Ro-olin-g $to-ne Mag. Apriil 22, 19 and 76

Beyond and Behind a Reasonable Doubt

Note: The key insiders were Jack Scott and Steve Soliah who tended to

skew it in their favor. Take it with a grain of salt)

The verdict in the Patty Hearst trial was a shock; it was a sad Saturday

afternoon as we watched the live television reports

from the federal courthouse two miles from our offices.

• During the months that we dedicated to”The Inside Story’

our exclusive two-part account of the underground travels of

Patty Hearst and Bill and Emily Harris, we had sought to understand

the episode in human terms rather than rely on the speculation and

rhetoric borne of untested assumptions. We found certain inescapable

conclusions in the reporting of Howard Kohn and David Weir:

One was that Patricia Hearst was the unwilling victim of a violent

kidnapping during her 19th year. And whatever the facts of her innate

rebelliousness, the perceived abandonment by her parents and the de-

gree of truth in the SLA’s political analysis, the original and overriding

fact was that her circumstance was involuntary and everything that

happened subsequently must be seen in that light.

The members of the Hearst jury, in the few brief interviews granted

before we went to press, revealed that a major factor in their decision

was her refusal to discuss the so-called “missing year," the time she

and the Harrises spent underground after the crime for which she was

accused. All three SLA survivors face a staggering list of criminal

charges. But they cannot be understood, tried or sentenced fairly in

the context of a social and legal system which rewards the official terror-

ism of the CIA and FBI but punishes those who fight against it. Patty’s

crimes cannot be separated from the U.S. attorney general’s decision

to brand her a “common criminal” two months after her kidnapping.

In their totality, crimes committed by the threesome must be weighed

with the needless, unspeakable horror visited upon their six companions

by the Los Angeles police and the FBI.

We are presenting in this issue the third and final account of Patty

Hearst and the SLA, based on information of insiders. This time it’s

the story of that missing year. We have sought to accurately portray

and understand the individuals and events involved, and let the readers

draw their own conclusions. -JANN WENNER

(Note: The key insiders were Jack Scott and Steve Soliah who tended to

skew it in their favor. Take it with a grain of salt)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IT WAS JUST PAST SUNDOWN IN SAN

Francisco’s Mission district, the center of the

local Mexican-American community. As the

streetlights blinked on, two men walked along

the main boulevard, Mission Street, past a row

of cheap cocktail lounges, take-out restaurants

and auto supply stores.

The pair strolled up to a bar and, finding it near-

ly deserted, walked in. The only customers were three

middle-aged blue collar workers, slouched in familiar

comfort on their stools at the long wooden counter.

A tattered pool table sat unused in the back. The juke-

box next to the front door was playing Frank Sinatra.

The two newcomers ordered beers and took an

empty corner table. William Harris, a short, muscular

ex-Marine lance corporal better known as General

Teko of the Symbionese Liberation Army, had re-

quested a rendezvous to say farewell to Patty Hearst.

But his kidnap victim-turned-comrade was absent. She

held too many regrets and harbored too much bitter-

ness for any final courtesies. She never wanted to see

Harris again.

Instead, Steve Soliah had come, as her boyfriend

and surrogate. “We’re leaving town,” he told Harris.

“We’ll be gone by the end of the month. Probably drive

to Oregon, get some new IDs from a friend of mine

there, and then we’re headed back east”

Hearst and Soliab hoped to settle in Boston, where

they planned to find jobs and resume a lifestyle with-

out tension and violence. Patty wanted to join a fem-

inist group and enter community organizing, and both

wanted to rethink their future.

Harris listened to Soliah without interruption. After

a few minutes of silence and small talk, Bill explained

that he and his wife, Emily, would be staying on.

We’re not giving up. We’ll find other people to

help fight the pigs.” Though his army had now dwin-

dled to two-their support group melting away along

with Patty----Harris said that rebuilding the SLA re-

mained his only priority.

It was the second week of September 1975. For

Bill and Emily Harris, their 19-month odyssey with

Patty had apparently come to an end. But Bill was

resigned to her departure; he offered no argument

or protest.

The two men finished their beers, stood and shook

hands. They set up no plan or codes for further com-

munication. They did not expect to see each other

again.

One week later they were all in jail.

STEVE SOLIAH ARRIVED IN BERKELEY in December 1971.

At 23, he was acollege dropout and a political neophyte.

He had been a football and track star as a

teenager, growing up in Palmdale, Cali-

fornia, a small town on the edge of the

Mojave Desert, northeast of Los Angeles.

He left home at 19 and enrolled at Humboldt College,

a small campus set in the redwoods of northern Cali-

fornia. He put three years into sociology but quit

school just shy of a diploma when his track team

eligibility ran out.

His older sister, Kathy, then 24, was a serious po-

litical activist living in Berkeley. She had been an

English major at the University of California at Santa

Barbara in 1970, when students had burned the cam-

pus branch ‘of the Bank of America’ to the ground

during a week of violent protest.

The confrontation made a decisive change in the

social awareness of Kathy and her boyfriend, James

Kilgore. Kilgore, then 23, bad an uncanny ability to

add two-digit numbers as fast as a pocket calculator,

and had come to the seaside Santa Barbara campus to

study economics.

Jim set up his girlfriend’s brother in the house paint-

ing trade, a part-time gig Jim had learned and passed

on to Steve Steve was hardworking but unambitious. He liked the jock life,

and though he felt a vague dislike for the war in Vietnam, he preferred dope

smoking, beer and partying to political discussions. He waslukewarm and

bored visitor at the study group that Kathy and Jim began in 1972 for their

apolitical friends.

That circle included Angela Atwood, a 23-year-old, New Jersey-born

graduate of Indiana University, who worked with Kathy as a waitress at a

San Francisco restaurant. Angela became an enthusiastic member of

the discussion group. Within a year, Atwood fell into

increasingly vitriolic circles, finally joining a small

group of whites who visited black prisoners in state

jails.

Kathy and Jim felt that Angela had succumbed

to the unreasoning and abrasive rhetoric of her’ new

friends. They were tolerant but ‘disappointed by the

change. “It’s a phase she’ll outgrow,” Kathy said to

the others. But a year later, following the arrest of

Joseph Remiro and Russell Little, whom Kathy and

Jim had met through Angela, they realized she had

become a loyal soldier of the Symbionese Liberation

Army, which had assassinated a school superintendent

in neighboring Oakland.

Kathy, Jim and Steve followed news of the SLA and

the Hearst kidnapping closely, their political interest in-

extricably merged with their personal fears about An-

gela’s safety. As they sat in a Berkeley house in May

1974, watching the telecast of the shootout in a Los

Angeles ghetto that killed Angela and five other SLA’

members, they felt saddened, outraged and helpless.

As a tribute to Atwood, and in commemoration

of her murdered companions, the Soliahs and Kilgore

organized a rally in Berkeley’s Ho Chi Minh Park.

The rally was Steve’s first political work. He phoned

friends, pinned posters on campus bulletin boards and

helped set up the equipment. The memorial attracted

several hundred people-and the notice of the three

surviving SLA members.

