[9 articles] 1970s radical Sara Jane Olson released from Calif prison
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11931966 By Don Thompson, Associated Press Writer Posted: 03/17/2009 CHOWCHILLA, Calif. (AP) - A former 1970s radical associated with the group that kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst finished her California prison sentence Tuesday, ending a legal drama that harkened back to a violent era of social unrest. Sara Jane Olson, 62, was freed from the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla shortly after midnight and was allowed to serve her year-long parole in Minnesota, the state she adopted during a 24-year flight from justice. Olson served seven years - half her sentence - after pleading guilty to helping place pipe bombs under Los Angeles Police Department patrol cars and participating in the deadly robbery of a bank in a Sacramento suburb. The crimes took place while she was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a relatively short-lived but violent group that sought to overthrow the government while engaging in killings, robberies and gun battles with police. Among the group's victims was 42-year-old Myrna Opsahl, a mother of four who was gunned down during a 1975 robbery of the Crocker National Bank in a Sacramento suburb. "I'm just glad that the former SLA members were finally held accountable for the murder of my mom," Jon Opsahl, who is now living in Southern California, said Tuesday after hearing of Olson's release. "It does finish out this chapter, and I hope it's the last chapter," he said. "I'm glad she's leaving the state." Olson was released by mistake a year ago after California corrections officials miscalculated her parole date, joining her family for five days before she was re-arrested. Authorities now say she has served the proper seven-year sentence. "She was definitely relieved that it all went smoothly," said David Nickerson, one of Olson's attorneys. He said Olson and her husband, Dr. Gerald "Fred" Peterson, were trying to make travel arrangements to return to their home in St. Paul, Minn., and their three daughters. A bouquet of flowers was left at the couple's home Tuesday morning, but no one was there to receive it. Not everyone in Minnesota will be happy to see Olson return. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and police protective leagues in Los Angeles and St. Paul wrote Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, urging him to have Olson serve her parole in California. Some Minnesota lawmakers also called for Olson to remain in California. The Los Angeles police union said she should finish her parole in the state where she committed her crimes. "I think today is a slap in the face of California law enforcement and (other) law enforcement ... with her release and the governor's abdicating his responsibility to let her leave the state and go back to Minnesota," Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul Weber said in an interview. "The police officers here and around the state are outraged." Schwarzenegger said he deferred the decision to the corrections department. Department spokeswoman Terry Thornton said parole decisions are intended to give former prisoners the best chance of reintegrating into society and avoiding re-arrest. "Being with their family increases the chances that they will succeed on parole," she said. More than 1,000 California parolees are being supervised in other states. They typically have a week to report to the state in which they will serve their parole. Several hours after her release from the prison, which sits among orchards and vineyards about 150 miles southeast of San Francisco, Olson and her husband returned to a Madera County parole office to finish paperwork. Neither her lawyers nor corrections officials would say where they went afterward, other than to say they were making arrangements to leave the state. Olson's mother and younger sister declined to speak to reporters when they returned Tuesday afternoon to the family home in Palmdale, a working class suburb in the high desert north of Los Angeles. In a brief telephone conversation, the younger woman identified herself only as Martha and said she was 3 years old when her sister - then known as Kathleen Soliah - left home. The woman said she had not spoken to her older sister since her release from prison but had heard through someone else that she was doing fine and looking forward to going home. When asked how her mother, Elsie Soliah, was doing, the younger woman said, "She's just glad everything is over." In Minnesota, Olson developed an identity that was worlds apart from her California past. She volunteered in social causes and acted in community theater while raising the couple's daughters. The Olson home was a frequent site of dinner parties. When she returns, she'll likely assume the type of comfortable, middle class lifestyle she once denounced as