1977 — Aug 03, terrorism, Puerto Rican FALN bombings/two buildings, Manhattan, NY– 1

–1 Breasted. “10,000 Leave New York Offices…Bomb Threats Disrupt City…” NYT, 8-4-1977, 1.
–1 Lubasch. “Woman is Charged in F.A.L.N. Blast.” New York Times. 9-8-1977, p. 1.

Narrative Information

Aug 4: “Note Found in Park. Puerto Rican Terror Group Takes the Responsibility —Beame Is Angered

“Terrorist bombs exploded in two midtown Manhattan office buildings yesterday morning, killing one man and injuring seven other persons, while dozens of bomb threats forced more than 100,000 people to vacate their offices.

“The entire twin towers of the World Trade Center were evacuated, as were seven floors of the Empire State Building. The self‐styled F.A.L.N. terrorist group took responsibility for the explosions, leaving a statement at the base of the statue of Jose Marti, the Cuban revolutionary, in Central Park that called for the independence of Puerto Rico.

“The F.A.L.N., which stands for Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacien Nacional Puertorriquefta, has been setting bombs in Manhattan and in Chicago, Newark and Washington since 1974, and is now the focus of two Federal grand jury investigations.

“The evacuations caused traffic and ‘ pedestrian jams around the city, as entire streets and sidewalks were closed. Wherever fire and police vehicles gathered, throngs of people stood in the rain and pushed against wooden or rope barricades for a better view. Some people took ad‐; vantage of the early quitting time to socialize in local bars, while thousands of others went home.

“Millions of dollars were lost to business. Mayor Beame visited the Mobil Oil. Building, at 150 East 42d Street, where Charles S. Steinberg, 26 years old, was killed by the second bomb. Standing near the bloodstained shards of glass, the Mayor said: ‘This is an outrageous act of terrorism.’

“He called for a resumption of the death penalty as ‘a deterrent to terrorism.’

“The Mayor announced later in the day that he had met with Federal Bureau of Investigation officials and had been assured by them that ‘the F.B.I. has an excellent idea who these people are, but they haven’t been able to catch them in the act.’ The Mayor also said that the F.A.L.N. bombing suspects had been ‘under surveillance for the last six months.’….

“Yesterday’s first bombing, which injured no one, occurred at 342 Madison Avenue in the 21st‐floor offices of the Department of Defense. Employees of that office found a woman’s handbag in the hallway at about 9:30 A.M. They brought it inside, where the assistant, agent in charge, Thomas J. Sweeney, opened it and immediately realized it was a .bomb when he saw wires and the face of clock. Mr. Sweeney left the purse on a table, urged the staff to move to the other end of the long office and moved with them. Seconds later the bomb went off, blowing a hole in the concrete wall and breaking most of the windows in the office. That explosion occurred at about 9:37 A.M.

“About an hour later, a second explosion ripped through the first‐floor personnel office of the Mobil Oil Corporation in the Mobil Oil Building, instantly killing Mr. Steinberg, a partner in an employment service who had stopped by to see if there were any jobs for his applicants.

“The explosion, caused by a device the police think, may have been hung from a coat rack or placed on a high shelf, bent a metal door in half, shattered large plate‐glass .windows and splattered the office curtains with the blood of the victim.

“At the time of the blast, two men from the Police Department’s emergency services unit were searching for a bomb in front of the, building and in the lobby. They were searching because a caller, saying he was a spokesman for the F.A.L.N., had listed the Mobil Oil Building among a group of office buildings where bombs allegedly had been set.

“The caller, who telephoned the WABCTV Eyewitness News desk at about 9:40 A.M., was so nervous and so badly out of breath that he garbled the acronym at the outset, saying, ‘This is the F.L.A.N.’

“Speaking to a news clerk, the caller said that bombs had been set in the Mobil Oil Building and in three other buildings —410 Park Avenue (where there is Chase Manhattan Bank branch), 1270 Avenue of the Americas (where there are several Latin American consulates) and 245 Park Avenue (the American Brands Building).

“A second call to Eyewitness News five minutes liter repeated the same information, but added the World Trade Center towers to the list of buildings where explosive devices were reportedly about to go off, a spokesman for the television station said later.

