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The Symbionese Liberation Army was an American-based terrorist group, that considered itself a revolutionary vanguard army. Their belief in the revolutionary rhetoric of the time inspired them, but they were considered a farce by other leftists. They committed two murders, bank robberies, and acts of violence in 1973 to 1975. During this time they became the top ongoing media story during their underground fugitive period, making the groups names and nicknames household names, in the USA, even though they never had more than 13 members.
The group dates its formation from the escape of Donald DeFreeze, who adopted the byname "Field Marshal Cinque" (reportedly after a legendary confederate of Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture), from Soledad State Prison on 5 March 1973. DeFreeze had been active in the Black Cultural Association while at the California Medical Facility, a state prison facility in Vacaville, California, where he had made contacts with members of the radical political organization known as Venceremos. He sought refuge among these contacts, and ended up at a commune known as Peking House in the San Francisco Bay Area. For some time he shared living quarters with future SLA members Willie Wolfe and Russ Little, then moved in with Patricia Soltysik, also known as "Mizmoon." DeFreeze and Solytsik became lovers (DeFreeze was black, and Solytsik white) and began to outline the plans for forming the "Symbionese Nation". The word "Symbionese" is thought to be derived from symbiosis, a term used in biology to denote mutually beneficial interaction between different species; apparently the founders of the SLA had different human races in mind when coining the term. Although the SLA considered themselves leaders of the Black revolution, DeFreeze was the only Black member.
 "Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people." —motto of the Symbionese Liberation Army The SLA committed their first "revolutionary" action in 6 November 1973 when they murdered Oakland, California schools superintendent Dr. Marcus Foster. They characterized Dr. Foster's plan to introduce identification cards into Oakland schools as "fascist." Ironically, Dr. Foster had opposed the use of identification cards in the Oakland schools, and his plan was a watered down version of similar plans that had been proposed by others. Dr. Foster, who was Black, was popular, including on the left and in the Black community, and his murder was considered a counterproductive, pointless action, by just about everybody; thus, they garnered no support, just media attention. On 10 January 1974, Joe Remiro and Russ Little were arrested and charged with the murder of Dr. Foster. Little was ultimately acquitted on retrial, but Remiro was convicted and remains in prison.
The SLA was already planning their next action. Documents found by the FBI at one abandoned safehouse revealed plans set for the "full moon of 7 January". The FBI did not take any precautions and the SLA did not act until a month later. (This needs to be referenced.) On 4 February, publishing heiress Patricia Hearst, then a Berkeley college student, was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment. The SLA demanded a ransom for her release which was supposed to consist of food given to the poor in the Bay Area, then, on 23 February, increased the demand by $4 million. (It was $400 million at one point.) Some free food was actually distributed in the poor areas; it was a mob scene. Hearst's family newspaper business insured full news coverage, part of the "reason" she was chosen; another was to swap her for two members in prison.
The SLA took refuge in a number of safe-houses while the manhunt continued. While under the SLA's control, Ms. Hearst was subjected to a series of ordeals that had the effect of a "brainwashing". She was forced to live in a tiny closet, isolated from outside contact, deprived of all privacy, possibly raped, and otherwise pressured.
All her physical needs where dependent on the wishes of her captors. She was given unrelenting political indoctrination into the beliefs of the group, to the point she could just spout it back at them (she was a good college student) and they started to believe she believed it. This was a survival technique that lead to better treatment. She actually DID believe at some level. She was forced to produce several "communiqués" sent to the media that denounced her former life and her parents. A large amount of time in captivity was taken up with military training; physical training, weapons training, as well as group socialization, including general sleeping around within the group. Due to their need for money and the rationalization that they were "reappropriating" money from the rich oppressors, Hearst participated in a Hiberia Bank robbery holding a rifle; the security camera photo of this was splashed on the news and it became an icon of the time. Later she would be tried for this crime, making the defense that she wasn't really free, she would be killed for noncompliance during the robbery. However, at the time she did comply with her captors' wishes in many ways; the "brainwashing" has remained controversial as an explanation. The process of change under duress Hearst underwent lead to what has been called the Stockholm syndrome; in short, the captive identifies with the all-powerful captor. (Later she was examined by coercive-persuasion specialist psychologist and Berkeley professor Margaret Singer, who agreed with this theory.)
