Controversial statements about Tate-LaBianca murders Dohrn was criticized for comments she made about the murders of actress Sharon Tate and retail store owners Leno and Rosemary LaBianca by the Charles Manson clan. In a speech during the December 1969 "War Council" meeting organized by the Weathermen, attended by about 400 people in Flint, Michigan, Dohrn said, "First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the victim's stomach! Wild!"[12] In greeting each other, delegates to the war council often spread their fingers to signify the fork.[7]
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In 2008, Dohrn's husband Bill Ayers wrote that Dohrn was being ironic when she made the statement about the Manson murders.[13] Ayers wrote that he always thought Dohrn's statement was intended to make a political point, "agitated and inflamed and full of rhetorical overkill, and partly as a joke, stupid perhaps, tasteless, but a joke nonetheless", and similar (he said) to jokes about Charles Manson that were being made by Hunter S Thompson and Richard Pryor. Ayers said he had been present at interviews with reporters in which Dohrn had tried to put her statement in context but the reporters had dismissed her explanation.[13] However, in a 2001 Salon article, David Horowitz wrote: "In 1980, I taped interviews with 30 members of the Weather Underground who were present at the Flint War Council, including most of its leadership. Not one of them thought Dohrn was anything but deadly serious. Outrageous nihilism was the Weatherman political style."[14]
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A founder of the Weatherman group, Dohrn was a member of the "Weather Bureau" (name later changed to "Central Committee"). Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant who was with the Weatherman from autumn 1969 through spring 1970, considered her one of the two top leaders of the organization, along with Bill Ayers.[19]
During this period, the group organized the October 1969 Days of Rage riot in Chicago, which Dohrn led.[20] During the 1970s, the Weathermen bombed federal buildings and police stations.[21] Prior to the March 6, 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, in which three members of the group were killed as a bomb was being constructed, all members of Weatherman went underground. The group then changed its name to Weather Underground.
Dohrn went underground in early 1970, engaging in bombing activities.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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