HOWARD KOHN

AND DAVID WEIR

Tania's World

EVERYBODY IN AMERICA, INCLUDING THE FBI, WAS

LOOKING FOR KIDNAPPED HEIRESS PATTY HEARST IT

TOOK A COUPLE OF FORMER COLLEGE RADICALS TO

GET THE INSIDE STORY OF HER LIFE UNDERGROUND.

The inside story? Who would have the chutzpah to put such a

baldly unexplained headline on a magazine cover? And in blar-

ing type! Yet by the time RS 198 hit the newsstands on a Tues-

day in October 1975, no explanation was necessary. The whole

country and half the world knew what it meant, to exaggerate not at all.

Until the moment of publication, Jann Wenner went to great lengths

to keep this one a secret. Even at the magazine offices it was known only

inside a small circle. On the previous Saturday the issue had rolled off the

presses under the watchful eye of guards, hired by Jann to make sure no

one walked away with a copy. The precautions just helped agitate rumors,

of course, and the radio buzzed with them all day Sunday. Finally, after

nineteen months, here was everything there was to know about heiress

Patty Hearst’s kidnapping and disappearance! The scoop of the decade,

to be published by that underground music magazine in San Francisco!

Everyone wanted to know what had happened to Patty Hearst, from the

time when she was stolen away in her nightclothes by members of the

Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) to the shocking flash of her ten weeks

later on a bank surveillance camera as the beret-wearing, machine-gun-

wielding “Tania” and through the many months after she had dropped

completely out of sight.

On Monday morning the Today show devoted twenty-two minutes to

the scoop. On Monday evening, NBC and CBS led off their news broad-

casts with “The Inside Story.” The ROLLING STONE cover flashed up on

the screen as big as life. By the following morning, the story had become

a banner headline on newspapers throughout North America, Europe and

Asia.

But if you want more details about all the hoopla, don’t ask us. We

don’t remember. We were too busy trying to keep our jobs. We had made

a foolhardy and very public promise to write “The Inside Story: Part 2,”

and we were a long way from delivering. The truth was, we had no “Part

2.” Talk about chutzpah.

We do remember Jann toasting us with champagne in his oflce and

then saying, “Okay, back to work, boys.” For two weeks we hardly slept,

and most of the sleep we did grab was in airport terminals or in parked

cars or at our desks. Our notebooks show we conducted more than thirty

interviews, ten on a confidential basis.

These many years later we’d have to say that getting the story was not

the hardest part, though. Most other reporters seemed to be waiting for

the FBI to break the case and then leak them the information, and it

happened that the FBI, more than a year and a half after the kidnapping

of Patty Hearst, still did not have a clue. The only people who were able

to clear up the mysteries that had translxed so much of the world (Was

Patty an SLA stooge from the very beginning? Had she converted to the

SLA? Or was she the consummate victim?) were former college radicals

like ourselves who knew someone who knew someone. It was our good

luck that both for “The Inside Story” and for “Part 2” we were able to

locate and talk to some of the people who had been hiding out with her.

No, the hardest part was dealing with the fact that we ourselves were

suddenly in the spotlight. During those same two weeks, we were inter-

viewed by more than thirty other reporters looking for the inside story

behind “The Inside Story.” Local TV editors assigned crews to tail us,

hoping we would lead them to a new scoop they could seize on. When one

of us checked his wife into a Sacramento, California, hotel, a TV station

went on the air to report our association with “an unknown woman.” It

was a mad time. A representative of the FBI’s San Francisco bureau

approached us with a proposition. He would break us apart “at the knee-

caps” if we did not give the FBI an advance look at “Part 2.” He did not

sound like he was kidding around.

Meanwhile, the New World Liberation Front (NWLF), a gang of

armed leftists who believed it was their mission in life to carry on the

vendettas of the SLA, issued a communiqu~ to say we’d been placed on

their hit list alongside FBI bureau chief Charles Bates. Communiques were

then an accepted means by which underground groups made their wishes

known to the larger community of the left or to any psychopaths who

might be interested. The surviving members of the SLA, who were by this

time under arrest, had expressed unhappiness over their portrayals in

“The Inside Story.” One of the lawyers in their camp also was issuing

threats of ruin to us and the magazine.

For some time there had been a bitter debate over what the proper

political perspective on the SLA and the NWLF should be. Were they

genuine expression of Sixties-era dissatisfaction with the status quo? O~

were they acting out of a personal dementia? The answer wasn’t reall)

hard to come by, but the two groups had a certain genius for publi

relations. For instance, the ransom demand sent to the Hearst family foi

Patty’s release was not for a bag of money to be dropped off in the dan

but rather was for truckloads of food to be handed out to Bay Area pool

people in a spectacularly staged media event. Strange as such good Sa

maritanism might have seemed, there was considerable praise for it on th4

left. Our piece, on the other hand, had made it clear that based on thei

overall conduct, these self-styled revolutionaries were no more than crim

ma1 thugs.

No one at ROLLING STONE doubted that the situation had becom

dicey. Recent history in the Bay Area favored violent political retaliations

Everyone on staff stayed away from the windows in the old brick ware

house that served as our oflices, and Jann brought in extra security. Ye~

m order to do a thorough job for “Part 2,” we had to try to get in touc

with the NWLF, and through intermediaries we were told we would re

ceive a communiqu6 in response to questions we had posed. Sure enougi

a call to the magazine switchboard said a message would be waiting for u

taped to the bottom of the metal ledge in a phone booth several blocic

away. We borrowed a van and drove to the site, noticing right away th~

the booth was in a highly exposed position under a freeway overpass.

small army could have been concealed behind the cement abutment

There was nothing to do but jump out, fumble under the ledge and te~

away the communiqu6.

In the late summer of 1975, Patty Hearst and her SLA traveling con

panions, Bill and Emily Harris, returned to San Francisco and were re4

ognized by local residents, who alerted authorities. Captured and he

under tight security, the fugitive trio was prosecuted for armed robbery

the Hibernia-bank case. Publication of ‘The Inside Story” caused the

Hearst family to hire high-powered F. Lee Bailey and change legal strat-

egies for Patty’s trial. Nonetheless, she was convicted by jurors who did

not believe she had acted wholly under duress. The Harrises also were

convicted. All three served time behind bars; Patty was pardoned in 1979

after serving almost two years.

