Playboy Interview: Sara Jane Moore

In the twilight of early morning, June 8, 1975, a black man named Wilbert "Popeye" Jackson and a woman friend were sitting in his car in San Francisco's Mission District, talking. Suddenly, there was a burst of gunfire, and when it stopped, both Jackson and his companion were dead.

At 3:30 P.M. on September 22, 1975, near San Francisco's Union Square, a single shot rang out, aimed at President Gerald R. Ford. The bullet missed and the would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, was immediately subdued.

The two events are not unrelated--and both were entangled with an even more bizarre crime, the kidnaping of Patricia Campbell Hearst. Sara Jane Moore, a middle-aged divorcee then working as a free-lance accountant in the East Bay Area, had volunteered bookkeeping services for the People in Need program set up by Randolph Hearst to distribute food to the poor in fulfillment of the demands of Patty's kidnapers, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Through PIN, Moore met Popeye Jackson, a revolutionary who headed the United Prisoners Union in San Francisco. Hearst and Moore believed that Jackson might, through his prison sources, be able to establish contact with the S.L.A. So Sara Jane--or Sally, as she often calls herself--became the liaison between Jackson and Hearst. All of which brought her to the attention of the FBI, which recruited her as an informant, asking her to report on the leftist groups with which she was becoming affiliated--and to whose doctrines she says she was gradually converted.

From the beginning, Moore was fascinated with Jackson, whom she regarded as her political mentor. Eventually, she gave up her comfortable home in suburbia to move into an apartment in San Francisco only a few blocks from where Popeye lived. The proximity, not incidentally, made it easier for her to continue her FBI-directed surveillance. Jackson, however, began to lose favor with other revolutionaries, who believed he might have received favors from the establishment, notably Hearst, in exchange for his help in the search for Patty. When he was killed, Moore--knowing it was she, in statements made when she had tried to repudiate her FBI relationship, who had let the cat out of the bag about the Jackson-Hearst connection--began looking over her shoulder. She's been doing so ever since; her conviction that she was marked for death, she has said, made it easier to risk the assassination attempt.

Who is Sara Jane Moore? Is that even her real name? Most reports say that she was born Sara Jane Kahn on February 15, 1930, in Charleston, West Virginia, and that Moore was her mother's name. Other published accounts vary; some say she was married twice, others four times; that she had borne four children, or five; that as a WAC in 1950 she fainted near the White House, suffering from amnesia. Moore herself refuses to clarify her past. Adding to the air of mystery surrounding her case is the fact that U. S. District Judge Samuel Conti, in pronouncing a sentence of life imprisonment after she entered a plea of guilty to the charge of attempted assassination, sealed all the trial evidence.

Andrew Hill, a free-lance writer and television newsman in San Francisco, met Moore during her stint with the People in Need program. A year later, he saw her again, marching in support of Cesar Chavez' United Farm Workers. After her arrest for the assassination attempt, Hill wrote an article about Moore, which she read. Deciding that he was perhaps one representative of the media she could trust, she invited him to visit her in her cell in the San Francisco County Jail, where she was incarcerated before sentencing. She has since been transferred to the Federal prison at Terminal Island, California. Hill's report on his two sessions with her, on which, plus several subsequent telephone conversations, this interview is based:

"I wondered what everybody else wondered about Sara Jane Moore: How did a seemingly well-educated, middle-class divorcee get entangled in such a mess? And why did she think knocking off the President would solve her problems? These are the things I asked her, and, to my surprise, she answered my questions with glib candor. She talked mostly about the FBI, about how she had naïvely believed that its agents were truly her friends, and about her resentment that that aspect of her life had not been more fully publicized. She spoke compassionately about her nine-year-old son, Frederick, whom she has tried to protect from the consequences of her action. She has arranged for him to live with friends in her absence.

"I came away from the sessions with the feeling that here was not so much a political kook as a victim--perhaps the yield of Bicentennial America, an unblended brew of stars, stripes, media hype, domestic spying and urban guerrilla warfare. It's especially difficult to cast this buoyant woman in the role of assassin. Yet she has insisted, in court, that such was, indeed, her intent. Our conversation began on that note."

[Q] Playboy: You told the court at the time you entered your guilty plea that you did intend to kill President Ford when you shot at him. Do you still stand by that statement?