a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, settling into her St. Paul neighborhood among lawyers, doctors and professors. Her past resurfaced in 1999, when she was arrested while driving a minivan after she was profiled on the television show "America's Most Wanted." The SLA was a band of mostly white, middle class young people. In addition to the 1974 Hearst kidnapping, it claimed responsibility for assassinating Oakland Schools Superintendent Marcus Foster and was involved in a shootout with Los Angeles police officers that killed five SLA members. In a sign of those turbulent times, the group adopted a seven-headed snake as its symbol and the slogan, "Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people." All but one other former SLA member have been released from prison after pleading guilty in 2002 to taking part in the 1975 bank robbery. Emily Montague-Harris was paroled in February 2007 after serving half her eight-year sentence. She says she accidentally fired the shotgun that killed Myrna Opsahl. Montague-Harris' former husband, William Harris, was paroled in September 2006 after serving half his seven-year sentence for acting as a lookout during the robbery. The couple previously spent eight years in prison for kidnapping Hearst, who was 19 at the time. Michael Bortin was paroled in February 2006. Hearst herself spent nearly two years in prison after a 1976 conviction for robbing the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco with the SLA, during which a security camera photographed her carrying a semiautomatic carbine. A granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, she had her sentence commuted by President Jimmy Carter and was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001. Only James Kilgore remains in prison. He eluded capture in South Africa until his arrest in November 2002 and was sentenced in May 2004. He is scheduled for release in May. Olson's brother, Steven Soliah, was acquitted in 1976 of charges alleging involvement in the fatal bank robbery. He declined to be interviewed when a reporter showed up at his Berkeley home Monday night. "We were young and foolish. We felt we were committing an idealized, ideological action to obtain government-insured money and that we were not stealing from ordinary people," Olson wrote in an apology before her sentencing for the bank robbery. "In the end, we stole someone's life." The terms of Olson's parole specify that she cannot associate with former SLA members or co-defendants, including her brother. -------- Letting go of Sara Jane Olson http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-olson19-2009mar18,0,430148.story The former radical has served her time and is going home. Now we have to start moving toward closure. March 18, 2009 Sara Jane Olson was released Tuesday from the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla after serving seven years for murder and other crimes. We'd like to say that this brings a measure of closure to her case, but of course it doesn't. Olson was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a self-styled urban guerrilla group most notorious for kidnapping heiress Patty Hearst in the early 1970s. Then known as Kathleen Soliah, Olson placed nail-packed pipe bombs beneath two Los Angeles police cars and helped carry out a bank robbery near Sacramento that led to the death of a mother of four who was depositing her church's collection money. Before she could be brought to trial, Olson vanished. She fled the state, changed her name and married a man who says he knew nothing of her past, raising three daughters with him in an upscale neighborhood in St. Paul, Minn. She was not caught until she was profiled on "America's Most Wanted" in 1999. A tip led to her arrest. It's now been almost 35 years since her crimes were committed; Olson is 62. But these old cultural battles refuse to go away; they are among our country's great unhealed issues. Just a few months ago, a passing acquaintance with former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers threatened Barack Obama's presidential campaign. How should we think about such people today? In recent years, novelists Peter Carey, Dana Spiotta and Hari Kunzru have written not-unsympathetic but nuanced stories of radicals on the lam. Conservative pundits view the Olsons and Ayerses of the world as terrorists whose crimes cannot be expiated. And the 1988 movie "Running on Empty" starred a lovable Judd Hirsch as an old 1960s fugitive trying to hold his family together while living underground. Our position is simple: Crimes are crimes. No matter what you think of the Vietnam War or capitalism or Richard Nixon, the tiny minority who chose violence in that period were wrong. Olson was very wrong. Distorted ideals, no doubt, led her to terrible acts. But she's served her time. She's been paroled, like other inmates, and permitted to go home to Minnesota, where her