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Cliff Kincaid www.usasurvival.org 443-964-8208 Kincaid@comcast.net FAX 301-855-3732 March 7, 2009 Dear Mr. Murdoch: When your News Corp., the parent company of book publisher HarperCollins and the FOX network, canceled publication of the O.J. Simpson murder book and television special "If I Did It," you issued a statement saying: "I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.” Since you are obviously sensitive to the victims of murder, and their families, we ask that you reconsider your decision to publish through HarperCollins the book, Undergound: My Life with the SDS and the Weathermen, by Weather Underground terrorist Mark Rudd. Rudd was a member of a Communist gang that waged violence and murder during the 1960s and 1970s. The book celebrates the Weather Underground campaign of violence and murder and is scheduled to go on sale on March 24 and a speaking tour, also advertised on the HarperCollins website, begins the next day. In fact, the HarperCollins publicity department says there will be a major marketing campaign for the book, including:
This is nothing less than an effort by your company to use its resources to expose this communist terrorist and his communist views to millions of Americans, especially young people and students. This is morally wrong. The book, a copy of which I have obtained in advance from your publicity department, is extremely offensive to the victims of Weather Underground terrorism and their families. In the book Rudd talks with pride of his involvement in terrorist acts, including the planned bombing of a servicemen’s dance at Ft. Dix, where hundreds of military personnel and their wives and girlfriends could have been injured or killed. He said our U.S. military personnel deserved a “taste” of what the Army had been doing during the Vietnam War. This book constitutes nothing less than a celebration of attempted murder. Surely you can’t defend this. On March 12, my group, America’s Survival, Inc., will be holding a press conference in Washington, D.C. at the National Press Club to call for a full and complete investigation into the unsolved 1970 bombing murder of San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell. Sgt. McDonnell was killed after a bomb containing heavy metal staples exploded at the Park Station where he was serving. Members of the Weather Underground have been accused of involvement in that murder. I have enclosed a copy of a letter from the San Francisco Police Officers Association in support of our efforts to obtain justice in this case. Rudd does not acknowledge involvement in that murder in his book, but he does describe how he was involved in casing a California courthouse so that a bomb could be planted there. The FBI says that his fingerprints were discovered in a bomb factory in San Francisco. As someone who has communicated with many retired police officers who were working in the 1970s to stop this violence and terrorism, I can assure you that the publication of Rudd’s book -- and the HarperCollins publicity campaign to promote it – will cause pain and outrage. Before my March 12 event takes place, I wanted to provide you the opportunity to contact me personally so that I can report to the assembled representatives of the press and the public what your response will be. That is the purpose of this letter. I look forward to hearing from you. Yours Truly,  Cliff Kincaid, President |
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