A Review of Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America's First Female Terrorist Group

 

Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America's First Female Terrorist Group by William Rosenau
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I feel badly for what I'm about to write -- largely for the authors as I know how much time, labor, sweat, etc., is invested in writing a book, let alone a book like this. But I've got to be honest. I bought this book in early May 2020  & nearly 2 1/2 years later, having read, stopped, started again much later, stopped, repeat, repeat, I'm now just giving up in massive frustration. And you know, I'm guessing my reaction might not have been so bad if not for the marketing, or more precisely the misleading book title that set me up with massive excitement & lofty expectations only to make me feel -- consistently bored every fu**ing time I read just a paragraph -- that has to be among my top five disappointments ever. Which is saying a lot. It bored me endlessly, almost to the point of begging for physical torture so I could be released from the mental torture, experienced in the constant knowledge that I was experiencing the most UNDERwhelming book of my life! "Explosive Story?" God, I feel cheated. And I resent that. It was so NOT what the title states or promises. Explosive story? Possibly a play on words as some of these women were loosely attached (largely in a support role) to a few Black Panther/BLA bombers. Even then, that would be a lousy trick & not worth crap. But if that title is meant to be literal, that's false advertising if I've ever seen it.

 

Think about it. If we're sticking solely with nonfiction, in no specific order & off the top of my head, I can think of a number of books that both I & probably a number of others would describe as at least as explosive or exciting, if not more. And I'm aware this is subjective, but at the moment I don't have the time to address that. Nonetheless, some options include: 

• Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage
• Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter
• (Possibly) The Rape of Nanking by Iris Change
• The infamous Anarchist Cookbook
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
• Bernard Fall's Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu
• God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction by Dan Barker
• (and by far the most exciting & explosive nonfiction I've ever read...)
• Ken Follett's On Wings of Eagles

There are so many more I could add but I see little point. Moving on, just sticking with the overall theme & era, there are/were so many groups within the US & globally -- some almost more fringe & unknown than M19 -- that there seems to be an endless supply of resources. But as most would expect, there's a plethora of resources on a number of the usual people or groups, which doesn't make them illegitimate to read about, but does cause the forever curious, like myself, to seek out info on more fringe, unknown, suppressed groups, people and topics, & as this is the only book I've yet come across on M19, I was very excited. One can only read so much increasingly redundant stuff on groups labeled "dissident, militant" & soon "domestic terrorists." Some include the SDS, Weather Underground, Black Panthers, German Red Army Faction (RAF) (which, like many, had ties to Carlos the Jackal, the most notorious terrorist, but one of whom I feel is correct to include despite not working his violence for personal political reasons -- many of his clients WERE), SLA, BLA, American Indian movement, Italy's Red Brigades, etc. But I've known there were others yet some seem to be lacking nearly any resources, info, etc., which is simply served to make me all the more eager to locate nearly any info for the really underground ones. And M19CO (related name) was one of those.

To generalize badly, the smallish group was largely comprised of Jewish college graduates or dropouts, nearly all from mid-to-upper class families, most of whom had gone to elite schools, whether Ivy League or more women-traditional like a Smith or Wellesley, many to most of whom were lesbians (neither here nor there -- just part of the overall description, as were the prep schools, etc., et al), who had caught the revolutionary buzz circulating among both thousands of students (typically of similar backgrounds) or historically oppressed minorities, many of which initially formed as both community defense groups (from the police, such as the Black Panthers) as well as groups that gave out free breakfast to children, set up free medical clinics, preached "black power" in some cases, etc. Some were radical in their speech & ideas while others  became quite dangerous, yet often as many were being literally destroyed by the FBI in Hoover's infamous program you all probably know about. M19 has been attributed with some of the more infamous bombings of the late '70s & early '80s, but even though I read a large section of the book, I can't name a single instance in which they either didn't have massive aid from their BLA friends or were themselves little more than watchers & getaway drivers while the men did the dirty work. I'm under the impression that changed with time, but I was so ticked off at what I viewed as false advertising due to the title, as well as being bored beyond description that I didn't even care anymore. Lesser known groups (& causes) that interested me were the various Puerto Rican "Freedom fighter"/"terrorist" groups fighting a war dating back to the beginning of the century. A war against the US government, trying to earn their freedom as a nation instead of what the people there had been forced to endure as an American trophy obtained via the Spanish-American War and later as a federal territory, though never a state. If you want to read some about some horrors long suppressed in American textbooks, look up info on Puerto Rico since 1900 & its relationship with the US government. (While not recommending any, some options might include Militant Puerto Ricans: Migrants, Armed Struggle & Political Prisoners or War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony.) Anyway, there were many such dissident group in the US at the time, one of the foremost of which was called the Young Lords. One of the least known, least publicized yet most violent ended up, I believe,  bombing more than 120 government & other important commercial locations/buildings than any other was FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional). Some of their more infamous bombings included Wall Street -- literally -- the Rockefeller Center, courthouses, theaters, New York Life & Metropolitan Life's NY headquarters, as well as attempts against government officials like Carter & Bush, etc. While little known to the public & aside from their leader, virtually unknown to the government, a group of them were captured in Illinois around 1980. So, you want government acknowledgment, let alone details? Do your best looking because basically the only thing the government has ever produced as available to the public and not classified is something I have in many formats, including the actual book produced by Congress. Many of these versions have different titles, but they are all literally the same. The book held in my hand right now is called Clemency For the FALN: A Flawed Decision? Otherwise formally known as a "Hearing Before the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Sixth Congress, First Session September 21, 1999, Serial No. 106-44." And it's a copy of the most boring drivel, the actual Congressional hearing so important about this dangerous FALN, that its purpose was to crap all over Clinton for granting clemency to these men who had just spent close to 20 years in prison. Yep, that's it. Now, try to find info, docs, lit BY FALN. There are a couple of books about or including FALN. But it's hard. There's not much there by the group. Two German universities had a couple of documents awhile back. FALN is still around, though, unlike virtually all of these other groups. Leaving them all, like M19, in the dust. (M19's era lasted from the late '70s to slightly beyond 1985.)