On 16 May 1974, William Harris and Emily Harris (who were married and known within the SLA as "Teko" and "Yolanda") entered Mel's Sporting Goods Store in Inglewood, California, to shop for supplies for their safehouse. While Yolanda made the purchases, Teko on a whim tried to shoplift a bandolier. When his attempt was foiled by a security guard, Teko brandished a revolver. The guard knocked the gun from his hand, and had succeeded in placing a handcuff on William's left wrist when "Tania"—Patricia Hearst—began shooting into the store from across the street with a submachine gun from their van. Everyone in the store took cover, and the Harrises with Tania escaped.
As a direct result of this, the police found the address of the safehouse from a parking ticket in the glove box of the van that had been abandoned. The rest of the SLA fled the safehouse when they saw the events on the news. The SLA took over a house in a Black neighborhood that happened to have its lights on at 4 am.
The next day, an anonymous phone call to the LAPD stated that several people were staying at "her daughter's house" and that they had many weapons. That afternoon, more than 400 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers, under the command of Captain Mervin King, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, California Highway Patrol, and Los Angeles Fire Department surrounded the neighborhood. The squad leader of a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team used a bullhorn to announce, "Occupants of 1466 East 54th Street, this is the Los Angeles Police Department speaking. Come out with your hands up!" A small child walked out, along with an older man. The man stated that no one else was in the house, and the child reported that several people were in the house with guns and ammo belts. After several other attempts to get anyone else to leave the house, a member of SWAT fired tear gas projectiles into the house, was answered by heavy bursts of automatic gunfire, and the battle began.
Two hours later, the house caught fire. The police again announced, "Come on out! The house is on fire! You will not be harmed." Two women left from the rear of the house and one came out the front (she had come in drunk the previous night and passed out, she woke up in a siege); all were taken into custody, but were found to not be SLA members. Automatic weapons fire continued from the house. Two women charged from the burning building, still firing at the police, and were shot. The rest died from the fire. After the shooting stopped and the fire was extinguished, nineteen firearms, including rifles, pistols, and shotguns were recovered, as well as the bodies of Nancy Ling Perry ("Fahiza"), Angela Atwood ("General Genina"), Willie Wolfe (who was reputedly Patricia Hearst's lover and who bore the SLA alias "Cujo"), Donald DeFreeze ("Cinque"), Patricia Soltysik ("Mizmoon", "Zoya"), and Camilla Hall ("Gabi").
The siege was televised live and watched by Tania, Teko, and Yolanda in their hotel room.
On 21 April 1975, remaining members of the SLA robbed the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California and killed Myrna Opsahl, a bank customer, in the process. Much later, Patty Hearst, after being granted immunity from prosecution for this crime, stated that Emily Harris, Kathleen Soliah, Michael Bortin, and James Kilgore actually committed the robbery, while she and Wendy Yoshimura were getaway drivers and William Harris and Steven Soliah acted as lookouts. Hearst also stated that Opsahl was killed by Emily Harris, but she wasn't a witness, as she admits.
Patty Hearst, after one of longest and most published manhunts, was captured with Wendy Yoshimura in 1975. She was convicted of bank robbery, served 21 months in prison. Her sentence was commuted by President Carter. Much later, President Clinton gave her full exoneration. As soon as she was freed from the SLA, she reindentified with the role she grew up in, ruling class heiress.
On 21 August 1975, Kathleen Soliah failed in her attempt to kill officers of the LAPD when her bombs she placed under a police car did not detonate. Soliah remained a fugitive, first in Zimbabwe, eventually living in Minnesota under the alias Sarah Jane Olson; she was married to a doctor, had several children. Somehow the FBI finally caught up with her; she was arrested in 1999. In 2001, she pled guilty to possession of explosives with the intent to murder and was sentenced to two consecutive ten-years-to-life terms, after being told as part of plea bargain that she would serve only eight years. She did not go to trial because she felt she could not get leniency from a jury so recently after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Prosecutors were relieved to avoid a trial due to their fear that Hearst was a flaky witness.
