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THE decision to bomb the office of the radical Jeas reached with relative ease Only three people were involved in the process The first was the man with the money The second was a local operative who knew the territory And the third was a young patriot and zealot with a talent for explosives and an astonishing knack for disappearing without a trail After the bo, he fled the country and hid in Northern Ireland for six years

The lawyer's naeneration Mississippi Jehose family had prospered as merchants in the Delta He lived in an antebellu Jewish community, a pleasant place with a history of little racial discord He practiced law because commerce bored him Like most Jews of German descent, his family had assimilated nicely into the culture of the Deep South, and viewed the but typical Southerners who happened to have a different religion Anti-Semitism rarely surfaced For the most part, they blended with the rest of established society and went about their business

Marvin was different His father sent him up North to Brandeis in the late fifties He spent four years there, then three years in law school at Coluhts ot in the thick of it Less than ahis little law office, he was arrested along with two of his Brandeis classister black voters His father was furious His family was embarrassed, but Marvin couldn't have cared less He received his first death threat at the age of twenty-five, and started carrying a gun He bought a pistol for his wife, a Meirl, and instructed their black maid to keep one in her purse The Kramers had to-year-old sons

The first civil rights lawsuit filed in 1965 by the law offices of Marvin B Kraed apractices by local officials It ot his picture in the papers He also got his name on a Klan list of Jews to harass Here was a radical Jeith a beard and a bleeding heart, educated by Jews up North and now roes in the Mississippi Delta It would not be tolerated

Later, there were ru his own hts workers He filed lawsuits attacking whites-only facilities He paid for the reconstruction of a black church boroes into his hoed the letters to newspapers, fehich were printed Lawyer Kra bravely toward his doom

The presence of a nighttinly around the flower beds prevented an attack upon the Krauard for two years He was a former cop and he was heavily armed, and the Kramers let it be known to all of Greenville that they were protected by an expert uard, and the Klan knew to leave him alone Thus, the decision was made to bomb Marvin Kramer's office, and not his home

The actual planning of the operation took very little time, and this was principally because so few people were involved in it The man with the an, was at the time the Imperial Wizard for the Klan in Mississippi His predecessor had been loaded off to prison, and Jerry Dogan was having a wonderful tis He was not stupid In fact, the FBI later adan was quite effective as a terrorist because he delegated the dirty work to sroups of hit men orked completely independent of one another The FBI had becoan trusted no one but faest used car lot in Meridian, Mississippi, and had made plenty of money on all sorts of shady deals

He sometimes preached in rural churches

The second member of the team was a Klansman by the name of Sam Cayhall from Clanton, Mississippi, in Ford County, three hours north of Meridian and an hour south of Mean was not The FBI considered him to be harmless because he lived in an area of the state with almost no Klan activity A few crosses had been burned in Ford County recently, but no bos The FBI knew that Cayhall's father had been a Klansman, but on the whole the faan's recruitment of Sam Cayhall was a brilliant move

The boht of April 17, 1967 Suspecting, with good reason, that his phones were tapped, Jereht and drove to a pay phone at a gas station south of Meridian He also suspected he was being followed by the FBI, and he was correct They watched hi

Sam Cayhall listened quietly on the other end, asked a question or two, then hung up He returned to his bed, and told his wife nothing She knew better than to ask The nexthe left the house early and drove into the town of Clanton He ate his daily breakfast at The Coffee Shop, then placed a call on a pay phone inside the Ford County Courthouse

Two days later, on April 20, Cayhall left Clanton at dusk and drove two hours to

Cleveland, Mississippi, a Delta college town an hour fro lot of a busy shopping center, but saw no sign of a green Pontiac He ate fried chicken in a cheap diner, then drove to Greenville to scout the law offices of Marvin B Kramer and Associates Cayhall had spent a day in Greenville teeks earlier, and knew the city fairly well He found Kramer's office, then drove by his stately houe ht be next, but first they needed to hit the Jeyer By eleven, Cayhall was back in Cleveland, and the green pontiac was parked not at the shopping center but at a truck stop on Highway 61, a secondary site He found the ignition key under the driver's floor h the rich farm fields of the Delta He turned onto a farm road and opened the trunk In a cardboard box covered with newspapers, he found fifteen sticks of dyna caps, and a fuse He drove into town and waited in an allnight cafe