Patty Hearst and Bill and Emily Harris were hid-

ing from a national police dragnet. The three fugi-

‘tives already had been turned away by several old

friends in the San Francisco Bay Area and were des-

perate when they approached Kathy Soliah for help.

The request presented Kathy and Jim with a di-

lemma. They considered themselves leftists but not

armed guerrillas. They had never met Patty Hearst

or the Harrises before, but the Harrises had been

close friends with Atwood since college, and to re-

fuse refuge to the three fugitives might condemn

them to her fate.

Kathy and Jim discussed the plea with Steve.

After some hesitation they decided to provide tem-

porary housing for the three fugitives until they could

escape from the Bay Area. The opportunity to flee

came just two weeks later when Jack Scott, a sports

activist who had met Kathy and Jim two years before,

flew from New York to Berkeley to begin a book

about the SLA. Scott offered to finance an East Coast

hideout in exchange for material for his book.

The summer passed quietly until n urgent call from

Pennsylvania came in September. Bill Harris was on

the line, explaining that Scott was abandoning the

fugitives because of a falling-out over the book. Once

more the three needed help and safety from the police.

Harris asked the Berkeley group to becomethe SLA’s

aboveground supporters.

Kathy and Jim called a meeting. They included

Steve, his younger sister, Josephine, and a few other

friends. After several days of hesitation the •group

reached a compromise-they would give money and

companionship to the fugitives but they would stop

short of joining the SLA.

“It was a kind of schizophrenic situation for us,”

one member later recalled. “We decided to do it, then

we had to figure out how to do it. We had to balance

out our personal lives with this other thing. We had

to protect these people but at the same time we had

to make it appear that everything was still normal.”

In late September they acquired a “safe house” for

the SLA trio. They pooled their extra money to pay

the $80 monthly rent and contributed another $400

per month for food, clothes, toiletries and disguises.

THE HIDEOUT WAS A GLOOMY,

run-down duplex in Sacramento, 90 minutes north of the bay area

There were three small rooms lit by bare lightbulbs and furnished

with a shabby couch,two secondhand mattresses and an ancient,

sputtering oil heater. The kitchen was dark, smelly and drafty.

The one bedroom-where Patty, Bill and Emily

had to sleep together-was the only room with heat.

It was in the front of the house, which was less than

50 yards from U.S. interstate 80. Trucks rumbled over

a huge bump in the expressway, sendlng tremors

through the apartment.

They had to get used to no privacy-an adjustment

that Bill and Emily made with less difficulty than

Patty. During the summer in Pennsylvania, she had

enjoyed the freedom to take walks or go swimming.

But here, recreation was limited to reading. Their

return to life in a city had reactivated their paranoia.

Venturing outside meant mingling with townspeople

and taking the risk of being recognized. Patty’s fears

were confirmed during an early Sacramento shopping

trip when a woman accosted her and loudly pro-

nounced: “You look just like Patty Hearst!” She had

blanched and nearly given herself away.

It was a relief for her whenever one of the Berkeley

friends came up for a visit, in late October, Steve

Soliah arrived for the first time since helping them

settle into the duplex a month before. He assumed

they were still a congenial unit. When Patty suggested

the two of them take a walk, he agreed. He was

stunned, however, when a few blocks from their

shabby house Patty blurted out her feelings about

Bill: “I hate living with him. If I had any alternative

at all, I’d jump at it.”

What was wrong? Soliah asked. Why this sudden

hostility toward Harris?

“He’s got some kind of complex,” Patty explained.

“He acts like he’s a coach or a drill sergeant or some-

thing.”

Some of the time, however, being a fugitive could

be fun. In hide-and-seek fashion Patty would be sent

into a shopping district while one of the Harrises sur-

reptitibusly followed. If she spotted and eluded the

“tail,” she won the game and got a small reward. Then

the roles would be reversed. But such outings were

infrequent and daily routine was considerably more

dreary. Every morning there were calisthenics, drills

on a homemade obstacle course and weapons practice.

In the afternoons, there were political study ses-

sions, which Bill supervised, and laborious work on

the book manuscript they had begun with Scott. The

Harrises hoped to revise it and have it printed as a

history of the SLA and a blueprint for revolution. All

of them seemed perpetually dissatisfied with the manu-

script and spent hours feverishly rewriting sections.

In keeping with SLA rules, Harris insisted on a

strict security routine: doors locked, shades pulled,

guns loaded, neighbors monitored. When Patty made

careless mistakes or forgot her duties, Harris lectured

her-or depr,ived her of privileges.

“Suspension of cigarettes for a week ... may not

seem like such a big deal,.” Patty wrote in the SLA

manuscript later seized by the FBI. “But if you’re a

smoker it’s really a drag to not be able to smoke for

a week.”

Patty soon became weary of the routine that Gen-

eral Teko demanded. Cooped up in the bleak apart-

ment, they let little irritations flare into disagreements.

By the end of their first month in Sacramento, a rift

had developed between Patty and Bill.

Bill Harris, she felt, was not unlike the Dominican

nuns who made her scrub toilets for minor infractions

in school.

With a sarcasm that had often nettled her teenage

friends, Patty began to mock Harris’s dictatorial

tendencies, calling him “Adolf” to his face. And she

deliberately disobeyed his instructions.

Faced with Patty’s rebellion, Harris threw tantrums,

stormed out of rooms and slammed doors-a reaction

that encouraged even more insubordination. Her con-

tempt for Harris escalated.

To irritate Harris she treated him to an aloof si-

lence followed by more peppery sarcasm. Sometimes

their arguments grew so loud that they annoyed a

neighbor living on the other side of the thin walls sep-

arating the duplex. In a wrangle over the wording in

the book manuscript, Harris smacked Patty hard in

the face, giving her a black eye.

“You rich little bitch,” Harris yelled during another

fight. “What do you know about the struggle of the

people-you grew up in a fucking mansion.”

“Kiss my cunt, Adolf,” Patty spat back.

Her complaints about Harris were relayed through

Steve Soliah to the Berkeley group. They initially

were reluctant to interfere in Patty’s personal feud.

But they became concerned when she told them of a

nagging health problem: for more than a month she

had suffered continual vaginal bleeding and was wor-

ried she had a tumor. They arranged for a paramedic

to take a pap smear and blood sample to anonymously

present to a doctor for tests. The doctor’s report was

that the patient, whoever she was, was suffering from

acute emotional stress. Patty’s solution was to find her

own place away from the drab regimentation of the

Harrises.

By January 1975 the support group was earning

enough money to afford a second apartment in Sacra-

mento. They concurred with Patty’s conclusion and

she happily packed her belongings and moved out.

ALTHOUGH PATTY’S BASIC QUARREL

was with Bill, she was not close to Emily

either. Without exception, Patty told the others,

Emily sided with Bill against her.

“I always feel like it’s them versus me.

I feel like I’m an outsider.”. Under the SLA social codes,

couples supposedly were taboo. When Patty and Willie

Wolfe became lovers, they had been encouraged to

sleep with other SLA members to avoid forming a

twosome. But the Harrises, Patty felt, treated their

marriage as an exception to the rule.