[A] Moore: Yes, I wish I had killed him. Since I was arrested, I've been in four different jails. In each of them, people have asked me, "What were you trying to do when you fired the shot?" I always say, "I was trying to kill him." That's good for a minute or two of dead silence, because everybody expects I'm going to be struck dead on the spot. But then--whether the women are black or white, old or young, in for assault and battery, possession of marijuana or whatever--every one of them says, with really intense emotion, "I wish you had killed the motherfucker."

[Q] Playboy: What, specifically, do you have against President Ford?

[A] Moore: Oh, Ford is a nebbish. I have nothing against him personally. It was the office of the Presidency that I was trying to attack. Killing Ford would have shaken a lot of people up. More importantly, it would have elevated Nelson Rockefeller to the Presidency, and then people would see who the actual leaders of the country are. I guess I was giving the average American credit for a lot more political awareness than he has.

You see, what we have now is a phony Government. Nobody ever elected Rocky to the Vice-Presidency; he was governor of a state. Nobody elected Ford President: he was a Representative from a Congressional district. We've never had a true democracy here or anything even approaching it; now we don't even have representative government. We have a façade up there, and people say, "This proves the system works." But it doesn't. All it proves is that they--the real rulers of our country--have got a good thing going. Killing Ford would have meant that people would have had to face Rocky head on, which should rouse a lot of people out of their rationalizing daydreams.

[Q] Playboy: But how can you possibly justify assassination as a tool of political education?

[A] Moore: How can you justify hitting a child? That's what you do when you spank him. A government that uses assassination as a tool--whether against political leaders in other countries or against its own citizens to put down dissent--has to expect to have that tool turned against it. I regret the necessity for it, but I think it will be used more and more.

Sure, there's one part of me that's glad I didn't kill another human being, but my intent was to kill him. I knew what I was doing. The Government has tried to make me look like a crazy woman. That's an impression being deliberately fostered--with the press's enthusiastic cooperation--that I am a poor demented woman who went off her rocker and in a moment of madness fired at Gerald Ford.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't that the most likely explanation of your act?

[A] Moore: Look, in every case of violent political protest, there is a serious attempt to put it down as a kook's act and as quickly and quietly as possible sweep it under the rug, where we try to hide the growing discontent of the people in this country. Am I mad? That was for the psychiatrists and the courts to decide, and they said I was competent to stand trial. If I am mad, it's because I was driven to it by a growing feeling of rage at what has happened in this, my country, and a growing feeling of frustration at being unable to do anything about it.

You know, there's been a lot of talk about the need for more money to provide protection for Ford and other politicians. Doesn't anybody realize that the only way to protect our so-called leaders is to bring about qualitative change in this country so that we would have leaders who are of the people, a Government by the people and for the people? That's what our American tradition says we're supposed to have. What we do have are PR puppets controlled by corporate money monsters: enemies of the people. Somebody, somewhere along the way, must strike the spark that will kindle the prairie fire of a revolution in America. I tried and failed.

[Q] Playboy: You've been quoted as saying if you had had your .44, if the police hadn't confiscated it, you would have got Ford. Is that what you feel?

[A] Moore: Well, you know, I was stunned that I missed. I just could not believe that I missed. The trajectory of the shot, the history of the gun, leads me to believe that my aim was true, the shot was good--it was just that the .38 was a faulty gun. I had never fired that particular gun, the .38 I used that day. The police had confiscated my .44 the day before, so I had to get another gun that morning, September 22.

[Q] Playboy: And your shot went wild. What were you aiming for?

[A] Moore: His face. I knew he was wearing a bulletproof vest. It was always going to be a face shot. I'd been practicing.

[Q] Playboy: What did you practice on?

[A] Moore: A board about eight inches wide.

[Q] Playboy: Can you recall any of your feelings that day, when you fired at the President?

[A] Moore: I can even recite for you a poem I wrote at the time. I think it expresses my feelings as well as anything:

Hold--hold

Still my hand

Steady my eye

Chill my heart

And let my gun

Sing for the people

Scream their anger

Cleanse with their hate

And kill this monster.

[Q] Playboy: Was there no moment at which your determination wavered?

