My name is Bill Newhall. I have been invited to speak before this committee because I was injured in the FALN bombing of Fraunces Tavern in January 1975.

On January 24th of that year, I was having lunch with two colleagues, Charlie Murray and Frank Connor and three clients, Jim Gezork, Alex Berger and Dave Urskind. We were seated at a table overlooking Broad Street, about to return to work when a bomb, placed in a doorway next to our table, detonated, destroying our corner with shrapnel and debris. Jim, Alex, and Frank died terrible deaths, barely recognizable to their families. Another man, Harold Sherburne, who was upstairs at the time of the blast, was also killed. Charlie, David and I suffered multiple wounds, many of them from shrapnel. More than fifty other people sustained injuries as well. With the time limits of this hearing, it is impossible to adequately describe the effects of this savagery on the injured and dead as well as their families.

This bombing, a terrorist act against unarmed and unsuspecting civilians and its lethal results were followed by many more, though fortunately none was as deadly as this one. I don’t recall ever hearing any expression of remorse, concern or contrition by any member of the FALN for the pain and loss they caused those directly affected, or their families, for this or any other bombing.

Why were these bombings carried out? Because the FALN was frustrated by its inability, in any voting referendum, to persuade a significant number of its fellow Puerto Ricans of the merits of its cause. The resulting strategy was to murder U.S. civilians.

None of the FALN members who were recently released through the President’s grant of clemency were ever convicted of the bombing of Fraunces Tavern. But they were proven in courts of law to be supporters of these terrorist methods, some were videotaped making bombs, and all were clearly committed to acts of violence against innocent people.

The living can speak and so can the dead, through their surviving families, friends and our memories of them. That is why I am here before you. We’ve heard recently in New York how much these self-styled “freedom fighters” sacrificed and lost because of their political beliefs. To the contrary, those who truly paid for the FALN’s political beliefs were their dead victims. Men of character, humor, and promise, they will never return to their loved ones, or receive a hero’s welcome. And what about the price paid by those permanently injured or scarred? I understand the goal of this committee is to examine the way in which the clemency process was carried out. I and I’m sure many other citizens, including the many law enforcement personnel who worked so hard to halt the FALN bombing campaign, are curious about this as well. I would like to know whether the views of any victims or their families were sought, much less obtained and considered.

It is easy to suspect that political grandstanding parading as compassion was at work here. If so, not only is it an affront to those the FALN killed and maimed, it delivers perhaps the worst message of all: near indifference to terrorist activities of all kinds and the human misery they cause.