Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial

[the Scribe]

I had a great post response yesterday and some links for you and just as I was ready to reply the power in Tempe went out for hours.

So here I am again about to respond and just got a call from a friend as I begin about a death. This post may be jinxed for me.

[JasonKlose]

Aug 9, 2016 16:53:12 GMT -5 the Scribe said:

I had a great post response yesterday and some links for you and just as I was ready to reply the power in Tempe went out for hours.

So here I am again about to respond and just got a call from a friend as I begin about a death. This post may be jinxed for me.

I was hoping to get more responses to this thread, but I guess nobody's interested. I personally find this case very intriguing, especially since I never really knew a whole lot about it. There really hasn't been another case like it. I'm in the process of reading Jeffrey Toobin's book and so far I think it's an interesting read. I've read many reviews on Amazon.com and they tend to be mixed. A lot of readers found his book well-written and enjoyed it. Then there are a few who are quite critical, saying that he seems to be convicting Patricia Hearst, believing that she willingly took part in the Hibernia Bank robbery on April 15, 1974, and that she had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). He doesn't believe in brainwashing, which Patty claimed, or the term "Stockholm Syndrome."

I would have to read Hearst's book, which she wrote in the early '80s, to really get a sense of what happened to her and to be able to put myself in her shoes. My initial thinking was, and still is at the moment, that she was in constant fear early on, that she did what she was told to do to stay alive. In a way, I think she did sort of sympathize with her captors eventually. I think that mentally she was under their control and she was just a different person. If she had never been kidnapped, none of the crimes that she went to prison for would have happened.....or at least she would never have been involved in those crimes.

[the Scribe]

You might want to read this and listen to the show. It goes into all the behind the scenes stuff most people never knew about.



Date: Wednesday - August 3, 2016
Host: George Noory
Guests: Brad Schreiber

In the first half, author and researcher Brad Schreiber discussed the startling evidence that the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and Donald DeFreeze (who were behind the kidnapping of Patty Hearst) were CIA operatives and that the SLA was created by employees of the CIA and California Department of Corrections. Out of concern over "white radicals protesting the Viet Nam war that want to blow up buildings" the CIA cut a deal for DeFreeze to "escape" from prison and set up a phony left-wing organization (the SLA).

Interestingly, according to Schreiber's research, Patty Hearst was already radicalized and was secretly visiting DeFreeze at Vacaville prison, before she was kidnapped in 1974. DeFreeze was furious with her because she broke up with him and that's why he set up her kidnapping to get even with her, he continued. Further, none of the white members of the SLA were aware that he was a double agent, he noted. Schreiber also shared another bizarre twist: California Representative Leo Ryan, before he was murdered in Jonestown, learned that DeFreeze had been a victim of behavior modification by the CIA at Vacaville, and went to Pres. Jimmy Carter to plead for Patty Hearst's sentence to be lessened because she'd gotten mixed up in a CIA plot.

REVOLUTION’S END

The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA
(Skyhorse Publishing, NY)

Revolution’s End fully explains the most famouskidnapping in US history, detailing Patty Hearst’s relationship with Donald DeFreeze, known as Cinque, head of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Not only did the heiress have a sexual relationship with DeFreeze while he was imprisoned, she didn’t know he was an informant and a victim of prison behavior modification.

Neither she nor the white radicals who followed DeFreeze realized that he was molded by a CIA officer and allowed to escape, thanks to collusion with the California Department of Corrections. DeFreeze’s secret mission: infiltrate and discredit Bay Area anti-war radicals and the Black PantherParty, the nexus of 70s activism.

When the murder of the first black Oakland schools superintendent failed to create an insurrection, DeFreeze was alienated from his controllers and decided to become a revolutionary, since his life was in jeopardy. Revolution’s End finally elucidates the complex relationship of Hearst and DeFreeze and proves that the largest shootout in US history, one that killed six members of the SLA in South Central Los Angeles, ended when the LAPD purposely set fire to the house and incinerated those six radicals on live television, nationwide, as a warning to American leftists.

Revolution’s End at Amazon.com

“Revolution’s End is a stunning and chilling exposé of one of the most bizarre political chapters in my lifetime—the rise of the Symbionese Liberation Army and the kidnapping of bad-girl heiress Patty Hearst. Brad Schreiber presents a compelling new case that the SLA was a creation of the police state to infiltrate, subvert and destroy the growing radical movements of the period.”

--David Talbot, founder, Salon.com, author of Season of the Witch and The Devil’s Chessboard

“This book careens to its bloody ending with all the inevitability of a train wreck. Schreiber won’t let us take our eyes off it. He ignites the past in chilling detail and at the same time shines an uncanny and unsettling light on who we are today.”