Looking back, it’s obvious we might have considered dropping the

whole idea of a “Part 2.” At the time, however, we were too far caught

up in the action, and the possibility of calling it quits simply did not occur

to us. Nor, we dare say, did it occur to Jann. “You write it, and I’ll print

it” was his operating slogan, his axis munch. So “Part 2” was printed in

RS 200 and was followed by weeks of additional controversy. Francis Ford

Coppola, then the publisher of another San Francisco magazine, sicked a

team of interviewers on us. The result appeared under the headline ROLL-

ING STONE SUPERSTARS EXAMINE THEIR CONSCIENCES. Another SLA

lawyer persuaded a judge to hold us in contempt of court for refusing to

name the people who had talked confidentially to us. In the end, however,

everything blew over. The contempt citation was dropped; the NWLF

never struck; the SLA was thoroughly discredited; and no FBI agents

showed up to break our knees. Oh, yes, we also wrote “Part 3.”

RS198

OCTOBER 23RD, 1975

Patty Hearst and Emily Harris waited on a grimy Los Angeles street,

fighting their emotions as they listened to a radio rebroadcasting the

sounds of their friends dying. On a nearby corner Bill Harris dickered

over the price of a battered old car.

Only blocks away, rifle cartridges were exploding in the dying flames of

a charred bungalow. The ashes were still too hot to retrieve the bodies of

the six SLA members who had died hours before on the afternoon of May

17th, 1974.

Bill Harris shifted impatiently as the car’s owner patted a dented fender.

“I want five bills for this mother.”

The SLA survivors had only $400. Reluctantly Harris offered $350.

The man quickly pocketed the money.

Minutes later Bill picked up Patty and Emily and steered onto a freeway

north to San Francisco. They drove all night—the Harrises in the front

seat of the noisy car and Patty in back, hidden under a blanket. They were

too tense to sleep, each grappling with the aftershock of the fiery deaths.

They exited twice at brightly lit service station clusters that flank In-

terstate 5, checking out each before picking what looked like the safest

attendant. They made no other stops and reached San Francisco in the

predawn darkness.

The three fugitives drove to a black ghetto with rows of ramshackle

Victorians—and sought out a friend. Bill and Emily’s knocks brought the

man sleepy-eyed to the door.

“You’re alive!” Then he panicked. “You can’t stay here. The whole

state is gonna be crawling with pigs looking for you.” He gave them five

dollars and shut the door. “Don’t come back.”

The Harrises returned to the car and twisted the ignition key. Patty

poked her head out from under the blanket. “What’s the matter? Why

won’t it start?”

The fugitives had no choice — to continue fiddling with the dead battery

might attract attention — so they abandoned the car. Walking the streets,

however, was a worse alternative.

“C’mon Tania,” said Emily. “You better bring the blanket.” Bill and

Emily both carried duffel bags. Inside were weapons, disguises and tat-

tered books.

A few blocks away, under a faded Victorian, they spotted a crawl space,

a gloomy cave for rats and runaway dogs. As Patty and the Harrises

huddled in the dirt under the old house, the noise of a late-night party

began in the living room above. Patty gripped her homemade machine

gun. “The pigs must have found the car!”

“Shhh,” came a whispered response. “Shut up, goddamnit. Please shut

up!”

They survived that night and spent the next two weeks in San Fran-

cisco, hiding in flophouses. Bill posed as a wino, Patty and Emily as dirty-

faced old women. On June 2nd they boarded a bus, dropped 55~ into the

coinbox and headed across the Bay Bridge toward Berkeley. They were on

their way to scout out a rally called to commemorate the death of SLA

member Angela Atwood. It was there that they got their first break.

The fugitives had only a few crumpled dollars left. The rally seemed

their best chance to find a benefactor. So Emily, wearing a tie-dyed shirt,

cutoff jeans and a wig, melted into the crowd at Ho Chi Mink Park in

Berkeley, the town that helped launch the Movement in the early Sixties.

Emily recognized several faces from the California prison reform

groups that had served as the crucible for her and most of the original

SLA members. But one of the speakers, Kathy Soliah, attracted her atten-

tion. Soliah, who had become friends with Atwood when both quit waitress

jobs because they felt the uniforms were demeaning, told the crowd she

now considered herself part of the SLA.

Afterward Emily approached her and a few hours later the three fugi

HOWARD KUHN AND DAVID WEIR 176

tives were stashed in a small Berkeley flat, sipping tea and contemplating

their next move.

‘You can only stay here a few days. But maybe I can find someplace

else you can go.

That hope soon faded. Other former SLA sympathizers wanted no part

in the new underground life. A few contributed money — but not enough

to buy another car. The fugitives were pale and weak from months of

being away from sunshine—and eating a diet of carryout hamburgers.

Patty paced about the flat, putting her arms around her, dark eyes

staring out the windows, measuring each passer-by as a potential enemy.

They felt it was only a matter of time before they would be discovered—

in a few days they might be facing a police siege like their friends in Los

Angeles. They kept their guns loaded, always within quick reach.

Then after a week at the Berkeley flat, a friend stopped by with an

announcement: ~‘I think I found someone who might help you. His name

is Jack Scott and he wants to write a book about the SLA.”

On February 4th, 1974, while Patty Hearst was being kidnapped, Jack

Scott was confronting his own private crisis. A few months earlier he had

considered himself a Movement radical working successfully within the

system. As Oberlin College’s athletic director he had hired the school’s

first black coaches, opened its athletic facilities to poor people from the

community and shocked the alumni by declaring his unconcern for football

scores. He also had authored three controversial sports books and

founded the Institute for the Study of Sport and Society (ISSS). The

sports world regarded Scott as a daring and influential pioneer.