[A] Moore: Oh, yes. There was a point where anything could have stopped me and almost did. The most trivial little thing and I would have said, "Oh, this is ludicrous. What am I doing standing here?" There was a point where I was trapped ... I was actually up on the ropes, my hand in my purse, my finger on the trigger and the hammer back on the gun. I couldn't move, even if I had wanted to leave. I did try to leave once, but the crowd was just so tight ... there was a point where I thought, "This has to be the most ridiculous thing I have done in my entire life. What the hell am I doing here, getting ready to shoot the President?" I turned around to leave. Couldn't get through the crowd.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you concerned that you might shoot an innocent bystander?

[A] Moore: One of the things that bothered me about my court hearing was that one of the Secret Service agents lied about that. He said I told him I would have shot into the crowd. Actually, I told him I wouldn't have. That morning, I was listening to the newscasts about the President's coming in at the airport. The media people reported that he had been so surrounded by Secret Service men that they hadn't been able to see him. And I thought, "Oh-oh," because that possibility had never occurred to me. If he had come out with people very close to him or in front of him, I would not have fired.

[Q] Playboy: The possibility of Ford's being surrounded never occurred to you? Only a few weeks earlier. Lynette From me had pointed a gun at him, in the same part of the country. Certainly you realized he would have guards?

[A] Moore: Yes, I knew he would have guards, but a politician can't appear to fear the people and has to risk some exposure to them. That's why I had wanted to go to Palo Alto, where he was speaking the day before--to see what kind of security was around him. But I never got there, because I was picked up by the San Francisco police on orders--as I learned later that night--of the Secret Service.

[Q] Playboy: What was their reason for suspecting you?

[A] Moore: The San Francisco Police Department said it had had a tip I was carrying a loaded gun. The gun, my .44, was not loaded, and they let me go after a couple of hours. But they did keep both the gun and the ammunition they found in the car. When the Secret Service men picked me up later that night, they admitted it was they who had ordered the arrest. They said it was because they had had a tip I was going to Palo Alto with a loaded gun and might be planning to shoot the President. I told them I had wanted to go to Palo Alto to attend the anti-Ford demonstration, not to shoot the President, and that I had a gun with me because I always carried it.

At the end of the interview, I asked, "What the hell does all of this mean?" They said, "In the future, any time you and the President are in the same city, we will come and get you and at least talk to you." I asked, "For how long?" "For the rest of your life." And I was sitting there thinking, "My God, for the rest of my life!" They took me back to my flat about midnight or one o'clock. This is going to sound silly, but they had thrown me one hell of a challenge. They had my gun, they had my picture, but they had also set things up so that the only chance I had of doing this was the next day. They felt safe ... I seemed like such an unlikely assassin.

[Q] Playboy: When did you first get the idea of killing Ford?

[A] Moore: I don't think there was any one instant when I said, "I think it would be a nice thing to do as a political protest to kill the President."

[Q] Playboy: But there had to be some point at which you started to take the steps that would get you to Union Square on the 22nd of September.

[A] Moore: Yes, but I think that it was a culmination of things. I had been politically active--active in terms of doing things--as an FBI informant; I already had the habit of political protest. And there was more and more pressure being put on me. There was considerable pressure brought on me from the left in terms of proving my commitment--everything I did, everything they asked me to do that I did, wasn't enough. And I was getting angrier at injustices I saw. The escalation of what to me was an acceptable political act had begun some time before. There was also the need to break the tie with the FBI.

[Q] Playboy: What tie with the FBI? Haven't you stated publicly that you stopped working for the FBI in 1974?

[A] Moore: That's the story I've always told previously, but it was true only as far as it went. I did blow my own cover in July of 1974, and for some time I didn't do anything for the FBI. But I didn't go down and storm the FBI office and say "I quit." And eventually, by 1975, I had become a double agent.

[Q] Playboy: How long did you continue as a double agent?

[A] Moore: All the time.

[Q] Playboy: Wait a minute. Were you, in fact, doubling until the very last moment--say until the day before you took the shot at the President?

[A] Moore: Oh, the day before the shot, I don't think I was doing anything.

[Q] Playboy: But right up to September 1975?

[A] Moore: I'm not going to answer that, and I'm not sure that I could. I talked to Bert, my FBI control officer, the morning of the assassination attempt, but it had nothing to do with that. God, it is all really hard to explain. But the FBI wasn't going to throw me out and I wasn't feeling strong enough to break the tie by myself. So, for a long time, I'd been trying to do something that would accomplish two things: Number one, it would publicly commit me to several things I had said; and, number two, I planned to burn myself so badly with my FBI contacts that they would not dare use me again.