A lingering memory of her days locked in •the

closet, Patty said, was of listening to the Harrises.

At the time her only clue to the personalities of her

captors had been their voices. “But I could tell by

the way they talked to each other that they were

married.” Later, when the SLA divided into three

teams, the Harrises were assigned to the same unit

while Patty and Wolfe were forced to separate.

During the summer following Wolfe’s death, Bill

had tried to ease her loneliness and sometimes he

and Patty had slept together. But the Harrises pre-

ferred each other, and Patty usually was left alone.

Patty and Steve first met in June 1974 during the

fugitives’ panicked retreat to the Bay Area before

going east. Patty looked like a dowdy housewife. She

was unappealingly pale and gaunt, draped in form-

less clothes and disguised in horn-rimmed glasses and

a bouffant wig. Soliah had dirty blond hair and a

ragged goatee.

“He looked like a spaced-out hippie,” Patty later

told a friend.

Steve’s impression also had been unexciting. “She

didn’t look very attractive,” he said later. “She wasn’t

the kind of woman that men look twice at.”

They met again in late September. after Patty rode

a bus to California from Las Vegas, where Jack Scott

had dropped her off. Patty had a healthy tan, Soliah

had shaved off his beard and the two were attracted

to each other. They laughed about their earlier meet~

ing and spent several days together before the Har-

rises arrived.

On Patty’s second night back the two slept together

for the first time. Soliah had hesitated, still a little

awed by the prospect of getting involved with some-

one so famous. But Patty had been encouraging. “It

seemed all right,” he casually told a friend the next

morning. “We got along fine.”

On his visits to the Sacramento duplex during the

fall, he became Patty’s confidant and her refuge from

the Harrises. He was full of warmth and smiles and

they shared several good times. Soliah’s doubts about

assisting the fugitives faded as he grew closer to

Patty.

They discovered an easy compatibility away from

the rest of the group, where stronger egos debated

more serious matters. Soliab, however, soon became

aware of Patty’s competitive nature. She challenged

him to arm-wrestling contests to show off the wiry

muscles she had developed over the summer. On ten-

nis courts at neighborhood playgrounds she was a

merciless server, forcing Soliah to play his best game

to win. And she often defeated him.

Patty jogged each day and sometimes dropped to

the floor to grunt through 20 finger-tip pushups. She

was willing to exercise as long as it wasn’t a require-

ment, and as long as she wasn’t outclassed. Where

she could not outdo Soliah, as in uphill bicycling, she

refused to compete and berated him when he raced

ahead of her.

With Soliah as her teacher Patty learned how to fix

minor car breakdowns, a hobby that had always fas-

cinated her. Patty had been a teenage hot rodder, flash-

ing about in the. blue MG she got on her 16th birth-

day. Now, wrench in hand, she was introduced to a

•car’s underside, and after practicing on the SLA’s

battered cars she became an adept mechanic. Her

specialty was replacing worn brake linings.

Patty’s best times with Soliah, though, were long

walks or visits to the local drive-in theaters where they

watched Young Frankenstein, Death Race 2000 and

other grade-B movies. She still was careful to look as

unpretentious and unattractive as possible when going

outside. One trick she mastered was locking her jaw to

affect a receding chinline, thereby hiding the jutting

Hearst chin made famous by newspaper cartoonists

and magazine covers. After a few weeks in her own

apartment Patty’s health problems. disappeared and

she recovered her cheerfulness.

S OLIAH WAS STILL ONLY AN OCCA-

sional visitor. But in February 1975 Patty

gained Wendy Yoshimura as a full-time

roommate.

Wendy, accused of storing explosives

for an antiwar bombing conspiracy in

Berkeley, had been a fugitive since 1972.

She met Patty and the Harrises through Jack Scott-

her boyfriend, Willie Brandt, and Scott had been ac-

tive together in the Jock Liberation Front-and had

stayed with them during the previous summer. She re-

turned west with them in the fall but initially decided

to stay in San Francisco instead of moving to Sacra-

mento.

Then Scott told his brother, Walter, of his summer

adventure with Patty Hearst. Walter, desperate for

money, informed theFBI. In February word of Wen-

dy’s connection to the SLA leaked to the media.

Fearing an intensive search for her in the Bay Area,

where most of her known friends lived, Wendy fled

north to hide out with Patty.

The two quickly resumed their summer friendship.

Wendy was sympathetic to Patty’s discontent with

Harris’s totalitarianism. Wendy’s feeling was that the

SLA’s male leadership had been at fault for its lack

of success. Wendy was able to give political meaning

to the Patty-Bill Personality clash. Patty and Wendy

began to question the validity of the SLA, an~ issue

that increasingly came to dominate conversations

within the group as the year progressed.

PATTY CONTINUED TO VISIT THE

Harrises regularly, pedaling there on

a ten-speed bicycle. Living away from

them had reduced the tension. She and

Steve occasionally went out with them, once

going to see Freebie and the Bean at a drive-in.

But the Harrises had little interest in so-

~ializing. They spent their spare time dreaming about

how to resurrect the SLA. If they laid down their guns,

they felt, their comrades would have been sacrificed

in vain. -.

During Bill’s hitch. in the Marines, he had shunned

the gung-ho attitude. Harris would usually choose a

game of cards instead of. finishing up his barracks

duties. Harris disliked drills and his overall attitude

to officersc~st him several chances at promotions.

But as General Teko, Harris felt he had to re-

quire military discipline. He wanted to rebuild an

army that would carry on the declaration of war is-

sued by the SLA a year before. He began reviving the

strategy that originally had captured national atten-

tion.

Bill and Emily spent long hours clipping news-

papers and searching through Standard and Poor’s

Register, Business Periodicals Index, the United States

Government Manual and other library reference

books. From these they compiled a list of targets: can-

didates for assassinations, kidnappings, bombings and

other terrorist attacks.

Among the people they listed were four Oakland

police officers involved in a controversial shooting

of a mental incompetent and three other Oakland

policemen accused of recklessly killing a 14-year-old

black youth. They also did research on then-San Fran-

cisco police chief Donald Scott, whose department

had harrassed blacks during the hunt for the killers

of 14 whites in the notorious Zebra case. A biography

of Scott, which included the names of his family, a

description of him as the “commander of a quasi-mili-

tary unit” and mention of his proclivity for handball,

was later found among the SLA papers confiscated

by the FBI.

The Harrises concentrated mainly on law enforce-

ment targets. Among’ the buildings they listed were

the FBI office in San Mateo, U.S. Board of Parole

and U.S. Bureau of Prisons branch offices in Burlin-

game, a Law Enforcement Assistance Administration

(LEAA) headquarters in Burlingame and an IRS

office in San Mateo. All these buildings were located

on the San Francisco peninsula where Patty grew

up, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Sacramento.

But the fugitives trekked to the sites and mapped out

floor plans and diagrams of the surrounding streets,

always alert to possible escape routes. By now they

had lost their fear of mingling with people and they

traveled freely throughout northern California.