When Oberlin’s administration changed hands in early 1974, however,

he had been forced out of his job. He had dedicated nearly ten years to

his work in sports. Now at age 32, he began to wonder if all that time had

been wasted.

Jack and his wife, Micki, moved to an apartment in New York where

they continued to run the ISSS and Jack signed a contract to write his

autobiography for William Morrow Publishers.

But Jack remained despondent. He stayed indoors, watched television

and slept 12 hours a day. Twice a day he went out to corner newsstands

and bought copies of the Times, the Post and the Daily News. Judging by

the headlines, the only thing happening was the advent of an off-the-wall

political militia calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army.

“SLA Kidnaps Newspaper Heiress”

“SLA Demands $200 Million in Food for Poor”

The SLA’s rhetoric and tactics seemed to parody what the Movement

had become. But Jack’s initial scorn turned to curiosity as the headlines

piled up.

1/I

“Patty Hearst Joins SLA”

“Patty Helps Rob Bank”

The media also was unable to make up its mind. Were they crazies?

Or young idealists fed up with working through the system? Did their

tactics signal an emerging guerrilla violence in the United States? Was

Patty Hearst in fact an SLA soldier now?

Jack’s own doubts about the viability of peaceful reform began to crys-

talize in the continuing media debate over Patty Hearst and the SLA. At

dinnertime he flicked the television knob from one network news show to

another so he could monitor each bizarre twist in the case. By early May

he was a walking encyclopedia on the subject.

He began spending his days in the offices of New York’s book publish-

ers. Jack was persuaded that the SLA symbolized the pent-up frustration

of the Movement. He wanted to write a book that placed the SEA in a

historical perspective.

But the publishers weren’t interested in Jack’s theories. A Doubleday

editor told him he’d have to talk to people who knew how the SLA was

formed before he could get a book contract.

Then Jack’s book negotiations and his television watching were inter-

rupted by live camera footage of the six flaming deaths in Los Angeles.

He felt the SLA had been executed without a trial.

Flushed by anger, Jack boarded an airplane two weeks later and headed

for Berkeley. He had spent six years there studying for his doctorate in

educational psychology. He’d been a Goldwater supporter when he first

arrived but, like thousands of others, had been radicalized.

Now he sought out old Movement friends who had ties to the under-

ground. They introduced him to a friend of the Harrises. He explained

his book idea and asked about the couple. He was told of Emily’s disap-

pointments as a teacher in Indiana, Bill’s disgust after a military tour in

Vietnam, their migration to California, their attempts to hold classes at

prisons, the harsh reaction of prison officials to their suggested changes,

their disillusionment that grew into cynicism and violence.

Then the friend cautiously introduced a possibility that had seemed a

million-to-one shot.

“How’d you like to meet some people who could tell you even more

about Bill and Emily—and about Patty?”

Jack understood the question’s implications. He was intrigued. If a

meeting with the three surviving members of the SLA actually could be

arranged, he was willing to go along.

At 2:00 the next afternoon he was at the corner of Telegraph and

Dwight Way. For nearly an hour he stood uncomfortably in the sun. He

was easily recognized — thinning hair, professorial beard and wire-rimmed

glasses. But no one approached him. Then, as he began to walk away, he

was stopped by a short dark man dressed in a white tennis outfit and

carrying a tennis racket. The man gave Jack an address and told him to

come by that evening.

Jack wasn’t sure the man was Bill Harris. He wasn’t sure he wanted to

know. Apprehension began welling up. He circled the block several times

before finally knocking on the door. A face looked out from behind a

curtain. The door opened and Jack walked into a room prepared for a

police invasion. Mattresses were piled against the doors and next to the

windows. Rifles that had been converted to automatic machine guns were

lined up next to a pair of duffel bags. Grenades were stacked in strategic

corners. One gun was cradled by a short unsmiling woman.

She was Tania, Patricia Campbell Hearst, the granddaughter of Wil-

liam Randolph Hearst. Emily Harris was the only other one in the room.

She came forward and smiled tentatively, “I’m Yolanda.” Then the man

in the tennis outfit emerged from another room and gripped Jack’s hand,

“I’m Teko.”

The fugitives said nothing further for a few moments, absorbed in

watching their impact on the visitor. They noted Jack’s apprehensive

glance toward the guns leaning against the walls. He seemed suitably

impressed with their military accouterments.

“You said you were interested in the SLA,” Bill said. “That’s why we

invited you here. The most important thing at this time, you must under-

stand, is to help us.”

Jack sat down and went through a long nervous explanation of how and

why he had agreed to this meeting. He was collecting information for a

book. He wanted to present an accurate portrayal of the SLA that probed

beneath the screaming headlines. They could help by telling the full story

of their involvement.

“Okay,” Bill answered. “We know you want to do a book. But right

now we don’t know if we’re gonna be around long enough to read it.

Aren’t our lives more important than your book?”

Jack nodded. He had over $40,000 that he’d been paid by Oberlin

College after he’d threatened to sue for breach of contract. The fugitives

were welcome to some of that money.

For Patty and the Harrises this was an incredible offer. “That’s just

what we need,” said Emily. “We can take the money and rent some place

out in the country and lay back while things cool out.”

But Jack was already having second thoughts. He felt equivocal about

the SLA’s previous tactics. And he didn’t want to be involved if they were

planning more violence.

“There is one condition.” Jack’s quiet voice was firm. The fugitives

turned quickly in his direction, their faces stiff and challenging. Jack ig-

nored the sudden change and plunged ahead.

“I can’t help you unless you get rid of those guns.”

“Who the fuck are you!” Patty stepped forward, her mouth tight with

contempt.

Jack was red in the face but he did not retreat. “I won’t help you unless

you give up your weapons.~~

The mood in the house went electric with tension. The fugitives had

gambled on Jack by inviting him to their hideout. They were pretending

that their act was more together than it was. Realistically, they could not

leave Berkeley without the kind of money Jack had.

Bill spoke. His tone was taut and blunt. “Listen, we can’t stay in this

house much longer. Like Yolanda says, we need a place in the country

where we can get our shit together. I’ll be honest. We need your help.

