward a pair of bedrooms.

The sounds of drawers opening and closing echo down the hall.

Two other women, Fiona and Andy, are in the living room, carefully packing guns into hard cases.

Bill doesn't react to any of it.

The image of his girlfriend, Diana Otten, flickers in his mind.

It's so vivid he can see her straw-colored hair waving in the breeze, her warm smile, and her eyes that look kind and fierce at the same time.

She's the love of Bill's life, the one who taught him to be a revolutionary.

But she's gone.

Bill and the others only just heard the news.

A few days ago, Diana and two other members of The Weather Underground died in an explosion at a townhouse in New York.

They were making bombs in the basement, explosives intended to overthrow the United States government and protest the Vietnam War.

Then something went wrong.

Bill blinks away the tears and forces himself to look down at the pad of paper in front of him.

He needs a plan.

He's the leader of this collective.

Right now, his comrades are operating on autopilot, waiting for him to step up and take command.

His heart is broken, but he knows he has to move.

He bites his lip and starts jotting things.

Ditch trucks, destroy evidence, pack, find new safe house.

Bill's only had about 20 minutes to process all of this, and his head is spinning.

The police already have a few days head start on them.

Officers are probably scouring the country, searching for The Weather Underground at this very moment.

He can't assume anywhere is safe.

Not even this remote hideout.

Where will they go now?

The sound of Andy stumbling near the front door brings Bill back to reality.

She sits on the floor beside the pair of boots she tripped on and cries.

Fiona shuffles over and puts her hand on Andy's shoulder.

Bill swallows another sob and keeps taking notes.

They'll have to split up for tonight.

Tomorrow morning, they can meet at a secure location.

A truck stop, maybe.

By then, he'll need a full plan.

A few minutes later, the rest of the collective is lined up in front of him, standing at attention.

Bill knows this might be the last time they ever see each other.

He tries to fix each of their faces in his mind to remember them.

But all he can see is Diana.

Eventually, Fiona has to pull him to his feet.

It's time to go, whether he's ready or not.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

By early 1970, the Weather Underground had come into its own.

What used to be a loose collection of student activists who opposed the Vietnam War had transformed into a far left militant organization in just under a year.

The group's plan was to train small guerrilla cells of young people to foment revolution inside the United States.

Nothing was off the table if it helped combat US imperialism and military intervention.

Violence was a tool in their arsenal, just like anything else.

But overthrowing the government turned out to be a tall order.

The would be revolutionaries thought they knew what they were dealing with.

But they were inexperienced, fatally so as the members of the New York Collective found out firsthand.

But the accidental explosion in a Greenwich Village townhouse wasn't the only issue The Weather Underground had to deal with.

Even before that tragedy, the group was dealing with a problem it didn't even know it had, infiltration.

You see, while members were scheming to carry out bombings at police stations and military events, the feds were working with at least one undercover operative to spoil The Underground's plans at every turn.

As time wore on, so did the groups resolve.

The authorities were closing in, and life as fugitives was harder than any of them had ever imagined.

But they knew they couldn't give up.

They had started out with such grand ambitions.

And for the few people who remained committed to the cause, it was important to go out with a bang.

This is episode three in our four-part series on The Weather Underground, Smolder.

It's February 1970, one month before the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.

In a third-floor apartment of a Cincinnati tenement building, the local Weather Underground collective gathers together.

It's around 7 p.m.

when 22-year-old Larry Grothwall enters, finding the group in the middle of a heated discussion.

A recent recruit, a young woman named Lynn, is in the hot seat.

Around her, a crowd has assembled to mercilessly berate and insult her.

They call it a criticism session.

It's designed to toughen up new members of the Weather Underground and encourage self-improvement.

Larry grits his teeth, edges to a corner of the living room, and keeps his mouth shut while everyone else lays into Lynn.

He's seen plenty of these sessions and almost all of them end in tears or arguments.

Larry hates the progress, just like he hates most of what the group does.

Still, he can't avert his eyes.

He has to pay attention, to make note of everything he sees and hears.

Larry is an undercover agent, one of the only people to successfully infiltrate the Weather Underground.

And there's a lot riding on how well he does his job.

As Larry watches, Lynn becomes flustered.

Earlier today, she spent time with two members of the White Panthers, another leftist group that the Underground is on friendly terms with.

