Child Guerrillas?

The children of Haverhill, Mass. (pop. 45,000), are victims of neither poverty nor permissiveness. They are mostly sons and daughters of upright workers in the shoe factories of a New England mill town 40 miles north of Boston. Yet in the past month two anonymous notes from a "people's revolutionary tribunal" have been sent to the local school committee, threatening "death by bombing." Three high school boys, aged 15 and 16, have been arrested and charged with the manufacture and possession of "infernal machines" found in their basements.

So far, no buildings have actually been bombed in Haverhill (pronounced Hay-vrill). The evidence against the boys consists of 21 outsize firecrackers, each one inch in diameter and four inches long. Nonetheless, rumors of "revolution" have swept the city and sharply split the generations. Police Chief William Ross, 59. has ignored Mayor James Waldron's request for silence about the case ("Rhetoric will not solve problems"). Ross asserts that the basement chemists are linked to the writers of the threatening notes, and he has informed the populace of a "plot" to blow up the police station and high school. "There is a lot involved in this case and it is becoming larger and more complex," he says. "I don't know how big this is going to get." He has hauled at least 30 other youngsters in for questioning.

Under Siege. In fact, bomb threats are common in towns near Haverhill. Saugus High School was closed three days this fall as a result. When a telephone threat interrupted Senator Edward Kennedy's campaign visit at Stoneham High last month, the weary principal announced that the school would be cleared "for the usual reason." Last week mysterious fires damaged high schools in Woburn and Chelsea.

As a result, many Haverhill citizens believe Chief Ross's intimations that the town is under siege by a children's guerrilla movement. Homeowners have installed new locks on their doors; parents have taken to seeing all long-haired kids as Weathermen.

The city's edginess started last spring when about two dozen of Haverhill's 2,400 high school students tried to lead a demonstration against the Cambodian invasion and the Kent and Jackson State killings. They were beaten by members of the football team while police quietly watched. This fall, they put out an underground paper called the Mad Hatter. According to a local attorney, the school committee reacted to its four-letter words "as if they had come on the first copy of Das Kapital." The members banned the sheet from the school, calling it "filth" and "insanity."

Cattle Bin. No one has yet proved that a conspiracy really exists. "The basic problem here is paranoia," insists Lawyer Norman Brisson, whose firm represents one of the young defendants. "I don't believe our kids have ever met a Weatherman." Other citizens have begun to wonder if the letters and explosives may not be just sick pranks. Since one device had "school" written on it, many young people agree with a self-styled radical student: "That was a joke. The school is run like a cattle bin. We've got to change it, and if we have to use violence we will. But only a fool would think we're stupid enough to make the stuff in a basement and then put the name of our targets on it."

Some facts may eventually emerge from a closed juvenile court hearing next month. But the suspicions fanned by the incident may not subside for years. Says the father of one boy who was questioned recently: "It's a witch hunt. You don't know what's going to happen; there are names being bandied about and scare rumors. Who knows how much evidence there is? It gets your stomach in a knot."

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