Review: The Radical Transformation of Patricia Hearst

The New York Times ^ | July 26, 2016 | Janet Maslin

[Cecily]

“American Heiress,” Jeffrey Toobin’s new book about Patty Hearst, is a clever companion piece to “The Run of His Life” (1996), his book about the O. J. Simpson case. Mr. Toobin has used the same winning formula of delving deeply into an American crime story that had tremendous notoriety in its day and retelling it with new resonance.

Ms. Hearst’s tale is much more bizarre than Mr. Simpson’s. And much less of it has to do with legal proceedings, Mr. Toobin’s specialty. But in an age of terrorism, the chronicle of how a sedate heiress named Patricia morphed into a gun-toting, invective-spouting revolutionary calling herself Tania holds a definite fascination.

[Cecily]

I didn't know that F. Lee Bailey was disbarred.

[Clintonfatigued]

Interesting read, though I don’t know what to think about it.

[kiryandil]

Jeffrey Toobin is a dedicated Clinton @sslamprey, and was one during the impeachment wars.

He can eat Mitt, and bark like a Hillary.

[Robert DeLong]

F. Lee Bailey loses his quest to practice law again after past misdeeds

Kind of an interesting read.

[colorado tanker]

Yep, he's broke and disbarred.

Many years ago I saw an interview of him (was it Johnny Carson?) and after introducing him the interviewer turned and deadpanned, "may I call you F"?

[minnesota_bound]

Yep, the article says he is a beautician in Maine or something....... : )

[Nifster]

oh yeah...Flee managed to mishandle funds .....always a bad thing

[forgotten man]

I read Patty Hearst’s biography. She pointed out that the SLA ring leaders, Bill and Emily Harris, were sentenced to less time than Patty Hearst was. Bill and Emily Harris had public defenders. Patty Hearst’s father paid F Lee Bailey $1 million. Also, Patty Hearst wrote that F. Lee Bailey was drunk in the courtroom.

[knarf]

I remember about the case, but remember few details.

In my adolescent male mind, Patti Hearst wanted dark meat and when caught, copped a kidnap plea.

THAT was my assessment back then and I've had nothing to alter it.

[Nifster]

oh it was common knowledge that Flee was drunk most of the time...in or out of court.....Unfortunately for patty her father was enamored of Flee’s inflated reputation.

[ETL]

"The Symbionese Liberation Army (S.L.A.) was an American self-styled urban guerrilla warfare group active between 1973 and 1975 that considered itself a revolutionary vanguard army [ie communist revolutionaries/terrorists like the Weather Underground]. The group committed bank robberies, two murders and other acts of violence.

The S.L.A. became internationally notorious for kidnapping media heiress Patty Hearst, abducting the 19-year-old as she and her 26-year-old boyfriend, Steven Weed, sat relaxing in their Berkeley, California home."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army
__________________________________________________

"The granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst and great-granddaughter of self-made millionaire George Hearst, she gained notoriety in 1974 when, following her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), she ultimately joined her captors in furthering their cause. Apprehended after having taken part in a bank robbery with other SLA members, Hearst was imprisoned for almost two years before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter.[1] She was later granted a presidential pardon by President Bill Clinton in his last act as president.[2][1]"

Patty Hearst yelling commands at bank customers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst
__________________________________________________

Soliah-Olson timeline: Radical, bank robber, mom, inmate
Last update: March 21, 2008

(snip)

May 1999: The TV show "America's Most Wanted" features Soliah. The FBI offers a $20,000 reward for her on the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles shootout.

June 16, 1999: Olson is arrested in St. Paul, where she and her family live in an ivy-covered house in the Highland Park neighborhood.

July 1999: Olson signs papers in St. Paul that acknowledge she is the SLA fugitive. She waives extradition and is sent to California to face charges in connection with the 1975 crime. After 35 days in jail, she returns home after being freed on $1 million bail, raised by friends and supporters.

August 1999: Olson legally changes her name from Kathleen Ann Soliah.

September 1999: Trial date set for Jan. 10, 2000.

October 1999: A judge rules that the history of the Symbionese Liberation Army is fair game for prosecutors seeking to convict Olson, saying past crimes attributed to the SLA would be relevant.

December 1999: Olson publishes a 100-page cookbook called "Serving Time: America's Most Wanted Recipes" to raise funds for her defense. She asks that her trial be televised.

May 2000: Trial delayed until Jan. 8, 2001. Patty Hearst violates judge's gag order in case, implicating Olson in a Sacramento-area bank robbery and murder.