[Q] Playboy: We'd say you succeeded in burning yourself with the FBI. But let's examine what you just said about committing yourself publicly. Can you honestly say that there wasn't something in you--aside from any political considerations--that was seeking the limelight? Didn't you want to make history in the most notorious way possible?

[A] Moore: No, I was not seeking publicity; the world-wide publicity stunned me. My world had become so small and so local that I thought only in those terms. I hoped the act would mark a turning point in history but thought of myself as a tool of history rather than a maker of it. I still cannot fully understand or accept how much attention has been focused on me personally. It was the act and its reasons that were important--that it happened to be me was important only in that my background would, I hoped, embarrass and damage the FBI and the Government.

[Q] Playboy: When Judge Samuel Conti pronounced sentence on you, he expressed the opinion that you never would have shot at Ford if we still had capital-punishment statutes on the books. You wrote to him that the death penalty would not have deterred you; you said you were "already under a death sentence." What did you mean by that?

[A] Moore: I had been receiving death threats. Just in the previous few weeks, I had finally got scared enough to ask the San Francisco Police Department for protection. I was going to get killed. I'm glad to see stories in the papers, finally, that people are admitting they had told me that. If anyone was saying I was safe, I never heard it. I even got calls from people out of town, saying, "My God, do you know what we've heard from our underground contacts?" They were calling to tell me I was going to be killed. The FBI had told me I was in danger and they wanted to contact the S.F.P.D. I got them to promise not to do it without my permission, but they did it anyway. When people began dying around me, though, I began to think maybe I was next.

[Q] Playboy: People such as Popeye Jackson, the black revolutionary friend of yours who was murdered last June?

[A] Moore: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: What reason did the FBI give for thinking you were in danger?

[A] Moore: One of their other sources had told them an organization on the left had discovered I was a pig and wanted to take care of me. The FBI didn't know for some time that I had blown my own cover to the left; I didn't tell them. I went through a very freaky time.

[Q] Playboy: How did that whole tangle--your involvement with the FBI and with the underground left--get started?

[A] Moore: I had been a political activist all my life. People tend to think of a political activist as a left-wing person, but a political activist is someone who goes out and does things. I had worked for things I believed in for a long time, some of them for 20 or 30 years, and they hadn't got much better.

[Q] Playboy: Such as?

[A] Moore: Civil rights, particularly. I think I first became involved when I was a teenager and Marian Anderson was to sing in a concert in my home town. There was a controversy because she refused to sing in a segregated public auditorium.

[Q] Playboy: Where was that?

[A] Moore: I never talk about my past life at all. That's the choice I've made. I feel if people who knew me wish to come forth and identify themselves with me, that should be their choice, not something I dragged them into.

[Q] Playboy: What about the more recent past? How did you come to work for the FBI?

[A] Moore: It all started when I volunteered to work for the People in Need program, the food-distribution centers that Randy Hearst set up after Patty was kidnaped. Popeye, who was head of the United Prisoners Union, offered to help Randy get in touch with Patty, and I was the go-between. The FBI learned about it and asked me who had made the offer and I was afraid to tell them. I asked them why they wanted to know and they told me that they were not interested in picking this person up; they were not interested even in what he was going to do. They said it was their policy never to interfere with anything the family did, that their sole concern was the safe return of the kidnaped victim. After the victim was safely returned, you bet your boots they were going to go out and catch the kidnapers and maybe kill them if they resisted, but, according to them, until that point, they never interfered with any arrangements the parents made. But they said, as I was well aware, Randy had been ripped off dozens of times. We sat down and estimated how many times Randy or his agents had gone out on the street at 2:30 in the morning with $300 to buy information. We had all been this route.

[Q] Playboy: You speak of Hearst as Randy. Had you known him before Patty's kidnaping?

[A] Moore: No. I had met the Hearsts once years before at a social function, but we didn't know one another.

[Q] Playboy: So you finally told the FBI that it was Popeye who made the offer?

[A] Moore: Yes, I told them. Now, this was a freaky thing. The FBI agents were in and out of Randy's office all the time. As a matter of fact, my first conversation with them had been inside Hearst's office itself. So when they said they wanted me to meet someone else from the bureau, I said, "Fine." And I called them the next morning on my coffee break--we had arranged that--and they told me, "Go stand on such and such a street corner and a green car with license number so-and-so will pick you up." I thought, "This has to be the wildest B-movie nonsense I have ever heard in my life." They were serious; they do it just like in the movies. I don't know whether the movies are made because that's the way the bureau does it or whether the movies have done it so often that the bureau plays along, but I swear to God it's exactly like that--the codes and all, just like a very bad movie script. There I was, standing on a street corner feeling so obvious, when the green car pulled up with a man in the back seat.

