Storm Clouds for Weathermen

The Federal Government reaffirmed last week that the bellicose Weathermen deserve to be taken at their word when they vow to make war on American society. The radical group, a grand jury charged, contained a criminal revolutionary conspiracy complete with a central directorate, small cells, explosives and the intent to kill.

It was not the first criminal charge against the Weathermen, a breakaway faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, but it was the most encompassing. The indictment was filed in Detroit because, it was charged, the conspiracy was born at a secret meeting of the Weathermen in Flint, Mich., last December. Among those indicted was Weatherman Leader Mark Rudd, 23, the former Columbia University student who rose to S.D.S. prominence through his generalship of the student uprising there two years ago.

Justice Department officials said they built their case by working backward from the rubble of a New York City town house, blown up in an accidental explosion last March after it had been turned into a bomb factory by the Weathermen. According to the indictment, the Flint conspirators (and others the grand jury could not identify) formed a central committee to direct "focals"--cells of three or four activists--in the bombing of "police and other civic, business and educational buildings throughout the country."

To carry out the conspiracy, the Weathermen allegedly traveled around the U.S. with false identities, using coded messages, to get the guns and explosives they needed. Although the indictment cited 21 overt acts furthering the conspiracy, no actual bombing was charged. Federal officials said that there was an attempt to blow up the Detroit police officers' association building, but the bomb never went off.

The indictment amounted to a stage set that lacked most of the cast of characters. Of the 13 defendants, only four are in custody. Rudd and eight others are fugitives. The indictment carries the clear implication that police succeeded in infiltrating the security-conscious movement. It was learned that undercover men for both the New York City police department and the FBI attended the Flint meeting. But Justice Department officials were not optimistic about bringing all the defendants to trial soon. "We expect to arrest some of them, but we will probably not get them all," said Will Wilson, head of the Justice Department's criminal division.

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