Radical Consequences

Karl Armstrong passes through the doorway at 231 State Street like an apparition. It is March, and behind him, bitter winds sweep across Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, blasting the University of Wisconsin's flagship campus with cold as sharp as shrapnel.

Inside, a grill sizzles in the open kitchen. Sandwich makers load meat and cheese onto slabs of homemade bread. A neon sign certifies, in shades of pink, that this is Radical Rye, but no one pays much attention to the radical in the room.

"I don't think many students know who Karl Armstrong is," says Courtney Heeren, a sophomore. "Even if they do, I think they take the attitude that he paid his debt to society and people should let it go."

Sunday, August 23, 1970. The campus is under siege. Students and cops clash in the streets. The National Guard, reacting to the Kent State shootings that spring, has erected a machine-gun nest. Students and members of the faculty are required to carry photo ID's and a local politician has dubbed the campus "Kremlin West."

Nervous about what lies ahead, Karl and his younger brother, Dwight, share a joint with their co-conspirators, David Fine and Leo Burt, out-of-state students on the staff of the Daily Cardinal.The campus newspaper has endorsed terrorism as a means to end the Vietnam War, and for the past year, Karl and Dwight, native Madisonians from the blue-collar part of town, have led the way. Dwight does not attend the university; Karl has recently dropped out, again.

The four young men, despite their differences, have formed what they call the New Year's Gang. The name refers to the brothers' bombing of a local ordnance plant the previous January 31. In a display of daring and ineptitude, Karl and Dwight buzzed the plant in a stolen plane, dropping enormous Hellman's mayonnaise jars that had been filched from a local restaurant and filled with homemade explosives, made of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. The bombs were duds, smashing harmlessly on the ground.

The lunch crowd, mostly students, scribbles orders on printed pads or opts for one of the mainstays, like the $4.95 reuben. (There is no "Jerry Reuben.") "It's a really popular restaurant," Ms. Heeren says. "The sandwiches are really inexpensive, and they're huge."

A year ago, when Radical Rye went on the market at a good price, Karl and Dwight jumped at the chance to buy it. The location, on the fringe of campus -- not to mention the name -- fit the brothers well.

During the two decades since their release from prison, no one would hire them for anything but "crap" jobs, says Dwight. He had worked as, among other things, a delivery man. Karl had run the LooseJuice beverage stand. Both brothers had driven taxis.

For the most part, they get along with the university crowd. Karl never earned a degree, but he continues to enroll in the occasional class. Some people, though, would like to see the brothers fail. When they bought the business, a conservative student newspaper, The Badger Herald, called for a boycott. A local radio DJ encouraged listeners to take their business elsewhere.

Karl produces from his pocket an anonymous letter that suggests bombing Radical Rye, "with you in it."

"You never know where, out of the clear blue, the opposition will come from," he says.

Sometime after 3:30 a.m., Karl Armstrong, a former Eagle Scout, drives a stolen van into the heart of campus. The van contains a one-ton bomb fashioned from fertilizer, fuel oil, and dynamite. The target is the Army Mathematics Research Center, in Sterling Hall. There, Madison professors solve equations predicting the dispersal patterns of viral agents, the effect of anthrax on humans, the probability of survival in an underground bunker. Rumor has it that they also helped develop the infrared surveillance techniques used in the assassination of Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary.

Karl lights the fuse, and the four members of the New Year's Gang speed off in the Armstrong family's yellow Corvair.

Karl ascends the pine stairs to Radical Rye's second floor, also known as Che's Lounge, so named over the objections of the younger Armstrong. "I keep telling Karl, 'This is a business. It's not a statement. There's no politics,'" says Dwight, whose disheveled hair, untucked shirt, and paint-splattered pants suggest a cultivated indifference to conformity. Karl, wrapped in a blue jacket and wearing a beige cap that conceals his bald pate, looks like a suburban dad on his way to the minivan. (Both brothers are divorced. Dwight's daughter lives with her mother. Karl has no children.)

At the height of the Vietnam War, the Madison bombings rattled the campus and echoed around the country. In their 50s now, the brothers have made the transition from saboteurs to entrepreneurs. Not long ago they fired an employee. "He had really good ideas," Karl says. "Unfortunately, not all of them were profitable."

Upstairs, Karl catalogs the daily chaos: The scuffed-up maple floor needs refinishing. The manager is restless and threatening to quit. Vendors are clamoring for past-due payments. There are the usual hassles from local officialdom, the most worrisome at the moment being restrictions on beer sales. Karl suspects that the city's Alcohol License Review Committee wants to make the radicals squirm. "It's all political with me," he says.

At 3:41 a.m. the bomb detonates, blasting a crater in Sterling Hall and damaging 26 nearby buildings. Later, a worker in a local glass store will thank Karl for the increased business. At the time, the bombing was the most destructive act of terrorism ever on American soil.

Several blocks away, the blast lifts the Corvair off the ground. When the bombers learn that a young physicist, Robert Fassnacht, was killed in the explosion, some of them cry. He left behind a wife and three kids. With charges of murder looming, the New Year's Gang plots an escape. David Fine, at 18 the youngest member, objects: Who, he asks, will cover my paper route?

Right away, law-enforcement authorities identify the four as the primary suspects. J. Edgar Hoover put them on the FBI's "10 Most Wanted" list, alongside Angela Davis. The four young men fled to Canada, but one by one, three of them were arrested, tried, and convicted. In 1972, Karl was sentenced to concurrent prison terms of 23 and 10 years. In 1977, Dwight received a sentence of seven years. Both were paroled in 1980. Karl calls the prison experience "eroding." Leo Burt has never been caught.

The first major snowstorm of the season is approaching, which could hurt business. "It's going to be dead tomorrow," Karl predicts.

Sniffing out another crisis, he detects a strong aroma of grilled onions drifting up from downstairs. A grease fire has disabled the kitchen's exhaust fan, and the smoke of sizzling meat fills the shop, fuzzing the blackboard that advertises chee-z-broccoli soup and veggie chili. The haze hangs thick, as it did then, when there was always something in the air -- tear gas, reefer, the plume that poured from Sterling Hall.

Outside, it begins to snow. The flakes settle like ash blown across the decades. Karl takes a swig from a cup of coffee, which he favors because "it's cheap and legal."

Musing on their radical past, the brothers are both contrite and defiant.

"We regret that Fassnacht got killed," Karl says, a sentiment he has expressed often. At the same time, though, he says, "we regret that the university couldn't come to grips" with its role in the Vietnam War.

The next day, the sky has cleared. Radical Rye's manager quit, but Karl has found a replacement and the vendors have been paid. Madison got its biggest snowfall of the season, but the customers are showing up anyway. And the scuffed floors don't look all that bad.

"I'm just like anyone else here," Karl says, "just trying to make a living, trying to do honest work."