husband and children live. The L.A. police union wanted to keep her here. But California allows some parolees to move to another state if that state approves (and supervises the parole). Olson met the criteria. Letting her leave was the right decision. We don't have to forgive her, or even understand her. We don't have to make a movie about her. But she's finished her sentence, and now we're done with her. With luck, closure will come eventually. -------- Olson meets parole officer, gets list of do's and don'ts http://www.startribune.com/local/41502422.html No outstate travel. No guns or booze, or any communication with SLA operatives, their victims or families . Those are among Sara Jane Olson's parole conditions. By JEAN HOPFENSPERGER and PAUL WALSH, Star Tribune staff writers March 19, 2009 On her first day back in Minnesota after seven years in a California prison, Sara Jane Olson met with her Ramsey County parole agent Thursday to discuss the restrictions she must comply with in the year ahead. The 1970s-era militant, now 62, cannot move to another home or travel to another state without her parole officer's consent. She cannot buy or possess firearms. She must remain law-abiding. And she must "refrain from the use or possession of intoxicants." That means no champagne to celebrate her return -- not even a Bud Light. Olson's mandatory meeting in St. Paul "went very well," said county Corrections spokesman Chris Crutchfield, who outlined the conditions of her parole. In addition, California requires that Olson have no contact with former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the 1970s guerrilla group she belonged to. Nor can she have contact with any of the SLA's victims or their families. On Thursday, a young woman who answered the phone at the family's St. Paul home said, "We're happy our mother is home." Her husband, Fred Peterson, said in an e-mail to the Associated Press that Olson cannot do interviews because they "do not comply with the conditions of Sara's parole." But in a follow-up note, he instead cited opposition by some to Olson serving her parole in Minnesota. "Giving the police union's and Gov. [Tim] Pawlenty's statements ... our interpretation of parole conditions is that Sara should not make public comments, for our family's safety," he wrote. Olson served seven years in prison for attempting to bomb Los Angeles police cars and participating in a bank robbery in 1975 in which a customer was killed. At the time, she was a member of the SLA. Before her arrest a decade ago, Olson had changed her name from Kathleen Soliah and assumed a new identity in St. Paul, raising three daughters, acting in local theater and working for progressive causes. -------- Once justice is served, then what? http://www.startribune.com/opinion/41396507.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ By Eric Ringham March 17, 2009 Only among Minnesotans would it seem like a punishment to make someone stay in California. That is just one of the ways the effort to keep Sara Jane Olson away from home doesn't add up. Here's another: Parole, presumably, is meant to cushion a convict's return to society, to provide some structure and supervision to a process that too often goes wrong and leads the offender back to prison. So it only makes sense that society would want each paroled inmate to have the best possible chance of a successful life in society the kind of life that comes with support networks, friends, family, a home, that sort of thing. Such as Olson has waiting for her in Minnesota. Among the population being released from prison this week, she enjoys relative advantages that put her at low risk of reoffending. But the case of Olson or, by the exotic-sounding birth name her denouncers still use, Kathleen Soliah has little to do with the ordinary workings of the corrections system or with any risk that she will reoffend. Nobody thinks she's a danger. If California officials thought she were a danger, they wouldn't release her. Nor do Minnesota officials think she's a danger. They just think she's an outrage. They're right, of course. As Olson's large community of friends and fellow actors discovered when they rallied to defend her in 1999, she's indefensible. To argue that she didn't deserve punishment for what she did as a member of the grandiosely self-styled Symbionese Liberation Army is to play a loser's game. It also misses a truth of human nature: People are not all good or all bad. You don't have to like Olson as she was then to like her as she is now. Olson embraced the same ideology and tactics as another Minnesotan in the SLA, Camilla Hall. Hall was a Minneapolis pastor's kid who attended Washburn High School and the University of Minnesota. She wound up dead in a shootout with the Los Angeles police. Anybody who sees Olson's past through a gauzy montage of Jane Fonda and Abbie Hoffman should look again. The SLA carried guns for the purpose of using