The saga of the kidnapping, brainwashing, crimes, conviction and amnesty of the granddaughter of the creator of yellow journalism, William Randolph Hearst

I Peti Herst
Ti stojiš tamo ispred
Zastave Simbionske oslobodilačke armije raširenih nogu
Pitah se da li to dobijaš svake noći
Od crnog revolucionara
I njegovih žena
Ili si stvarno mrtva
A sada, kada si u bekstvu,
šta se dešava u tvom umu?

Tvoje sestre sede pored prozora.
A sve što tvoja mama
radi je da sedi i plače.
A tvoj tata?
Pa znaš šta je tvoj tata rekao, Peti?
Znaš šta je tvoj tata rekao, Peti?
Rekao je, rekao je, rekao je,
pa pre šezdeset dana
bila je tako divno dete
sada evo je sa pištoljem u ruci.

(Patti Smith on Patti Hearst, 1974)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH9KozepiFU&list=RDHH9KozepiFU&start_radio=1

Scanning the QR code takes you to the story of Patti Hearst as sung by Patti Smith in 1974 in the intro to the classic track Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix (written by Billy Roberts)

On November 6, 1973, Symbion Liberation Army members Russell Leet and Osceola and Joseph Remiro Bo killed Marcus Foster, the first black superintendent of schools in Oakland, California, and seriously wounded his deputy, Robert Blackburn, using cyanide-laced bullets. Foster worked to improve education in Auckland, but was branded a "fascist" by the SLA for his plan to introduce mandatory ID cards.

A month after Foster's murder, she was kidnapped Patricia Hearst.

On an audiotape sent to local radio station KPFA in Berkeley, Field Marshal Sinke could be heard warning that any attempt by the authorities to release Patricia, or arrest any of her kidnapper, result in the execution of the prisoner. The Symbiotes originally planned to trade Patricia Hearst for Foster Russell Litt and Joseph Remire, accused of Marcus' murder, but then-California Governor Ronald Reagan rejected any possibility of negotiating this.

90.000 BAGS OF FOOD FOR THE POOR OF LOS ANGELES

The murder of the black school superintendent was condemned by the influential radical Black Panther Party and all other left-wing groups, except for the extreme "Weather Underground" organization. Eight days after the kidnapping, the Symbionese Liberation Army, in an attempt to wash its image, presented itself as a Robin Hood organization - demanding that the Hearst family fund $70 in food aid for every poor Californian.

From the tape sent to Radio-Berkeley, Patty Hearst's frightened voice was heard: "Mom, Dad, I'm fine. I'm with the automatic weapons combat unit. And these people aren't just a bunch of crazy people... I want to get out of here, but the only way I'm going to do it is to do it their way. And I just hope you do what they say, Dad, and you do it fast..."

In the first months after the kidnapping, Hearst's papers mostly followed the official family narrative: Patricia was an innocent victim of the terrorist organization Symbion Liberation Army. Patricia's father, Randolph Apperson Hearst, regularly faced scores of television cameras outside the front door of his Hillsborough mansion, calmly discussing the latest news the family had received from the SLA. Susan Sword in the San Francisco Chronicle quotes William Randolph Hearst III, who visited his uncle often in the months after the kidnapping: "Randy was a center of calm in a very turbulent time."

The family was simultaneously trying to negotiate with the SLA.

Patricia's father, Randolph Apperson Hearst, could not fulfill the request to feed all the poor of San Francisco, which, according to media estimates, could cost as much as 400 million dollars. As chairman of the board at the Hearst Association, he controlled 42 US stocks, but that capital could not be turned into cash.

In response to the demands of the SLA, Randolph Apperson Hearst founded the "Endangered People" program (People in Need - PIN) and as a gesture of goodwill donated about two million dollars for this venture. More than 90.000 bags and boxes of food (turkey, fruit, vegetables, etc.) were distributed, but fights broke out during the distribution of packages and bags of food in long lines. Riots in West Auckland on February 22 led to dozens of injuries and arrests. One police officer was stabbed.

In an audio recording published by the SLA in March, Patty criticized her father: "So far it sounds like you and your advisers have managed to turn it into a real disaster..." and in a tone different from the one in the first messages, said that she was alive, scolding her mother for appearing in front of the press in a black dress.