We’ll work with you on the book. But our weapons are our only protec-

tion. We all feel the same way. When we joined the SLA we understood

we’d have to be armed at all times.”

The discussion continued. The fugitives were weary. But they clung to

the SLA tenet of armed struggle. Jack could not make up his mind. Seven

years before, during a “Stop the Draft Week” in Oakland, he and his

wife, Micki, had converted their van into a makeshifi medical center to

treat students who had been clubbed and bloodied by the police. That had

been their introduction to the Movement and had set a pattern for their

style of radicalism: Their house was open to draft resisters, evicted tenants

and others needing a sanctuary.

It was past midnight. Maybe the morning would bring a clearer deci-

sion. Jack rose to go.

“You can’t leave.” Emily’s command was precise. “You might attract

attention.”

Now Jack was scared. In his fantasies the police had the house sur-

rounded and were moving in for another climactic fusillade.

But the fugitives gave him no choice. He was told to sleep sandwiched

between Emily and Patty. Positioned at the head of their bed was an

arsenal of guns and grenades. Bill turned out the lights and Jack lay back,

staring at the ceiling.

He couldn’t sleep. Thirty minutes passed. It seemed like decades. Then

a loud crash jarred everyone upright. Patty rolled over and grabbed a gun

in a single motion that she had practiced many times in the dark. ~‘It’s the

pigs,” she whispered.

Someone had knocked over a garbage can in the alley. Nobody said a

word as the three fugitives trained their guns on the entrances. Slowly Bill

pulled back a curtain and peered out. He turned to the rest and grinned.

“It’s only a cat.”

Jack forced himself to laugh. The others joined in, a trace of hysteria

showing in their smiles.

Beneath the bravado in the gun-filled room, Jack realized, there was a

sense of deepening desperation. His mind was made up. If the SLA sur-

vivors surrendered their guns, he’d help them find a haven, spend some

time with them, get to know them—and write his book.

He settled into a fitful sleep, his nightmares filled with roaring flames

and exploding cartridges. His face still felt hot from the dream flames

when Bill shook him awake. The fugitives had gotten up early and had

reached their own decision.

“We’ve talked it over. If you’ll help get us out of here, we’ll leave our

guns behind.”

Once Jack’s wife, Micki, found the fugitives a farm house in a secluded

part of Pennsylvania, the next major problem was transportation. Too

many wanted posters had been circulated to risk planes or trains. They

would have to split up and travel by car. Bill and Emily would get rides

from two friends. But Jack would have to chauffeur Party. None of their

other friends was willing to drive 3000 miles with the most famous fugitive

in the country.

Jack’s curiosity outweighed his fears. He wanted answers to the ques-

tions that had been nagging him. Why had Patty converted to the SLA?

Had she been tortured? Or brainwashed? Or was she still a hostage? She

had been the most hostile to Scott’s demand that the fugitives disarm and

she had yet to speak a friendly word to him. But maybe that was a ploy to

fool the Harrises. Once free of them, she might want to return to her

parents and boyfriend.

Emily and her escort left on Friday night. The fugitives felt there was

some chance the FBI had the group under surveillance and was waiting to

pick them up separately on the highway. So they set up a signal. The

others wouldn’t leave until Emily called from Nevada.

They expected her call by Saturday afternoon but the phone was silent

all Saturday. Jack listened to the radio. There was no news of Emily’s

apprehension. But that did not calm him. If the feds were laying an am-

bush, there would be a news blackout.

By Sunday noon Emily still had nor phoned. There had been a pre-

arranged deadline. If she didn’t call by five o’clock Sunday afternoon,

they’d be sure she’d been caught. At five minutes to five the phone rang.

“Hi,” said Emily cheerily, “we’re in Iowa.”

Emily and her companion had misunderstood the signal. They thought

the plan was for her to call at five on Sunday. Bill started to rebuke Emily

for breach of orders. But he was too relieved to hear she was safe. “Stay

strong. We’ll see you in about a week.”

An hour later Jack and Patty were on the freeway outside Berkeley.

They were dressed in sports clothes and carried tennis rackets on the back

ledge of their car. Tennis rackets somehow seemed a perfect complement

to any well-mannered disguise. They were still only across the bay from

the Hillsborough mansion where she grew up. As far as Jack knew this

was the first time since her kidnapping that Patty had been away from the

SLA. He stopped the car and awkwardly began a conversation he’d been

rehearsing in his mind.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way. But I want you to know that I’m

willing to drive you anywhere you want to go. You don’t have to go to

Pennsylvania. I’ll take you anywhere.. .“

Patty looked incredulous. She shifted into a corner of the car farthest

from Jack.

He wasn’t sure how to interpret her fear. “You can go anywhere you

want,” he repeated.

“I want to go where my friends are going.”

Patty eyed Jack suspiciously. She was ready to bolt if he turned the car

toward Hillsborough. Jack’s embarrassment rushed across his face. He

rammed the gear shift into first and silently resumed their journey east.

Patty stayed in her corner of the car and held herself rigidly, as if

waiting for Jack to apologize. He offered small talk, unwilling to concede

her opinion that he had blundered inexcusably.

The tension building between them kept them both awake. They were

in Reno before Jack suggested stopping for sleep. Parry nodded assent.

She stayed in the car while Jack registered for a motel room.

The room was furnished with only one bed. Patty gave a wary glance

to it and then to Jack.

“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me,” he tried to reassure

her. “I got a room with one bed because we’re registered as a married

couple. But I don’t want you to think you have to have sex with me. In

fact, I don’t think we should have sex. I don’t want you to feel later that

you were coerced in any way. All I’d like is to have a warm body next to

me.

The hardness around Patty’s mouth softened and she smiled for the

first time since he’d met her. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not into sex with

anybody right now. I loved Cujo too much . . .“ Cujo—Willie Wolfe—

had been killed in Los Angeles. They went to bed exhausted and fell into

an uneasy sleep.

