patricia, she s sitting there watching this spectacle from outside her home with all the knucklehead news people talking about shit, and also she doesn t really get the sense that her family has her well-being foremost in their minds. and her mother was just grossing her out. one of the reasons we had targeted the family was catherine s tenure as a regent of the university of california. the regents, who was no friend of the students, thought they should behave, had been an ongoing subject of discord and unhappiness ever since the free speech movement. catherine hearst was tough. she was a powerful figure in her own right who could help ronald reagan in his mission to crack down on the student protesters and restore berkeley to the orderly place it had been in the 1950s. after patricia s kidnapping, she agreed to reappointment by governor reagan, which was her
dig in mexico. she wore it around her neck all the time. she didn t take it off. as much as i hated the idea of her joining us, it was spectacular propaganda. now, the heiress wants to join the kidnappers. just by saying that she had decided to join us was only part of the equation. we had to prove that. there does seem to have been a profound change in her. i don t believe she s going to change her philosophies that quickly. who would have thunk that patricia hearst would be robbing a bank as a revolutionary act? she was ready to shoot at anything that got in the way. she must have been forced to do it. she s a victim of thought control.
she thought he totally understated his abilities. that crushed her, that she thought that she had been abandoned by her father that she thought would always be there for her. and what occurred to her was that this was evidence that he was playing games with her life. she just figured her father could do anything. the next communique patty s pretty pretty angry. patty had dramatically changed. something something had snapped. i ve always been amazed by what s next.
you know, i just figured, if anybody can persuade her, it s me. i m going to persuade her, this is a dumb idea. i didn t see this political theater. i saw this as some serious shit. you want to do this, you re probably going to die. the fbi came. and he said there s a new communique that has just come in, and it was patty s voice and randy kind of, you know, took this deep breath. i would like to begin this statement by informing the public that i wrote what i am about to say. it s what i feel. i ve never been forced to say anything on any tape. there was a moment of truth, when we had a meeting. and we were out in the main room, the main room at golden gate, and she s blindfolded. and we re all sitting around. none of us have ski masks. and the question is posed to her. you are now no longer a prisoner. we re going to release you.
nobody s ever seen anything like this. the talking heads on the 6:00 news are sitting there reading, word for word, these crazy-ass communiques. the hostage was was not just patricia hearst, the whole media was the hostage. should any attempt be made by authorities to rescue the prisoner or to arrest or harm any sla elements, the prisoner is to be executed. in capital letters under that is, death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people. death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people. i m sure i m not the only person who remembers that line. it was crazy talk. but they took themselves seriously, and they had patty hearst. hy-a-luronic acid