Outlaw violence in America has long had a romantic aura. In the 1967 movie version of their story, Bonnie and Clyde rob a bank but don’t take money from waiting customers. It was rumored that when the sad-eyed gunman of their era, Pretty Boy Floyd, robbed banks, he also tore up mortgages. Woody Guthrie burnished the myth:

And as through your life you travel,

Yes, as through your life you roam,

You won’t never see an outlaw

Drive a family from their home.

The militant sect the Weathermen, soon to become the Weather Underground, was formed in 1969, at a time when the United States was riven by bitter divisions. It took its name from Bob Dylan’s line “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” One member openly praised Bonnie and Clyde, calling them “consciousness-expanding.” The group idolized the movements that had brought revolutionary regimes to power in North Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba, and elsewhere.…