The 1960s Campus Bombings

Shortly before midnight on September 29, 1968, an explosion shook downtown Ann Arbor. Police Chief Walter Krasny was woken by the blast, and arrived on the scene shortly after the Ann Arbor Fire Department. After the firemen had extinguished the smoldering wreckage of a small, unassuming office at 450 S. Main St, Krasny and his officers investigated the source of the blast. Upon initial investigation, the following facts were surmised:

“On that night in late September, someone set off four to six sticks of dynamite in front of [the director’s] office. The explosion blew a three-inch deep hole in the sidewalk, shattered windows and overturned furniture, causing thousands of dollars of damage, though no one was hurt.” (Zbrozek, 2006)

The office, as it turned out, was an undercover Central Intelligence Agency recruiting office. Under the direction of John F. Forrester, the office existed with the goal of recruiting students from the University of Michigan and Michigan State campuses to the CIA task force.

Having ascertained the office’s purpose, Krasny immediately suspected that the bombing was likely political in nature, and that the target was the United States Federal Government, specifically the CIA. Given the prevailing political movements on the University of Michigan campus at that time, Chief Krasny told a reporter from the Ann Arbor News that he suspected the attacks had been planned and carried out by “anti-establishment militants,” and that his investigation would focus on “hippies of a college age.”

A mere two weeks later, the University of Michigan campus fell victim to another bombing. On the night of Monday, October 14, 1968, a dynamite explosion took place right outside the door to the office of the Institute of Science and Technology on North Campus. Again, no one was hurt, but the building sustained significant damage. According to Police Chief Krasny, it ripped open the heavy metal doors of the Institute’s East Wing and shattered a dozen windows along the side of the seven-story building. “The concussion apparently was terrific. It was so powerful it sent a metal piece of that door rocketing down a hallway more than 80 feet and into a wooden door.”

Noting the similarities to the CIA office bombing two weeks prior, Krasny contacted officials at the University of Michigan, inquiring as to the nature of the research being conducted at the IST facility. Upon learning that the IST had been conducting research on behalf of the United States Military, Krasny’s suspicions that the bombings were politically motivated attacks against the United States Federal Government seemed to be realized. For this reason, he invited the Federal Bureau of Investigation to collaborate on the investigation. An FBI explosives expert arrived in Ann Arbor the following day. (The Michigan Daily, 1968)

One final attack occurred on the University of Michigan campus the following June. Shortly after 11pm on Sunday, June 1st, 1969, a large bomb detonated under a car parked outside North Hall. Local Police and an FBI Bomb Squad responded, arriving on the scene promptly and immediately recognizing the similarities between this bombing and those that had occurred on the University of Michigan campus the previous fall. Residents up to two miles away from the site of the explosion reported feeling their houses shake. More than sixty of North Hall’s windows were shattered by the blast, and a large part of one wall was blown in. Plaster was blown from the walls and ceilings almost throughout the building. Nearby buildings also sustained significant damage, especially the Museums Annex next door. (Harris, 1969)

Later in the same year, the editor of The Detroit News received a telephone call from one David Valler, a squatter in an abandoned-house-turned-commune near the Wayne State University campus in Detroit. In this call, Valler, extremely high on LSD, confessed implicitly to the Ann Arbor bombings as well as five other explosive-based attacks in the Southeastern Michigan. In his confession, he also implicated three other individuals: John Sinclair, Jack Forrest, and Lawrence “Pun” Plamondon. According to his report, the bombings had been on behalf of the Michigan-based far-left political coalition known as The White Panther Party, of which all four men were members, and of which Sinclair and Plamondon were co-founders. (Zbrozek, 2006.)

Valler, Sinclair, Forrest and Plamondon were all indicted in a case that reached the United States Supreme Court on February 24, 1972. Sinclair, Forrest, and Plamondon all received sentences of 9 ½ to 10 years. Valler, who, after initially admitting guilt renounced his actions and condemned The White Panther Party and hippies in general, took a plea deal and served a very short sentence, after which he went on to become a newspaper columnist who wrote articles condemning drug use, counterculture, and radical politics.

Sources

-Davis, Hugh “Buck.” “A People’s History of the CIA Bombing Conspiracy (the Keith Case); Or, How the White Panthers Saved the Movement Freeing John Sinclair.” Accessed April 28, 2017. http://freeingjohnsinclair.aadl.org/freeingjohnsinclair/essays/peoples_history_of_the_cia_bombing_conspiracy.

-“Door Blown Out by Bomb Blast at Institute of Science and Technology, University of Michigan.” The Ann Arbor News, October 15, 1968. http://oldnews.aadl.org/N035_0467_012.

-Hirschman, Martin. “Bomb Hits ROTC Building.” The Michigan Daily, February 6, 1969. The Michigan Daily Digital Archives. https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/midaily/mdp.39015071754233/105.

-“Krasny Connects CIA, IST Blasts.” Michigan Daily, October 16, 1968. Michigan Daily Digital Archives. https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/midaily/mdp.39015071754043/457.

-“On The Run! Old News.” The Ann Arbor Sun, September 6, 1972. Old News, AADL. http://oldnews.aadl.org/node/194849.

-Treml, William B. “Area Law Officials Call 1968 A Busy Year.” The Ann Arbor News, May 1, 1969. Old News, AADL. http://oldnews.aadl.org/node/84028.

-United States v. United States Dist. Court for Eastern Dist. of Mich., 407 US 297 (Supreme Court 1972).

-Zbrozek, Christopher. “The Boming of A2 CIA Office.” The Michigan Daily, October 24, 2006. https://www.michigandaily.com/content/bombing-a2-cia-office.