Who Killed Brian V. McDonnell?

"Larry Grathwohl, an FBI mole within the Weathermen, connected [Bill] Ayers to the planning — and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, to the execution— of a police station bombing in San Francisco in February 1970 that killed one officer and injured two others."---David Freddoso, National Review Online (8-18-08)

This a a photo of Brian V. McDonnell, a San Francisco policeman who was killed by shrapnel from a bomb set on a ledge at the San Francisco Police Department on February 16, 1970. Brian died of his injuries two days later on February 18. The San Francisco Police Officers Association remembers him in an article.

The New York Times (10-3-08) writes:

Most of the bombs the Weathermen were blamed for had been placed to do only property damage, a fact Mr. Ayers emphasizes in his memoir. But a 1970 pipe bomb in San Francisco attributed to the group killed one police officer and severely hurt another.

The New York Times doesn't mention that one of the potential suspects in this San Francisco pipe bomb murder is Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers' wife. In about 2000, armed with new forensic techniques and help from state and federal authorities, the San Francisco Police Department reopened an investigation into this murder.

KRON4 (11-10-03) reports from San Francisco:

On February 16, 1970, officer Brian McDonnell is killed when a bomb explodes at Park Police Station...

KRON 4 News has learned that three years ago, San Francisco police secretly re-opened the case. Armed with new forensic technology and with State and Federal agencies helping, SFPD investigators began to work full-time on the murders.

And now, sources tell us, those investigators have identified potential suspects: former members of two militant groups in the '60s and '70s -- the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army, people who've been out of the spotlight for decades. The most prominent among them is Bernardine Dohrn, a former leader of the Weather Underground and now a law professor at Northwestern University in Illinois.

The Canada Free Press (7-24-08) fills in some details, and perhaps there is some information in declassified FBI files.

In turns out that the FBI had an informant inside the Weather organization named Larry Grathwohl. Author Cliff Kincaid (5-8-08) reports:

The Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation authored a 1979 pamphlet on the WUO that reported, 'On October 18, 1974, Larry Grathwohl, a former member of the WUO, testified before a US Senate Subcommittee that Bill Ayers, a WUO leader, had told him that Bernardine Dohrn, another WUO leader, had to plan, develop and carry out the bombing of the police station in San Francisco. Ayers told Grathwohl the bomb was placed on the window ledge and he described the bomb that was used to the extent of saying what kind of shrapnel was used in it.'

David Freddoso of National Review Online (8-18-08) writes:

Larry Grathwohl, an FBI mole within the Weathermen, connected Ayers to the planning — and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, to the execution— of a police station bombing in San Francisco in February 1970 that killed one officer and injured two others. Grathwohl testified that Ayers had discussed the deadly incident after the fact. The revelation came as Ayers was talking about the organizational difficulties in running a terrorist cell:

"[H]e cited as one of the real problems that someone like Bernardine Dohrn had to plan, develop, and carry out the bombing of the police station in San Francisco, and he specifically named her as the person that committed that act. . . . He said that the bomb was placed on the window ledge and he described the kind of bomb that was used to the extent of saying what kind of shrapnel was used in it. . . . [I]f he wasn’t there to see it, somebody who was there told him about it, because he stated it very emphatically."

Grathwohl also testified about an unsuccessful Weatherman bombing in Detroit, which he said Ayers had planned to be executed when the maximum number of people would be present:

"The only time that I was ever instructed or we were ever instructed to place a bomb in a building at a time when there would be people in it was during the planning of the bombing at the Detroit Police Officers’ Association building and the 13th precinct in Detroit, Mich., at which time Bill said that we should plan our bombing to coincide with the time when there would be the most people in those buildings."

Grathwohl tipped off police to this latter plot, and they cleared the area. When they finally found the Detroit bomb, it was unexploded. It contained 13 sticks of dynamite with an M-80 firecracker to detonate them, along with a burnt-out cigarette.

Christopher C. Harmon, a fellow of the Claremont Institute, writes (1-14-04):

Larry Grathwohl ...[was]...Recruited into the Weathermen, who valued his limited military experience, the Cincinnati resident worked with Ayers. Grathwohl found Ayers hard to love; he seemed self-important, a controller of subordinates, the type who loved to give orders. Ayers was a key leader. Grathwohl, a government informant, wrote that Ayers had a helped direct a pair of attempted police building bombings in Detroit in February 1970. After doing his assigned job in reconnaissance, Grathwohl disagreed with Mr. Ayers over the placement of one bomb, which could easily kill black patrons who favored an adjacent restaurant, but that Ayers dismissed such sentimentality as unrevolutionary. The informant was glad to be dismissed from the operation by Ayers. Forty-four sticks of dynamite were then formed into two bombs and put into place, before Grathwohl's information allowed police to dismantle both.

Wikipedia states:

In a bombing that took place on February 16, 1970, and that was credited to the Weathermen at the time,[25][26] a pipe bomb filled with heavy metal staples and lead bullet projectiles was set off on the ledge of a window at the Park Station of the San Francisco Police Department. In the blast, Brian V. McDonnell, a police sergeant, was fatally wounded while Robert Fogarty, another police officer, received severe wounds to his face and legs and was partially blinded.[27]
Weatherman leader Bernardine Dohrn has been suspected of involvement in the February 16, 1970, bombing of the Park Police Station in San Francisco. At the time, Dohrn was said to be living with a Weatherman cell in a houseboat in Sausalito, California, unnamed law enforcement sources later told KRON-TV.[28] An investigation into the case was reopened in 1999,[29] and a San Francisco grand jury looked into the incident, but no indictments followed,[28] and no one was ever arrested for the bombing.[29] An FBI informant, Larry Grathwohl, who successfully penetrated the organization from the late summer of 1969 until April 1970, later testified to a U.S. Senate subcommittee that Bill Ayers, then a high-ranking member of the organization and a member of its Central Committee (but not then Dohrn's husband), had said Dohrn constructed and planted the bomb. Grathwohl testified that Ayers had told him specifically where the bomb was placed (on a window ledge) and what kind of shrapnel was put in it. Grathwohl said Ayers was emphatic, leading Grathwohl to believe Ayers either was present at some point during the operation or had heard about it from someone who was there.[30] In a book about his experiences published in 1976, Grathwohl wrote that Ayers, who had recently attended a meeting of the group's Central Committee, said Dohrn had planned the operation, made the bomb and placed it herself.[31] In 2008, author David Freddoso commented that "Ayers and Dohrn escaped prosecution only because of government misconduct in collecting evidence against them".[30][32]