After the kidnapping, Patriša was kept for two months (57 days) in a closet measuring two meters by 63 centimeters, bound and blindfolded, without contact with the outside world, with torture, persuasion - and rape.

TANIA THE GUERRILLA

In April, the Symbion Liberation Army sent a tape of Patricia Hearst's statement to a local radio station. Its tone and content shocked the American public, which until then showed empathy towards the abducted girl: "I was given the right to choose to be freed... or to join the forces of the Symbion Liberation Army and fight for my freedom and the freedom of all oppressed people. I chose to stay and fight."

The package that arrived at the radio station also contained a photo of Patricia Hearst holding a carbine in her hands and wearing a beret with the symbol of the SLA - a snake with seven heads.

The flag of the Symbionist Liberation Army depicted a seven-headed cobra. Each head had a special meaning: umoja (unity), kujichagulia (self-determination), ujima (collective work and responsibility), ujamaa (cooperative economy), niya (aspiration), kuumba (creativity) and imani (faith).

Patricia Hurst announced that she accepted the name "Tanya" after "a friend who fought together with Che in Bolivia".

It was obvious that she was saying what the captors wanted their POW to say, but during the trial individuals would note that she had quite quickly and convincingly, after only two months of captivity, mastered the new role, rhetoric and tone and symbols of the captors.

The Symbionists chose truly striking symbols, from the rebel slave leader Sengbe Pih to the guerrilla Tanya.

Tania la Guerillera, or Heidi Tamara Banke Bayder, was the only woman in the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, whose leader was Che Guevara, who was killed on October 9, 1967 by the Bolivian army with the help of the CIA.

Born on November 19, 1937 in Buenos Aires, where her parents, communists of German-Jewish origin, fled the Nazis in the 1930s, and returned to East Germany in 1952. When he visited Berlin as a Cuban leader in 1960, Heidi Tamara Banke Beider was Che Guevara's translator. Then she moved to Cuba and was trained for the secret operation "Phantasm", whose goal was to start a people's uprising throughout South America, inspired by the Cuban Revolution.

In October 1964, Bunke infiltrated Bolivia's elite society, even vacationing in Peru with Bolivian President Rene Barrientos. She used hidden radio equipment and coded messages to communicate with Havana and Che Guevara's guerrillas in Bolivia. Betrayed by a captured guerrilla, she escaped from La Paz in March 1967 and joined Che Guevara. She chose the code name Tanya in honor of teacher Zoya Anatolyevna Kosmodemyanska, a Soviet partisan who was tortured and hanged in Moscow by the Nazis in 1941. Zoya, on the other hand, chose her wartime name Tanya in memory of Tatyana Solomakh, who was executed by the White Guards during the civil war.

Tania la Guerrillera was only thirty years old when, on August 31, 1967, a convoy of CIA-backed guerrillas was ambushed by the Bolivian army in Vado del Hesos, an area along the Rio Grande, and killed. Fidel Castro declared her a hero of the Cuban Revolution. Three decades later, on December 30, 1998, she will be buried with military honors at the Che Guevara Mausoleum in Santa Clara.

Scanning the QR code takes you to a 1973 folk song by Argentinian singer-songwriter Suni Paz called Tania the Guerrilla "flor nueva de Bolivia" - the new flower of Bolivia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBHyvFQO-vo&list=RDOBHyvFQO-vo&start_radio=1

Granddaughter of William Hearst, daughter of Randolph Hearst joined left-wing terrorists?

The media story "The heiress of a dynasty turns into a terrorist" became stronger than "a young woman broken under duress". For the family, it was a disastrous turn that the Hearst media could not simply ignore. They began to question whether Patricia Hearst, as a hostage, was doing all this under psychological duress.

REVOLUTIONARY BAPTISM DURING THE BANK ROBBERY

photo: wikipedia

Then came another shock. Two months and ten days after the abduction, two weeks after her captors removed her blindfold, security camera footage showed Patricia "Tanya" Hearst in her first groundbreaking action - robbing the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco's Sunset District at noon on April 15. With a rifle in his hand, he orders the customers to lie down on the floor. "I'm Tanya. We're not kidding!"