them. Olson was caught, tried and sent to prison, as she deserved. She was also duly paroled in a state that, for parole purposes, has what university students would call reciprocity. Our parolees can go there and theirs can come here. There is also a law that says parolees should go where their chances of success are best. But another truth of human nature is that we find comfort even political advantage in punishing the wicked, or at least the easy calls. Especially in scary times like these. So a U.S. senator can safely suggest that a corporate officer who takes a big bonus after reaping a taxpayer bailout might want to commit suicide. And a governor can recommend that a wife and mother who's done her time in prison should do an extended term in exile. And a police union official can suggest that her neighborhood can't be trusted to turn her in if she violates parole. We need to think better about justice and revenge, about why we send people to prison and why we let them out. And we have to be more careful about the difference between prosecution and persecution. -- Eric Ringham is the Star Tribune's commentary editor. He is at [email protected]. -------- Symbionese Liberation Parolee http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/opinion/22flanagan.html By CAITLIN FLANAGAN Published: March 21, 2009 Los Angeles -- THE first time I encountered the word "kleptomaniac," I asked my mother what it meant. She said, "That's what they call it when a rich person steals something." And now, thanks to Sara Jane Olson and her return to the spacious house and gracious life she's made for herself in St. Paul, we know what it's called when a rich, white woman gets convicted of trying to kill cops and robbing a bank: "idealism." We should review, very briefly: Sara Jane Olson, née Kathleen Soliah, was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the '70s militant group most notorious for both kidnapping the newspaper heiress Patty Hearst and espousing a philosophy at one with the age: "Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people." Ms. Soliah robbed a bank in Carmichael, Calif., during which a mother of four was murdered, and a young pregnant bank teller was kicked in the belly and later had a miscarriage. According to Ms. Hearst, who has proved to be a reliable informant on the actions of the S.L.A. (and who was driving the getaway car), it was Ms. Soliah who did the kicking. Furthermore, bullets found in the dead woman's body and scattered on the floor of the bank matched a gun found in a dresser drawer in Ms. Soliah's room in the S.L.A. safehouse. Ms. Soliah was also part of a plot to murder Los Angeles police officers by placing pipe bombs packed with nails under two squad cars. Ms. Soliah was indicted, but then fled to Zimbabwe. Eventually, she returned under her new alias and married a well-to-do and highly respected doctor in St. Paul, where she became a pillar of the community and a mom of three straight-arrow children, and where she confined her terrorist activities to dinner theater. (She became an amateur actress, with a specialty in God help us all Shakespeare.) What the F.B.I. could not do for two long decades, A.M.W. accomplished in 24 hours. Ms. Soliah was featured on that peerless instrument of law enforcement (I refer, of course, to "America's Most Wanted," a television program that ought to get a share of stimulus money, because it gets the job done, and on a shoestring). Before you could say "the quality of mercy is not strained" she was extradited to California and put on trial for some of the most serious crimes imaginable. In the courtroom, Ms. Olson was a real prize, changing her plea so many times that the frustrated judge asked her, "Were you lying to me then, or are you lying to me now?" Eventually she was convicted and sent to prison, but not before making it abundantly clear that while she admits guilt to a variety of charges, she does not feel remorse for her actions: she chalks them up to idealism and to the fact that O, sweet bird of youth she believed herself to have been "saving lives." She served seven years and was released last week, and that's when her long story came once again to the national fore: her lawyers persuaded California officials to let her serve parole back home in Minnesota. The legal maneuvering by which this bit of comfort has been extended to her and by which it is now being challenged is interesting. Because studies have proved that recidivism is lower in those cases in which a prisoner is released to his family, lawyers sometimes argue that the location of parole should be moved if such support is available elsewhere. But it's a hard case to argue. Only about 1 percent of those currently serving parole ordered by the California Department of Corrections are doing so out of state. Clearly, factors of race and class have come into play. As Celeste Fremon, an expert on gangs and criminal justice, observed on her