Obama didn’t care about the Connors, or other Americans who were killed.
Via NRO:
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama gave some clemency; the chief bomb-maker escaped to Cuba.
Forty-four years ago today, terrorists shattered my family. Sadly, the war against these individuals and their benefactors continues to this day.
My father, 33-year-old Frank Connor, and three other innocent men were murdered, while scores were injured and maimed, on Jan. 24, 1975, when the Marxist Puerto Rican terrorist group Armed Forces for National Liberation (“FALN”) blew up New York’s historic Fraunces Tavern during a crowded lunchtime. The FALN appointed themselves my father’s judge, jury, and executioner, profiling, targeting, and savagely murdering so-called “reactionary corporate executives.” The Connor family had planned to celebrate my ninth and my brother’s 11th birthday that very night.
Fraunces Tavern was targeted by the FALN — who paid lip service to independence but in reality sought to impose a Cuban-style socialist regime in Puerto Rico — for its proximity to Wall Street and for its storied reputation as the birthplace of American liberty. Alexander Hamilton and the Sons of Liberty met there. General George Washington bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces after the Revolutionary War.
Between 1974 and 1983, the FALN claimed responsibility for over 130 bombings in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Though never prosecuted specifically for the Fraunces bombing, the unrepentant terrorists served only 18 years of prison sentences ranging from 55 to 70 years. As Hillary Clinton geared up for her 2000 New York Senate run and was looking to connect with New York’s Hispanic community, Bill Clinton granted clemency to the FALN, a blatant political gesture orchestrated by then–deputy attorney general Eric Holder. One, leader Oscar Lopez Rivera, was so dedicated to his cause and his comrades that he refused the 1999 Clinton clemency, although in 2017 he accepted an unprecedented second presidential clemency from Barack Obama. It was one of Obama’s last acts as president.