November 17, 1969 — Washington — Mad dogs, Running dogs, Crazies, Yippies, Weathermen and a host of "nameless radicals" brought violence to this otherwise peaceful city over the weekend.
Their demonstrations drew police and National Guard troops, who relied chiefly on gas to clear the protesters from Dupont Circle Friday night and the Justice Department Building Saturday.
About 10 policemen were sent to the hospital over the weekend. None of their injuries were serious. No protesters needed to be hospitalized because of injuries sustained in any demonstration.
The damage and the injuries were slight and the arrests were few, but the eerie, nightmarish events of the demonstrations will be remembered long after the windows are repaired and the sentences are served.
A band of about 5,000 radicals, many wearing helmets and gas masks, left the peaceful rally at the Washington monument at about 3:30 Saturday afternoon.
They swept down Constitution Avenue to the Department of Justice, National Liberation Front flags flapping in the breeze and huge papermache of President Nixon and Vice President Agnew bobbing in the crowd.
"Free Bobby Seale!" the demonstrators chanted as they reached 10th Street and began a march around the Justice building. Seale is a member of the "Chicago Eight" who are being tried for conspiracy during last summer's Democratic convention.
Suddenly, the protesters broke into a run and began to scream "wo-wo-wo-wo." It was a blood-freezing, hair-raising sound.
They stopped on Constitution Avenue in front of the entrance to the building, then secured behind towering steel doors.
Someone took down the American flag near the building and raised an NLF flag.
"Right on!" the protesters shouted in encouragement.
Police in riot dress rushed to the flag pole, ran up the Stars and Stripes and stood guard around it.
The radicals began to throw rocks and bottles at the building. Windows broke. Red paint splattered on the walls. A red smoke bomb thrown by a protester exploded near the building.
When the radicals began to batter the doors, the police — who had waited nearby — moved in.
The police formed a line across the avenue, battons braced in both hands. They fired a few scattered gas bombs to move the demonstrators from the front of the building.
Then, as the protesters pelted them with rocks and bottles, the police smothered them with gas.
The police threw gas cannisters into the students, fired gas shells over their heads and blanketed them with a machine that emitted a cloud so thick that visibility — even through a mask — was less than 10 feet.
Most of the students did not have masks and they fell back choking and blinded with painful gas.
The gas drifted across several blocks, uncomfortably affecting hundreds of people. Saturday night shoppers waited at bus stops with handkerchiefs over their mouths. Some blew into the train station, covering a train of peaceful demonstrators returning home.
The crowd at Jusitce drifted away, after being pushed down Constitution past the Monument grounds almost to the Lincoln Memorial.
Some radicals went off in small bands, breaking windows in nearby stores. Some returned to Dupont Circle, the scene of the demonstration the night before.
The South Vietnam Embassy
Friday night, about 1,000 members of the Revolutionary Contingent in Solidarity with Vietnamese People — made up of Youth Against Fascism, SDS, Mad Dogs, Crazies and Weathermen — set out at about 8:30 from the circle down Massachusetts Avenue to the Vietnamese Embassy.
They never made it.
The police around the embassy forced them back quickly and when they regrouped a block above the embassy, they were again repelled.
Frustrated, the demonstrators returned to the circle and began to throw refuse barrels across the circle, which was filled with traffic at the time.
The radicals set fire to the barrels and smashed windows and stores around the circle.
The police came in speeding cars and filled the circle with gas, sending the students stampeding down the five streets that run into the circle.
Then the police disappeared, the students "retook the circle" and the see-saw conflict continued.
Finally, at about 2 a.m., after police had called in the National Guard and the protesters still returned when the gas was cleared, Washington Police Chief Jerry V. Wilson made a deal:
"You can stay in the park and there will be no more gas if you don't cause any more violence."
It worked. The radicals melted away to get some sleep.
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