Yes, I went on too long there but my point is I would prefer to read about any of these other groups rather than M19, or perhaps a different author/publisher might have made or would make a difference. Considering my interest in the subject, let me make clear just how much I do not recommend this book. I'd rather read Sartre's tome Being and Nothingness (and I love his fiction & drama), which has to be the most brain-addling & rather blasé book (or maybe I'd rather read about algorithms?) I've had yet. So, while everyone is different & some have liked this M19 book, I guess it's no surprise to me that it's rating on Goodreads is below a 3.5. Sorry, but never recommended by me.

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Old Geek Humor - "Top Secret Microsoft Code" (from Tek Thots vol. 2 issue 6, 1997)

 Back in 1996, I started an email newsletter I called Tek Thots. If you've ever seen my LinkedIn profile, you know I'm intrigued by and pursue many interests. At the time, I was working progressively longer hours at a growing tech company that would become the country's second largest Internet Service Provider behind only AOL. (AOL was technically a Commercial Online Service so I've often argued EarthLink was actually the largest ISP in the country, not AOL. But semantics, yes?)

I was also teaching at a couple of schools on the side (one a tenure track associate professor position). I taught an odd mix of classes ranging from Composition, Creative Writing and Twentieth Century British and American Literature to what evolved into web development, software development (and a rare class on computer hardware). I was also writing and publishing, traveling for business and pleasure, giving seminars with additional odd projects on the side that could become time and labor-intensive.

Still, I had many geek interests, in part stemming from my involvement in the computing world since the 1970s, my first home computer in 1982 (C64, of course), email, modems, my first programming classes, security, BBS's, protocols such the OSI model, TCP/IP stack, etc. Spending my time working in the biggest data center on the west coast thrilled me to no end, and I was working toward an engineering degree at UCLA. Of course I loved gaming, helping out newbies, research into still little known tech issues (anyone remember VRML?), tracking down "bad guys" with some others, typical geek humor, etc.

Tek Thots surprised me by turning out to be pretty influential. I published erratically, had no help and did everything myself, but met some great people from around the world. If you've read my short LinkedIn entry on it, I note it migrated to a greater emphasis on security, privacy, cryptography, info warfare, etc., and I was engaged with many professionals around the globe and people seemed to appreciate the (free) newsletter's growth. At one point I know Tek Thots had subscribers from over 50 countries, including the US, Belgium, New Zealand, Sweden, UK, Israel, Canada, Australia, Germany, Chile, Finland, Norway, UAE, Italy, South Korea, Denmark, Iceland, Poland, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa, Russia, Spain, Latvia, Thailand, Portugal, Mexico, Japan, Romania, India, Austria, Bermuda, Nicaragua, Brazil, Malaysia, Ireland, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovak Republic, Croatia, Greece, Cypress & Estonia. Moreover,  many were in education, government and military fields and the majority of US subscribers often had email domains ending with .edu, .gov, .mil and .arpa extensions. 

 

The purpose of this article actually is NOT supposed to be a full history of Tek Thots. Rather, I wanted to post a snippet of one of the issues as an introduction to my new project to put up an informal site where anyone can access the issues I still possess from between 1996-1999. I'm missing quite a few, but I still have over 15 and I think some are interesting because I made a lot of observations, predictions and forecasting and it's been interesting to see how accurate I turned out to be. Also I encouraged reader engagement, not all of which was glowing fan mail. Those who are honest will surely admit that techies are among the first to rip into each other if they think a person is wrong. They have no compuctions about proving that person stupid. Fortunately, I rarely had to deal with that, but I did receive many messages from people contesting some of my observations or assertions -- good naturedly -- and I'd often print a few (with their permission) and respond in the following issue. I came across one such a few weeks ago from the first year of the newsletter and I wondered whatever happened to the young lady who wrote me asking questions and offering a small challenge in response to some things I'd written in the previous issue. I knew nothing about her but decided to see if I could find her and to my surprise, she's on LinkedIn! I haven't contacted her because despite a positive relationship, that WAS in the previous century and who knows if she ever remembers this. My typical strategy is to tag a person and hope they see it, which I would do except since I haven't spoken to her, I don't know how she'd feel about me identifying her by name -- even via just a tag -- on this platform, but I'll worry about that another time.

