Another post for the desk drawer. (Here is Desk drawer 1).
On p. 193 of Radical Son, Horowitz mentions an article he wrote about a Moscow/Peking land dispute, which, I find, appeared in Ramparts in June 1969 (key word: Ussuri ). The Black Panther magazine wrote something else on the topic, inspiring Horowitz to go over to the Panther offices, which he had never before visited -- due, he tell us, to his "aversion to the Panthers' violent dogmatism."
Remember: As he has often written, Horowitz didn't "discover" the violent activities of the Black Panthers until after the 1974 murder of Betty Van Patten.
The author of the Pather magazine article turned out to be Bob Avakian, a lifelong Maoist revoutionary. Still.
Horowitz describes Avakian, circa 1969, as:
the prodigal sun of a Berkeley judge, whose previous claim to notoreity was scaling a flagpole at an antiwar protest in order to tear down the Stars and Stripes.
That sounds practically Dink Stover-like. But it's not true.
Thanks to 1968 hearings conducted by the blessed House Un-American Activities Committee, we have eyewitness testimony and evidence that Avakian was already notorious for soliciting funds to buy guns for "the black revolution" -- rather more than shinnying up a flagpole.
Here is the San Francisco Examiner report about it from July 1967. Note the participation of Don Rothenberg, a longtime Communist Party operative and organizer (identifed by FBI informant Mary Stalcup Markward) who, in the summer of 1967, had just left a job/mission, assisting the publisher of Ramparts Magazine.
Here's the Avakian circular -- on the "The Long Hot Summer" and "Gun Running"
Edward S. Montgomery, the investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner at the San Francisco Examiner who wrote the news story above and produced the circular above, also told the House committee in 1968 that he later learned area militants were
buying guns in big numbers. We were able to trace some of the purchases to a gun story in Reno, Nevada, where they were buying guns as many as 25 at a time.
I know of one purchase on February 15 of this year [1968], where they purchased 26 guns, for the most part 38's and nine-milimeter Aftra automatics. The bill came to $954 and the purchaser peeled off nine $100 bills and lesser bills.
So they are getting money in sizable sums from some source. These purchases are being made by individuals who have no visible means of support for the most part ...
Desk Drawer 3 is here.