Photo courtesy of KPFT-FM KPFT staffers inspect the remains of the station’s transmitter after it was bombed. KFPT was bombed off the air twice in its first seven months of operations.

In the quiet, early morning hours of a Tuesday, a deejay was spinning Arlo Guthrie‘s Alice’s Restaurant in a radio station studio on the northwestern edge of downtown Houston. On the southwestern edge of the city, under the cover of darkness, a bomber had placed dynamite on the roof of the station’s transmitter.

About 8½ minutes into the song, Arlo was telling the story about seeing the psychiatrist at the Army induction center in New York City. “I wanna kill. I mean, I mean I wanna … ” Then silence, and then static.

On Oct. 6, 1970, KPFT-FM, Houston’s new left-leaning, listener-supported station was blown off the air for the second time. The Pacifica station was the first radio station in the United States to be bombed off the air. Now, it had happened again.

Some seven months earlier, when the station signed on for the first time, the first song was The Beatles‘ Here Comes the Sun. Right-wing terrorists who liked to operate under the cover of darkness didn’t think this was all right.

On May 12, saboteurs struck for the first time, knocking the station off the air for a few weeks.

Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Frazier said the bomber used 15 sticks of dynamite this time.

“Whoever did this knew exactly where to place the bomb, for it was placed in a ventilation opening atop the cinder-block, reinforced building, so the force of the explosion would be downward,” he said in a Page 1 story in the Houston Chronicle on Oct. 7. “This is the work of the same man who blew the station off the air in May. He used the same explosives, the same type of fuse and he’s definitely an expert at using dynamite.”

In an interview in the Chronicle four days later, station manager Larry Lee said, “The bombers either killed this station or came quite close to it. Pacifica is in intensive care. It will take folk medicine in the form of support of our listeners and sponsors to pull it through.”

Lee said he believed “right-wing terrorists” blew up the station. “Actually, terrorism is beyond politics,” he said. “I think madmen must have done it.”

Lee said, “If the bombers are caught and charged, they can have a radio program on Pacifica to express their point of view. They always could if they had asked us. Our purpose is to express all points of view.”

Lee said right-wing groups such as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan were offered free time on the station but refused it. He said the bombing doesn’t detract from his ability to give a fair hearing to all sides. “In fact, it heightens my sensibilities,” he said.

Lee was on target with his suspicions that right-wingers were behind the October bombing. Three Klansman were arrested in the bombing. Jimmy Dale Hutto of Pasadena, the only person to stand trial in the bombings, was arrested on his way to California, where he allegedly planned to blow up KPFT’s sister stations KPFA in Berkeley and KPFK in Los Angeles. Hutto was convicted in 1971 and sent to prison. The other two suspects testified for the government and never stood trial.

KPFT was off the air for 3½ months. It returned in a big way on Jan. 20, 1971, with the whole country watching.

Shown live on PBS‘ Great American Dream Machine, Lee declared the station reopened.

“Outside this room, people are celebrating free speech, and something is wrong when free speech is a cause for celebration, and there are armed police out there guarding us. A lot of people are afraid of free speech, afraid of changing their minds,” he said.

Folksinger Don Sanders opened the celebration in the basement of the building on Prairie Street with a song featuring a few sour notes for the mayor and police chief, the Chronicle reported the next day. Filmed interviews with leading Houstonians reacting to Pacifica and the bombing followed.

Police Chief Herman Short, not exactly a friend of free speech, said, “Sure I’ve heard the station. I’ve heard it under conditions when I wonder how the FCC can leave it on the air.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Frazier said in so many words that he was not a fan of the station. “But there has been a violation of the law out there and we’ll try as hard on the case as if it were the First City Bank of Houston.”

The star of the show was Arlo Guthrie, who wrote a song — “a kind of mass bomb song” and pretty soon the whole audience was singing along, the Chronicle reported.

“When I get to Houston, pull out my strings, walk to the station, you can hear me sing — you get bombed, all God’s chillun get bombed.”

Spinning forward to February 2010: A man walks into the KPFT studios during the winter fund drive carrying a brick. Secured to brick by rubber bands were four $100 bills. The man, who identified himself as a member of the Knights of the White Gladiola, according the KPFT general manager Duane Bradley, said something to the effect of, “You know, in the old days we’d have just thrown this brick through your door, but we’re here to give you this in honor of KPFT being on the air for 40 years &mdash a hundred dollar bill for each decade KPFT’s been here.” The complete story is here.