So Finally! I'm finally at the place which this intended-short article was to be about. I apologize for the lengthy intro but I wanted to explain the purpose and context, especially since what I'm about to post was typical nerd humor in the 1980s and '90s, but as far as I know, may no longer be appreciated these days because it seems so many people have lost their sense of humor, a pity. But I have one more longish piece of information to provide, largely for those not familiar with the old hatred of Microsoft.

 

One of the frequent things found in engineering divisions (and elsewhere) back in those days was forms of humor ranging from pure geekfest to stuff that probably wouldn't pass the current PC barrier and that was true even for many female colleagues working in these environments. We made fun of a lot of famous people and companies and there were so many to trash. However, if you're old enough to remember those days, you should get this, and if you weren't around at the time, you should probably know this so as to have any needed context. The two tech companies that stood out for criticism with a little brutality were Apple and at #1, Microsoft. I'll skip Apple for now. Microsoft was hated by nearly everyone for nearly everything. In no particular order, they made horribly inferior products, and that was in manufacturing, because both by confirmation and strong assertions and beliefs, Microsoft never actually MADE anything! [This URL provides good and once common examples of the complaints people had about Microsoft: https://www.quora.com/What-made-Microsoft-deserve-the-moniker-of-Evil-Empire.] Apple may have put some stinkers out there but they were innovators. Microsoft was known for stealing most of their offerings from other companies, or buying companies solely for a product they wanted to sell but couldn't/wouldn't make themselves. While Gates did create DOS for IBM (though even that concept is challenged), legend has it Gates, et al, toured the incredibly innovative Xerox PARC where they'd already invented most anything worth a damn (a GUI display, a mouse [originally wooden], Ethernet, laser printing, a great text editor, the alleged first actual personal computer, user friendly programming languages and much more). Many young tech stars famously went to Palo Alto to tour the lab, yet many sources assert Gates stole his idea for a GUI OS interface, a mouse and more while there. (Steve Jobs and Apple were accused of the same thing and it seems very likely they both were guilty.) Additionally, Gates bought SQL from a small company and has made massive profits, as well as Windows servers and their IE browser from a small company they (metaphorically) roughed up. Nothing original, yet even then, products that were largely crap in quality. Unfortunately, users had no recourse because for one thing, Apples cost so much more, UNIX wasn't a viable reality, and you couldn't buy a PC without the new Windows on it, so Microsoft had a monopoly (which they abused) that was considered so "evil" that the DOJ went after them and forced a massive fine on them for various anti-competitive crimes.

 To cut to the chase, though, the real problem was Bill Gates. He was simply an asshole. By then Microsoft was called "the evil empire" by many and Boardwatch Magazine published an issue so infamous that they had merch made up and I still have the shirt that features Bill's head with some sci fi contraption over one eye and the title "BillGatus of Borg," which basically went viral. I not only still have the shirt, but the poster too.

One known example is when AOL was under the impression they were going to have a partnership with Microsoft. On the assigned day for talks, Gates and his team apparently walked into AOL's conference room, Gates sat down, looked at Steve Case and said "I can either buy you today or destroy you today, your choice." (Recollected quote from book I read some years ago, so not likely ver batam.) Unlike most companies, Case threw the Microsoft group out of the building. So It wasn't until Bill retired, got married and tried to resurrect his image with numerous interviews and much philanthropy, and also other Borgs arising, that Gates was finally able to become ... not nearly as toxic to many Microsoft haters. [As a personal aside - having nothing to do with the many hundreds of friends, colleagues and connections I have there - I've been impressed with the fact that over the past decade or so, Microsoft has done two things they never did -- innovate and vastly improve most products so that now before the 3rd version of whatever it is, it's long been stable and usable. So kudos to them!]

So I have gone on far too long and I'm finally going to get to the original reason for this article. I'm posting an example (bad, fuzzy -- sorry) of some subtle (not really), funny, sarcastic nerd humor from Tek Thots vol. 2, issue 6, published on June 13, 1997. This was typical of many different goofy things we'd exchange and occasionally post in between pieces of hacking and hackers (Mitnik), viruses, espionage, human trafficking, Russia's illegal purchase of SGIs, geopolitical armaments, etc. Between the jokes and the computer game reviews, had to keep things a bit lighter at times. One last note on this issue. I called this issue my "Spamford Wallace" issue. Long story, but I gave out his physical address and some 400 domains, IPs, invoices, etc., when it appeared most have difficulty locating him. In any event, here finally is the code. I can't improve on it so I hope it's readable and if so, I hope you enjoy. For my friends at Microsoft, please realize this is a harmless joke from over 25 years ago, so hopefully we can all have a chuckle without any ill feelings. Thanks!