At precisely 2 AM the third member of the team walked into the crowded truck stop and sat across fro man of no hts war He said he was from Louisiana, now lived somewhere in the h he never boasted, he had told Sam Cayhall several tile for white supremacy His father was a Klansman and a demolition contractor, and from him Rollie had learned how to use explosives

Sae, and didn't believe an where he found the kid

They sipped coffee and made small talk for half an hour Cayhall's cup shook occasionally from the jitters, but Rollie's was calether several ti He had reported to Jereot excited, not even when they neared their targets and he handled the dynamite

Wedge's car was a rental fro from the backseat, locked the car, and left it at the truck stop The green Pontiac with Cayhall behind the wheel left Cleveland and headed south on Highway 61 It was almost 3 AM, and there was no traffic A few e of Shaw, Cayhall turned onto a dark, gravel road and stopped Rollie instructed him to stay in the car while he inspected the explosives Sa with hi caps, and the fuse He left his bag in the trunk, closed it, and told Sam to head to Greenville

They drove by Kramer's office for the first time around 4 Am The street was deserted, and dark, and Rollie said so to the effect that this would be their easiest job yet

"Too bad we can't bomb his house," Rollie said softly as they drove by the Kramer home

"Yeah Too bad," Sauard, you know"

"Yeah, I know B_ ut the guard would be easy"

"Yeah, I guess But he's got kids in there, you know"

"Kill 'erow up to be big Jew bastards"

Cayhall parked the car in an alley behind Kranition, and both , and slid along a row of hedges leading to the rear door

Sam Cayhall jimmied the rear door of the office and they were inside within seconds Teeks earlier, Sam had presented hi for directions, then asked to use the rest room In the main hallway, between the rest room and what appeared to be Kramer's office, was a narrow closet filled with stacks of old files and other legal rubbish

"Stay by the door and watch the alley," Wedge whispered coolly, and Sam did exactly as he was told He preferred to serve as the watch the explosives

Rollie quickly sat the box on the floor in the closet, and wired the dynamite It was a delicate exercise, and Sam's heart raced each time as he waited His back was always to the explosives, just in case so

They were in the office less than five minutes

Then they were back in the alley strolling nonchalantly to the green Pontiac They were beco invincible It was all so easy They had bombed a real estate office in Jackson because the realtor had sold a house to a black couple A Jewish realtor They had bombed a s neutral on segregation They had deest in the state

They drove through the alley in the darkness, and as the green Pontiac entered a side street its headlights came on

In each of the prior boe had ud a fifteen-minute fuse, one simply lit with sec[ a match, very similar to a firecracker And as part of the exercise, the tea with the n at a point always on the outskirts of town just as the explosion ripped through the target They had heard and felt each of the prior hits, at a nice distance, as they etaways

But tonight would be different Sa turn so staring at flashing lights as a freighter clicked by in front of theht train Sa The train passed, and Sa turn They were near the river, with a bridge in the distance, and the street was lined with rundown houses Saround would shake in less than fiveinto the darkness of a lonely highhen that happened Rollie fidgeted once as if he was beco

Another turn, another new street Greenville was not that big a city, and if he kept turning Saured he could work his way back to a fa turn proved to be the last Sam hit the brakes as soon as he realized he had turned the wrong way on a one-way street And when he hit the brakes, the engine quit He yanked the gearshift into park, and turned the ignition The engine turned perfectly, but it just wouldn't start Then, the sasoline

"Dah clenched teeth "Dammit!"

Rollie sat low in his seat and stared through the