In the media, the videos of the bank robbery were analyzed over and over again, with questions whether Patricia was held at gunpoint by the kidnappers during the action, whether it was brainwashing, etc.

In an audio recording released by the SLA after the Hibernia robbery, Patricia Hurst says: "Greetings people, this is Tanya. Our actions since April 15 forced the corporate state to help fund the revolution. As far as brainwashing goes, that idea is incredibly ridiculous. I'm a soldier in the People's Army."

On FBI wanted lists, along with Wanted ("Wanted"), in addition to the faces of DeFreeze and other members of the SLA, hers is now also hers, but Patricia was wanted by the FBI as a "material witness".

A new episode followed. William Harris and his wife, Emily, attempted to steal a crate of ammunition from Mel's Sporting Goods Store in Englewood, California. One of the employees, a former police officer, waited for them to take the box out of the store - since, according to American law, only then does such an act qualify as theft - and tried to overpower them. From a van parked across the street from Mel's store, Patricia Hearst fired a full volley in the direction of the store, then switched frames and fired another. Emily and Harris ran into the van. Patricia hit the gas and everyone ran away.

LIQUIDATION OF GENERAL FELMARSHAL

The group went into hiding in Los Angeles. Considerably more militarized than those in Berkeley, the Los Angeles police surrounded the house at 1466 54th Street on May 17, 1974, and ordered the occupants to come out with their hands up. The symbiotes responded with automatic weapons fire. During the shootout, they say the longest police shootout to date, and which was also broadcast on television, 5000 bullets were fired (some who count the return fire, say as many as 10.000). The house caught fire. Diefries, not wanting to be burned alive, shot himself. Also killed were 23-year-old Willie Wolfe, aka "Kaho"; 25-year-old Angela Atwood, aka "General Jelina"; 29-year-old Patricia Soltisik, known as "Zoja"; 29-year-old Camilla “Gabby” Hall and 26-year-old Nancy Perry, aka “Fahiza”.

The survivors were Emily and William Harris and Patricia Hearst, who watched the shooting on TV in a nearby motel room.

Patricia Hearst then condemned the "fascist pig media" in a recorded message for the "typically distorted image" of her "beautiful sisters and brothers" killed in the attack. She said that she, Tanja, also died in that house, but that she was reborn from the ashes - and that she knows what to do next.

After Difreez's death, the command of the Symbion Army was taken over by William Harris who became "Field Marshal Tyco". Pati and the surviving members of the SLA were on the run. Over the course of more than a year and a half, they robbed two more banks, planted several bombs under cars, hijacked a car and held a young man hostage.

Heavily armed members of the SLA, wearing ski masks and wearing wigs, stormed the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, in 1975 and forced passersby to lie on the floor. Mike Bortin was standing at the cashier's counter brandishing a gun. Sarah Jane Olson emptied the cashier's drawers and grabbed the money. Emily Harris shot and killed 42-year-old Myrna Opsal, a mother of four, who was in the bank to pay money for a church contribution, with a shot from a shotgun in the lobby of the bank. Patricia was parked in front of the bank in the getaway car.

"This was not a robbery. It was an expropriation. It was a combat operation," Patricia Hurst wrote in her book. She described the Harrises as "extremely dedicated revolutionaries".

And as the "LA Times" wrote in 2002, Patricia Hearst later called that operation "a violent, senseless, evil act" committed by bloodthirsty revolutionaries. Hearst wrote that Emily Harris, after Myrna Opsal was killed, said that she was just a bourgeois pig. Attorney Bailey negotiated with prosecutors that Patricia Hearst, who drove the robbers, be granted immunity in exchange for testifying about the Carmichael robbery. This would protect her from the potential death penalty that the American legislator threatens to all those who participated in the robbery during which the murder took place.

William Harris, "Field Marshal Tico" and his wife, Emily Harris, were sentenced to 10 years to life in prison for kidnapping; both were paroled in 1983.

photo: wikipedia

PROFESSION URBAN GUERILLA...

Patricia Hearst was arrested on September 18, 1975, after police discovered an SLA hideout in San Francisco's Mission District. When she was arrested, when asked about her profession, she answered: "City guerrilla".

"I don't believe that Patty's legal problems are that serious. At the end of the day, she is primarily a victim of kidnapping. She never did anything of her own free will," Kathryn Hurst, Patricia's mother, said at the time.