They also investigated several multinational cor-

porations, including northern California offices of

Texaco and Aramco, and assembled the addresses

of foreign consulates in San Francisco.

Their most ambitious scheme was to break out

two imprisoned SLA members, Joseph Remiro and

Russell Little, from their cells in the Oakland jail. By

setting up surveillance in the jail lobby and by talking

to friends familiar with the jail routine, they com-

piled a 33-point log of jail patrols, bed checks, guard

shifts, visiting schedules, walkie-talkie systems and

other security observations.

“From elevator to gate it’s ten steps; from gate to

desk it’s two small steps,” they wrote. “Pigs have

walkie-talkies to keep them in communication with

people upstairs in jail. They don’t work too well

(hard to understand because of static) but they can

call them on the phone to find out what the message

is . . . Red gate is sometimes open but when they

see it they close it . . . The two doors in visitors’ hall

just outside elevators have a barred window with a

small door that can be opened by the pig inside to

check the hallway before he opens the door.”

Next they designed an incomplete and amateurish

plan to overpower the guards at the front desk and

force their way into the jail using a guard as hostage.

“Gate open when SGT. sees pig coming out of ele-

vator so kidnapped pig must be pushed out first,” they

wrote. They hoped to shut down the closed-circuit

cameras, then take the elevator to the maximum

security floor and free Remiro and Little.

But the plan was never carried out because the

Harrises could not get enough people to help, a prob-

lem that also jeopardized their other long-range plans.

BILL HARRIS GREW UP IN’ A MIDDLE CLASS Indiana

home built near acountry club golf course. He was an

Episcopal acolyte, a high school thespian and a star golfer.

At Indiana University he was rushed by a fraternity with the

best athletes on campus, and he contemplated becoming a

professional actor.

But during his sophomore year he lost interest in

a career and dropped out. Undismayed, he spent the

summer of 1965 working in Colorado in a national

park, and in San Francisco as a stagehand for an opera

company. In the fall he enlisted in the armed forces,

selecting the Marine Corps because of its challenging

physical criteria. He was shipped to Vietnam, where

he clerked in a supply depot and helped patrol the

Da Nang air base. He did not see combat and his only

injury was torn ligaments from a touch football ‘game.

But the’ Marines did introduce’ Harris to racism.

Reflecting the increased racial tension in society at

large, blacks’ and whites did not fraternize. Bill’s

brief friendship with a black Marine ended abruptly

because of pressure from fellow soldiers. In college

Bill had been close friends with several black frater-

nity men. The Marine episode stung him deeply and

awakened him to a cause that eventually preoccupied

his life.

He returned to Indiana University in 1967 and

over the next three years began reading the prison

writings of Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson and

other black authors. In arguments with friends he

championed the fight against racial injustice. He still

believed in nonviolent social change. But an anger

was welling up inside him. “He got impatient when he

found out other people hadn’t read all the books he

had,” explained Denver attorney Larry Leach, Bill’s

best friend from 1963 to 1971. “He became very

frustrated with Midwestern apathy.”

In 1972 his frustration led him back to the Bay

Area. Neither Bill nor Emily, who both held teaching

certificates, knew what kind of jobs they wanted. So

they threw their energy into the prison reform move-

ment. Along with many other young whites, they

started visiting nearby jails, where militant black pris-

oners. challenged them to put their revolutionary the-

ories into practice.

Outraged by the conditions they saw inside prisons

and impressed by the zeal with which angry prisoners

and Berkeley activists preached “armed struggle,”

Bill and Emily turned against their earlier pacifism.

But when one of the inmates, Donald DeFreeze,

escaped in March 1973 and began organizing the

SLA to wage war, the Harrises were not quite ready

to sign up, although some of their friends were.

In November 1973 the SLA assassinated Oakland

school superintendent Marcus Foster.

Leach visited the Harrises shortly thereafter and,

though unaware of their SLA connections, found they

were enthusiastically awaiting a widespread revolu-

tion. “I’m a revolutionary now,” Bill announced. The

Harrises intended to spend two or three years above-

ground recruiting hundreds of others to the SLA be-

fore they took up arms themselves.

But in January 1974 two of their SLA friends, Re-

miro and Little, were captured and charged with

Foster’s murder. The next day Bill quit his job in the

post office. He and Emily abandoned their Berkeley

apartment, leaving behind most of their possessions,

and joined General Field Marshal Cinque Mtume

underground.

Three weeks later they kidnapped Patricia Hearst

as a “prisoner of war” to barter for the release of

Remiro and Little. “After that there was no turning

back for them,” Leach remembered. “They felt they

had to spend the rest of their lives fighting for the

SLA.”

In a letter to his mother while he was underground,

Bill wrote: “I used to say that one day I’d be famous

and you’d be proud of me. I always thought

I would become a ‘great actor’ or in some way ‘rich,’

buy you a big house, all sorts of bourgeois pipe

dreams.

“Well, I may not be famous-more likely, noto-

rious-but you should still be proud of me. The gov-

ernment of the U.S.A. wants to kill me. That puts

me in the same class with some pretty fantastic and

beautifully courageous people.

“Just to mention a few (and I do so in complete

humbleness because they were all far greater than

me):

“Every dead Indian, every lynched black, every

gunned-down Chicuno, every imprisoned Puerto Ri-

can, every beat-up union organizer and to be more

specific: Nat Turner, John Brown, Joe Hill, Sacco

and Vanzetti, the. Rosenbergs, Martin Luther King,

Malcolm X, Jonathan and George Jackson, Sam Mel-

ville, L.D. Barkley, Fred Hampton, Zayd Malik Sha-

kur, Cinque Mtume, and damn near everyone in Viet-

nam..

But in the role he inherited from DeFreeze, Harris

was a general without the ability to lead or an army to

follow him-or the charisma DeFreeze had used to

compensate for lack of both. Harris adopted a black

slang that both honored and mimicked the slain field

marshal. And in moments of depression, he wished

aloud that he had been born black and poor so he

could feel more qualified to lead the revolution. He

felt weighed down with an imposing responsibility.

Having rejected all other ambitions, Harris was

determined that the SLA succeed. He believed that,

even with a small squadron, the SLA realistically -

could detonate a revolution in 1975. The best tactic

was the one DeFreeze had initiated: political mur-

der. Bill felt that SLA guns should be aiming at cops,

because police were to blame for the six deaths in

L.A. and because he was convinced the silver badge

was a symbol for black rage. By executing unpopular

policemen, the SLA could inspire guerrilla warfare

in U.S. ghettoes. He envisioned armed blacks rising

up like the Viet Cong in South Vietnam.

This fantasy was consistent with Harris’s fondness

for dramatics and the SLA analysis that black peo-

ple will lead the second American revolution. But

the Harrises needed soldiers for their army. So their

first task was to persuade their Berkeley friends to

join the SLA.

However, when Bill tried to sell the idea to the

Soliahs, Kilgore and the rest of the Berkeley group,

he failed.

AT THE REQUEST OF THE HARRISES,

the support group began to take part in

earnest discussions about the future of

the SLA. But they were still unsure about

. And they wereeven less anxious to get involved

in the violent tactics that Harris proposed.