That's the focus of the criticism session.

The other members claim Lynn sleeps with every guy she sees.

They accuse her of giving into the appetites of male chauvinists.

On and on, the insults go around the circle, with each member lobbing further critiques on to Lynn.

Eventually, she's had enough.

Before the round is finished, she stands up and glares down at her accusers with a tear-streaked face.

But she doesn't yell at them.

She just flees the apartment, weeping as she goes.

A couple of members rise to follow her, but they're stopped by the Collective's leader, Dion Dongi.

She says to let Lin go, she's clearly not tough enough.

The other members sit back down.

Feeling more relaxed now that the criticism session is over, Larry stuffs himself onto a crowded couch.

He scans the room trying to log the new faces.

He notices some of the members passing a small box around.

Each one takes a tiny capsule from it.

When it's Larry's turn, he realizes what's inside.

It's LSD.

He tenses up.

Besides weed, he's never done any drugs, and the idea of dropping acid scares him, especially here and now.

But he knows he can't refuse.

In his position, he really can't afford to stand out, and it already feels like Dion is suspicious of him.

She's got her eyes on him when the box is handed to him.

So he reaches in, takes a capsule, and pops it in his cheek.

Then, pretending to be waiting for it to kick in, he puts his face in his hands.

In that position, he keeps an eye on Dion, peeking out at her through the cracks in his fingers.

When she looks away for a second, he spits the capsule into his palm and stuffs it in his pocket.

Over the next hour or so, Larry waits anxiously for the drug to hit everyone else.

Eventually, one guy falls out of his chair, setting off a chain of giggles that goes on for several minutes.

Finally, Dion speaks.

She seems clear-headed, like she's not high at all.

Larry had been so fixated on getting rid of the LSD he'd taken that he didn't notice she'd let the box pass right by her.

Now he understands why.

The criticism session isn't over.

Dion wanted to stay sharp and for her targets to be vulnerable.

Just as Larry realizes this, Dion and another member, Ann Walton, turn on him.

Ann speaks up first, pointing out that Larry's hardly said a word since he got here.

She thinks he needs to participate in the criticism sessions more.

Just today, she says, he didn't say one thing against Lynn.

And not having anything to criticize her for isn't an excuse he could have defended her instead.

Without any other warning, Larry's the one in the hot seat.

And he can't think of anything to say as the people around him start to question his motives, question whether his heart is really in it.

And what can he say?

They're right.

While this is going on, the guy sitting next to Larry pulls out a switchblade and starts doing tricks with it.

So while everyone in the room hurls abuse at him, Larry's trying to keep his eye on the flashing knife, just in case.

The switchblade guy ends his little routine with a flourish, plunging the blade into the wooden floor.

It stays there, thrumming as the criticisms reach a fever pitch.

All of a sudden, Dion's in Larry's face screaming at him, forcing his attention away from the weapon just inches away from them.

She asks who he is, where he came from.

She knows he served in Vietnam and she says that makes him a murderer.

Anne jumps in at that point and adds that he hates women too.

She yanks the switchblade out of the floor and points it right at him.

This is terrifying.

Larry tries to keep calm, but he feels sick.

He's in a room full of impulsive, angry wannabe revolutionaries, all of them intent on overthrowing the US government.

On top of it all, they're tripping acid.

He keeps his gaze fixed on a point, resolutely not saying a word.

But silence doesn't fly with Dion, not in a criticism session.

Frustrated by his refusal to defend himself, she starts chanting, Larry's a pig, Larry's a pig, Larry's a pig, while everyone else oinks in chorus.

Finally, Larry can't take it anymore.

He wants this to end, for the group to accept him as one of them.

He jumps to his feet and raises his voice even louder than Dion's.

Yes, he's a murderer, he's a pig for what he did in Vietnam.

The room falls silent, everyone stunned by his admission.

Then Larry turns it back on them.

Yeah, he's those things, but he's here to make up for that, and what are they doing about it, he asks.

Besides complaining, what are they actually doing?

Again, the room falls silent.

Slowly, the crowd drifts apart, and Larry's left alone on the couch.

He smiles to himself.

He didn't break, he passed the test.

By this point, Larry Grothwall has been with The Weather Underground for about four months.

But he isn't a trained undercover cop.

He's more of a freelancer.