The next day Parry are her meals in the car. Even standing in line at a

McDonald’s was a risk. Millions had seen her picture on the evening news

and the cover of Newsweek or heard her soft, distinctive voice on radio

broadcasts of the SLA communiques.

For most of the previous four months she had been cooped up inside.

Her excursions outside twice had ended in gunfire. Now she was driving

across country through an FBI dragnet that already had employed more

agents than any other civilian case.

The strain of the past months was showing. To Patty the passing world

was populated by an army of undercover agents. Once, as Jack slowed up

to ease past a construction site, she ducked and whispered in a half shriek:

“Did you see that guy? I know he’s a pig.”

“C’mon, he’s a highway flagman. Don’t be so uptight.”

When Jack pulled in for gas she frequently demanded he speed away

as an attendant approached. “I don’t like the way he looks,” she’d explain.

“He looks like a pig.”

Patty’s repeated reviling of “pigs” soon led to a discussion about the

political criterion for such a classification. Patty took the position that a

pig was anyone who did not give wholehearted support to the SLA. Jane

Fonda and Tom Hayden, for instance, were pigs because they’d criticized

the SLA tactics. Patty sounded like what she was—a new convert to

radical thinking.

Jack pointed out Fonda and Hayden’s untiring work to end the Vietnam

war. “It’s one thing to disagree with them but it’s another thing to call

them pigs. We have to recognize who our friends are and who our enemies

are.

Patty sneered and changed the subject. What sort of author was Jack

Scott? She had never read any of his books.

He had written about sports, he explained. He believed that athletes

had a right not to be treated like cows at an auction. His books challenged

those attitudes.

“I don’t see how sports is relevant to anything at all,” Patty said.

“Certainly not to the revolution.”

Jack did not reply.

For the rest of the trip they reached an uneasy accord.

The Pennsylvania farmhouse which Micki had rented stood on a bluff

overlooking miles of rolling farmland. But the 87-acre spread had seldom

seen a plow. The previous owner had spent 30 years trying to raise small-

mouth bass in three small ponds that lay 100 yards behind the house in

thick stands of alfalfa and timothy grass. An aging windmill that had been

used to circulate air through the ponds was the only surviving testament

to the experiment. The bass all had been fished out; the fugitives found

only bullheads and a few undersized pickerel.

But that served to make the farm more isolated. Fishermen never both-

ered with the weedy ponds. The few motorists who bumped past the house

were introspective farmers who lived down the dusty road out of sight and

earshot.

The house also was ideal. From the outside it loomed tall and weath-

ered. Dirty white paint peeled onto waist-high weeds that nearly hid an

old and temperamental water tank. On the second floor was a balcony with

a wrought-iron railing. Below was a screened in porch with hanging iamp

where evenings could be spent listening to the litany of frogs and crickets.

Inside were four bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, dining room and

attic — an expansive layout for three people who’d been sleeping on floors

in cramped apartments.

Mornings brought rich sunrises flooding over the Pocono Mountains,

driving the black flies and mosquitoes into the shade of a clump of trees

that bordered the rear of the farm. By midmorning the fugitives were out

lying in the sun like three white-bellied bass tossed on the banks of the

ponds. Patty spent long hours on a grassy hummock. The Harrises

adapted to the sun more slowly. Within days, however, all three were a

crimson brown.

The Pennsylvania summer seemed to relax and rejuvenate the fugitives.

They read Marx and Debray during the morning cool, then went sunning

and swimming, chasing each other into the water. They picked wild black-

berries from bushes growing across the road and dropped hook and line

in search of the scavenger fish they grew to like cooked with butter and

onions.

In their political study sessions Emily and Micki were Patty’s mentors.

“Tania is a sister,” Emily told Micki. “But she’s still learning.” The two

older women became close. Sometimes they’d have long conversations

about feminism while sitting on the kitchen floor drinking coffee. Micki

confided that she’d felt a little jealous when Jack was traveling across

country with a woman she had not then met. Emily replied that she and

Bill tried not to be so possessive of each other. They were working it out

intellectually, she said, but deep down some jealousies were not yet erased.

Emily’s candor was a welcome surprise. The two women hugged and

laughed.

By the end of June the Scotts were at ease with Patty, Bill and Emily.

The only squabble was the amount of time the Scotts were spending at

the farm. Jack and Micki had decided to resume working a few days each

week at ISSS so they could see their New York friends without inviting

them to the farm. Because it was a six-hour round trip, they quickly tired

of a daily commute and the fugitives sometimes were left by themselves

for days at a time.

But while in New York the Scotts sought out Wendy Yoshimura, an-

other fugitive whose friends had helped Jack find the SLA survivors in

Berkeley. Wendy had gone underground in 1972 after being accused in

the bombing of a Navy ROTC building in Berkeley. She had been born

in a U.S. concentration camp—like many Japanese families, hers had been

interned for much of World War II — had attended the California College

of Arts and Crafts and had worked as a waitress.

Through mutual friends the Scotts arranged a meeting. Wendy

plained that she was working as a waitress again and was hoping to save

$500 by the end of the summer so she could return to the West Coast.

Jack asked her to move into the farmhouse and offered to pay her the

$500. She agreed and soon became a senior adviser and companion to the

SLA fugitives.

The Scotts tried to provide everything the fugitives wanted, Micki had

stocked the house with food, books and other supplies. When more was

needed she sometimes accompanied Emily on shopping trips to Scranton.

The fugitives also had new disguises. Patty’s hair had been cut to affect a

boyish look. Both Bill and Emily had lightened their dark hair with red

tints.

Jack and Micki had avoided discussing the issue of how far they would

go to protect the SLA survivors. But one evening while Jack was driving

to the farm a radio news flash suddenly confronted him with the dilemma.

“We have a report that the SLA has been located. Police have sur-

rounded their hideout and Patty Hearst’s parents are being flown to the

scene to plead with their daughter for her surrender. Keep tuned for fur-

ther details.”

The fugitives were alone at the house. Jack swallowed hard. His hands

jitterbugged on the wheel. Should he somehow try to divert the police?

Try to negotiate a peaceful surrender? Or should he turn around and flee

back to New York?