blog Witness LA: "Over and over again I see young men of color sent away for decades for crimes of far lesser magnitude in which no one was injured. And when they get out on parole, they usually can't even get their paroles transferred to Riverside if that's what they need to be out of harm's way, get a job and be with their families much less Minnesota." The Los Angeles police union (understandably hopping mad that special treatment is being given to a woman who tried to assassinate police officers) is waging an interesting counterargument to Ms. Olson's lawyers. As their spokesman, Eric Rose, explained to me, her own family has not only refused to acknowledge her guilt, but also harbored her as a fugitive for more than two decades. Under the kind of scrutiny the justice system would put a family through if the parolee had committed another kind of crime drug dealing, for example Ms. Olson's family wouldn't pass muster on the first go-round. Obviously, what we have here among the woman's many supporters, and among her adversaries is a conflict of ideology. The former view radical actions of the early '70s as an almost necessary reaction to the times (and particularly to the war in Vietnam). They believe that a small group of people including, most notably of late, William Ayers may have been moved to violent action of a kind that is now regrettable, but which they are not likely ever to repeat. The latter define criminal behavior as just that: illegal actions, the punishment of which should not be influenced by the youthful beliefs that spurred them. So, what to do with Sara Jane Olson? For starters, she must be required to serve her year of parole in California, and the reason lies in the specific nature of the gang whose values she held so dearly. Unlike many other radical factions that emerged in the '70s, the S.L.A. combined a set of generally laudable goals they wanted to end poverty, improve public schools and eradicate racism and sexism with the leadership and tactics of an unrepentant street criminal with a gun fixation. Donald DeFreeze known as Cinque began his career as a thug at 14 when he joined a gang in New York, and he was serving a prison sentence for armed robbery of the distinctly non-idealistic variety when he got introduced to radical thinking and decided to bust out, gather a harem of addle-brained Berkeley students and force them to put down their copies of "The Little Red Book" so they could train, relentlessly, with the guns and ammo he loved so well. Consequently, for a bunch of hippies, the S.L.A. was a gang that could actually shoot straight. (That Ms. Soliah's bombs were duds is almost certainly the result of their having been built after DeFreeze had died; trust a Berkeley radical to get the rhetoric right but the wiring wrong.) It is Sara Jane Olson's criminal behavior that society has a right to punish, not her ideology. In her case, however, we have a rare opportunity to censure the former and honor the latter. The irreducible starting point of the S.L.A.'s agenda was the belief that the justice system treated blacks differently from whites. By offering herself up to serve her parole in the state, she will do her part to ensure that there are not two standards of justice, one for the white women who have Tudor-style houses and shadowed lawns to return to in a distant state let us call such women the "fascist insect" and the other for African-American women let us call them "the people" who enter the system with very little and leave it with even less. -- Caitlin Flanagan, the author of "To Hell With All That," is at work on a book about female adolescence. -------- Few people in Hatton talk about Olson http://www.jamestownsun.com/articles/index.cfm?id=82407§ion=news The Jamestown Sun Published Friday, March 20, 2009 HATTON, N.D. (AP) Sara Jane Olson was born in North Dakota and visited her grandparents in Hatton, but her release from a California prison this week drew little reaction from people in the area. Olson was born Kathleen Soliah in Fargo and spent her early years in Barnesville, Minn. The former 1970s radical, now 62, returned to Minnesota this week after serving seven years in a California prison for crimes with the Symbionese Liberation Army. She spent more than 20 years as a fugitive and had changed her name. H.L. "Curly" McLain, 82, the former school superintendent in Hatton, said he knew Kathleen's father, Martin "Marty" Soliah, through coaching. He remembered that one summer, he helped paint the Soliah house about four miles outside Hatton. "Everybody was aware of it," he said, referring to when Olson's SLA activities became news. Most people in the area "were very quiet about it" out of respect for the Soliahs, he said. "That's the way I felt about it," McLain said. "Marty had a lot of respect, growing up here." A few distant relatives of the Soliah children still live in the Hatton area but are not inclined to discuss her