His ex-father-in-law, Don, a former police officer, heard about The Weathermen and made a deal with Larry.

If he infiltrated the group unofficially, Don essentially agreed to pay Larry's child support.

Larry thought the idea of working undercover sounded exciting, so he agreed.

From there, Don put him in contact with his friends in the Cincinnati Police Department, and Larry started going to Weathermen meetings.

He put in the time, showing up to events and getting to know the local leaders to earn their trust.

In just a matter of weeks, he connected with the FBI and started reporting to them as well.

Eventually, he was invited to live with one of the collectives full time.

It's a precarious possession, given that he isn't an official member of any law enforcement agency.

At first, he was conducting his surveillance free of charge, except for the financial arrangement he made with his father-in-law.

But once the FBI got involved, they offered him a stipend for his services.

After that, Larry became part of a huge FBI intelligence apparatus, a network geared specifically to take down subversive political organizations.

Since 1956, the agency has been going after leftist groups using a collective of covert operations termed COINTELPRO.

Under COINTELPRO, the Bureau targets feminists, civil rights organizations, environmentalists and communists.

In the name of protecting national security, agents brazenly violate the law to take down their targets.

They illegally surveil subjects, break into their apartments, open mail, leak falsified details about people's private lives to the press, and engage in psychological warfare.

Some of the COINTELPRO agents infiltrate organizations and actively incite violence in hopes of getting their targets arrested.

It's the same program that wiretapped Martin Luther King Jr.

and sent him anonymous letters encouraging him to take his own life.

For his part, Larry escalates things towards violence too, but usually as a defense mechanism.

Like during his criticism session, he often goes on the offensive when he's expected to defend himself.

Instead of denying he's a pig, he embraces the label and turns it back on the rest of the members.

If he's accused of not participating in a political debate, he insists he's not there to talk, he's there to take action.

And in a show of reckless bravado, he pretends to be an expert in explosives, when in fact, he knows nothing about dynamite.

It's a move that could easily get people killed, including himself.

Or it might just save lives.

In late February of 1970, all of Larry's big talk gets the attention of Bill Ayers, one of The Weather Underground's inner circle.

Bill recruits Larry for a team of bombers planning an upcoming operation.

Bill shows off his diagram for the proposed bombings, and Larry is surprised by how crude it is.

It seems disorganized at best, wildly dangerous at worst.

It's just some dynamite and an improvised fuse.

Then he finds out that Bill plans to target a local police precinct, as well as the Detroit Police Officers Association Building, or DPOA for short.

Larry knows he has to warn someone about the bomb.

But Bill cuts him from the team before things are finalized, leaving him out of the loop.

Then Bill reassigns him to a collective in Wisconsin.

Larry says that he doesn't want to go, but he's overruled.

It's for the good of the group.

Desperate to alert the authorities about what's being planned, Larry sneaks away from his comrades and makes a call to the FBI offices.

He doesn't have much to go on, so all he can tell them is to watch the DPOA building and the local police station over the course of the next week.

After Larry leaves for Wisconsin, the police surveil the DPOA building for four long nights.

By March 5th, 1970, they're ready to end the operation.

They haven't seen anything, and they're starting to doubt Larry's reliability as an informant.

But just before they call it quits, an agent notices a brown paper bag in the alleyway outside the DPOA.

One of the guys goes to check on it just in case.

Inside, he finds a burning cigarette stuck to 22 sticks of dynamite.

The agent puts out the improvised fuse, then the team calls the precinct building.

The officers there perform a quick sweep and find another bomb about to blow in the women's restroom.

Larry Grothwall's intel help foil two bombings and save lives.

But he's just one informant in the scrappy, sprawling Weather Underground where one hand doesn't know what the other's doing.

No matter how hard the feds try, they can't prevent every violent act and they can't stop tragedy.

Less than a week after the Detroit Group's bombs are found, the townhouse in Greenwich Village, New York explodes.

Three members of the Underground are killed, making front-page news around the country.

The deadly blast ratchets up the government's drive to shut down the group.

Meanwhile, the Weather Underground is reeling from the loss of three of its members, and they're forced to acknowledge that if they want to survive, they're gonna have to change again.

It's March 1970, about a week after the townhouse explosion.

25-year-old Bill Ayers steps off a greyhound at the Port Authority bus terminal in New York City.