They were disturbed by the unreality of his plans.

At first they were too awed by Harris and his

standing as a “revolutionary leader” to oppose his

suggestions outright. But a leader emerged from the

group in opposition to Bill. Not only did he disagree

with political assassinations but he saw Harris as more

concerned with image than political thought-and

said as much. Both Harrises were scandalized. Bill

labeled the dissenter a “troublemaker” and tried to

guilt-trip him, telling him that he had no credentials

or experience as a revolutionary. The two got into

long shouting matches.

When the clash could not be resolved, the Harrises

demanded the “troublemaker” be expelled. The others

reluctantly acceded.

But when they were confronted with the prospect

of actually picking up guns to kill someone, they

refused. Although there were differing, suggestions

from the support group, they all counseled for a less

violent strategy. They pointed out that the Weather

Underground, regarded as a vanguard revolutionary

group, had been using only symbolic bombings against

property to make its political points. But Bill rebuffed

that argument. The Weatherpeople were wrong, he

insisted-bombings alone could not muster the nec-

essary revolutionary fervor.

Even before he’d been radicalized, back when his

debates were with fraternity jocks, Bill’s style had

been burdened with intolerance and theatrics. “He

tended to be very emotional,” Leach recalled. “He

was always very sincere but he liked theatrics.”

He spouted SLA rhetoric. The U.S. was about to

be swallowed up by fascism, he contended; all blood

spilled now would prevent greater bloodshed later.

To emphasize his position he would wave his arms

and pace intently about the room.

Harris was too impatient for compromise or de-

lay. So when he could not rouse any volunteers he

reverted to more histrionics, which further under-

mined his leadership.

Despite her personality clash with Bill, Patty had

initially supported him in these discussions and helped

research some targets. In her grief over Willie Wolfe’s

death the year before, Patty had displayed the fanat-

icism of a new convert, wildly vowing to “off the

pigs” in vengeance. But she had since dropped her

overwrought demeanor. Now, bolstered by the poli-

tical logic of the Berkeley group, she moved into the

faction opposed to the old SLA tactics.

Emily alone supported her husband. As political

allies the Harrises were inseparable. But, with all the

tension, a new rift began to appear-between the

Harrises.

EMILY SCHWARTZ GREW UP IN

the wealthy Chicago suburb of Clar-

endon Hills, the daughter of an engineer-

ing consultant who kept a strict house-

hold. She was considered outgoing and

popular. At Indiana University her

blond-haired, blue-eyed looks won her

a choice of boyfriends and entree into a prestigious

sorority. She was a conscientious but not overly serious

student who dressed fashionably and majored in Eng-

lish literature. She spent two summers working at

Disneyland and at a California resort restaurant.

In her sophomore year Emily began dating the

khaki-clad Vietnam vet who talked to her about anti-

war politics in the midst of campus beer-drinking

bonhomie. After Emily met Bill, a sorority sister re-

called, “she started to change.” But their friendship~

remained casual until they began living together her

senior year. Emily started joining antiwar demon-

strations and began to take politics more seriously.

The next year, 1970, they were married in a campus

chapel.

Moving to the Bay Area increased Emily’s political

awareness and, ended her earlier deference to Bill’s

ideas. Because of her levelheaded approach, Emily

often was asked• to chair the pre-SLA meetings the

Harrises held with other Bay Area activists. Emily also

began picketing stores, mimeographing political leaf-

lets and visiting prisoners. But enlisting in the SLA

placed Emily under Bill’s authority, a situation that

subtly began to erode their relationship.

By spring of 1975, Bill was erupting against Emily

with unwelcome frequency. At one point Emily

wanted to take out a favorite .22-caliber rifle for tar-

get practice. Bill arbitrarily ordered her to use an-

other gun. When she refused, he tried to kick her.

Infuriated, she jumped on him and pounded away

on his back.

By May Emily could no longer summon tolerance

for Bill’s temper. She needed a fresh perspective, she

decided, and she had to get away from Bill to find

it. At the same time Steve and Patty were seeing less

of each other. Emily and Steve began spending more

time together. Emily liked Steve’s quiet nature. Within

the group he was known as a peacemaker; even in the

heat of political arguments he seldom raised his voice.

Steve already was attracted to Emily’s ready wit and

warm laugh. In early May the group reassessed its

living arrangements: Emily moved to Steve’s apart-

ment in Berkeley.

But Bill was jealous. After about two weeks he met

with Steve and made it clear he didn’t like Steve’s

affair with his wife. Steve, finding the situation too

uncomfortable for his easygoing nature, agreed to

end it.

But rather than return to Bill, Emily elected to set

up communal housekeeping with other women in the

group. At the end of May the group closed down the

Sacramento apartments and Emily and Patty moved

in with Wendy Yoshimura, who had returned to San

Francisco two months earlier. The threesome held

regular meetings with the other women from Berkeley.

Bill, Steve and Jim Kilgore were assigned to live in

a second San Francisco apartment and Emily urged

them to convene their own meetings with the other

men in the group.

Emily was hoping that by separating men’s and

women’s criticisms she could salvage a consensus. In

her discussions with the women’s collective Emily

willingly offered a candid critique of the SLA’s history

dating from the arrest of Remiro and Little. “The

capture of our two comrades really hurt us and threw

us into a panic. Our changed situation compelled us

to place primary importance on obtaining survival

and military skills".

“We got ourselves into such a heavy military state

of mind that we lost control of our conditions

It was safe for the men to think of themselves as our

teachers and political commissars . . . We behaved

like the ‘Ladies Auxiliary of the Left.’ We were just so

grateful to the men for taking the time to teach us-

so we could help save their asses!

“We finally realized that the way we were doing

this was crazy!”

WHEN EMILY AND STEVE were still living together, Patty

had agreed to move in with Bill as a sort of reconciliation attempt. But

they both quickly regretted the decision. Bill continued to view himself

as her superior andPatty responded with her inimitable sarcasm. Sex be-

tween them was brief and mechanical. After a weekof renewed squabbling,

Patty moved out. A few weekslater, while living with Emily and Wendy,

she resumed her love life with Steve. On weekends they

often wandered along northern California beaches

or sunbathed next to rivers. It was a welcome change

for Patty, even though she had a few narrow escapes.

On one trip in June she and Steve were rescued by

sheriff’s deputies when they became stranded climb-

ing a cliff near the coastal town of Pacifica. But the

deputies did not recognize them. They had another

scare in a Sari Francisco supermarket. As Patty stood

in the checkout line, she spotted an old friend-a

former fellew employee from her days as a clerk

at Capwell’s department store in Oakland. But Patty

coolly exited the store, leaving Steve to carry the

groceries.

Despite the close calls, Patty’s earlier preoccupation

with getting caught had vanished. Her daily schedule

in San Francisco was conventional and unrestricted.