situation. "This is a house that has no comment," said a man who answered the phone at a Soliah residence in Mayville on Monday night. -------- Radical's release leaves 1 SLA member in prison http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iBZi2zkFM0TDquI5RaKVS0H2lazAD971KOA80 By DON THOMPSON 3/20/09 SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) This week's release of Sara Jane Olson to her adopted home state of Minnesota leaves one last member of the violent 1970s-era Symbionese Liberation Army still in prison, serving out the final months of his California sentence. James William Kilgore managed to elude authorities the longest of any of his former radical comrades, who made headlines with their kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, the murder of an Oakland school official and numerous bank robberies. Kilgore stayed underground for nearly three decades before being arrested in 2002 in Cape Town, South Africa. Like Olson his former girlfriend who was unmasked three years earlier the aging former radical had built a prosperous new life during his decades on the run. While Olson spent 24 years as a doctor's wife raising three daughters, Kilgore became a University of Cape Town professor, writing one of South Africa's most popular high school history books, "Making History," under his alias of Charles William Pape. And like Olson, who returned to St. Paul on Tuesday after serving a seven-year sentence, Kilgore wants to rejoin his family in the Midwest. Kilgore is asking that he be allowed to serve his year of parole in Illinois, though state prison officials have not decided whether to grant the request. "He's going to live in the States. His family has moved here," said attorney Louis Freeman of New York City, who represented Kilgore after his arrest and remains in contact with his former client. Kilgore, now 61, had married an American woman while living in South Africa. His wife teaches at a university, and his two sons have grown up while he's been in prison; one is in college, the other in high school. He is set to be released from High Desert State Prison at Susanville in May after completing a six-year sentence for the killing of suburban Sacramento housewife Myrna Opsahl during an April 1975 bank robbery. The state sentence is on top of a 54-month federal prison sentence for using the birth certificate of a dead baby to obtain a passport in Seattle and for possession of a pipe bomb that federal authorities said they found in his Daly City apartment in 1975. Kilgore was born in Portland, Ore., in 1947, but grew up near San Francisco. He was an athlete and honors student at San Rafael High School athlete, then graduated in 1969 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He grew into an SLA bomb-maker during the tumultuous days surrounding the collapse of the Vietnam War and resignation of disgraced President Richard M. Nixon. He escaped a 1974 shootout with Los Angeles police that killed six of the SLA's original members. The group was most notorious for murdering Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster and kidnapping Hearst. The heiress, who later contended she had been brainwashed, helped the group commit bank robberies including the one that killed Opsahl, a 42-year-old mother of four who was there to deposit a church collection. The robbery netted $15,000. "I can say if there is one day in my life I could live again, it would be that moment," Kilgore said at his sentencing for second-degree murder in 2004. William Harris; Harris' former wife, Emily Montague; Michael Bortin; and now Olson have all served time for the murder and been released. Kilgore disappeared from San Francisco on Sept. 18, 1975, the day FBI agents arrested Hearst and four other SLA members. He went with Olson, known then as Kathy Soliah, first to Minneapolis, then to Zimbabwe. Olson returned to the United States, while he remained in Africa until his arrest. Freeman, his attorney, said Kilgore has served his prison time like he lived his life after he fled the country: teaching. He taught other inmates Spanish and English as a second language, and learned sign language himself. Both Freeman and a 2003 probation report refer to Kilgore as a "model inmate" with no disciplinary problems. "He's just the kind of person who makes the best of every situation," said Freeman. "He's not somebody who grouses or complains or can't wait to get out." He expects Kilgore will return to teaching and writing, following the mold of former '60s radicals Angela Davis and Bill Ayers. Kilgore won grudging sympathy even from Jon Opsahl, who was 15 when his mother died of a shotgun blast during the bank robbery. "I had the most compassion, I think, for James Kilgore," Opsahl said. "I don't know why. I just think he had a little more of a pure, idealistic philosophy. ... He did not want anyone to get hurt. Even though he was the explosives expert, he always insisted that