ANN ARBOR, Mich. (Liberation News Service) A dynamite bomb blasted open the Institute of Science and Technology Building on the University of Michigan campus on Oct. 15. It was the latest in a series of 13 bombings to hit the Detroit area in recent months, and followed by two weeks the destruction of a semi-secret CIA recruiting office in downtown Ann Arbor.
The explosion at the Institute was described by police officials as being “larger and more powerful” than any of the previous bombings. The force of the blast shattered all twelve windows on one side of the building; although the explosion tore off a heavy metal door and hurled a piece of it 80 feet down a corridor and through another wooden door, it did little to actually disrupt the classified military research being conducted in the seven story north campus building.
The east wing of the building houses a radar laboratory doing classified research; it had recently been transferred from the Ypsilanti Willow Run Laboratories, an Institute subsidiary. The Willow Run Lab is studying infrared sensory devices for use in tracking guerrillas. Roger Countill, writing in the Guardian (October 12), recently connected the work of the Laboratory and the U.S. government’s successful effort to locate Che Guevara in Bolivian jungles. Che Guevara was murdered a little more than a year ago.
University of Michigan spokesmen declined to speculate whether the radar studies and other counterinsurgency research in progress at the Institute might have been the reason for the bombing.
Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter Krasny, however, has claimed that the bombings may be the work of “anti-establishment militants” at the University. He thus showed more sophistication than Detroit police officials who had blamed the earlier explosions on “hippies.”
Officers have not announced any progress in their search for saboteurs. Although FBI agents have searched the ruins inch by inch, no clues have been found.