[Q] Playboy: Who was in the back seat?

[A] Moore: Bertram Worthington, who later became my control officer. They wanted to go somewhere and have coffee, but I was scared. They had so firmly convinced me it wasn't cool for me to be seen with them that I was afraid to have coffee with them. So I suggested somewhere in Golden Gate Park and they said, "Well, you're twice as obvious sitting in a parked car." We compromised by going out to Pacific Heights and parking. They said something that's very true: The most private place is a public place.

At any rate, I told the FBI then that the man who had made the offer to Randy Hearst was Popeye Jackson. Bert said, "It's highly improbable, but it's possible that they would trust him."

[Q] Playboy: They meaning the Symbionese Liberation Army?

[A] Moore: Yes. They asked me a lot of questions about what Popeye said and why I thought he knew S.L.A. people and I answered them. They said that he was telling the truth, that he did know them. They asked me if I would look at some pictures and I said yes. At a subsequent meeting with Worthington, I looked at the pictures, identified some people I had either seen or met, identified one man I had met on two occasions. They said that they had a continuing interest in that one man in particular. Then I asked, "What has this got to do with the S.L.A. and Patty and Popeye?" They said, "We feel that if anyone is currently in touch with the S.L.A., this man is."

[Q] Playboy: Who was he?

[A] Moore: I've never identified him publicly. I've given him a pseudonym; I call him Tom. When the FBI agents told me they thought Tom was in touch with the S.L.A., I said, "You're joking." They assured me that they were not. I had several conversations with Worthington. He asked at one point if I thought I could arrange to see Tom again and if I was willing to do so. I agreed to work with them and Tom became my target.

I was at that time attending benefits, seminars and things on the background of the left. I was listening to left people--not the left people I'd worked with in the antiwar movement, not liberals or anything like that, but guerrilla types, closer to terrorist types. Not Weather-people, not S.L.A. but the group of people in the middle who stand up and support the bombers.

[Q] Playboy: Did you come to believe that Toni was connected with the S.L.A.?

[A] Moore: Oh, well, he admitted it. Yes, he knew most of the S.L.A. people. He had recruited two of the original women--not into the S.L.A. itself but into an organization that he belonged to.

[Q] Playboy: You don't know which one?

[A] Moore: Yes, but I'm not going to say.

[Q] Playboy: Is he still active?

[A] Moore: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: The FBI is therefore maintaining its continuing interest in him?

[A] Moore: Oh, sure. The FBI's going to chop him down and everybody else, too. The FBI practice is to chop down the leaders before they get anywhere. And they're good at it.

[Q] Playboy: Did the FBI also maintain an interest in your connection with Jackson?

[A] Moore: The FBI didn't care that much about Popeye. It used him as--kind of a training thing for me. All that we talked about in terms of Popeye was how his people were reacting to me--how I felt about what was being said at the benefits and seminars I was attending; in other words, was I being accepted by these people? And there were some messages Popeye had given me, some messages reputedly from the S.L.A. or its associates. One of those messages I believe to have been authentic.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Moore: It had the right feel. Number one, the way Popeye treated it; number two, the wording of it. By that time, I was permeated with the S.L.A. I knew people who knew its members; I had read every communiqué, had a catalog--I was one of the few people around who had a copy of every one of its tapes, every one of its communiqués.

[Q] Playboy: What happened to your collection?

[A] Moore: I hope it hasn't been lost. The FBI confiscated it after I was arrested, but I think it has been returned to my attorney's office.

[Q] Playboy: Did the FBI believe the message was genuine?

[A] Moore: No, the FBI had doubts about its authenticity. One thing about the FBI, it's very specific. For instance, if I were writing a report on you today, I would give the date, what time you got here, that you were wearing brown corduroy pants and Hush Puppy shoes, etc., etc. I asked them once why they wanted that kind of detail, which I thought was trivial: where we had coffee, how you took your coffee, whether you ordered anything with it, the content of your social conversation as well as your political conversation. They said it was because they needed to know these people as well as their best friends knew them or better. I asked them why and they said, "So we'll be able to predict how they'll react." And they do. They know the most intimate details about people--if they really decide they want to know about you, they'll know how often you go to the bathroom, I swear to God.

