430 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography(^35) Ayers and Oughton had founded the Jesse James Gang out of the University of Michigan SDS chapter, with
the help of a suspected agent provocateur named Jim Mellen. ‘Bill and Diana... became more active in the
Ann Arbor chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Ayers had been a member of the SDS radical
education project for several years at a time when SDS was still a loosely-organized group of students who
believed in experimental schools and community projects as vehicles for change. In June, 1968, they attended
an SDS convention in East Lansing where a sharp split was emerging between the Progressive Labor Party
(PL) and the cultural revolutionaries who naturally attracted Bill and Diana. ... After the convention Diana
and Bill spent part of the summer in Chicago working in the SDS national office where they had intense
political discussion with Mike Klonsky, an SDS national officer, and Bernardine Dohrn, a later leader of the
Weathermen. Diana and Bill became convinced that direct action rather than education and peaceful reform
were the way to change society. Diana was deeply affected by the demonstrations at the Democratic Party
convention that August and what she and the SDS and eventually the Walker Commission felt was a “police
riot.” At the peak of the violence, she called her sister, Carol, in Chicago for $150 to help bail Tom Hayden,
one of the founders of SDS in 1962, out of jail. A day or two later she called again and said she and Bill were
leaving the city because “it’s getting too rough.” It was also during that summer that Bill and Diana turned
full-scale toward the cultural revolution. They developed a taste for “acid” rock at ear-shattering volume.
They cut off their hair and began to wear hippy headbands and wire-rimmed glasses. They took LSD,
sometimes with another couple. On one occasion one of the group ran out into the street naked but was
coaxed back inside before the police came. They returned to Ann Arbor that fall in an activist mood. At the
first meeting of the Ann Arbor SDS on Sept. 24, 1968, a sharp division in the group was apparent. Diana and
Bill along with some 40 other radicals banded together against the moderates and formed a faction which they
called “The Jesse James Gang.” The gang declared themselves revolutionary gangsters. They held peaceful
methods of reform in contempt. They urged direct action instead of talk, individual violent confrontations
instead of big peace marches. Contained in their still half-formed ideas about the role of America in the world
and white radicals in America, was the germ of the Weatherman analysis which would later call for violence.
The gang disrupted SDS meetings and made vicious personal attacks on their opponents. The meetings
frequently degenerated into brawls. The gang shouted and heckled and even threw eggs and tomatoes at
moderate speakers. They often let it be known that their opponents were running the risk of physical beatings.
Bill Ayers, Diana at his side, spoke against the failure of education to change people and described the gang
as “the arms of liberation inside the monster.” “We are tired of tiptoeing up to society and asking for reform.
We’re ready to kick it,” he told one opponent. The behind-the-scenes leader of the Jesse James Gang was a
mysterious, 31-year-old man named Jim Mellen who appeared out of nowhere in Ann Arbor that Fall. No one
knew where he had gone to school or why he had come to the University of Michigan. Although he was the
major intellectual force behind the gang, Mellen carefully avoided any position of formal authority. A rumor
began circulating among his critics that Mellen was an agent provocateur sent by the Central
Intelligence Agency to destroy SDS and the radical movement in Michigan. Ten months later, after
helping to write the Weatherman manifesto and playing a part in the June, 1969, SDS convention which
destroyed the organization, Mellen faded from the Ann Arbor radical scene as mysteriously as he had arrived.
Within a period of a few weeks the Jesse James Gang triumphed within the SDS chapter at Ann Arbor. Early
in October, 1968, the moderates decided they had had enough and walked out to form their own group.
Through psychological warfare and vague threats of violence, the gang had captured the single most
important SDS chapter in Michigan, which automatically gave them a powerful voice in the national
organization. ... Ayers rose to a position of strength with the gang because of his ability to dominate groups
through a combination of charm and the volume of his voice. Handsome and brash, he was a notorious lady’s
man who did not hide his promiscuity from Diana. Diana told friends that although she was hurt by Bill’s
infidelity, it made her redouble her efforts to be a true revolutionary. Stung by frequent jibes that she could
afford to be one because her daddy was rich, Diana struggled to make her own mark in the movement.
(Lucinda Franks and Thomas Powers, “Story of Diana--The Making of a Terrorist--III--Angry, She Returns to
US,” United Press International 1970, emphasis added)