His foot stayed jammed against the accelerator. He had to see for

himself what was happening. From a mile away the farm seemed dark. He

couldn’t see any police floodlights or red flashers. As he turned onto the

dirt road the radio announced a followup report. “From Los Angeles,

word has been received that the SLA sighting was a mistake. Police say

that a secretary who lived alone was mistakenly identified as Patty Hearst.

This has been another false lead in the hunt for the missing heiress.”

Jack’s heart stopped hammering. But his face was still ashen as he

entered the farmhouse. “Good God,” Bill greeted him quizzically. “You

look like you just got out of prison.”

Jack slumped to a chair and told his story of the two radio announce-

ments. Everybody smiled and patted Jack on the back. The camaraderie

carried over to the following days. Jack was asked to teach a basic set of

exercises. He fashioned weights from concrete blocks for muscle building

and led the fugitives through wind sprints to restore their strength and

stamina.

Races were held between a rickety barn and a finish line marked by a

child’s rusting yellow swing set. Patty was surprisingly swift. Jack, once an

outstanding sprinter himself, was hard pressed to outrun her. He had

begun to like Patty. She enjoyed joking around and displayed an exuber-

ance that had been impossible to imagine two weeks before. Her snap-

pishness had dissipated.

She still chided Jack about the political irrelevancy of sports and his

work at the ISSS. But she exercised daily under his rigorous tutelage.

During one hard run she stepped in a gopher hole and crashed forward

on a twisted ankle. She limped back to the house hanging onto Jack’s

shoulder. There he massaged and taped the ligaments. A similar injury

had ended Jack’s athletic career and ruined his shot at the Olympics when

he was Patty’s age.

Patty spent the afternoon resting on the porch. Jack stayed with her

and they began to talk about Patty’s conversion to the SLA.

Patty Hearst and Steven Weed were home in their Berkeley apartment

watching The Magician on TV at nine o’clock on the foggy night of Feb-

ruary 4th, 1974. The young couple lived together in something that used

to be called sin and smoked an occasional joint. But in Berkeley they were

considered straight.

Outside, a stolen 1964 Chevrolet Impala convertible pulled up in front

and dimmed its lights. Donald DeFreeze, Willie Wolfe and Nancy Ling

Perry emerged and moved silently to apartment number four. Perry rang

the doorbell while DeFreeze and Wolfe waited in the shadows. Perry

hunched over and held a hand to her face. “I just had a car accident out

front. Could you...

Weed cracked open the door and DeFreeze and Wolfe burst in, bran-

dishing guns, knocking him to the floor and kicking him in the face with

heavy boots. They grabbed Patty and carried her kicking and screaming

to the waiting car. There they shoved her into the trunk with a brusque

order: “Get in and keep quiet.”

Patty was scared and half-naked but she stared hardeyed at her kidnap-

pers. “Don’t give me any shit.”

Even in those first terrible moments Patricia Campbell Hearst managed

to summon up the daring and arrogance that had been her style through

19 years of life as an heiress to the Hearst fortune.

Her parents had provided every indulgence, tolerated her dope smok-

ing, her sneaking out to rock concerts at San Francisco’s Fillmore audi-

torium and her faded blue jeans. When she couldn’t accept the Catholic

school discipline that required her to scrub toilets for breaking petty rules,

her parents transferred her to a more flexible nonsectarian school.

It was there she met Weed, a math teacher and the school’s most

eligible bachelor. Two years later, when she was 18, she moved in with

him. Her parents initially disapproved and Patty briefly worked at paying

her own bills, holding a $2.25 per hour job in a department store for four

months. But when she gave that up to return to school, her father paid

for her books, tuition and the out-of-wedlock apartment as well. Over the

next year her father supplied enough money to buy expensive prints from

her grandfather’s collection, Persian rugs, a tenth-century Persian manu-

script and dozens of plants.

Patty was not used to discomfort. Her life had been insulated from

real-life drama and pain. She assumed her father would quickly ransom

her.

She was kept blindfolded in a stuffy, closet-sized room with a bare

lightbulb and a portable cot. There were no windows and it was hot. She

lost track of time and didn’t feel like eating. She was told her parents

loved money more than her.

She was not raped or starved or otherwise brutalized. But Donald

DeFreeze, the SLA leader known as Cinque, kept up a constant intimi-

dation. He berated her and her family for heing part of a ruling class that

was sucking blood from the common people.

“Your mommy and daddy are insects,” he yelled. “They should be

made to crawl on their hands and knees like insects if they want you hack.”

Patty tried to defend her parents. They had not hurt anyone. They

were good people. Cinque was wrong. He had never met them.

But Patty feared Cinque. He told her she’d be killed if her parents did

not meet the SLA’s demands, and she believed him.

So Patty grew impatient as the ransom negotiations bogged down. “I

felt my parents were debating how much I was worth,” she later told Jack.

“Like they figured I was worth $2 million but 1 wasn’t worth $10 million.

It was a terrible feeling that my parents could think of me in terms of

dollars and cents. I felt sick all over.

It angered her when her father visited San Quentin and reported that

the living conditions there were fine.

The SLA had informed him that her living quarters were identical to

those in San Quentin. Her father seemed to be saying that tiny cells, stale

air and gloomy walls were an acceptable environment for his daughter.

And she became alarmed when heavily armed FBI agents raided a house

where they thought she was being held. She felt her parents were reck-

lessly allowing the FBI to risk her life.

After a while it seemed that her parents had given her up for dead.

“It’s really depressing to hear people talk about me like I was dead,” she

said in her second taped statement. “I can’t explain what it’s like.” Her

mother had taken to wearing black and speaking of Patty in the past tense.

Worse, her mother had ignored an SLA demand by accepting another

appointment from then governor Ronald Reagan as a regent of the Uni-

versiry of California.

“I felt like I could kill her when she did that,” Patty said. “My own

mother didn’t care whether the SLA shot me or not.