they go to great lengths to make sure no one was harmed. "I think he wanted to do good someplace in the world and he got in with the wrong crowd," Opsahl said. Kilgore apologized at his federal sentencing for violent acts he said were "misguided and misdirected." "There aren't any shortcuts to meaningful social change," he told the federal judge. -------- Final imprisoned SLA member seeks parole deal http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/03/sla-redux.html March 19, 2009 by Andrew Blankstein Just as the controversy surrounding Sara Jane Olson's release to Minnesota is beginning to fade, another could be heating up with word that one of her imprisoned Symbionese Liberation Army comrades is seeking a similar parole arrangement when he is released. James William Kilgore, 61, recently asked officials at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to allow him supervised parole in Illinois after his scheduled release in May from High Desert State prison in Susanville, in far northeastern California. Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said it is early in the process, and that Kilgore's request has been forwarded to Illinois, which must approve the request together with California prison officials. Kilgore was one of five SLA members including Michael Alexander Bortin, Emily Montague-Harris, William Taylor Harris and Olson who pleaded guilty in Sacramento County in 2002 to second-degree murder in the death of Myrna Opsahl during the April 21, 1975, robbery of Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, Calif. He admitted that he entered the bank with a revolver, but said he did not open fire. The former honors student and UC Santa Barbara graduate participated in the SLA's radical activities in the 1970s and was one of nation's most wanted fugitives for a quarter-century before he was arrested in Cape Town, South Africa. Similar to Olson, who refashioned herself from radical Katherine Soliah into a Midwestern soccer mom, Kilgore became a university professor under an assumed name, Charles William Pape. He eventually was sentenced to six years in prison. During his stint behind bars, he was transferred to federal custody and served time for federal explosives and passport fraud convictions. Kilgore said at his sentencing that he accepted full responsibility for his actions, adding, "I apologize with all my heart to the Opsahl family." UPDATED, 5 p.m.: Officials with the Los Angeles Police Protective League sent a letter Thursday to state prison officials stating their opposition to granting Kilgore supervised parole in Illinois. "I urge you not to grant supervised out-of-state parole to James William Kilgore," union President Paul M. Weber wrote in a letter to the parole board for High Desert State Prison and Illinois Gov. Patrick J. Quinn. A copy was provided to The Times. Kilgore "is a terrorist who participated in two bank robberies and a bombing campaign directed against police officers in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, then fled from justice." -------- Another Communist Terrorist to be Free http://www.rightsidenews.com/200903174034/editorial/another-communist-terrorist-to-be-free.html March 17, 2009 By Cliff Kincaid Another one of Bill Ayers' and Bernardine Dohrn's terrorist comrades is being released on the streets of America. Sara Jane Olson, a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an off-shoot of the Weather Underground, has served only seven years for involvement in the murder of a bank customer and the attempted murder of Los Angeles police officers by bombing their cars. Meanwhile, justice continues to be sought for the victims of Weather Underground terrorism such as San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell, who was killed by a bomb on February 16, 1970. Former FBI informant Larry Grathwohl has testified under oath that Ayers told him that Dohrn planted the bomb. The case has been re-opened and evidence is still being gathered. While the SLA committed murders, bank robberies and other acts of violence, it became notorious for kidnapping the granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Patty Hearst. In the document, "The Last SLA Statement," Bill Harris of the SLA declared that "The long run aim of the SLA was to work toward the annihilation of U.S. imperialism and the culture and institutions that support it." The SLA was part of "a people's army" to accomplish this goal. Ayers and Dohrn, leading members of the Weather Underground, had served as supporters of the "Sara Olson Defense Fund Committee," along with such luminaries as Keith Ellison, now a Democratic member of Congress from Minnesota. Olson was a fugitive for about 25 years until in 1999 she was discovered and apprehended and put on trial for her crimes. She pleaded guilty in 2002 to murdering a bank customer, Myrna Opsahl in 1975, and planting bombs intended to kill police. Opsahl was a 