Weatherman Informant Larry Grathwohl(AKA Tom Niehman)
Berkeley Barb August 21, 1970 . The Red Mountain Tribe
Larry Grathwohl began hanging around the Cincinnati Weather collective before the National
Action in October, 1969. He came on as a "greaser"óa poor Cincinnati working-class street
kid. He said he was an ex-G.I. who had served his time in Vietnam, and had come out of
that experience totally disgusted with Amerika. He said he had an old police record in the
city from when he was a kid, and that he'd gone to night school at the University. He told
the collective that he'd never dug political groups, because none of them seemed to be into
much; he was attracted to Weatherman because it was the first organization he'd seen that
was really into doing shit.
Grathwohl didn't go to the National Action, but after it was over, he came into the Cincinnati
collective. People didn't quite trust him, and tried to run security checks on him. Posing as
employers, they tried to check out both his police record and his claims about night school;
neither place would release any information about him. They met with old friends of his, to
check out what he said about himself; that seemed to fit together. They talked heavy to
him, trying to find out where he was at; he never got flustered or contradicted himself. The
best example of how Grathwohl handled himself in the collective is the story of an "acid
test" of him they did in January. For the first six hours of the trip, people laid into him hard
about their suspicionsóquestioning, accusing, and pressing him for information. He wouldn't
say anything at all. Finally, he looked up at them. "You're right," he said slowly, "I AM a
pigóI'm a pig because of what I did in Vietnam; because I stood by and saw the brutality of
what was being done to innocent people, because I watched Vietnamese women being
raped by G.I.s, and didn't try to stop it." He spoke of the beauty and strength of the
Vietnamese people, and how that had turned him on to fighting for revolution here when he
returned home. The end of the trip was a coming together between him and the other
people in the collective. They felt they had made a mistake about him; that their suspicions
had been wrong. "Most people you suspect of being a pig are schmucks anyway," one of
them told us; "If you throw them out, it isn't much of a loss. But with Larry, what we felt
was that if he wasn't a pig, there was a good chance that he'd turn into an outasight
revolutionary leader." After the acid trip, Larry became much more open in his relationships in the collective. He
became something of a leader in struggling to find a new life and a new identity for them as
white revolutionary kids. He even began to loosen up about fucking, one of the things he'd
always been most uptight about, and almost incapable of. People were feeling pretty good
about him. In February, Dianne Donghi, who'd known Larry in Cincinnati, went to Chicago. There, she
was busted by the FBI for interstate transportation of stolen weapons. The U.S. Attorney
threw the case out, and told Dianne and her lawyer that the bust had been set up by an
informer inside Weatherman. Meanwhile, Grathwohl was in another city, supposedly sick with malaria. He said he was
desperately ill, and getting treatment in a Veterans Hospital. When his friends called the
hospital to check on how he was, they were told that he had never been there. At the same
time, he was seen outside the Federal Building in Cincinnati in a coat and tie. If the malaria
story was true, there's no way he could have been well enough to be out of bed on the day
that he was seen. Because of communications fuck-ups, this information didn't get through
to people who could have put it together until much, much later. Grathwohl "recovered," and became active again. He took to disappearing for days at a time
and returning with weird stories, and unexplained sums of money. People didn't question
him too muchóthey wanted their cadre to be independent, and not to feel that they had to
account to each other for every facet of their lives. Larry met up with Dianne again in New York City, shortly before the April bust. He was
acting strange; constantly grumpy and bitter. He couldn't relate any more to the closeness
they'd been developing. His sexual uptightness had returnedóonce again, he was incapable
of fucking. As the time of the bust got nearer, he grew increasingly violent, alienated, and
hostile. He demanded to meet with other Weatherpeople who were underground, and
refused to tell Dianne why. He said he had his own reasons, and that he didn't trust her
enough to tell her what they were. She grew suspicious of him again; she was sick, pregnant, and fucked up by the contradiction of caring for him and thinking that he might
be a pig. She tried to make sure that he didn't know much about anyone but her.
