Village Explosives Arrests Conjure Memories Of Weather Underground

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The arrest of a man and woman who were found with explosives, weapons and bomb-making materials at a Greenwich Village townhouse was a reminder for some of a far more destructive incident a couple of blocks away more than 40 years ago.

Morgan Gliedman, 27, and her boyfriend, Aaron Greene, 31, were arrested Saturday when police found a container of the powerful explosive HMTD in their living room, CBS 2 reported. Three buildings in Greenwich Village were evacuated as a result.

HMTD was believed to have been used during the 2005 London bombings.

The couple was arrested after the items were found in an apartment on West 9th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. Just two blocks to the north on March 6, 1970, a bomb actually detonated in another Greenwich Village apartment and three people died.

That bomb was built by members of the Weather Underground – the infamous leftist radical group that sought a violent revolution to overthrow the U.S. government in the late 1960s. Former Weather Underground member Mark Rudd wrote that members of the group had planned to bring the bombs, full of dynamite and nails, to a dance for non-commissioned military officers at Fort Dix, N.J., in an effort to "bring the (Vietnam) war home."

"Inexperienced and freaked-out, somebody must have crossed two wires leading to the detonator," Rudd wrote. "The townhouse on West 11th Street in Manhattan exploded from within, collapsing in fire."

Three Weather Underground members – Theodore Gold, 23; Diana Oughton, 28; and Terry Robbins, 21 – were killed in the blast.

Two others, Cathlyn Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin, survived the explosion on another floor of the townhouse. Out on bail at the time from charges stemming from the 1969 Days of Rage riots in Chicago, the women fled the scene.

Wilkerson did not surrender until 1980. Boudin was arrested in connection with the Nanuet, N.Y., Brinks armored car robbery that resulted in the murder of two police officers and a Brinks guard.

Speaking to 1010 WINS' Gene Michaels over the weekend, a 9th Street neighbor, "Joan," said she found it ironic that explosives and bomb-making items were found so close to the site of the Weather Underground horror.

"Living in this world is sort of next to disaster all the time," Joan said.

Gliedman, 27, is the daughter of a prominent real estate agent and a top-rated New York oncologist, CBS 2 reported. She was nine months pregnant at the time of her arrest and gave birth to a baby girl soon afterward.

CBS News has learned that police seized two shotguns, a flare launcher, nine high-capacity rifle magazines, various handwritten notebooks containing formulas, literature on how to make booby traps and homemade weapons, and pages from a do-it-yourself manual called "The Terrorist Encyclopedia."

The New York Post reported Greene was a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but the group has denied this.

Gliedman and Greene have been charged with weapons possession.

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