Lefty bomb-guide author has no regrets
COLUMBINE. Oklahoma City. The Brink’s cop-killing robbery. Gabby Giffords. The 2005 London transport bombings. These and many other rampages had something in common: All of the attackers had copies of “The Anarchist Cookbook,” a step-by-step manual for revolution.
So how does the author of the notorious 1971 book, with its detailed instructions for making TNT, booby traps and napalm, feel about the book? “This is the first time I’m becoming aware of the laundry list of associations that the book has had,” writer William Powell tells filmmaker Charlie Siskel in the unnerving documentary “American Anarchist.”
The director (a nephew of the late film critic Gene Siskel) tracked the aging Powell down in France to confront him with a relentless, prosecutorial case. “Allow your love of freedom to overcome the false values placed on human life,” Powell wrote in the book.
An upper-class kid from Long Island, Powell holed up in libraries during the Woodstock era, poring over army field manuals and transcribing the secrets for explosives and weapons. “The time is for a mass uprising armed with single-minded, deadly intolerance,” he wrote.
Powell, who says he feels “remorse” but not “regret,” spent decades in denial. Only during the making of this riveting film does he seem to confront, albeit with bland disinterest, the horror of what he has done. “It’s not, ‘Oh, let’s go and burn the government down.’ That’s not there,” Powell insists, until Siskel shows him passages from the book advocating exactly that.
Watching Powell try to find some middle ground between defending the indefensible and begging humanity’s pardon makes for a chilling experience. “I think,” he says weakly, “I was advocating for people to think for themselves.” Shortly after the film was completed, he died.