They gathered for a moment of silence at 1:19 pm, the moment the bomb exploded.
The attack 50 years ago today was aimed at the heart of American liberty.
It targeted a place where our nation was forged during the revolution and where George Washington took his leave knowing the future of his new nation was secured.
On December 4, 1783, nine days after the British evacuated New York City, Washington held a banquet at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan to bid farewell to his troops.
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On January 24, 1975, the Puerto Rican separatist group, the FALN, planted a bomb that ripped through the historic site at lunchtime, killing four and wounding more than 50 others in lower Manhattan. Sixty-six-year-old banker Harold Sherburne, 28-year-old businessmen Alex Berger and 32-year-old James Gezork were killed.
“They were really attacking the American people,” says Joe Connor, whose father, Frank, was a 33-year-old banker who was killed in the terrorist attack.
“They attacked Fraunces Tavern because that’s where George Washington bade farewell to his officers after the Revolutionary War, where the Sons of Liberty met and was a symbol of American liberty and justice and freedom, and they couldn’t abide by that.”
Joe was 9 years old the day his father was killed, and in the decades since, he has dedicated his life to bringing justice for his father and the other victims. He is the author of “Shattered Lives: Overcoming the Fraunces Tavern Terror,” which is also now a documentary. Connor has, with other families, elected officials and law enforcement, waged a mission to hold the terrorists to account.
No one has ever been charged in the attack, but the man believed to be the terrorist group’s chief bomb maker, Willie Morales, escaped to Cuba, where he has lived along with an estimated 50 other U.S. fugitives. A bill in Congress named for Joe’s father and New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, who was killed by Black Liberation Army militant Joanne Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, who also is on the lam in Cuba, demands Havana return the fugitives.
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“It’s a very concise, clear bill demanding the return,” says Connor. “There has been a mystique about the Castro regime and Che Guevara, of some fanciful romantic view of these people. But they were nothing but Marxist thugs and were waging their own war on the United States for many, many years.”
In his final days in office, former President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
President Donald Trump immediately put Havana back on the list, and in his first term also vowed to put pressure on Cuba to return Morales and the other fugitives.
During his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for Cuba to cough up the criminals who remain on the lam.
“There are fugitives of American justice, including cop killers and others who are actively hosted in Cuba and protected from the long arm of American justice by the Cuban regime. So, there is no doubt in my mind that they meet all the qualifications for being a state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio said.
Over the last two decades, FALN members have been granted clemency, as if the years that passed lessened their crimes. President Barack Obama commuted the 70-year sentence of Oscar Lopez Rivera, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and charged with other crimes. President Bill Clinton offered clemency to the terrorist group’s imprisoned members, which eleven accepted in 1999.
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At a ceremony marking the bombing, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the bombing “was terrorism in its purest form, meant to frighten, intimidate, to injure, maim and kill in order to achieve their political purpose.
“For 50 years, no one has been held accountable for this attack, which remains an open investigation by the NYPD and the Joint Terrorism Taskforce,” Tisch said. “Our department never forgets.”
Before the ceremony marking the bombing, there was an emotional luncheon attended by family members, dozens of former FBI agents, survivors of the bombing and others.
Joe Connor’s son, Frank, named for his grandfather and who is studying to be a priest, gave the benediction.
“We remember the four men who were killed 50 years ago today in this very place, and all of those whose lives were cut short by terrorism.”
Joe noted how the gathering was being held by the door where the bomb, which consisted of ten pounds of dynamite, was placed inside an unassuming briefcase.
“Cuba has to eventually turn these people over, and the only way that will happen is by keeping them on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list and by keeping the pressure on Cuba,” he says. “This is the moment to do it.”
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