42-year-old mother of four who was trying to deposit money from a church collection. Olson, also known as Katherine Soliah, was sentenced to 14 years and became eligible for parole after seven years. Officials in Minnesota, where Olson hid out, and California, where her crimes were committed, have been arguing about where she should serve her probation. More attention should be paid to a dysfunctional justice system that permits a murderer to get out of prison after only seven years. In addition, the Olson support apparatus also deserves serious scrutiny. Ellison, the only Muslim member of Congress, was an attorney and member of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), which handled Olson's defense. The NLG was cited as a Communist Party front organization by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Today, the NLG specializes in accusing the U.S. Government of being too tough on terrorists and cop-killers and is still an affiliate of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, officially designated a Soviet front during the Cold War. News reports about Olson's impending release have inaccurately called her a "domestic terrorist" and have ignored her associations with Ayers and Dohrn. However, former Congressional investigator Herbert Romerstein points out that the SLA was in fact a group or section of the Weather Underground, which had connections to the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI, and the Soviet KGB. He notes that a Weather Underground communiqué dated February 20, 1974, and signed by Bernardine Dohrn discussed the work of the SLA and said that the purpose of the kidnapping of Patty Hearst was: "the guerillas have kidnapped the daughter of a rich and powerful man in order to provide food to the poor. Their action has unleashed an astonishing p(r)actical unity among people's organizations, and a leap in everyone's consciousness about the fundamental reality which will not die or pass into the memoires [sic] of a previous decade. That is, the war between the rich and the poor." Dohrn did question the SLA's murder of black educator Marcus Foster, the superintendent of Oakland's public schools, as he was not a "recognized enemy." But Dohrn said "it wrong to allow such questions to become a grant of immunity to enemies and executioners of the oppressed." So Dohrn wasn't too upset about the senseless murder of an innocent man, comments Romerstein. (See pages 17-20 of this report for the Dohrn communiqué.) A Court TV account of the Foster murder noted, "In a communiqué delivered to a radio station the next day, the SLA claimed responsibility for the murder and gave their motive: Foster's supposed support for mandatory photo ID cards for high school students. The SLA contended the program was a government scheme to establish prison-like surveillance at schools and that Foster was a CIA agent." Former FBI informant Grathwohl commented to AIM on Olson's release: "Isn't this wonderful? I see another book in the offing explaining why she did what she did! It is just another terrorist in our midst. Look at the list of endorsements to set Olson free. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were right there advocating her release. Why not? She's just a gray haired lady who didn't mean to hurt anyone. It's the same BS we've been listening to from Bill and Bernardine for years." In response to the incessant claims of Ayers and Dohrn that they never killed anybody, Grathwhol comments, "Marcus Foster was killed by the SLA and their association with the Weather Underground is documented." Grathwohl participated in a March 12 news conference demanding that charges be pursued against Ayers and Dohrn in connection with the McDonnell murder. He adds, "Where has our reason gone if somehow we can now accept bombings and terrorism as a means of protest? No wonder Mark Rudd admits his role in the plans to place bombs at Ft. Dix. They think they're bullet-proof and they can get away with anything. They might be right." Rudd was a Cuban-trained comrade of Ayers and Dohrn in the Weather Underground. Grathwohl's latter comments are a reference to Rudd's forthcoming book from Harper Collins, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Accuracy in Media has encouraged the public to appeal to Murdoch to cancel the book, out of sensitivity to the victims of Weather Underground terrorism. News Corporation executives in New York can be reached here. AIM is also asking Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and other TV personalities on the Fox News Channel, another subsidiary of News Corporation, to intervene with Murdoch and ask him to withdraw the Rudd book from publication. The Fox News Channel can be reached in Washington, D.C. at 202-824-6300. Please ask that they cover the controversy over the Mark Rudd book by going to the AIM site http://www.aim.org/ for information. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