July 2000: Judge lifts gag order in case. Olson begins speaking out in public, saying her trial will become a credibility contest between her and Hearst, slamming her prosecution as politically motivated.

January 2001: After President Clinton pardons Hearst, Olson asks district attorney to drop charges against her.

February 2001: Authorities in Sacramento, Calif., say they've reopened their investigation into a fatal 1975 bank robbery that they allege involved Olson and SLA members.

October 2001: Olson pleads guilty in the pipe bomb case, is later sentenced to 14 years in prison.

February 2003: Olson is sentenced to six years in prison for her role in the fatal bank robbery. The other defendants -- SLA cohorts Emily Montague, William Harris and Michael Bortin -- were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to eight years. In court, Jon Opsahl, the son of the woman killed during the robbery, called the four defendants "monsters" and "a group of pathetic, deranged revolutionaries who simply decided one day to make my mother [Myrna Opsahl] instantly and permanently expendable."

March 17 [2008]: Olson is [mistakenly released a year early...] from prison. [this timeline is from 2008, so doesn't include the latest -etl]

http://www.startribune.com/local/16892976.html?elr=KArks:DCiUoaW_eEO7UiacyKUUr
___________________________________________________

Sara Jane Olson and former fugitive Bernardine Dohrn [wife of Obama pal Bill Ayers] chatted before Dohrn was to lead a panel discussion about conspiracy prosecutions of political activists in 2000.

Article:
http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/16944051.html
___________________________________________________

"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

I’d like to know if Toobin got into the SLA support network that crisscrossed the US. Hearst’s fingerprints were found in a barn outside of Philadelphia (Bucks or Montgomery County) along with those of athlete radical Bill Walton (who, as I recalled, refused to testify about it before a Grand Jury - don’t recall if he got jail time or not).

This farmhouse was one of several underground railroad resting/hiding places for Marxist terrorists/radicals on the run from the law.

I wrote about this in 1979 in a special section for the old “Pink Sheet on the Left”, No. 279 and this report provided one of the first public maps of terrorist hideouts in the US (Beat the FBI by about 6 months when they issued a similar report).

The reds in the US used a combination (by their own admissions) of old active and former members of the Communist Party USA to move them and hide them, esp. in New York City (where Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohr hide/taught in plain sight for about 10 years, by their own admission).

They also used radical communes to move across the country, esp. re Hearst from California to the East Coast.

The same thing apparently happened with the members of the May 19th Communist Organization (M19CO), participants in the deadly Nyack, NY armored car robbery that killed to local police officers and the Brink’s truck driver.

Other non white participants came from the remnants of the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Africa, and affiliated black Marxist/terrorist groups.

Many operated out of front groups/buildings in Brooklyn during the early 80’s before scramming after the Brink’s job. An unheralded NYPD officer tried to warn his superiors about these groups but was largely ignored until after the Brink’s job.

Other underground support groups and safehouses existed for the FALN Puerto Rican Marxists of Morales, the Black Liberation Army of Joan Chesimard (now safely in Cuba), the Massachusetts terrorists/killers (Lammands? brothers, et al).

I bumped into an FBI agent in Baltimore years ago at our local bank (he was an old schoolmate of my) and we got around to talking about bank robbers. He mentioned that he was on the tailing detail for Marilyn Buck and others from the maoist terrorist group closely affiliated with the M19CO
and that they had a safehouse in Baltimore.

I told him that I was the FBI operative whose testimony warned the nation about the “Days of Rage” riots planned by the Ayers/Dohrn/Jones/Machtinger wing of SDS known later as the Weather Underground Organization/Weathermen.

We had some good laughs about all this.

Sam did forget that I had to beat him up in a fight because he was a little nasty bastard back in elementary school. It lasted about three seconds and he was on his back on the floor. After that, we called a truce and became friends in Junior High.

See, we turned out to be the “good guys” after all. Ah, those were the good old days.

However, the communists became college professors (Ayers and Dohrn, Wilkinson, etc) so while we were the good guys, the bad guys became academic successes. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? OBAMA, FOR ONE. THE CLINTONS FOR ANOTHER.

Hopefully when the last chapter to this story is written, we, the good guys will have won. If not, adios America.

[Monterrosa-24]

“...She pointed out that the SLA ring leaders, Bill and Emily Harris, were sentenced to less time than Patty Hearst...”

Yes, and not to mention Bill and Bernadine skating on so many crimes. The best poetic justice for the Weathermen faction was their three dead in the Greenwich Village bomb blast.

Patty was: Kidnapped, held in a closet, raped and abused horribly, and only after all that did she join up with the SLA scum.

[gattaca]

bump