[Q] Playboy: How much money did the FBI offer for your services?

[A] Moore: The money thing I would like to clarify. I never took money for services. I refused any money in the beginning, but finally I did accept reimbursement for expenditures. If they said to me, "Go to this store and buy this book," I would go, and when I gave them the book, I'd say, "That will be $1.55." The actual amount of money I received from the FBI was $816.26.

[Q] Playboy: Were the FBI agents people you could talk to and trust? Did you see them socially and regard them as real people?

[A] Moore: In the beginning, yes, I regarded them as real people--but I don't totally regard them as real people now.

[Q] Playboy: What happened to alienate you from them?

[A] Moore: Well, they targeted me to infiltrate a group--they moved me very quickly. First of all, by the time the S.L.A. thing became moot, my purpose had changed. The people this man, Tom, knew were killed in the shoot-out in Los Angeles where six S.L.A. members were killed, so it never came up again. He knew Emily and Bill Harris, but they weren't the people he really knew well. By that time, I had really gone the FBI route, infiltrating a Communist cadre group and reporting on it. I was by then a real Potential Security Informant, a P.S.I., as they call it. It was freaky. I didn't like what I was doing. Those people were not at all what the FBI had pictured them to be--they'd pictured them to be kind of evil incarnate, paid agents of a foreign government. They painted them as real baddies and I met them--and they weren't baddies at all. The people I met were very dedicated, extremely. I found I shared their dreams and I envied their dedication.

[Q] Playboy: Which groups did you inform on?

[A] Moore: I reported on the Vietnam Veterans Against the War/Winter Soldier Organization, on the Revolutionary Union, on the October League, on the Socialist Workers Party and on the Communist League, which later became the Communist Labor Party. I reported on groups and people peripheral to the Weather Underground. I reported on the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. In addition, I filed reports on the U. S.-China People's Friendship Association, the May First Movement and K.D.P., which is the Philippine Liberation Group. I also reported on the Black Workers Congress.

[Q] Playboy: What is meant by reporting on groups and individuals? What, specifically, did you do?

[A] Moore: I take shorthand, so at meetings I wrote up minutes. At most meetings, people take notes, so nobody paid much attention to me. I made notes on conversations that took place before and after meetings: who said what to whom. I also reported on individual people. I supplied the FBI with addresses and phone numbers--even on one occasion stealing and copying an address book belonging to someone they had a continuing interest in. I reported on study groups I heard about and who participated and what they were reading. I looked at pictures taken at demonstrations, identifying people and their organizational affiliations. I gave the FBI literature and, on a couple of occasions, copies of internal policy papers of groups I knew. Sometimes I made analyses of organizations, spotting evidences of divisiveness within them, and so on. The FBI always likes to know who in an organization is getting mad at the group. One of its primary ways of recruiting people is making contact with those who are mad at organizations. If they haven't already left the group, the FBI tries to get them to smooth over their differences, stay in the group and report on it. If they've already left the group, the FBI will contact them and see if they want to be debriefed about the organization.

[Q] Playboy: Were your assignments specific?

[A] Moore: Oh, I rarely had real assignments. They were more like suggestions to check on particular groups. I didn't report on every group I was associated with. I worked in coalitions; I went to seminars; I met people; I listened. I jabber on and on and it's a real fooler, because people think of me as old gabby box, but old gabby box listens.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever give the FBI any information that turned out to be destructive to the organizations and individuals you reported on?

[A] Moore: Well, I know now, because of the things I've seen since my arrest, that they started files on people they didn't previously have files on. Someone asked me if anyone was now in prison as the result of any report that I had made. I countered that by saying there are some people in prison on whom I had filed reports. Whether or not anything I said was directly or indirectly responsible for their arrests, I do not know.

[Q] Playboy: Was Worthington your only FBI contact?

[A] Moore: No, I answered questions for other agents who knew me only in terms of my code name. My real identity was known, I was told, only to my contact and his immediate superior. Not even the director himself knew my true identity. I think that was a pile of shit, all that supposed secrecy. Although the reason the bureau gave me for it at the time was really very good. They said they did not want anybody to make a slip. In other words, if I were somewhere where people were being arrested, or if I were participating in a demonstration, they did not want any other agent to make a slip in public.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you blow your own cover in 1974? Was it under pressure from left-wing organizations?

