William „Anarchist Cookbook“ Powell, R.I.P.

03.31.2017

William Powell was a teenager, angry at the government
and the Vietnam War, when he walked into the main branch of the New York
Public Library in Manhattan in 1969 to begin research for a handbook on
causing violent mayhem. Over the next months, he studied military
manuals and other publications that taught him the essentials of
do-it-yourself warfare, including how to make dynamite, how to convert a
shotgun into a grenade launcher and how to blow up a bridge.

What emerged was “The Anarchist Cookbook,” a diagram- and
recipe-filled manifesto that is believed to have been used as a source
in heinous acts of violence since its publication in 1971, most notably
the killings of 12 students and one teacher in 1999 at Columbine High
School in Littleton, Colo. […]

“It was inevitable that he did it,” James J. F. Forest, a professor
of security studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, said in a
phone interview. “If he hadn’t done it, somebody else would have. It’s
human behavior to tap into a dangerous stream of knowledge, and in his
case he was inspired to make that dangerous information available to
anyone else who was interested.”

Mr. Powell never revised the book or wrote a sequel, but his original
stayed in print, through Lyle Stuart and its successor company,
Barricade Books, and most recently by Delta Press. Eventually, he
renounced the book. In 2000, he posted a statement to that effect on
Amazon.com. And later, in 2013, he expressed his regret in an article he wrote for The Guardian.