New York Times Shills for Convicted '60s Revolutionary Terrorist Judith Clark

I first saw this story at Althouse, where Ann noted how Clark represented herself at trial and most certainly screwed up her own defense, resulting in a prison term lasting until 2056. Her co-defendants made pleas and were sentenced to shorter terms and are out on parole today. So then I was reading the comments from Ron Radosh on this as well, "The Sad Story of Judith Clark: How Ideology can Ruin a Life. The Question Remains: Should She Go Free?" It's an interesting commentary, especially since Radosh thinks Clark's done her time and she should get clemency from the State of New York.

The problem, of course, is that the New York Times is hardly a neutral observer. The article, by freelance correspondent Tom Robbins, is basically a long plea for forgiveness, making the case for Clark's "radical transformation," which is a bunch of baloney for many observers and contemporaries. The editors at the New York Post weren't fooled a bit, for example, "Sick push to spring radical Judith Clark." And David Horowitz is practically livid, "The NYT Shilling Again for Leftwing Murderers":

The New York Times, which played a key role in getting convicted and unrepentant murderer Kathy Boudin a parole, has now published a similar massive plea posing as a news story for her accomplice, Judy Clark. The piece is maliciously titled “The Radical Transformation of Judy Clark” as though Clark, understanding the heinous nature of her crime which left 9 children fatherless, is prepared to renounce the life that led to it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course Clark is in her sixties now and regrets her separation from the infant she abandoned to commit the crime (her last crime not her only crime). Her daughter  is now 31 and she would obviously like to be able to share the kind of life with her that her victims cannot share with their dead fathers. And, of course, being old and gray, she no longer thinks Amerikkka is on the brink of a violent revolution and liberation. Unlike Boudin, moreover, she does seem to have given some thought to the enormity  of what she did to those nine fatherless children. But that said, there is no indication that her parole plea is anything but self-serving, or that she has turned her back on the progressive terrorists — Boudin, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn among them — who were her comrades-in-arms through the twelve years of armed warfare she conducted against her country and its citizens, which left more than a handful of people dead.

To begin with, Clark and her mouthpiece at the Times, present the culprit as an absent-minded accomplice to the one crime for which she was convicted, the Brinks robbery in Nyack NY in 1981. According to Clark,  her participation  was an “obligation” — the fulfillment of a promise she had made to participate as a getaway driver in a robbery she thought would never take place. This is baloney. Clark was part of a group that called itself “The Family,” which  was a working alliance between the Black Liberation Army and the May 19th Communist Movement (so-named in part to commemorate the day the BLA murdered a black and white police team in New York for no reason other than that they were a black and white officer working together).

The May 19 gang was mainly women (among them Boudin, Clark and Susan Rosenberg) who served as the getaway team for the BLA in a string of bank robberies in which people were killed. One attempted assassination of  a New York judge was unsuccessful. All these crimes were committed in the name of the revolution, which in the perverse eyes of progressives like Judy Clark, justified them. The Family had also sprung a cold-blooded killer — Assata Shakur — from federal prison. Clark’s role in the May 19th organization was not the beginning of her criminal career but its fulfillment. Previously she had spent 7 years as one of the most fanatical members of the Weather Underground, helping to conduct many bombings and kill at least three people, and probably also two police officers whose deaths are still under investigation.

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Horowitz suggests that Clark could have atoned by turning her back on terrorism and her terrorist past, and by turning state's evidence against those radicals still working their ways of criminal destruction and mayhem.

Now, it turns out that Radosh faced some heavy pushback for suggesting leniency for Clark, and he's updated with a new post, "Second Thoughts on the Plight of Judith Clark: An Answer to My Critics." Here's this from Radosh's third consideration for leniency:

What Judith Clark is most vulnerable on, and what Tom Robbins did not ask her about, is her violent past with the May 19th Communist Organization. The Black Liberation Army, which they supported, killed a guard and two police officers. They were probably responsible for other actions in past years. As Horowitz points out in as yet unpublished article, May 19th was picked as their name for the birthday of both Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X, as well as being the date that the BLA murdered two cops in Harlem, one white and one black. The group also helped free the convicted cop killer JoAnne Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, whom they broke out of prison and who has since fled to Cuba, where she now lives.

I agree with Horowitz that these radicals are part “of an ongoing community of political radicals” who try to conceal their agenda through playing the victim, and always pointing out how they only want “social justice,” the term through which they hide their actual goal of communist revolution. They are anything but the noble idealists the Times paints them out to be.

And he continues with more concurrence with Horowitz: Clark should be asked what she knows about the unsolved crimes of her radical comrades, and she should come clean with the whole truth about her activities, which would demonstrate a real remorse for her terrorism --- something that so many others of the '60s generation have not done.

Bonus, from Curtis in the comments at Neo-Neocon:

Again, the real injustice here is not that Clark, while being the least of the terrorists received the most punishment. Her punishment is apt and deserved. The real injustice is the appalling lack of value and respect shown to the victims of terrorist violence and the amount of credence and play the lies and disingenuous stories the New York Times receives.

Word.