Abstract

Bombs to the Right of Them

The article focuses on the radio network, Pacifica. Pacifica's transmitter in Houston, Texas, was bombed twice in 1970, in May and in October. Right-wing extremists have systematically harassed it and its staffers say that police protection was either inadequate or deliberately negligent. Larry Lee, a former wire service reporter and the associate editor of the periodical "The Texas Observer," brought the idea of Pacifica to Houston in 1969. The radio network KPFT-FM opened for business in February 1969. Three months later its transmitter was totally destroyed by a dynamite blast. For whatever solace it might provide, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission officials told Lee that his transmitter was probably the first to be blown up in the history of U.S. radio broadcasting.