The day of the bust, Larry went out to meet with Linda Evans. As they walked down the
street, they were surrounded by FBI agents. "Linda Evans," the pigs announced, "you're
under arrest." They said nothing to Larry (or Tom Niehman, the alias he was going under). Larry took off down the street. He says that when they caught him, he pulled a knife, and
hit one of them. He and Linda were taken to jail, and the pigs went for Dianne. Twenty
agents busted into her hotel room at once. "Where's your boyfriend?" they demanded. The FBI told Dianne that she'd been followed for six days, and mentioned places she'd been, and things she'd done. She thought they knew everything, and that she'd been a total fool
for not realizing that she'd been followed. But as they kept questioning her, she began to
realize that all they knew was stuff she'd told Larry aboutónothing else. The only people
they asked her about were those she'd talked to him about. The pigs emphasized to Dianne
how glad they were to have caught Tom Niehman. They said they wished they'd beat the
shit out of him when he put up a fight. But a little while later, when Dianne got to speak to
Larry, he complained that they HAD beaten him up badly. Obviously, there was some game
they were into playing about Larry to Dianne and Linda. When the three were booked and
fingerprinted, Linda and Dianne smiled and joked with each other, trying to give each other
strength in the panic of what was happening to them. Larry wouldn't look at or speak to
them. Both women were rapidly coming to the same conclusion. Larry's next appearance was at his identity hearing. His alias of Tom Niehman was exposed, along with the fact that he'd been using stolen identification for months. But no charges
were put on him for that Federal offenseópretty strange practice for a government that's
into piling charges sky-high on any Weatherman they can get their hands on. His bail was
set at $7,500óabsurdly low for the charge of assaulting a Federal agent (Linda's was
$50,000, and Dianne's $20,000, for the comparatively minor charge of witnessing a
forgery). He was cut loose on his own recognizance. Once out on bail, Grathwohl's travel restrictions were that he couldn't leave New York. He
promptly split to the New Haven Panther trial, and hung around openly, trying to make
contact with people. He also went to Cincinnati and Dodge City, Iowa, where Linda Evans
was living in her parents' custody. Straight lawyers in Dodge City have proof that he was
given a police escort out of town. In all this traveling, he moved freely and obviouslyónot at
all like someone who would be thrown back in jail if it was discovered that he was violating
the terms of his bail. He consistently hung around places that were crawling with
undercover pigs, and yet he was never busted for what he was doing. In late July, the day
that the latest Weather indictments came down, he called Linda, and kept her on the phone
until the very minute when the FBI knocked at her door to arrest her. And everything that's
happened since has followed the same pattern. Grathwohl was one of the conspirators named in the July indictments. Every other
conspirator who was living openly has been picked up by the FBI. Larry has been traveling
freely from city to city, making contact with all kinds of people, coming into watched
movement offices, hanging out in pig-patrolled places like Telegraph Avenue. And yet he's
never been picked up on the Federal fugitive warrant they have out for him. At a time when
the FBI is so desperate to pick up Weathermen, it's obvious on the basis of how he's been
living that they could get him in a minute if they really wanted to. The only explanation for
why they don't is that he's on their sideóone of the most together police agents they've
ever been able to put over on us.
There are several reasons the FBI is leaving Grathwohl on the streets, despite the fact that
his cover is partially blown. The most obvious is that they want to preserve his cover as a
Weatherman, so they can use him to testify against the others at the trial. Larry is working
hard to re-establish his identity as a revolutionary in Movement circles around the country;
his rage and protests against our charges are loud and clear. It's possible that people who
don't know the facts will be taken in by him, and will lead him to further chances to destroy
work that's going on, and the people who are doing it. And of course, the government might
be insane enough to hope that Weatherpeople would still trust him, and that he would be
able to lead them to people who are still underground. The other possibilities are just as
insidious. One is that the government is hoping that by leaving him open in the midst of all
this suspicion, some people will take care of business with him. Then maybe they can pin a
conspiracy to murder charge on Linda and Dianne. And if that doesn't happen, maybeóand
this is what the Weatherpeople's lawyers fear mostómaybe the Government will off him
themselves, and pin the blame on people they want to put away for a long time. Both these
possibilities make it hard to know how to deal with the situation. We all know what should happen to Larry Grathwohl. But like one of the Weather
defendants said: "The thing about a level of struggle is, you do it when you can win." And
right now, there's a danger that people with the best intentions could move on Grathwohl in
a way that would fuck up our sisters who were busted real bad. What we've got to do is deal
with him in a way that will put him out of circulation, and not hurt any of us. For example, if
the pigs are forced to arrest Grathwohl, and still refuse to declare that he's their agent, a
good part of their legal case will be blown. What's probably the worst thing we could do is to think that we can outsmart Grathwohl by
getting friendly, and turning his game around on him. Larry is clearly one of the smartest
dudes going, and to try to turn him around would be suicidal. Pigs like him are, literally, wired for sound, and anythingóANYTHINGóyou say to him can be used against you in
court, in a new Grand Jury indictment, or whatever. If Grathwohl stays in circulation, Berkeley'll probably get too hot for him soonóhe'll move
on to a place like Portland or Isia Vista, where his pig identity isn't well known, and where
kids would be inclined to trust a tough, smooth-talking revolutionary who pulled a knife on
the FBI when they were busting Linda Evans. We've got to spread the word about
Grathwohl all over the country, and cancel any chance of that happening. Agents like Larry Grathwohl are viciously fucked up. The only thing we can want is to have
them wiped out like the poisonous vipers they areówithout leaving them or the government
that controls them the smallest chance to strike back