The Monumental Plot

Early this year, the Black Liberation Front, a hot-eyed batch of pro-Castro New York Negroes, got in touch with some Quebec separatists, an equally odd outfit fanatically dedicated to Quebec's secession from Canada. The Black Liberation boys wanted some dynamite; the Canadians were willing to provide it. From their agreement sprang one of the most convoluted conspiracies since Guy Fawkes schemed in 1605 to blow up the English Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder.

"Damned Old Bitch." According to charges brought by New York police last week, the mastermind--if that is the word--of the plot was one Robert Steele Collier, 28, a library clerk who visited Cuba early last summer and returned to organize the Black Liberation Front. Also charged were Walter Augustus Bowe, 32, a onetime trumpet player who used to lead a combo called "The Angry Black Men," but more recently has worked as a $50-a-week New York settlement-house youth leader, and boyish-looking Khaleel Sul-tarn Sayyed, 22, son of an Arab-descended Negro who runs a Brooklyn delicatessen. And then there was husky (6 ft. 1 in., 201 lbs.) Raymond A. Wood, 31, a former Chester, S.C., high school football star.

The plotters were seeking to create a spectacular sort of disturbance that would dramatize the troubles of U.S. Negroes. Bowe, Sayyed and Wood started scouting around last month, visited the 300-ft.-high, 225-ton Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. Obviously, blowing up the Statue of Liberty would be as spectacular an event as anyone could wish for.

Bowe purchased an inexpensive replica of the statue, demonstrated to his colleagues that it would be a simple matter to break the lock on a door leading from the statue's head (where a million tourists annually stare out at the harbor through windows in the crown) into the 42-ft.-long torch-bearing arm, from which the public is excluded. At the statue's shoulder, Bowe reported, the Black Liberation boys could plant a few sticks of dynamite, detonate them with electrical blasting caps, and--bang!--in one blast the "damned old bitch" would be rendered both headless and torchless.

Enter la Femme. It all sounded so good that Bowe had another idea: "This is so easy we should split up and knock out the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia." Why not? The Black Liberation boys became highly enthusiastic about wrecking U.S. shrines. As long as they were at it, why not the 555-ft.-high Washington Monument as well?

As a first step toward the sabotage, Collier ordered Ray Wood to pick up some planks and nails to make spiked boards for puncturing police-car tires, and gasoline bottles for Molotov cocktails. Collier also began talking about setting up three-man demolition teams to knock out U.S. oilfields and military installations. Early this month, Collier and Wood went to Canada to make final arrangements for bringing in 30 sticks of dynamite. A frowsy, 6-ft. blonde named Michelle Duclos, 26, was to bring the dynamite from Montreal to New York in her car. She is a member of the separatist Rassemblement pour l'lndependance Nationale, is a sometime performer on Montreal's French-language television station CFTM, and a frequent visitor to New York for dates with African representatives to the U.N.

To the Black Liberation plotters, things seemed to be going swimmingly. Little did they know that in their midst was an undercover agent: big Ray Wood, not a pro-Castro kook at all but a New York rookie cop. Last summer he was taken from his classes at the police academy, ordered to infiltrate left-wing groups like the Black Liberation Front that at the time were suspected of fomenting Harlem riots. Wood spent hours plodding picket lines and insulting cops, managed to gain Collier's confidence, and joined the conspirators' inner circle. He kept a daily diary of the lunatic schemings. Soon, every detail of the plot was known to New York cops, the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Highly Volatile. Early last week in Montreal, Michelle Duclos loaded the trunk of her white 1961 Rambler with a brown cardboard box full of dynamite --each stick wrapped in pages of a French-language newspaper. The New Yorkers almost certainly could have purchased or stolen their dynamite closer to home, but getting it from Quebec terrorists added to the internationalism of it all.

It was not very good stuff. Ordinarily, dynamite is a stable explosive; it can be bumped and jostled without much danger. But old dynamite deteriorates, undergoing chemical changes that turn it into highly volatile nitroglycerin, which could explode at the slightest jiggle. Michelle's dynamite was old, deteriorated and dangerous. She was obviously unaware of this fact as she sped toward New York. So were the FBI agents who tailed her, constantly radioing news of her progress to other law-enforcement men along the way. Luckily, Michelle got to New York early on the morning of Feb. 16 without being blown to smithereens; she cached the dynamite in a vacant lot in the prosperous Riverdale residential section of The Bronx, checked into a Manhattan hotel, and got in touch with Ray Wood to report that the explosives had arrived.

A few hours later, FBI men swept in, arrested Bowe at his home, Sayyed at his father's store, and Michelle at the Hotel Excelsior. New York police grabbed Collier at the Riverdale vacant lot as he and Wood arrived to pick up the dynamite. The four were charged with conspiring to destroy Government property, which carries a maximum penalty of $10,000 and ten years in prison. Collier was also charged with unlawful possession of explosives.

"Routine Case." At a press conference with beaming New York Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy, Ray Wood explained: "I just tried to do my best." Commissioner Murphy gave Wood an on-the-spot promotion from rookie ($6,325 annual salary) to detective third-grade ($8,126). Next day Murphy was even more impressed by Wood's performance, upped him once more, to detective second-grade ($8,572). Said Murphy: "There was nothing lucky about this case. An undercover man risked his life for months." Mumbled modest Hero Wood: "I thought this was just another routine case."

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