By degrees her disillusionment with her parents turned into sympathy

for the SLA. Cinque was the first to perceive the change. He rewarded

her by allowing her to roam about the San Francisco apartment that Serveg

as the SLA headquarters. For a month she had been kept in a sinai

“isolation chamber” approximating a San Quentin “hole.” She’d becom4

weak and could barely stand up. To be able to walk freely from one roori

to another seemed the world’s greatest pleasure.

Cinque

tempered his frequent beratings of her. Patty was urged tc

attend the SLA’5 daily political study sessions. She was invited to listen to

the SLA national anthem, an eerie jazz composition of wind and string

that Cinque had selected. And she was furnished with statistical evidence

and quotations from George Jackson and Ruchell Magee that promoted

her political development. Less than ten percent of the U.S. population

controls 90% of its wealth. Some people eat catered meals while others

starve. Some can afford fancy lawyers while others rot in jail. Some live

off their inheritances while others live in squalor and despair.

Patty was shown a long list of the Hearst family holdings — nine news-

papers, 13 magazines, four TV and radio stations, a silver mine, a paper

mill and prime real estate. Her parents clearly were part of the ruling

elite. That’s why they had quibbled over the ransom money. That’s why

they had handed out turkey giblets instead of steaks during the food give-

away that the SLA had demanded. Money meant everything to the eco-

nomic class of her parents. And the only power that could fight that mone~,

was the power that came out of the barrel of a gun.

It was a political philosophy that had bored her when Weed and hi~

doctoral student friends had discussed it in their Berkeley apartment. Ba

Cinque’s rough eloquence was more persuasive than the abstract talk

graduate students. The SLA’s motives made sense. They wanted to redis

tribute the Hearst wealth to more needy people. It was her parents — an

the economic class they representedwho were to blame for her miser

and the misery of countless others.

The SLA members encouraged her radicalization. They hugged he~

called her sister and ended her loneliness. Patty’s conversion was as muc

emotional as political.

Seven weeks after she was kidnapped, Patty asked to join the SLA.

She began sleeping with 23-year-old Willie Wolfe, whom she calle

Cujo. Of the three men in the SLA, Wolfe was the closest to Patty in a~

and background. The son of a Pennsylvania doctor, he’d attended priva

schools, been a varsity swimmer, sports editor of the school paper ar

gotten roughed up in antiwar demonstrations. He’d spent a summer woW

ing with kids in Harlem, then spurned the Yale family tradition and e

rolled at Berkeley, where he’d roomed with SLA member Russell Liii

and met Cinque.

He subsequently joined the SLA combat unit that assassinated t

Oakland superintendent of schools and wounded his assistant. (Patty tcJack that Wolfe also helped Cinque kidnap her. She said Weed was mis-

taken when he identified both of his assailants as black men.)

Violence once had turned Patty off. Now she found it appealing. She

learned to use the converted rifles, practiced “keeping my ass down” while

crawling through Cinque’s homemade obstacle course and took part in a

bank robbery to prove herself to the SLA.

After the robbery the SLA switched its headquarters from a racially

mixed neighborhood to an all-black one in San Francisco. The eight white

SLA members moved their clothes, guns and bullets in daylight—they

were wearing Afro wigs and a black-face disguise that was smeared on so

professionally that several observers mistook them for blacks. They left

behind papers and other paraphernalia in a bathtub filled with acid and

excrement beneath a spray-painted sign that read: “Here it is, pigs. Have

fun getting it.”

In early May they moved again, driving south to Cinque’s home turf in

Los Angeles. On May 16th Patty and the Harrises took the SLA van to

shop at Mel’s Sporting Goods store in the suburb of Inglewood. Bill

walked through the aisles with frequent glances over his shoulder, a ner-

vous tip-off that a security guard misinterpreted. Bill was grabbed and

handcuffed as a suspected shoplifter. He escaped when Patty, keeping a

vigil outside Mel’s, sprayed the store with machine-gun fire. But the

shootout separated the three from the rest of the group and left the SLA

van in the hands of Los Angeles police.

The next day police located the SLA hideout through an address writ-

ten on unpaid parking tickets found in the van. Cinque, Wolfe, Perry,

Angela Atwood, Camilla Hall and Mizmoon Soltysik had fled. But they

were cornered and killed in a bungalow only blocks away.

“Neither Cujo nor I had ever loved an individual the way we loved each

other,” she said in her taped communique following the shootout.

Afterwards she clung to the Harrises and shared their love. But her

pain over Wolfe’s death was a long time in healing.

By mid-summer, constant bickering—political and otherwise—had soured

interest in the book and reopened a rift between the Scotts and the fugi-

tives. Both sides agreed that the fugitives should leave the farmhouse by

September 1st, the day the lease expired.

Back in New York, Jack conferred with Micki. She agreed. They would

move the ISSS to Portland and live and work with renegade Portland

Trailblazers’ center Bill Walton.

But first they had to untangle themselves from the underground.

So the Harrises drove to phone booths in a nearby town where they

called friends on the West Coast. A series of calls followed—all from pay

phones and to pay phones. The West Coast friends, whom Bill named the

new team,” were willing to help. Everything would be arranged—trans-

portation, money, even a ploy to distract police attention.

The Harrises brought back the news. “These people are heavy revo-

lutionaries,” Bill pointedly told the Scotts. “They’ve really got it together.

They want to be part of our unit.”

The new team included Kathy Soliafi, the friend of Angela Atwood’s

who had helped the fugitives in Berkeley, and Soliah’s brother, Steve. Like

many SLA sympathizers, the Soliahs had been outraged by the L.A. shoot-

out. During the summer they had talked to other Berkeley area radicals

who believed that the SLA’s guerrilla tactics should be resumed—perhaps

by bombing carefully selected targets.

The Harrises were anxious to rejoin people who shared their belief in

political violence. They felt contempt for the Scotts’ skittishness—and no

longer bothered to conceal it. And although the Scotts had been logistic

experts, the new team had some ideas of its own.

What especially pleased Bill was the decoy operation. Patty was to send

an identifiable item of hers to the new team. They would plant it in a Los

Angeles apartment and tip off the police in an anonymous call. While the

government marshalled its forces in Southern California, the new team

would pick up the fugitives and ferry them to a new hideout.