--T. Jefferson Parker, three-time winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award


“‘The Symbionese Liberation Army’ was a counter-revolutionary front, carefully created…to infiltrate and discredit the authentic leftist movements then alive and well in California. Such is the unhappy, fascinating truth Brad Schreiber tells in Revolution’s End—a careful book and one as necessary as it is disturbing.”

--Mark Crispin Miller, author, professor of Media Studies, New York University

[JasonKlose]

I saw Brad Schreiber's book on Amazon and read some of the reviews. I can't believe that people can believe such a bogus story. I don't know how Schreiber did his research or where he got his information, but it all sounds pretty ridiculous to me. There is never one mention in Jeffrey Toobin's book about DeFreeze working for the CIA, or that the CIA formed the SLA. And Toobin had a wealth of information to use for his book, including boxes of documents from former SLA member Bill Harris. So I'm sure if there was some truth to Schreiber's claims, Toobin would have found it as well. Also, how could Hearst have possibly had a sexual relationship with DeFreeze when he was in prison? And why would she have been secretly visiting him in prison? It just doesn't make any sense. She didn't even know DeFreeze before the kidnapping. She didn't know who he was until he told her his name when they were holding her captive. She then realized who he was because she had heard of the murder of Oakland schools superintendent Marcus Foster.

[JasonKlose]

On February 4, 1974, Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of 19th century media mogul William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her Berkeley, California apartment by a rag-tag terrorist group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). She then spent 19 months in their captivity, joining with them in various criminal acts in the San Francisco Bay Area soon after her kidnapping, before she was captured by the FBI on September 18, 1975.

The story has become front and center again with the release of a book by lawyer, author, and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, titled "American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst."

I knew very little about this case until I watched one of CNN's documentaries last week on the Seventies, which was about terrorism at home and abroad. The Patty Hearst case was one that was featured. The case is so intriguing and I've become fascinated by it. It's quite ironic that Jeffrey Toobin's book is coming out at the same time. I've also read that CBS will release a series based on the Patty Hearst case, similar to the recent "The People vs O.J. Simpson."

I was born in 1973, so when the kidnapping took place I was not quite a year old. By the time Patty Hearst was arrested in 1975, I was only two. I only remember reading something about it sometime in the '80s, and then watching part of an interview with Patty on Dateline NBC in the '90s, but I never really knew much about it until now. Of course there is still a lot to learn about it. I have purchased Toobin's book and I'm looking forward to reading it. I have read reviews of his book and they are mixed. A number of people have said that they feel Toobin is biased against Hearst, and basically believes that she was a willing participant in the SLA. I tend to have more empathy for Particia of the horrible ordeal she was put through. I would like to get her own book as well, which she wrote back in the early '80s. Maybe by reading both books I can make my own decisions on what is fact and what is fiction.

I know there are a few members here on the forum from California or who currently live there. If any of you are old enough to remember the Patty Hearst case or just know something about it I would like to read your comments and opinions. This is a very riveting case and open to so many theories. For anyone who is not familiar with the case, here is the link to Patty Hearst on Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst

Also, here is Jeffrey Toobin on CBS This Morning, talking about his book:

[the Scribe]

I guess you didn't listen to the two hour long interview I posted. It may answer some of those questions for you. Toobin is a lawyer. He relied on court documents. Other evidence that never made it into the court was ignored or not available to him. We are talking CIA. When doing so all bets are off.



Patty Hearst Kidnapping the SLA - Brad Schreiber ( full 2 hour interview)

Published on Aug 20, 2016
Revolution's End fully explains the most famous kidnapping in US history, detailing Patty Hearst's relationship with Donald DeFreeze, known as Cinque, head of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Not only did the heiress have a sexual relationship with DeFreeze while he was imprisoned; she didn't know he was an informant and a victim of prison behavior modification.

Neither Hearst nor the white radicals who followed DeFreeze realized that he was molded by a CIA officer and allowed to escape, thanks to collusion with the California Department of Corrections. DeFreeze's secret mission: infiltrate and discredit Bay Area anti-war radicals and the Black Panther Party, the nexus of seventies activism. When the murder of the first black Oakland schools superintendent failed to create an insurrection, DeFreeze was alienated from his controllers and decided to become a revolutionary, since his life was in jeopardy.

Revolution's End finally elucidates the complex relationship of Hearst and DeFreeze and proves that one of the largest shootouts in US history, which killed six members of the SLA in South Central Los Angeles, ended when the LAPD set fire to the house and incinerated those six radicals on live television, nationwide, as a warning to American leftists.

www.spreaker.com/user/oppermanreport/brad-schreiber-revolutions-end-the-patty

www.iheart.com/show/53-The-Opperman-Report/?episode_id=27624280

radaronline.com/celebrity-news/cia-patty-hearst-kidnapping-secret/