She rode city buses, went shopping frequently and

took walks by herself. Occasionally she accompanied

Soliah to his house-painting jobs. There, perched on

a ladder, she layered acrylic on Walls, bestowing on

unsuspecting landlords a building painted by the most

wanted fugitive in the country. Her companions de-

scribed her appearance then as “housewifey. She al-

ways dressed pretty straight-face powder, eyeliner

and lipstick-and fit in well at a supermarket.”

After an outing in Mann County across the Golden

Gate Bridge from San Francisco, her face turned

puffy and lopsided from a case of poison oak. Soliah

tried to tease her into a better mood. “C’mon, let’s go

for a walk around police headquarters. They’ll never

recognize you. You’ve got the perfect disguise.”

“Leave me alone. I can’t go outside-I look awful.”

Generally Patty had few complaints about her

San Francisco underground lifestyle. Compared to the

previous fall in Sacramento, she had more freedom,

better friends and a happier outlook.

At night Patty and Soliah listened to Gil Scott-

Heron records, watched television reruns or got

quietly high on beer or marijuana. Sometimes they

held barbecues on the back lawn with Emily and

Wendy. Most of Patty’s days were consumed with

mundane chores. She washed clothes at the corner

laundromat, watered plants (including a two-foot

cannibis stalk) and dished out economy meals of pea

soup or hamburger casserole. She also clipped cou-

pons for grocery bargains and thought up money-

saving recipes. Although she’d jab Soliah in the ribs

when he made sexist jokes, Patty contentedly settled

into a housewife’s routine, a lifestyle little different

from 18 months before when she’d been living with

Steven Weed.

NEXT TO SOLIAH, WENDY remained

Patty’s best friend. During the summer, they continued

to grow closer, both personally and politically.

Patty and Wendy took an active part

in the women’s meetings. Both had been

heartened by Emily’s criticism of SLA

sexism. They agreed with the analysis but had been

hesitant about voicing it first. After that Patty and

Wendy started privately discussing other problems.

Patty’s growing independence and her participation in

the women’s meetings now helped her articulate a deep-

seated bitterness about the Harrises and the SLA.

Both Bill and Emily had opposed Patty’s member-

ship in the SLA when it was first discussed in the

weeks following her February 1974 kidnapping. They

had argued that she didn’t have any guerrilla training.

But Patty showed an unexpected ability to compete

physically with Bill. She had always been a natural

athlete and possessed an agility which Harris couldn’t

equal. She excelled in the dive-and-roll, leaping over

a chair and somersaulting smoothly as she hit the

floor to avoid imaginary gunfire. She could sprint

faster than Harris and was able to outlast him in run-

ning exercises.

Patty also demonstrated a new proficiency with

guns. Before joining the SLA she had known only

the rudiments of pulling a trigger from the times her

father had taken her along on bird hunts. Once she

had fired too soon and barely missed her father’s head.

By contrast, Harris had been among the best shots

in his Marine class.

But Patty proved a quick and willing student. She

was issued her first SLA weapon, a 12-gauge shot-

gun, while still blindfolded. A year later Patty was

better and faster than Harris at disassembling and re-

assembling guns.

Patty’s superiority in such skills helped undermine

her respect for the Harrises. A family governess once

had noted that “the key thing with Patty was winning

her respect-then you could count on her absolute

loyalty.” But Patty refused to give the Harrises the

esteem they felt their position should command.

They labeled her attitude as “bourgie” rebellious-

ness, which they defined in the book manuscript as

“bourgeois conditioning against leadership, know-it-

all attitudes, arrogance, rebelliousness, ultrademoc-

racy,’ individualism often resulting in unopenness to

learn and reluctance to follow suggestions of leader.”

Patty resented being patronized by the Harrises.

She felt that the SLA could not have sustained front-

page headlines without her. The Harrises conceded as

much in developing the group’s contingency plan for a

potential police siege. If all else failed, they said, they

would pretend to hold Patty hostage, threaten to

shoot her and bargain for a plane to Cuba.

But the underlying cause of Patty’s disillusionment

was her feeling that Bill was responsible for the deaths

of the six SLA members in Los Angeles.

The day before the shootout, Harris had tried to

shoplift a shotgun bandoleer from Mel’s Sporting

Goods store in suburban Los Angeles. The ensuing

scuffle with a security guard alerted police and helped

lead them to the bungalow where Wolfe and the other

five SLA members died. Wolfe’s death, and her loss,

Patty blamed on Harris.

Afterward, in an SLA communique, Harris claimed

he’d been falsely accused of the theft: “At Mel’s

Sporting Goods store in Inglewood, a pig agent clerk

named Tony Shepard attempted to show his allegiance

to his reactionary white bosses, falsely accused me

of shoplifting. It was impossible to allow a verifying.

search by store security guards because I was armed

and therefore we were forced to fire our way out of

the situation.

“The policy of the Symbionese Liberation Army

has always been to avoid shoplifting because of the

heavy risk involved to the whole unit We cannot af-

ford to have soldiers busted on humbug charges

Privately he told Patty and Emily he had tried to steal

the bandoleer because he feared buying it might

arouse the checkout clerk’s suspicion.

Patty had never criticized that explanation, she

said, until one day in Sacramento when Harris brought

home a kitchen knife he’d lifted from a local store.

She had exploded, her long festering resentment of his

shoplifting coverup surfacing in a fury of epithets.

Since then she had been reexamining her conversion

to and membership in the SLA. When she originally

joined, she told Wendy, she had viewed the other

members. as warm, understanding companions who,

after some misgivings, had welcomed her into an emo-

tional refuge and a new mission. By comparison, she

felt that her parents were uncaring and selfish.

Her feelings about her parents had not changed

but her assessment of the SLA had. She now be-

lieved that DeFreeze had wanted her name on the

SLA roll only to promote bigger headlines for him-

self. He had not trusted her, she explained, and had

placed her and Wolfe on different teams so they

wouldn’t run off together, a decision she felt had

contributed to Wolfe’s death. Watching Harris emu-

late DeFreeze, she said scornfully, had convinced her

that the internal dynamic of the SLA was “whites

kissing Cinque’s ass because of white guilt.”

Her revised judgment was that her kidnappers had

wronged her. They had disrupted her life, turned her

into a- criminal and a fugitive, created a caricatured

public image and left her with the Harrises as her

family-all for the sake of a political vision not based

on reality.

ACTING AS AN EMISSARY FOR PATTY,

Steve Soliah made a special trip to see Bill

Harris in early August 1975. For nearly two months

Harris had been living alone.

Emily had not returned. Soliah had beenliving with

Patty and Wendy and Jim Kilgore had moved back to his old

apartment in nearby Daly City. Kilgore had given

up trying to change Harris’s mind about political

assassinations and now avoided talking to him.

Despite his ostracism, Harris remained intransigent.

He whiled away his time playing solitaire and jogging,

stubbornly waiting until the others yielded. So Harris

was not receptive to Soliah’s message that Patty had

described him as a guilty, “ass-kissing” white.

Harris refused to hear more. Patty was a “bour-

geois bitch” slandering the coming revolution.

Soliah pointed out that the group had reached an

impasse. “It’s your fault, too,” he told Harris. “You

both fight every time you see each other. You should

try to communicate.”

‘Fuck her. I’m not gonna try.”