A few days ago, he and his collective evacuated their cabin outside of Detroit.

They're not the only ones.

The entire Weather Underground is in disarray.

But Bill's not thinking about that now.

He's here in New York to say goodbye to his girlfriend, Diana Autin.

Stepping out of the bus station and onto the street, Bill scans the crowd.

He's looking for his ride, but he's also keeping an eye out for the police.

Since Diana's death, he's been expecting cops around every quarter.

Soon enough, he finds a friendly face.

Gloria, the temporary leader of the New York Collective, grabs Bill's hand and drags him to her car.

Once they're safe inside, she eagerly asks for news.

Bill looks down at his hands while he answers.

Two members of his Detroit group have left since the explosion.

Including Bill, there's only five of them now, and together they've only got around $1,500.

While he's away, Bill's tasked his four comrades with finding a new base of operations.

That's where he'll go when he's done here, to wherever their new hideout is.

Gloria's not so sure he'll make it.

She reaches into the back seat and grabs a small stack of magazines.

She hands them to Bill.

The latest issues of Newsweek and Time dedicate significant page space to The Weather Underground.

Flipping through the pages, Bill finds his mugshot alongside his friends.

The photo is only about two years old, but it feels like it was taken a lifetime ago.

He skims the articles and hands them back to Gloria.

So what?

That's not the result she was expecting.

She tells Bill that he's a wanted man, along with Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dorn and the rest of the Underground's leadership.

They've all been indicted on charges of inciting a riot during the Days of Rage protests in Chicago six months ago.

They're officially federal fugitives, complete with wanted posters and arrest warrants.

And now he's in a city where the cops are on high alert for any sign of weatherman activity.

He'll be lucky to make it out.

Gloria stresses her last point.

She knows Bill wants to visit the site of the explosion to pay his respects, but there are barricades and a checkpoint posted at the end of the street where the townhouse used to be.

It's not safe for Bill to be there right now.

If he's caught, he faces years in prison.

Bill nods, but Gloria can tell she's not getting through to him.

She finally gives in and takes Bill back to her apartment where the two of them change into cheap disguises.

The part of Manhattan where the townhouse stood is a pretty nice neighborhood.

So with that in mind, Gloria and Bill do themselves up to look like a wealthy young couple.

Bill dons a suit and tie capped with a trench coat and tucks a copy of the New York Times under his arm.

Gloria pulls her best sweater over her nicest dress and the two of them walk out into the spring night.

In no time, they've made it to Greenwich Village.

They round the corner and glimpse the blast site from a distance.

Bright floodlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the crater that used to be the townhouse.

Workers load debris into wheelbarrows and roll them over to huge dumpsters.

It's already too much for Bill, but Gloria knows he won't be satisfied with watching from a distance.

She strides in front of him and approaches a tiny metal booth at the end of the street, the police checkpoint.

She puts on her most innocent face and asks the officer what's going on.

Happy to have something to do, the cop eagerly shares what he knows about the explosion, and even lets Gloria and Bill through to walk right by the blast zone.

He has no idea he's chatting with wanted criminals.

As they approach the destroyed townhouse, Bill shoves his hand into his trench coat and clenches his fist around a small box filled with mementos.

Inside is one of Diana's bracelets, a photo of the two of them, and a poem scribbled on a postcard.

He meant to leave the box by the townhouse, but now realizes how impossible that would be.

He settles for dropping it by the corner of the lot and kicking it into the mouth of the sewer.

It's all the goodbye he's going to get.

Bill's trip to New York is the end of another chapter in his life.

The underground are in dire straits.

Given the new arrest warrants from Chicago, the group's leaders need to hide out.

And as simple as the idea of hiding out might sound, it's not cheap to arrange.

Once everyone's safe, the group is pretty much out of funds.

And there's not a lot of options for them to bring in more cash.

Few members have the valid IDs they need to get legitimate jobs.

And most of them have already tapped out their middle class parents.

So they turn to petty crime.

Bill and Gloria leave Manhattan and head southwest to Baltimore.

There they pickpocket customers at an upscale department store, which nets them enough for a fresh set of clothes and a rental car.

After that, they hit the road, traveling west to meet up with the rest of the underground's leadership.

They have to decide what comes next for them.

Now Bill's got no idea what that conversation's gonna look like.