[A] Moore: No, there was no pressure then. I had not yet converted to Marxism. I knew so little ... I still know very little about Marxism. But I began to see that the leftist people I was working with were not enemies of this country--they were dedicated people working for qualitative change. They were not evil. Yes, they recognized revolution, they were dedicated to the armed overthrow of the Government--because they did not think there was any other way to do it. I became aware of how dangerous what I was doing was, how dangerous it was in terms of those people. I was looking at people getting arrested on the basis of information like that which I was telling the FBI--I was looking at people getting killed. I couldn't do what I was doing anymore. You can't fink on friends. You can't be a snitch. I could always have walked away from it; I could have just gone back out to suburbia and done my thing. I was still living in suburbia at that point. But I didn't want to--I wanted to continue to study. I didn't know if these people had the right answers, but certainly they seemed to have a viable alternative. But the bureau still knew where to find me; I would be under surveillance like everybody else. I was afraid of the bureau. It kills people. FBI agents are quite honest about killing people. They have three ways they neutralize people. One of those three ways is to kill them.

[Q] Playboy: What are the two others?

[A] Moore: They convict them or they hassle them until they burn out.

[Q] Playboy: Someone at the bureau told you this?

[A] Moore: Oh, yes; they're quite open about the way they handle these things. They talk about neutralizing people and I finally asked them, "What the hell do you mean by neutralizing?" Those are the three ways they neutralize enemies, they said. "Look at the S.L.A. They don't hesitate; they go armed." It was Worthington who first said to me, "I don't think you take this seriously enough. This is a war." Bert goes armed 24 hours a day. The FBI people don't hesitate; they shoot. For me to get up the courage to try to shoot someone--you don't know what I went through, the idea of killing another human being. It doesn't bother them. I'm serious. They really don't care. If anyone thinks they do, think again. Death for them is simply a way to neutralize someone.

[Q] Playboy: Is that what you were referring to earlier when you said a government that used assassination as a tool must expect it to be turned against it? Could you have learned the use of assassination as a tool from the FBI?

[A] Moore: Partly, I suppose. There has been so much killing.

[Q] Playboy: Just how did you go about telling your leftist friends that you had been an FBI informant?

[A] Moore: At first I told only Tom. That was in July of 1974, as I said. It was really funny. The night that I told him I was a pig--it was the first time I'd ever used the word pig--I was just talking to him and I said, "There's something I've got to tell you." I kept saying, "No, don't leave." I finally said, "I'm a pig." He said, "S.F.P.D.?" I said, "No." He said, "State?" I said, "No." He said, "Treasury Department?" I said, "No." He said, "That leaves only one. FBI?" I said, "Yes." He didn't believe it. Look at me--would you believe it if I said, "I'm an FBI pig"? A white, upper-middle-class suburbanite wandering around in the left? Well, he didn't believe it, either. That's why I was good at it; I just don't look like an agent. But he asked me enough questions to satisfy himself and finally he realized that I was, indeed, what I said I was.

[Q] Playboy: What was his reaction?

[A] Moore: Well, he said the FBI would never let me go--and it doesn't really ever let you go, I have to tell you that--once they've got you, they've got you. Anyway, Tom said that they would never let me go--not and keep working on the left. Tom had to talk it over with his group.

[Q] Playboy: Then what happened?

[A] Moore: The decision of Tom's group was that I was a security risk to them and therefore they had to break off all contact with me. However, they believed in my sincerity and therefore they were making what to them was a dangerous decision. They would not tell anyone else I was a pig. I was left free to find my way in the movement as best I could. So, for many months, Tom said nothing to anyone, which means he was going directly contrary to the code, and therefore I do not feel that I can ever say who he is, because I do not want it to land on him that he didn't tell.

[Q] Playboy: What did you say to the FBI?

[A] Moore: Nothing, at first. I got a call from Worthington telling me he would be in Washington and we would be out of touch for a while. So it was a while before I told him I had blown myself.

[Q] Playboy: But even after your confession to Tom, you went back to the FBI. Why?