“Another call was made to The New York Post by a woman who claimed to be speaking for the F.A.L.N. and who said that a note related to the first explosion could be found near the Central Park statue. The call, which came shortly after the first explosion, led to the discovery of the communiqué with the F.A.L.N. demands.

“Late in the day, a Police Department spokesman said that both explosions appeared to have been caused by devices ‘made by the same person.’

“The note called the explosions “just a warning” to “multinational corporations” that, it said, ‘explore and exploit our national resource’ and ‘are part of Yanki Imperialism.’ The note also said that the devices had been set because the subject of Puerto Rico’s status is to come up soon in the United Nations.

“The scores of telephoned bomb threats —’by the end of the day, police said they had received more than 200—were at times made by people who said they were speaking for the F.A.L.N., at other times by people who said they were calling in behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Deputy Police Commissioner Francis J. McLoughlin said that most were considered crank calls and did not lead to building evacuations.

“But more than 100,000 people had to be removed from the buildings mentioned in the two calls to WABC‐TV‐35,000 from the World Trade Center towers alone.

“A bomb threat called in to Manhattan’s Midtown South precinct said that a device would explode on the 82d floor of the Empire State Building. The police, according to their policy, evacuated that floor and the three floors above and below it, which included the 86th floor observation deck. They found nothing, and gave permission for a return to those floors at 2:15 P.M….

“Hearing of the explosions and the bomb threats in Valley Forge, Pa., both the Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Carlos Romero Barcelo, and Representative Herman Badillo, Bronx Democrat, denounced the terrorists….

“Like previous F.A.L.N. communications, the note asked for the freeing of the five Puerto Rican nationalists jailed since the 1950’s for shooting at and wounding several Representatives in the House of Representatives and for attempting to assassinate the late President Harry S. Truman. And as in previous F.A.L.N. notes, it called for an end to the grand jury investigations of the bombings.

“The note was signed “FALN CENTRAL COMMAND.”

“Yesterday’s bombings were the first of those claimed by the F.A.L.N. to involve a fatality since the Jan. 24, 1975 lunch hour bombing of Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan, which killed four people and injured more than 50 others….” (Breasted, Mary. “10,000 Leave New York Offices as Bomb Threats Disrupt City…” New York Times, 8-4-1977, p. 1.)

Sep 8: “A 22‐year‐old woman identified through a fingerprint found at the site of the Aug. 3 bombing that killed one person and injured several others at the Mobil Oil Building in Manhattan was charged with the bombing yesterday. The bombing was one of a series of terrorist acts attributed to a Puerto Rican nationalist group known as the F.A.L.N. The suspect was identified as Marie Haydee Beltran Torres. She and her husband, Carlos Alberto Torres, a central figure in the F.A.L.N. investigations, are being sought by the authorities. Mr. Torres, was indicted yesterday in Chicago on charges involving bombings there.

“Responsibility for numerous bombings in New York, Chicago and elsewhere since 1974 has been taken by the F.A.L.N., the Spanish initials for the armed forces of national liberation. The most serious explosion killed four persons and injured more than 50 at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan in 1975.

“A criminal complaint charging Mrs. Torres with the bombing of the Mobil Oil building was filed late yesterday in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The complaint was announced by Robert B. Fiske Jr., the United States Attorney, who said that an arrest warrant had been issued for her….”

(Lubasch, Arnold H. “Woman is Charged in F.A.L.N. Blast.” New York Times. 9-8-1977, p. 1.

Sources

Breasted, Mary. “10,000 Leave New York Offices as Bomb Threats Disrupt City…” New York Times, 8-4-1977, p. 1. Accessed 2-11-2022 at: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/08/04/archives/100000-leave-new-york-offices-as-bomb-threats-disrupt-city-blasts.html

Lubasch, Arnold H. “Woman is Charged in F.A.L.N. Blast.” New York Times. 9-8-1977, p. 1. Accessed 2-12-2022 at: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/08/archives/woman-is-charged-in-faln-blast-wife-of-fugitive-sought-in-faln.html