Some of the members will probably urge more violence, even after what happened in Greenwich Village.

Others might want to dissolve the group altogether.

For his part, Bill isn't sure what's right anymore.

He just doesn't know.

Sometime in April, Bill and Gloria make it to a home nestled high among the southern California mountains.

In the valleys below, lush green vineyards unfurl around winding roads.

The sun is bright and the sky is a clear triumphant blue.

Bernadine Dorn, one of the underground's most prominent leaders, greets Bill with a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

Jeffrey, an easygoing Californian with a surfer's attitude, treats him like family.

That night, the four of them have dinner together and drink wine outside on the porch.

For the first time in years, Bill experiences what feels like a normal life, free from political debates and fear of arrest.

It's exactly what he needs, but it's only a temporary reprieve.

Once the remaining members of the Underground's leadership make it to the safe house, Bernadine calls a meeting to decide the future of the group.

Clearly, they made a mistake in letting the most militant voices set their agenda.

Instead, she argues, the group should focus on organizing, on building up their membership again.

The explosion was a wake-up call, because it wasn't just an accident.

It was an inevitability, given the group's increasingly violent path.

If they don't want it to happen again, they need to make a major pivot.

There's a lot of drawn-out debate when she's finished speaking.

A particularly fiery discussion ends with one of the leaders being expelled from the underground for being too violent.

After that, Mark Rudd wants the face of the organization is demoted.

He's the one who signed off on the plans to build bombs in the townhouse.

So he shares part of the blame for the explosion.

But even with all this change going on, there aren't many suggestions about what their next move should be.

No one wants to just throw in the towel, or at least no one is willing to say that.

Giving up would mean that Diana, Terry and Ted died in that explosion for nothing.

So, Bernadine's plan of regrouping, of trying to rebuild, is the best they've got.

And while they do that, they'll focus on symbolic actions rather than attacks meant to kill.

They're still going to use bombs, but never anything that will put lives at risk.

And they'll have to remain underground.

Because so many of them are under indictment in Chicago, they can't risk taking more public action without facing years in prison.

When the meeting is adjourned, everyone goes their separate ways, with most of the leadership returning to major cities.

By this point, there are small collectives in places like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco and LA.

In total, there are maybe a hundred members left across the whole organization, maybe 10% of what they once had.

Bill moves to California with Bernadine.

The two of them live out of a pick up truck at first, and over time, their shared grief over losing friends in the townhouse explosion brings them close, and they slowly fall in love.

Well aware that romance won't bring on the revolution, they have to forge ahead with their plan.

By day, work takes precedence.

They need money to fund their operations, which are essential not just for advancing their cause, but for recruiting new members.

At first, the underground members return to pickpocketing, but they quickly decide that's too risky.

As soon as the credit cards are reported stolen, they stop working.

And even if they're not, they're only good for small purchases.

If they want to pay for anything big, anything really useful to their cause, like a car or rent, they need a valid ID.

And none of them are using their legal names.

So Bill and Bernadine have to get more creative.

They seek out small rural cemeteries in places like Iowa and Wisconsin and check the grave markers.

First, they look for children under five, kids who were issued birth certificates, but died too young to receive social security cards.

Then they look up the deaths in local newspaper archives to get some basic information.

Then they use that information to apply for copies of the birth certificates, at local county courthouses.

Before long, they have more than a hundredth stocked up.

This allows Bill and Bernadine to live under their assumed names, complete with official IDs, and take on regular jobs to earn money.

While they work on that, the others do their best to grow their tiny collectives.

Mark Rudd returns to New York, no longer as a leader.

Ever since the townhouse explosion, he's been caught in a spiral of shame and sadness.

He doesn't know what to do anymore, and he has serious doubts about the organization he helped create just a year ago.

He believes in his friends, but the revolution they once thought was so close had started to feel light years away.

And on top of that, his paranoia is at an all-time high.

He's one of the most recognizable members of the underground, so even going outside after the townhouse explosion feels like a major risk.

Still, he sticks around and tries to be useful.

It's not easy, given that life on the run requires constant vigilance.

Whenever he's out on the streets, he's worried about being watched.

As he walks home, he has to double and triple check to make sure he's not followed.

He's certain that he's running out of time.

In his mind, it's not a question of if, but when he'll have to make a sudden run for his life.

