Clinton's Rosenberg Case - Before we "move on" . . .

Bill Clinton's last days in office were busy ones; and the stomach still revolts from them.

Hours before his successor was sworn in, Clinton granted clemency to a pair of longtime terrorists from the Weather Underground, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans. These women are less well known than the glam figures Bernadine Dohrn and Kathy Boudin, but they are deadly enough. For the last decade and a half, they have been on the roll call of the darlings of the violent Left, along with Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, and other "political" killers. Their world is unforgettably described in Peter Collier and David Horowitz's 1989 book, Destructive Generation.

Rosenberg and Evans were the kind the authors dub "radical airheads." These were white women, brought up in privilege, who placed themselves in the service of more unflinching killers, usually black. They were support players in the Underground: drivers of getaway cars, haulers of weapons, securers of safehouses. They let others pull the trigger, but were always faithful abettors. In the 1970s and '80s, Rosenberg and Evans participated in a string of armed robberies and other crimes, leaving corpses, mayhem, and fear in their wake.

The two belonged primarily to the Weather group, but all such outfits worked together, in an alliance of terror: the May 19th Communist Organization, the Black Liberation Army, the Red Guerrilla Resistance, the Republic of New Afrika, and so on. Collectively, they were known, in positively bourgeois fashion, as "The Family."

Rosenberg-on whom we will focus-was born in 1956 and grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her father was a dentist, her mother involved with the theater. The girl attended the "progressive" Walden School and, at 17, traveled to Cuba as a member of a "youth work brigade." In time, she left such activities for the harder action of The Family.

The Family's most notorious crime occurred on October 20, 1981, in Nanuet, N.Y. This was the operation code-named "Big Dance." (Details of the crime are given in John Castellucci's 1986 book, Big Dance. Castellucci, a reporter with the Providence Journal, remains a leading authority on the case and its many actors.) The gang held up a Brink's truck, killing a guard named Peter Paige. In flight, they killed two police officers, Waverly Brown and Edward O'Grady. Brown had been the first black man admitted to the local force-a real pioneer. This fact should be remembered in light of the contention of Rosenberg et al. that they were dedicated to black people and black progress everywhere.

Rosenberg's role in the crime was that of getaway driver and general accomplice. Four of her partners were immediately caught. At least eight others escaped, including Rosenberg herself.