No more Sterling Halls

by

On the 50th anniversary of the Sterling Hall bombing it’s time to reflect on the importance of nonviolence. 

It could have just been comical. On New Year’s Eve 1969, two ne’er do well domestic terrorists mixed up a molotov cocktail, commandeered a small plane and dropped the bomb on the Badger Army Ammunition Plant near Baraboo. It splattered on the ground without effect. The problem was that neither Dwight nor Karleton Armstrong knew how to land the plane. 

The tragedy is that they both survived. For their next act the brothers teamed with David Fine and Leo Burt to collect 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil in a Ford Econoline, park it in front of Sterling Hall on the UW-Madison campus, and set it to detonate in the early morning hours of Aug. 24, 1970. 

Their aim was the Army Math Research Center, which they thought was aiding the war effort in Vietnam. They ended up killing 33-year-old postgraduate student Robert Fassnacht, who had a wife and three young children. He was working late to finish up some work before leaving on a family vacation. The blast injured three others. Neither Fassnacht nor the others had anything to do with the Army Math Research Center. 

Cowards all, the bombers fled to Canada. Eventually, three were caught and brought to some measure of justice, if you can call it that. Dwight Armstrong spent only seven years in prison and Karleton Armstrong and Fine only three. Fine went to law school and applied for the bar in Oregon. He was denied admission on the grounds that he did not display “good moral character.” Yeah, you might say so. 

Burt has never been found. I hope that someday he’s brought to justice. 

These four committed an act of domestic terrorism in principle, if not in body count, just the same as Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. It’s true that McVeigh timed his bombing to kill the maximum number of people while the New Year’s Eve Gang did the opposite. But blowing up a big building with a massive explosion is likely to cause death or injury no matter when it is done. McVeigh and the Sterling Hall bombers both acted without regard for human life. McVeigh paid with his life. The Armstrong brothers opened a sandwich shop on State Street. 

A Madison resident for the last four decades, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a Madison liberal say something like, “Yeah, that Sterling Hall bombing was terrible, but…” Then they go on to say something nonsensical about Lyndon Johnson. 

It’s a complete non sequitur. Yes, the Vietnam War was wrong. Yes, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon lied about what we were up to there and about our prospects for success. No, all of that did not justify the murder of Robert Fassnacht or the bombing of Sterling Hall even if no innocent man had been killed. 

On the 50th anniversary of the bombing it’s worth reviewing this history because history seems to be repeating itself in ugly fashion. In the early morning hours of June 24 a molotov cocktail was thrown through a window on the ground floor of the City County Building. It failed to explode, but if it had people working inside might well have been seriously injured or killed. As it was, it resulted in the evacuation of the 911 call center for a time, endangering the lives of anyone who needed emergency assistance. 

Just as I hope that Leo Burt is one day brought to justice, I hope the same for those who bombed the City County Building. Pictures of people of interest can be found here. 

But what I wonder is, why doesn’t anyone in local government seem to share my outrage over this? Is the Madison city council righteously angry over an act that could have torched the very building they work in? No, instead they’re focused on trying to hamstring the Madison police, the very people who are working to track down those responsible. They’re currently in the process of creating a “police monitor,” which would, in my view at least, unnecessarily duplicate the citizen oversight that already exists in the Police and Fire Commission. 

It’s a slippery slope. One could argue that the increasingly militant actions and rhetoric of the anti-war movement set the stage for Sterling Hall. Only a few months earlier a makeshift bomb factory in the basement of a Greenwich Village townhouse exploded. In that case no innocent people lost their lives, but three members of the radical Weather Underground did. 

Today it’s a plausible argument that irresponsible actions and the rhetoric of elements of the current movement are doing the same. For example, while responsible community voices were trying to draw a line between peaceful protests and the looting of State Street, M. Adams of Freedom Inc. was quoted as saying, “Stop murdering Black people and your glass will be safe.” 

The implication, apparently, is that if a Black man is murdered by a Minneapolis cop it’s okay for people to loot businesses in Madison. It’s exactly the same non sequitur as the Madison liberal argument that killing an innocent man in Sterling Hall had anything at all to do with what was going on in Vietnam. Vietnam was wrong. Murdering Robert Fassnacht was wrong. Murdering George Floyd was wrong. Looting businesses in Madison was wrong. What’s so hard to understand about this? 

One currently popular phrase is, “No justice, no peace.” I find that disturbing because it would seem to provide a justification for violence. And, by the way, who exactly is the brahman who will hand down the edict that just enough destruction has been meted out and now justice has prevailed? 

In addition to the criminality of killing and beating innocent people, tearing down statues and tossing bombs into public buildings, it’s all just politically self-defeating. If anything, the Sterling Hall bombing and other acts of political idiocy probably lengthened the Vietnam War. If anything, the rhetoric of people like M. Adams is setting back the movement toward a more just society. Irrational passions need to be placed in check. 

The Sterling Hall bombing was a despicable crime committed by four domestic terrorists. But it is also worth remembering, not just this year but every year, that these things don’t happen in a vacuum. If you say you’re for nonviolence then be for nonviolence. Without conditions. Without qualifications. Without peace, justice will only get further away.