“That’s not a revolutionary attitude.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

The meeting ended with a warning. Unless Harris

could achieve an accord with Patty, Soliah said, the

Berkeley group was ready to abandon him.

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HER kidnapping Patty

began to consider leaving the underground. Living in

San Francisco, a few miles from her childhood home,

had awakened memories. She thought about phoning

old friends. “I was thinking of even getting in touch with you,”

she later told Patricia Tobin, her best friend in high

school.

But Patty’s toughest debate was over going home

to her parents.

She considered surrendering, pleading guilty to her

crimes in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and hoping

for leniency. But the prospect of spending long years

behind bars worried her. “Every time I think about

it I get really depressed,” she told her roommates.

She was not sure, she said, that her parents would use

their power and money to help keep her out of prison

-or that she wanted them to.

If she gave herself up, Patty decided, the legal and

personal recriminations could be devastating. Even

an unpromising future of life on the run seemed a

better alternative. As long as she stayed underground,

she at least had some friends.

IN MID-AUGUST THE BERKELEY

group met with the fugitives for a final round

of discussions. The subject was the past and

future of the SLA. With varying degrees of

jntensity, the support group declared the SLA

record a study in failure. DeFreeze’s army had

succeeded only in frightening the public,

not in mobilizing it. The shooting of Marcus Foster,

Oakland’s first black school superintendent, had out-

raged the black constituency that the SLA coveted.

The kidnapping of Patty Hearst had persuaded mil-

lions of television viewers that the elder Hearsts were

loving parents, not corporate fascists. The SLA’s San

Francisco bank robbery had wounded two innocent

civilians, a result the Harrises had callously dismissed

in the book manuscript: “We can never hesitate to

stop someone who actively attempts to fuck us up

during an operation.”

Emily bristled at these criticisms. For weeks she

had been trying to bridge the deep contradictions

dividing the group. But her critique of the SLA mis-

takes did not extend to a total denunciation. She

clung to the belief that the SI.A’s guerrilla strategy

could yet succeed. She would not agree that political

assassinations were without merit simply because

other leftists didn’t sanction them.

But on this point the Berkeley group forged an in-

flexible and unified front. All assassinations were pre-

mature, they said, and counterproductive. “Trying to

kill pigs is suicidal,” Kilgore explained. “We’re not

interested in getting ourselves killed whenit’s not going to

bring on the revolution.”

Bill refused to accept defeatgracefully. “You’re.

a bunch of chickenshits,” he shouted.“You’re all honkie

chicken-shits.” That led to more namecalling, and Kilgore

almost had a fistfight with Harris.

For the Berkeley group thiswas the end of the line.

They had helped the SLA fugitivesfor nearly a year, an

accomplishment in which they took pride. But the Harrises

had not once said thanks.

From the beginning the

Berkeley group had, been wary

of offering themselves as sol-

diers for the SLA’s war. At

times they had equivocated.

But now they were convinced

that the SLA tactics were

bankrupt. “We did not want

to become what the SLA had

been,” one of the group later

explained. “We concluded that

was a crazy way to go about

changing the world.”

When the shouting subsided,

Emily and Bill were reunited.

Wendy decided to go to Boston

with a girlfriend. Steve and

Patty planned to return to po-

litical study and nonviolent or-

ganizing. The Harrises were on

their own.

Kathy Soliah and Jim Kil

gore knew Wendy slightly be-

fore she went underground in

1972. They were enthusiastic

when she became part’ of the

group supporting the SLA trio.

She had been underground for

three years and could counsel

Patty and the Harrises from

experience.

Wendy was born during

World War II in a U.S. con-

centration camp for Japanese-

Americans and spent her early

childhood in Japan. When she

returned to this country at age

13, she was placed in second

grade with children’ half her

age and size. Later she stud-

ied at the California College

of Art and started a career as

a commercial artist before be-

coming a political activist. She

spent a summer cutting sugar

cane in Cuba and, at age 32,

was the oldest member of the

Berkeley group.

She was soft-spoken and her

difficulty with English some-

times interfered with her ‘op-

portunities to speak in large

discussions. But, as the year

wore on, she became a firm

voice against the inflamed rhet-

oric of Bill Harris. In mid-

September, after the split be-

tween the Berkeley group and

the Harrises became irrepara-

ble, she wrote a long’ letter to

a close friend.

“It is very difficult for me to

begin. The group has literally

ceased to be a group.

“Ever since the group came

together around these people a

little over a year ago, we’ve

had a very trying time. The se-

curity was a big factor but

there was the sensationalized

media play on those people af-

fecting our heads, in effect

making us unable to think

clearly of them as people with

strengfl~s and weaknesses but

as ‘the leaders’ who knew

everything. My experience dur-

ing the summer made me real-

ize that they (two in par~ic-

ular-not P.H.) in fact are

very different from me and

personally I did not much like

them.

“In spite of it I decided to

stick with it because of their

fierce dedication . . . and I was

under their spell. Unfortu-

nately the other people were

also spellbound into submis-

siveness and there began a

mass of confusion touched up

with fucked up interpersonal

dynamics between some of the

people.

“To show you how confus-

ing it was, it began with,

some ready to go underground

(expecting it to get hot next

week) to some pushing for

jobs,’ staying cool and normal;

some ‘pushing for totally iso-

lated communal living to some

demanding normal separate

living arrangements; some de-

manding fucked up interper-

sonal relationships be dealt

with, to some seeing it as to-

tally unnecessary; some want-

ing to off pigs to some totally

disagreeing. Let me tell you, I

can go on forever. It was a

psychodrama!

“Finally, at one point, we

seemed to have found a mid-

dle ground and it looked as

though’ we were beginning to

coordinate and work together

Since then it began to get

obvious that the security that

seemed to be existing was due

to total repression, politically

as well as personally, on every-

body’s part as to maintain the

group together. As you can well

imagine, such calm can be

maintained for only so long. It

began to rattle and once it

started the process was very

fast.

“We, those of us who de-

cided to go our own way, dis-

cussed the matter and it be-

came obvious to us what the

problems were. On the surface

it seems as though we all agree

and believe in the same thing

but, after working with [the

Harrises, we’ve come to the

realization that we do in fact

disagree politically very dras-

tically.

“They’ve no understanding

of what it really means by

‘Third World leadership.’ Their

blind insistence of Third World

leadership (black) is clearly

coming from white guilt.

“Their attitude around

armed struggle is that it only

is valid and anything else

(aboveground, etc.) is irrele-

vant.

“And to add to this is the

personal aspect of these peo-

ple. They are two individuals

with weak egos lacking very

much a sense of themselves.

They have so little sense of

themselves that they literally

have to use the old bullshit-

‘I think, therefore I am’-to

even function.

These people are totally unable to check

out the objective situation and deal with it.

They simply. do not know how

to take a theory and apply it to

the reality that exists. It’s difficult

for me to clearly analyze

what ‘exactly is the problem

with these people but I think

other than their lacking in

strong egos, they are victim

ized by the guilt they feel-

guilt [for the] death of their

comrades possibly quickened

by his fuckup at the sporting

goods store (it’s true-he

fucked up)-guilt they feel for

being born white. (And are

they so racist that they must

put blacks on a pedestal to

even consider them worthy?)