And soon enough, that moment comes and the race is on.

It's the morning of April 15th, 1970, a month after the townhouse explosion in Greenwich Village.

Mark Rudd enters a Manhattan coffee shop just before the clock strikes nine.

He's haggard, worn out from months of living on the run.

His hair is shaggy, his clothes are old, and he hasn't showered in far too long.

Yet, for as bad as he looks on the outside, he feels so much worse.

Since returning to the city, Mark's been bouncing between safe houses in New York, trying to avoid the authorities.

On the surface, his recent indictment from the days of rage protests hasn't radically changed his day-to-day life.

He was already living as a fugitive.

What has changed is his mental state.

His stress levels have shot through the roof.

Paranoia and fear are making him hyper-vigilant.

That's why Mark feels a familiar sense of unease set in as he looks at the clock.

He's supposed to be meeting a new recruit, a young woman.

But it would seem she's running late.

As his fingers drum nervously on the tabletop, Mark can't help feel that something is off.

He surveys the other customers.

At the counter, a couple of identical-looking guys stare down into their mugs.

They've both got medium-length brown hair and brand-new tie-dyed jeans.

It's odd.

Mark saw another man outside the shop dressed exactly the same.

A server asked the men at the counter if they want another cup.

Clearly, they've been here a while, like they're waiting for something or someone.

Fear wells up in Mark.

He chugs the rest of his coffee, wincing as it burns his tongue, then jumps to his feet.

He digs a dollar out of his jeans, throws it on the table, and sprints outside.

As he does, he catches the third man muttering into a walkie-talkie.

Adrenaline takes over, and Mark continues running down 23rd Street.

Behind him, the tie-dyed men start to chase him.

He can hear their heavy shoes slapping the pavement.

They're gaining on him.

Mark rockets through the streets and jumps on board a city bus.

Once he's inside, he dives face first onto the sticky black floor to avoid being seen from outside.

The locals around him toss him some strange looks, but these are New Yorkers, and New Yorkers tend to ignore weirdos.

As the bus starts to move, Mark grabs a peek through the back window.

Right outside, one of the cops is yelling into his walkie talkie.

Mark catches his breath as he rides the bus for a few stops.

He transfers to the subway, changes trains, then eventually takes a taxi back to his safe house.

The antics narrowly save him from arrest, but not everyone's so lucky.

It turns out Mark wasn't the only target today.

Even people who aren't really underground members get scooped up in the operation.

By this stage, Larry Grothwall is living in New York with his collective.

He's still in a pod with Dion Dongue, the woman who seemed to have it out for him back in Cincinnati.

At the same time that agents are chasing Mark through the streets of Manhattan, Larry and Dion are arrested together.

The bust comes as a surprise to Larry.

As far as he knows, he's the only mole to have successfully infiltrated the underground, so blowing his cover for a couple of minor arrests seems reckless.

They don't have other agents to fall back on if he's expelled from the group.

Still, he keeps up his act in front of Dion, resisting arrest and being careful not to expose himself as an undercover agent.

But in the interrogation room with the FBI, he asked them what they were thinking.

Only a few people knew about Mark's plan to meet the new recruit.

And considering the underground's general paranoia about moles and Dion's previous suspicion of him, Larry is sure he'll be the most obvious suspect.

The agent questioning Larry can only shrug his shoulders.

The Nixon administration has been putting more and more pressure on the bureau to get rid of the underground.

They had no choice but to try and arrest Mark Rudd when they had the chance.

Unfortunately for them, that part of the plan failed.

The government charges Dion and the others with conspiracy to bomb government buildings in four cities.

After that, the underground immediately cuts off contact with any suspected moles, including Larry.

They won't return his calls and even circulate homemade wanted posters with his face on them.

He's permanently banned from their meetings.

Just like that, Larry's role in the story of the weather underground is over.

With nothing else to do, he picks up and goes home to Cincinnati, returning to his normal life.

He's proud of what he accomplished, but frustrated he didn't get a chance to do more.

He knows he was only one small part of the massive COINTELPRO operation, but it's hurtful to feel like he's been brushed aside.

He might not be in exactly the same boat as Larry, but the feeling of sudden irrelevance is one Mark Rudd can relate to.

After his narrow escape from the Feds, he flees New York and heads to San Francisco, where he joins a new collective.

