Explosives Linked to 1984 Terrorism Case

A cache of explosives has been found in a Santa Fe Springs rental storage space and linked to six suspected terrorists being sought in purported plots to disrupt the 1984 Los Angeles summer Olympics and to break a Puerto Rican nationalist out of federal prison, it was disclosed Friday.

FBI spokesman Jim Neilson said 50 pounds of explosives, blasting caps and detonating cord discovered by Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies at an abandoned storage shed on Wednesday was connected by members of the Los Angeles Joint Anti-Terrorist Task Force to dynamite found in the Los Angeles area in June of last year.

That 1985 cache, Neilson said, was believed stored by Claude Daniel Marks, 36, who, with Donna Jean Willmott, also 36, was named in warrants issued in Chicago last July 3 for alleged conspiracy to effect a prison escape and for interstate transportation of explosive material.

Prison at Leavenworth

The charges stemmed from an alleged abortive plot to free Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional figure Oscar Lopez, 43, from the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan., by dropping an armed squad into the prison yard from a helicopter. The FBI said the plot was foiled by an undercover agent who infiltrated the group.

Named in the warrants as material witnesses were Joan Ann Sokolower, 38; Karen Myra Shain, 38; Diana Block, 37, and Robert Bruce McBride, 39.

All six were linked by authorities to the Weather Underground and to the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. They were suspected of transporting explosives for the Fuerzas Armadas group, an organization dedicated to Puerto Rican independence through violence, and all reportedly lived in two houses in North Hollywood and Van Nuys for about a year until mid-1985.

Since then, Neilson said, they apparently have been out of Southern California.

Thwarted by Security

At the time the warrants were issued early last month, P. Bryce Christensen, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI office in Los Angeles, said that while living here, the six were believed to be plotting violent acts to disrupt the Olympics, but were discouraged by heavy security.

Christensen said then that the Joint Anti-Terrorist Task Force, which consists of FBI agents, Los Angeles police officers and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, had found one explosives cache and was looking for another storage site.

That, apparently, was the one found Wednesday.

Pennsylvania, New Jersey

According to the FBI, the two caches of explosives found here are similar to those found during the last two years at Doylestown, Pa.; Cherry Hill, N.J., and Evesham Township, N.J. All the explosives were stolen in 1980 in Austin, Tex., Neilson said. He could not offer details on that theft or say precisely how anti-terrorist agents know that all the explosives came from the same batch.

The explosives recovered in Pennsylvania were linked to members of the May 19 Communist Organization, implicated in the 1981 holdup of a Brinks armored car in Nyack, N.Y., in which a security guard and two police officers were killed.

Marks was identified as a native of Buenos Aires. Willmott is from Akron, Ohio. The FBI said Sokolower, originally from Denver, might be living with Marks and her 13-year-old son. Shain, the FBI said, is originally from Baltimore and also uses the last name Daenzer. Block is originally from New York City.