After her arrest, Patricia Hearst repeated "I am Tanya!" By the time of the trial, she had changed her attitude. A psychiatric evaluation showed that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and that her IQ had decreased during her detention.

After Patricia's arrest, the Hearst family hired eminent psychiatrists, psychologists and experts in coercive persuasion. The Hearst media mostly portrayed Patricia as a victim of "brainwashing" (brain washing) and coercive persuasion, double identification and Stockholm syndrome. However, many commentators have argued that behind that theory is an attempt by a rich and influential family to protect their heiress from the consequences of actions that an ordinary defendant could hardly explain.

photo: wikipedia

PATRIŽINA'S NEW DRESS

Carolyn Anspaher, who reported on the trial for the "San Francisco Chronicle", wrote that the reverse transformation of Tanya into Patti Hearst after the arrest, if there was any at all, required time and a lot of lawyers, who were gathered in desperation by the distraught Hearsts...

"The young woman they refer to as 'the accused' appears to be a replica of the original Patricia Hearst, a quiet voice torn violently from her familiar surroundings... Her hair, dyed a brassy red when she was arrested, has been dyed a soft auburn and gently draped around her face. Her tight and provocative sweater and jeans have been replaced by tasteful pants and jackets. She no longer raises her fist in black power greeting, and her eyes are mostly downcast, as if she is sharing a secret with herself."

Stockholm syndrome

David King, author of the book Six days in August (Six Days in August) which is based on police records, interviews and original documentation of the crisis, in the magazine "Time" of August 4, 2020, describes how a robbery of a Swedish bank in 1973 gave the world "Stockholm syndrome" - the phenomenon that hostages identify with their captors.

A tall, muscular man, convicted criminal Jan-Erik Olsson walked into a Kreditbanken branch in central Stockholm on August 23, 1973 wearing make-up, a woman's wig and sunglasses. He pulled out an automatic weapon and fired a bullet into the ceiling shouting, "The party's about to begin!" He then took hostages, demanded three million Swedish kroner and the release from prison of Clark Olofsson, one of Sweden's most notorious criminals of the 20th century, who had long made tabloid headlines for bank robberies, prison escapes and taunting the authorities with his highly quotable interviews. He was, as one reporter put it, a messy Scandinavian mix of Jesse James and Warren Beatty.

Then, to the astonishment of many, Olofsson was indeed brought into the bank and handed over to striker Jan-Erik Olsson.

The story reminded David King of Sidney Lamet's classic film Dog afternoon, starring Al Pacino, with the Swedish hostage affair eventually attracting the country's Prime Minister Olof Palme and creating a new way of understanding the complicated emotional relationship between kidnapper and abductee: Stockholm syndrome.

During the six-day crisis, the hostages began to show trust in their captors and distrust in the police. In a conversation with Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, the captured Christine Enmark expressed greater fear of police action than of the kidnappers themselves. "People" magazine wrote that Christine Enmark fell in love with her kidnapper, that she later maintained a close relationship with Clark Olofsson, but the sensationalist version of the story often exaggerates or romanticizes what really happened. Christine Enmark herself later rejected the claim that she suffered from Stockholm syndrome.

The parameters of Stockholm Syndrome were first defined by Nils Bejerot, a psychiatrist who assisted the police in Stockholm and studied the interactions between Olson, Olofsson and the four hostages. This theory was later elaborated by psychiatrists, psychologists and negotiators in hostage crises in Sweden and the United States, especially in the New York Police Department and the FBI. This syndrome has been used to explain the behavior of victims in well-known cases of kidnappings and hostages, and even more so in film, television and popular culture. Some researchers believe that the hostages' behavior is not necessarily evidence of Stockholm syndrome, but a rational survival strategy in a situation where their lives depend on armed kidnappers.

Continued in the next issue

(brainwashing, ; "Velcro Theory" for aimless lost souls; Getting into the role too quickly; The desperate need to survive; About the dirty past that everyone else would like to forget; They sent you a lot of drugs; You provide the pictures, I will provide the war)

Real journalism costs money, and we will not be bought by tycoons and corporations. Support us with a one-time or monthly donation. The time for it is now!