On 16 January 2002, first-degree murder charges for the killing of Myrna Opsahl were filed against Soliah, the Harrises, Bortin, and Kilgore. All were living "aboveground" and were immediately arrested except for James Kilgore, who remained at large for nearly another year. On 7 November, the first four pleaded guilty to those charges. Emily Harris, now known as Emily Montague, admitted to being the one holding the murder weapon, but said that the shotgun went off accidentally. According to Patty Hearst, Montague had dismissed the murder at the time saying, "She was a bourgeois pig anyway. Her husband is a doctor." (Hearsay, not even under oath.) In court, Montague denied that remark, and said "I do not want [the Opsahl family] to believe that we ever considered her life insignificant."
On 8 November 2002, the day after the guilty pleas, James Kilgore, who had been a fugitive since the 1975, was arrested in South Africa and extradited to the United States to face federal explosives and passport fraud charges. Prosecutors alleged a pipe bomb was found in Kilgore's apartment in 1975, and that he obtained a passport under a false name. He pleaded guilty to the charges in 2003.
Sentences were handed out on 14 February 2003 in Sacramento, California for all four defendants in the Opsahl murder case. Montague was sentenced to eight years for the murder (2nd degree). Her former husband, William Harris, got seven years, and Bortin got six years. Soliah had six years added to the 14-year sentence she is already serving. All sentences were the maximum allowed under their plea bargains. According to this link (http://www.courttv.com/trials/soliah/090804_reduce_ap.html) Soliah was expecting a 5 year 4 month sentence, but "In stiffening Olson's sentence two years ago, the prison board turned to a seldom-used section of state law, allowing it to recalculate sentences for old crimes in light of new, tougher sentencing guidelines." so it became 14, later reduced to 13, plus the six for Opsahl killing. Hearst had immunity because she was a state's witness, but there was no trial, so she never testified.
On 26 April 2004, Kilgore was sentenced to 54 months in prison for the explosives and passport fraud charges. He was the last remaining SLA member to face federal prosecution.
Due to the fact the SLA had such bad judgment, there circulated a conspiracy theory that DeFreeze was a government mind-controlled plant whose mission was to discredit the revolutionary left. He had been a prisoner at Vacaville, where said mind-control allegedly occurred, and he was able to escape from Soledad, under this theory, because he was allowed to. Nothing the SLA did provided any contrary evidence to this wild theory.
The saga of the SLA was the subject of a spectacularly unsuccessful yet highly controversial 1976 film, entitled Patty. The film attempted to portray the organization as a sex cult rather than a band of revolutionaries, and received profoundly negative reviews from virtually all cinematic columnists who saw it. The movie, which was rated X by the Motion Picture Association of America, was shown in only a few markets, most of them in large urban areas.
Other film include
- Patty Hearst, film, based on Every Secret Thing, directed by Paul Schrader, 1988. IMDB listing (http://imdb.com/title/tt0095836/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD0yMHxzZz0xfGxtPTIwMHx0dD1vbnxwbj0wfHE9UGF0dHkgSGVhcnN0fGh0bWw9MXxubT1vbg__;fc=1;ft=16;fm=1)
- The Ordeal of Patty Hearst (1979) (TV)
- Patty Hearst: The E! True Hollywood Story (2000) (TV)
- Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army aka Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, Directed by Robert Stone, 2004, documentary.
References
- Boulton, David. The Making Of Tania Hearst. Bergenfield, N.J., U.S.A.: New American Library, 1975. 224+[12] p., ill., ports., facsim., index, 22 cm. Also published: London, G.B.: New English Library, 1975.
- Hearst, Patty, with Alvin Moscow, Patty Hearst: Her Own Story, New York: Avon, 1982. ISBN 0380706512. This was the title after the movie came out. Original title: Every Secret Thing.
- Weed, Steven, with Scott Swanton. My Search for Patty Hearst, New York: Warner, 1976. Weed was Hearst's boyfriend at time of the kidnap. That was the end of their relationship.
Related articles
External links
- www.rickross.com/ (http://www.rickross.com/groups/symbionese.html) Rick A. Ross Institute The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)Page
- www.straightdope.com/ (http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msymbionese.html) The Straight Dope Symbionese Liberation Army
- www.courttv.com/ (http://www.courttv.com/trials/soliah/slahistory_ctv.html) Court TV Trial - Symbionese Liberation Army
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