His star has long since faded in the weather underground.

And he doesn't find many friends there to welcome him.

It's lonely, but he's got nowhere else to go.

Most of the time, he hangs around the docks, hoping for day labor hauling containers onto cargo ships.

Eventually, he starts seeing a girl outside of the underground and spends as much time with her as he can.

Over time, he drifts further and further from the other members.

He's so out of the loop that he doesn't even get a heads up in May when the group sends out a notice to newspapers all over the country.

In the letter, the underground pledges to attack a symbol of American injustice within the next two weeks.

It's an act of protest against the widening war in Vietnam and one in solidarity with black revolutionaries in the US.

Mark reads about the group's promise in the paper, and for the first time, he's in the same position as everyone else.

He's got no idea what the underground is going to hit or how they're going to do it.

All he can do is wait.

On June 9th, 1970, around 6:30 p.m., a call comes in to NYPD headquarters.

A garbled voice on the other end of the line warns that a bomb will detonate inside the building in half an hour.

That's not enough time to search for the device, so the police have no choice but to evacuate.

They pour out of the building, clearing it just before 7 o'clock.

They cut it so close that a few officers are still standing next to the windows when the bomb goes off.

Several cops are cut by flying shards of glass, but no one's killed in the blast.

It does do tens of thousands of dollars in damage, though.

This becomes a standard practice for The Weather Underground.

A warning call to evacuate, followed by a carefully timed explosion.

Mark is puzzled by the new protocol, unconvinced it's the best way to get what they want.

But what does he know?

He and the rest of the underground haven't seen eye to eye for a long time now.

His disillusionment only grows when he hears that the new leadership is planning to work with Timothy Leary, the infamous LSD advocate.

Tim's a hippie serving 10 years in a Southern California prison for cannabis possession.

At some stage, his supporters reached out to the underground to offer them $25,000 to break him out.

To Mark, the answer should be an easy no thank you.

The Weather Underground has some things in common with the larger counterculture movement, but they're not hippies.

This job is in no way aligned with their larger goals.

Sure, they could use the money, but this sounds more like a publicity stunt than a genuine act of rebellion against the government.

But again, his opinion doesn't really count anymore.

So in September 1970, the underground goes ahead with its plan to enact a jailbreak.

Really though, Timothy Leary does most of the hard work.

At 50 years old, he scales the wall at his minimum security prison, then slides along an electrical wire for 200 feet and drops to the ground.

It's about a 15-foot fall, so it's a miracle he gets away with only a sprained ankle.

He hobbles out onto the road where The Weather Underground's getaway car whisks him away to a safe house.

The escape grabs headlines all over the country.

Like always, The Weather Underground gleefully reports their victory to the press, claiming credit for the jailbreak.

But it all strikes Mark as ridiculous.

It's such a waste of time, such a distraction.

None of this does anything to further the revolution that the group is supposed to be cultivating.

One night, Mark meets his girlfriend Sue in a ratty motel and can't help venting his frustrations.

When he finally pauses to take a breath, Sue tells him that he needs to move on with his life.

He needs to leave the group.

Mark is stunned, but he knows that she's right.

Really, he's known that this is what he needs to do for months now.

It's just that he's never dared to say it out loud.

The truth is, he's afraid to turn his back on his friends, even if it feels like they've left him behind.

He's heard rumors they're going after a major target soon, convinced they can finally ignite their revolution.

But this time, the prospect fills Mark with dread rather than excitement.

He's not on the outside looking in with envy.

He feels like he's pounding on the glass trying to warn them.

Part of him wants to try and make them hear that warning and try to be the moderating voice he feels that the group needs.

Another part just wants to throw up his hands and start a new life.

It's a crossroads, and he's scared that if he takes the path that's right for him, his friends will be marching to their deaths alone.

From Airship, this is episode three in our series on The Weather Underground.

On the next episode, The Weather Underground embarks on their most ambitious series of bombings yet.

When that doesn't get them what they want, the remaining fugitives consider turning themselves in.

If you'd like to learn more about The Weather Underground, we recommend Bringing Down America, an FBI informer with The Weathermen by Larry Grothwald, and Underground, My Life with SDS and The Weathermen by Mark Rudd.

This episode contains reenactments and dramatized details.

And while in most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Mohammed Shahzi.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Terrell Wells.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham.