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What was a nice girl like Patt By JOSEPH M. RUSSIN The Voices of Guns It is three years since Patricia Hearst By Vin McLellan and Paul Avery. vanished kicking and screaming into Illustrated. 544 pp. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $14.95. the revolutionary psychodrama of the Symbionese Liberation Army. After al- most daily world-wide coverage and three S.L.A. trials, more than a half- The Life and Death of the S.L.A. dozen books have given us a pretty By good idea of what she did and when Les Payne and Tim Findley, With Carolyn Craven. she did it. The question is still why? lllustratetL369 pp. New York: Ballantine Books. Paper, $1.95. The two books at hand are the latest and most informative accounts of her once-haunting, now familiar odyssey. Both are the work of journalists who about the New Left in general and the books report, the S.L.A. were caring, were early hunters of the S.L.A.'s Berkeley Left in particular. As Tania gentle, even charming people. How seven-headed Cobra. While they offer Hearst once argued "we could be could such warm youngsters become no major revisions of S.L.A. history, anyone's daughter, son, husband, wife, cruel avengers of an uncaring prole- both teams have come across some lover, neighbor or friend." And in- tariat? fascinating missing pieces in the deed, while not exactly the best and None of the S.L.A. cadre led any puzzle. McLellan and Avery for the brightest, most of the S.L.A. of the protests of the 1960's and that, instance, reveal that the famous S.L.A. recruits were once numbered among McLellan and Avery argue, was part aversion to bugs ("Death to the Fascist the smartest of fashionable teen-agers of their problem. "They were young Insect That Preys Upon the Life of the in their towns. They came, for the radicals who had defined themselves People.") was well-founded. It was most part, from conservative or non- as revolutionaries in the late 60's.. known that filth-spawned cockroaches political families who often helped the [and] had then been caught treading led the F.B.I. to the main San Francis- F.B.I. in their hunt, But personal or water as tension waned in the quieter co hideout where Patty gave birth to political yearnings eventually led them years." Like those around them, the Tania. Now we learn that Wendy all to Berkeley. They came for and S.L.A. had dabbled in various libera- Yoshimura's fingerprint in the Penn- found demonstrations, • communes, tion movements without being liberat- sylvania .farm retreat, the clue which Marxist study groups, leftist teachers, ed and, guilt-laden by their white mid- eventually led to the arrest of Tania, drugs, protests and sex of every dle-class heritage, had sought vanguard Miss Yoshimura and S.L.A. charter biological and political persuasion. leadership among oppressed minority members Bill and Emily Harris, was Wendy Yoshimura's mother probably people who refused to revolt. Not until also insect-instigated: Wendy stuffed spoke for most of the parents when they turned to the politicized black a newspaper in her mattress to keep she told reporters, "Maybe if she had prisoners, the most oppressed repre- the bugs out. When the S.L.A. cleaned stayed in Fresno none of this would sentatives of the most oppressed their house of fingerprints, no one have happened." - - group, did the future soldiers of the remembered the paper. Still, Berkeley was only the soil, not S.L.A. find a leader whose very exist- "The Voices of Guns" is the more the seed. Most Berkeley revolution- ence conferred moral authority and ambitious and satisfying of these aries, as Payne and Findley observe, whose desperation to be someone and books, It knowledgeably depicts the were content to "prepare for the revo- to do something matched their own. S.L.A. as an inevitable, if mutant, lution as if it were a final examination In McLellan and Avery's account, growth of the California revolutionary in political science." The S.L.A. Army the S.L.A. was born when Donald De- subculture. "The Life and Death of the of 10 plotted the murder of black Freeze escaped from prison and S.L.A." is best at detailing the life educator Marcus Foster, kidnapped the chanced upon a group of crippled mis- histories of the core S.L.A, cadre, granddaughter of William Randolph fits whose personal frustration's were particularly the six who were in- Hearst, demanded and partially such that they could adopt a radical cinerated in the Los Angeles shootout. achieved a multi-million dollar feed- vision far removed from the realities The resumes of the S.L.A. confirm the-poor ransom scheme, robbed banks, of the outside