“Unfortunately our vision

was clouded for the reason

mentioned before and it too

us this long to get it together

Everyone rebelled one way or

another at different times

P.H. was hated by our ‘leader

for being so rebellious. J. [Ki

gore] at the end kept having

violent verbal fights with him,

(Bill Harris)

-often almost becoming physical.

All of this going on, PH

trying to survive at the same

time.

“I tell you this is an experi

ence I’ll never forget! It was

horrendous but at the same

time I’ve learned a hell of

lot. Now I understand more

clearly my’ political views

I think most of us came out

this ahead. I hope you’ll have

the chance to meet P.H. She

is incredible! She amazes me.

I swear only the toughest could

have come out of it as she did.

What an ordeal all of us went

through!

Wendy Yashimura was freed

in December on $25,000 bail,

raised by new friends in San

Francisco’s Japanese-American

community who came to her

aid after the arrests of Sep-

tember 18th, 1975. Except for

the non-SLA- related explo-

sives charge, which her law-

yers hope to quash, her legal

future is unclouded. Her plans

remain the same as before her

capture: to join a feminist col-

lective and use her artist’s

skills in political work.

Shortly after her arrest

Wendy provided information

for an affidavit to help Patty’s

legal defense. Since then she

has refused to comment pub-

licly about the case on the ad-

vice’ of her lawyers.

J osepnrne ~olian ana Jim 15.11-

gore, have been forced under-

ground. Kathy has been in-

dicted for bombing two po-

lice cars in Los Angeles, and

Jim for possession of an ifie-

gal bombing device. Rather

than risk jail terms, they have

become fugitives, altering their

public image and complicating

their political perspective.

A March 1976 communique

sent to Berkeley radio station

KPFA and signed by the

two Soliah sisters, Kilgore, and

a fourth member-pointed up

their dilemma. They were still

careful to separate themselves•

from the SLA style. “We are

not gun-toting militarists,”

they wrote. “We are serious

political people with much im-

portant work confronting us as

we try to help build the revo-

lutionary movement in this

country.” But their new

circumstance had revived their

sympathy for the Harrises:

“We are proud to be among

those fighting the U.S. empire.

We are proud to have uncom-

promisingly supported people

who have taken up arms

against the enemy.”

Their opinion of Patty also

changed after Patty’s testi-

mony about them-which un-

fortunately was based on a’ ru-

mor, since discounted by the

FBI-that they were respon-

sible for bombing a Hearst

castle guesthouse at San Sim-

eon. “Let me tell you about

the very rich,” they wrote,

quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“Even when they enter deep

into our world or sink below

us, they still’ think they are

better than we are.”

Steve Soliab is now on trial

in Sacramento for an April

1975 bank robbery/murder

that has been connected to the

SLA. So far he alone has been

indicted in the case. Soliah

states he is being prosecuted

because he embarrassed the

FBI by hiding Patty Hearst

and because police can’t find

enough evidence to charge the

real culprits.

When Soliab heard radio re-

ports of the Harrises’ capture

last September, he raced to

Patty’s hideout to rescue her.

But he arrived too late and

was taken into custody by

waiting FBI agents. He saw

her the next day in San Fran-

cisco~s federal courthouse. ‘She

her twice more in the court-

house holding tank and sent

her love notes through her orig-

inal lawyers.

But that stopped after F. Lee

Bailey assumed Patty’s defense.

“They broke it off,” Soliah told

the friend. “I haven’t been able

to communicate with hei

since.” Soliab said he is sad-

dened by the possibility of

prison for Patty: “She is a victim.”

If convicted in Sacramento

Soliab could receive a life sentence

which would mean a minimum of 15

years in a federal penitentiary before he’

be eligible for parole. He wouldbe 42.

Bill and Emily Harris face

life sentences for a number a crimes.

They are charged with11 counts of

kidnapping, assault

and armed robbery in Los Angeles for

their panicked flightfrom Bill’s shoplifting

episode. In addition, they could be put

on trial for Patty’s original kidnapping,

the Sacramento bank robbery/murder and

the SLA San Francisco bank robbery.

Just before their arrests, the

Harrises made a final unsucessful attempt

to resurrect if SLA. At a September 13th

political rally in San FranciscoGolden Gate

Park, they contacted “Doe” Holiday, a

recently paroled black convictthey knew

from their pre-SLA prison visits. He agreed

to me them two days later in a motel room.

But, when they asked him to join them as

an armed guerrilla, he refused.

In December the Harrises arranged

to present their version of the SLA’s history

through journalists Robert Scheer andSusan Lyne.

Their interview contained their first public doubts

about previous SLA tactics. They had righteously

defended the shooting of bystanders in the San

Franciso robbery when they were writing their

underground mamuscript. Now they conceded

SLA should have apologized.

But the Harrises chose to conceal the split

between themselves and the Berkeley group,

-and the political and personal dissension that led to I

split. Bill also lied about hitting Patty and covered

up his shoplifting mistake and his role as one of Patty’s

kidnappers. Once Patty began testifying about them,

the Harrises amended their interviews to include a

denunciation of Patty for telling lies "just to save her

own ass". They were pleased with Patty’s conviction,

rfeeling it vindicated their version.

Friends who have visited the Harrises say

the couple still believes that, except for minor

strategic mistakes, the SLA willbe vindicated by

history. Both Bill and Emily are resigned to

spending most of their adultlives in California’s

prisons, where they. will join some of the prisoners

who first introduced them to SLA politics. But

they still feel there’s a chance, according to their

friends, that a new SLA willrise up and break them out.

Patty Hearst awaits sentencing for abetting

the SLAin the San Francisco bank robbery. But that

is the least of her legal problems. She faces the

same charges as the Harrises in Los Angeles and

could be indicted in the Sacramento robbery.

With her conviction, the government

has backed her into a moral bind and moved closer

to putting the SLA and all its associates behind bars.

So far the government cannot use Patty’s testimony

to convict others in court. But now she must confront

the choice of turning state’s evidence against

her former comrades or accepting years in prison as her

foreseeable future.

F.Lee Bailey’s legal strategy compelled her

to deny her love for Willie Wolfe and to turn her

dislike and disdain for the Harrises into a. description

of coercion the jury found patently unbelievable.

Because of her legal defense, the pathos of

her situation has been nearly lost. Her arrest last fall

came just as she was about to rebuild her life, having

survived the impositions of her birth and the upheavals

of her kidnapping. Now she is once again a prisoner,

locked away from the real world and deprived of any

hope for a normal future.

To survive this ordeal she must overcome

public vindictiveness, the ambitions of prosecutors

and her own unwillingness to tell the full truth. She

may regain some public sympathy if she ends up in a

courtroom as a kidnap victim testifying against her

kidnappers, an event that’would finalize her

split with the Harrises and bringthe case full circle.

But, whatever she does, her fate seems

no longer her own. (My note: Hearst started secretly