Still paranoid after all these years. Carl, ever think maybe it’s Bill and Bernie?

Just a few days ago — it was only November 5, 2008, although it seems to have been so much longer — that RBO received another dismissive missive from former SDSer Carl Davidson on our post Weatherman still “submerged” in 1976.

We chose to not post his comment because RBO has received so many similar boiler plate comments from Mr. Davidson that we just sent this one directly to the spammer.

Taking another look at what he wrote, followed by our comments below, RBO determined that it was not only post-worthy but also a good addition to the conversation about Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, SDS (old and new), MDS (old and new), WUO, and Progressives for Obama.

First Davidson’s comment:

You’ve been suckered, at this late date, once again, by Hoover’s Cointelpro shenanigans. The ’submerged ones’ are not secret sleeper cells; they’re the police agents-provocateurs disguised as members of the WU, and their names are blacked out to hide them under cover. By comparing our various files obtain via FOIA and comparing notes, we were able to unmask a few of them over the years But keep digging, and let us know what you find, by all means. We’d like to unmask a few more of these creeps, too.

What Mr. Davidson is referring to as “blacked out” is the heavy redaction found in the FBI’s then-recently declassified August 1976 preliminary report on the Weather Underground. It had been declassified, of course, with the exception of those areas that had been redacted.

Today, Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire commented about a Bill Ayers’s whine published by In These Times. RBO also wrote about this article earlier today in Time to shut up now, Bill.

Cannon first highlights bostonboomer’s response at The Confluence to Ayers’s commentary:

Oh, he is so tortured and put upon. Poor Bill. He and a bunch of his wealthy, entitled friends managed to destroy Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in no time at all by creating the Weatherman group and advocating the violent overthrow of the federal government. They ruined the reputation of the peace movement too. Lots of people back then assumed the Weathermen were CIA infiltrators. Bill Ayers never spent a day in jail, and now he’s a tenured professor. In fact lots of the ex-weathermen are professors, and they’re all pretty wealthy. They aren’t exactly living up to their socialist ideals, are they?

Cannon then wrote:

“CIA infiltrators.” Interesting thought, that. Although the CIA is not supposed to operate domestically, they did have, in the Vietnam era, a program called MHCHAOS, designed to spy on the anti-war left. The FBI, of course, had COINTELPRO, and the DIA had its own progam, the name of which I forget.

Many ’60s student radicals will tell you that the perpetual game of spot-the-spook helped to cripple any attempt to get things done. But that game began because there really were spooks in the movement. (”Spooks” as in “spies”: I don’t want this blog to re-live the controversy depicted in The Human Stain.)

So how do you spot the spook? Look for three factors:

1. Infiltrators push for violent and illegal action.
2. They rarely or never serve time, even though everyone around them seems to get busted.
3. They somehow have plenty of cash.

Those three clues are the biggies. Perhaps someone should ask Bill and Bernadine if they can think of any others.

P.S. to Carl — Yes, we know all about Weather insider/FBI informant Larry Grathwohl and undercover agents Richard J. Gianotti and William D. Reagan.

What we really want to know is how “guilty as hell” and “free as a bird” Bill pulled it off.