world. But even the vi- every Middle-American nightmare defied scores of police to the last fire- sions of "Cinque Mtume," the Fifth scorched breath, and, in its second Prophet (as DeFreeze came to call him- Joseph M. Husain Is news director birth, apparently bombed industrial self), could not complete the alchemy of KPIX-TV in San Francisco. He has pockets all over northern California. that separted the S.L.A. from the cafe reported on the S.L.A. case from its The tragedy they produced included revolutionaries. It may seem reaction- beginning. their own lost lives. Individually, both ary, but from the evidence presented in these chronicles, the critical ingredi- ent was sex. Indeed, the full tale of the lives and loves of the S.L.A. sur- passes a pornographer's dream. The sex wasn't meant for titillation, reference to the literature of of course. These Intense young people The Voices kidnap victim psychology, and went about their coupling as seriously Continiaed.ltom Page 5 speculate instead on the pos- sible parallels to Maoist coer- as they pursued their weapons train- they say, she bombed buildings, cion and religious deprogram- ing. Once underground, they tried to helped rob banks and encourag- ming. Payne and Findley see view sex as just another essential need ed a feminist revolt in the re- nothing untoward about a requiring collective action. But our in- born S.L.A. rich adolescent, trapped in an vestigators 'say it never really worked But it's still unclear how this increasingly boring engage- out that way, and it hadn't begun there enigmatic heroine convinced ment, becoming entranced with either. Soon after Cinque escaped, the those around her after each women who speak their own familiar weakness of some radical startling change in her life. As minds and men who exude her- white middle-class women for black a teen-ager she skillfully won oic determination to right lovers provided him with romance, ref- the companionship of Steven wrongs her wealth helped to uge and female recruits. The women's Weed. As a kidnap victim her foster. Was Patricia Hearst a ultra feminist yearnings, complete passion for Cinque, Willie weak changeling or a premier with obligatory lesbianism, helped Wolfe and revolution was im- victim in an age of victim- hold them together. Sex did not lure pressive. As a fugitive she star- ization? Surely she was hor- most of the white men, but it appears tled collaborators with her tart ribly 'treated during her early that some of the women - came on tongue and commando bitchi- days with the S.L.A., justly ter- board as their bed partners first and ness. As a comrade she battled rified by watching the *loot- the male chauvinism of Bill out on television and hearing gunslingers later. To McLellan and Harris and "amazed" Wendy Avery, the S.L.A. "always carried a newsmen and police speculate Yoshimura with her strength. that her body, too, was in peculiar burden of unbridled sexual- "She is incredible," Yoshimura ity." Almost every turn of the S.L.A. flames, and, later, appropriate- wrote. "I swear only the tough- ly afraid of a life in prison. Her story seemed based in part on sleeping est could have come out of it trial only made the picture fuz- arrangements: with the exception of as she did." As a prisoner she zier. Indeed, F. Lee Bailey's Willie Wolfe, every member had some was an "unemployed urban argument that Patricia was sexual investment in the core group, guerrilla" seeking a revolution- both brainwashed and the un- and Willie Wolfe became the sexual ary feminist defense. As a de- willing victim of coercion link to their most celebrated comrade, fendant she was a frail victim served to increase her mortifi- Tanis Hearst. converted in prison to the Epis- Cation and, as it turned out, her Like the jury that convicted Patricia copal faith. As a convict she incarceration, In McLellan and Hearst; the two teams of authors find was an active informer on the Avery, "It was the misfortune her conversions both authentic and per- deeds of her one-time com- of Patricia Hearst"that her law- suasive. They also present some con- rades-at-arms. She herself told yers presented a trial defense vincing evidence the jury never heard. CBS that to others her story out of the 1950's, to a jury of Payne and Findley, for instance, quote must seem "crazy—it doesn't the 1970's, to explain an ex- "an S_L.A. member" describing the make any sense." perience that came out of the young kidnap victim as being gradual- McLellan and Avery agree 1960's, ly "caught up in the romanticism of that she developed "a psycho- The riddle of Tania, which being a revolutionary.

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