The Scotts and the fugitives prepared for their departure, wiping away

fingerprints from the farmhouse and tidying up other details. The Scotts

packed the van they’d just bought, closed down their New York apartment

and waited for the new team to arrive for the fugitives.

A week passed. The fugitives were still at the farm. The Harrises and

Patty were beginning to quarrel, their worry spilling out into petty dis-

putes. The only word from the new team was more procrastination. The

decoy operation inexplicably had been called off.

“Do you think they’ll ever show up?” Micki asked the Harrises.

Emily shrugged. Bill started to say “of course” but then paused and

didn’t answer.

Patty was more patient than the others. She had matured noticeably

over the summer. She’d dropped “pig” from her daily vocabulary. She had

spent long hours reading history books, especially on the early days of the

labor movement in the U.S. She was quiet; she stopped x-ing the New

York Times; she seemed to be preparing for a long-term life in the under-

ground.

Each day Patty practiced walking with a pillow stuffed under her dress.

She was disguised as a pregnant teenager with freckles. Throughout the

summer the fugitives had studied the art of disguise, reading books on

techniques for dyeing and styling hair, affecting lisps and limps, attaching

artificial moles, scars and tattoos, wearing reversible clothes. Within min-

utes they could switch from the hippie mode into the young professional,

from seedy bum to roughneck hillbilly.

But the preparation seemed beside the point—their West Coast friends

were having second thoughts. Finally, Bill insisted that the new team level

with him about its problems. Reluctantly they explained the hitch: Patty

Hearst.

Bill was unable to convince them that Patty’s disguise would be beyond

suspicion. Wendy and the Harrises were okay. But the new team did not

want the Newsweek cover girl to be in the car when they entered the

territories of highway patrolmen, toll attendants, motel managers, gas sta-

tion operators and restaurant cashiers who regulate a cross-country au-

tomobile trip. If Patty could get to the West Coast by herself, they told

Bill, they would provide her a hiding place, but she was on her own until

then.

Jack also was getting agitated. He wanted Micki to meet Walton before

the basketball season opened. But she couldn’t leave until the fugitives

were gone.

Then came a phone call from Pennsylvania to Oregon.

“We need your help again.” Bill’s voice sounded urgent. “There’s no

other way we can do it. We need you to drive a friend across country. No

one else will do it.” If Patty were ever to leave the farm, it seemed, Jack

would have to drive the getaway car. He hesitated.

The risks were incalculable. And his first trip with Patty was a bad

memory.

But Patty had changed over the summer. She seldom complained — and

never about physical discomforts. And she had the half-joking enthusiasm

of a daredevil that Jack admired.

He called back. “Okay, I’ll drive your friend.”

Three days later Jack, Patty, Micki and their German shepherd Sig-

mund headed west in the van with boxes of books and clothes stacked in

back and a mattress tied on top. They had to alternate sitting on a pillow

between the van’s two bucket seats. Patty was posing as Jack’s pregnant

wife, Micki as his sister. After a day on the road, though, they adopted a

more conservative tack. A couple traveling alone would arouse less sus-

picion. So Jack and Patty dropped Micki at the Cleveland airport and

continued alone.

This was Patty’s first venture out in public since her cross-country trip

with Jack in June. On their second day Patty accidentally locked herself

in a service station restroom. Afraid to call for help because she still feared

her voice might be recognized, she began to unhinge the door, banging

away with her shoe. She managed to get one hinge off before the door

slid open. Jack had been sitting in the van, waiting and worrying under

the boiling sun.

They spoke little. When they did the tension and irritation of three

months ago crept back into their conversation. Jack tuned in the radio to

a football game. Patty groaned and turned her face to the side window.

In Iowa their worst fears came true. A state patrolman turned on his

flasher and motioned their speeding car to the highway shoulder. Jack

didn’t give the trooper a chance to walk to the van. He swung open the

van door and sprinted back to the patrol car.

“Sorry, ofiicer, I guess I got a little excited about Iowa winning today.

That was some game. .

“You’re an Iowa fan?” The trooper seemed doubtful. “Those are out-

of-state tags you got there.”

“Hey, I’m just a football fan. No matter where I go I love to listen to

football.” Jack blabbered on. “You wouldn’t give a speeding ticket to a

football fan, would you? That would be kind of anti-American.~~

The trooper grinned. He was feeling good. Iowa had been a 2l-point

underdog in its win over UCLA. “I’ll let you off easy this time but be

careful when you cross the border into Nebraska. They got upset by

Wisconsin, you know.” He put his ticket book away without inspecting

the van.

That night Patty and Jack celebrated. They rented an expensive motel

room and ordered a room-service dinner. The tension was broken. Patty

laughed, “Now I understand what sports means to the revolution. From

now on, any time you want to listen to a football game it’s okay with me.

Three days later they reached Las Vegas. Jack dropped Patty at a

prearranged motel and went to visit his parents who live in Las Vegas and

manage an apartment complex. The next day he stopped by the motel.

The new team still had not arrived. Nor had they by the next morning.

Both Patty and Jack grew worried again. Had she been deserted? But

then the new team called. They’d be arriving that night.

Jack returned to his parents’ home and settled in to watch Bonnie and

Clyde on television. Suddenly the local station interrupted with a bulletin.

Jack tensed. Had Patty been caught?

But the bulletin was from Reno. A bank had been robbed of $1 million.

Jack remained nervous. He decided to stop by the motel. Patty was still

there. Both watched television for a few minutes. Then he got up. The

new team would be arriving shortly and he wanted to be gone by then.

Patty was returning to the San Francisco Bay Area where she had

grown up, been kidnapped and converted to armed fugitive. There she

would reunite with Wendy, Bill and Emily to continue living underground.

She was still undecided about how she fit into a revolution she had discov-

ered only seven months before. But she was dedicated to her new beliefs

and she still called herself Tania.

Jack embraced Patty, hugging her hard, and said good-bye.

The date was September 27th, 1974.