Weather Underground, 9/11, A Rhodes Scholarship, Cop Killers, A Tenured Terrorist & Death in a Northern Town- The '81 Brinks Heist Revisited

(AP Photo)

It all began on October 20, 1981 when terrorists from the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army wielding shotguns and M-16s ambushed a Brinks armoured truck making its rounds at the Nanuet Mall in Nyack, NY. Brink's guard Peter Paige was killed instantly and Jospeh Tombino nearly lost his arm in the assault. Triggermen Jeral Wayne Williams (AKA Mutulu Shakur), Donald Weems (AKA Kuwasi Balagoon) and David Gilbert made off with an estimated $1.6 million in cash and drove a short distance before ditching their getaway car and climbing into a rented U-Haul. The plan was to have Gilbert's common-law wife Kathy Boudin drive back to New York City with the money and the gunmen hidden in the back of the U-Haul while the police were looking for black gunmen and the getaway car. However, a high school student nearby witnessed the switch and immediately alerted the local police.

The Nyack P.D. set up a roadblock at the entrance of Exit 11 of the New York State Thruway and approximately 10 minutes after the witness reported the switch, the U-Haul approached the police roadblock with Boudin behind the wheel and the money from the Brinks armoured truck and six heavily-armed accomplices stowed in the back. Feigning innocence, Boudin pleaded with officers Edward O'Grady, Waverly Brown, Brian Lennon, and Artie Keenan to lower their weapons as they approached. Thinking they had the wrong vehicle, the officers complied- at which point Gilbert, Balagoon, Shakur and three other accomplices wearing body armor jumped out of the truck and opened fire on the police officers. Officer Waverly Brown was hit and killed immediately. Sgt. O'Grady was hit multiple times, but was able to return fire with his service revolver. Detective Arthur Keenan was struck immediately but was able to take cover and return fire while Officer Lennon was in the cruiser when the shootout began. He tried exiting from the passenger side, but the door was blocked by O'Grady's body. He fired multiple shots from the cruiser's 12-gauge shotgun at the U-Haul as the some of the assailants jumped back in and rammed the cruiser with the van. Other assailants scattered in the immediate aftermath of the bloody shootout. Boudin tried fleeing on foot, but she was tackled and arrested by off-duty New York City corrections officer Mike Koch, who witnessed the whole thing while in traffic.

Sgt. O'Grady died on the operating table some 90 minutes later after being hit by multiple 5.56mm rounds. He lived long enough to empty his service revolver into one of his assailants (investigators later recovered a flattened .38 slug identified as being from O'Grady's service revolver from the body armour of one of the suspects).

The other accomplices carjacked motorists- Judith Alice Clark, Chris Dobbs and Samuel Brown were pursued by South Nyack Police Chief Alan Colsey until their vehicle crashed into a stone wall. Separated from their weapons in the vehicle and disriented by the crash, the 3 terrorists were held at gunpoint by the police chief until backup arrived. Police also recovered more than $800,000 of the stolen money from the vehicle.

Before the October bloodbath in Nyack began, Kathy Boudin dropped off her 14 month old infant, Chesa Boudin, at a babysitter before picking up the U-Haul to be used in the getaway. With Chesa Boudin's parents- Dave Gilbert and Kathy Boudin- arrested and facing lengthy prison sentences for their role in the murders of Brown, O'Grady and Paige, another pair of Weather Underground alumni would wind up raising Chesa Boudin; none other than William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

Now- let's fast forward some 20 years or so to the year 2001. Kathy Boudin and Dave Gilbert are rotting in prison where they belong, little Chesa is all grown up in the relative comfort of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and Foster-daddy William Ayers has just completed his book Fugitive Days: A Memoir in part to answer some of Chesa's questions about his days as a Weather underground fugitive, and in part to try and revise his role in the botched bombing attempt of Ft. Dix that never got further than a Greenwich Village townhouse in 1970. Many critics and even some former Weather Underground members dismiss Ayers memoir as 'self-indulgent and morally clueless'.

The New York Times however, can't wait to run a piece on the fugitive-turned professor and his memoirs. [I hope you're paying special attention to the date, NANESB! readers]. Also some 20 years after being ambushed at the Nanuet Mall, a 68-year old Jospeh Trombino is still working for Brinks as an armoured truck driver.

The same day the Times puff-piece on the domestic terrorist hit the newsstands, Joseph Trombino and more than 2700 other Americans were murdered by Islamic terrorists at the World Trade Center site on September 11th 2001.

In the days following the attack, Ayers seems more upset that the scope of the calculated act of mass-murder seems to be diverting attention away from his memoir. However, when some began to question the Weather Underground's use of bombings as a tactic he penned a tepid, lukewarm denunciation of the 9/11 attacks in a Chicago Tribune letters to the editor piece, including various tried-and-true leftist weasel-words like "I condemn all forms of terrorism — individual, group and official" and "Today we are witnessing crimes against humanity on our own shores on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we may soon see more innocent people in other parts of the world dying in response."

Fast forward for about another year- December 2002- and the New York Times has once again caught up with the Ayers household- this time Ayers foster-son Chesa Boudin who has miraculously overcome the odds despite growing up in Hyde Park and his radical-but-politically connected foster parents and been granted a Rhodes scholarship.

Raised by two other Weathermen leaders, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, in Chicago's Hyde Park, he is one of 32 American winners of this year's Rhodes scholarships. It is a remarkable achievement for a boy with epilepsy and dyslexia who did not learn to read until third grade and spent much of his childhood in temper tantrums.

The closest Chesa comes to even mentioning his parents role in the murder of Waverly Brown, Peter Paige or Edward O'Grady is a vacuous, woe-is-me statement about Gilbert and Boudin's prison sentence:

"Now I'm not angry," he said, "I'm sad that my parents have to suffer what they have to suffer on a daily basis, that millions of other people have to suffer as well."

Young Chesa is also pretty fluent in Spanish and has taken to translating Hugo Chavez's anti-American and anti-capitalism screeds into English.

Sgt. Edward O'Grady left behind a wife and three children.

Officer Waverly Brown left behind two grown daughters and a son who would go on to a career in law-enforcement himself.

Peter Paige left behind a wife, an adult daughter and two sons.

Yet the New York Times doesn't even see it fit to print their names or mention the loved ones left behind thanks to the actions of Chesa's parents and Ayers' friends.

If they can't or won't, then I will. And if- in past and future posts- you think I'm being entirely too harsh on what I label as the 'Mainstream Media', then read this post in its entirety. Judging from the article's tone, we're supposed to be appreciative of the insight and wisdom Ayers provides in his memoir as a radical than say the loyalty and dedication Peter Paige (a 25-year Brinks employee) or Joseph Trombino (who also was a survivor of the '93 WTC attack) displayed while they were murdered on the job. Or the ultimate sacrifice made by Officers brown and O'Grady in the line of duty.

Consider this 'Exhibit A' on why Mainstream Media outlets cannot be trusted.