[A] Moore: I'm not sure I can explain it, partly because I don't totally understand why myself. When Tom said, "Go make your own way" and cut off all contact, I didn't realize how thoroughly I was going to be isolated. When you're in a group, you're getting mailings, you're talking to people, you're going to meetings. ... When they cut you off, you're really cut off. I had peripheral, surface contacts with other groups, but I was not happy with surface contacts. Being out of touch with the FBI also made me realize to what extent my studies had been directed by them and that it was from them I was really learning who was doing what on the left. I remember thinking the only way I was going to make my own way was to have the Feds head me in another direction.

I also began to remember things the FBI had told me about Tom and his background--confirmed by Tom himself. I began to wonder whether Tom's group might not be setting me up. What he had done was contrary to all I had heard about the way "pig agents" were treated when they were discovered. And you have to remember that violence and death were very real in the Bay Area then--Marcus Foster had been killed, Patty Hearst kidnaped. The People in Need program operated in a sea of threats and violence. Then there was the S.L.A.'s fiery shoot-out in L.A.

So I was struggling with my beliefs, struggling to find a place to continue studying and working, struggling against fear. Because Worthington was away, the FBI wasn't aware anything had changed. When he had left, his instructions to me had been just to continue but not to contact the bureau "unless something heavy happened." If that happened, I was to ask for Frank Doyle, who was Bert's backup. Well, something heavy did happen and I did make contact with Doyle.

[Q] Playboy: What happened?

[A] Moore: Let's just say I learned that a group the FBI had been interested in was about to take an action. Anyway, I did contact Doyle--and so the link stayed intact.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't the FBI suspect anything?

[A] Moore: Yes, I did finally tell Bert I had blown myself to Tom. As was the bureau's policy, I was dropped as a source and strongly "advised" to get out of the movement.

[Q] Playboy: That was still in 1974?

[A] Moore: Yes, early in September, I think. When I refused to heed this advice and appeared to be successful in maintaining contacts and even in making what to them were important new contacts on the left, Bert apparently argued successfully with his supervisor to reformalize my status as a P.S.I. According to him, that was the first time the bureau had ever continued with a blown source.

[Q] Playboy: And when did that reinstatement with the FBI take place?

[A] Moore: October 1974.

[Q] Playboy: When and why did you decide to start telling other people, besides Tom, something about your FBI activities?

[A] Moore: In January 1975, I told Charles Garry, the lawyer handling the San Quentin Six trial, about my FBI association up to July of '74. He convinced me my activities had been more harmful than I realized and that I owed it to the people I had reported on to let them know what I had done, especially if I were serious about continuing to work in the radical left. He was right. It was good advice. It eventually led to my making the assassination attempt and being here in prison, but it was right. I would not change that if I went back to change things. It was the only thing I could do if I believed what I said and wanted to continue working.

[Q] Playboy: So you followed Garry's advice?

[A] Moore: Yes. I called a leader in each of the three main organizations I had worked with in the movement and told them. I learned very quickly that I had to be rigid about the July 1974 thing, that I could not say that I had waffled through that summer and fall if I wanted to remain in the movement, which I did. There was some acceptance of me because I had come to them. Two organizations handled my story at the leadership level, but the third one spread it everywhere, and it began to go around the movement just like wildfire. And people began to come down on me very, very heavily. That's when I started actively reporting to the FBI again. The FBI is right, you know, about what happens when you get mad. But, at the same time, my heart and mind were with the revolutionaries. This is the part I do not understand about myself. People say, "Why?" and I say, "I can't answer it."

Anyway, this is the point at which I started doubling. Once I realized that that was what I was actually doing, I became very serious about keeping up my association with the FBI, because I began to see that was really the only way I could serve the left. Now, that was probably bastard reasoning, but I was piping information about the FBI to people in the movement. Telling people who thought they were clandestine members of organizations that the FBI knew about them, things like that. But I was scared, because if anybody had paid too much attention to what I said, it would have been obvious that some of the stuff I was talking about I couldn't possibly have known before July 1974, because it hadn't happened yet.

[Q] Playboy: But you were also piping information about people in the movement to the FBI?

[A] Moore: Yes. It was incredible. The faster word about me spread through the movement, the more new people came to me to ask me questions--and the more information I was able to give about them to the FBI.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't that bother you?

[A] Moore: Sure it did, and I don't know how I handled that. Part of it was that I thought if they were so goddamned stupid--I mean, here I was, walking around, an admitted FBI informant, or, as they thought, former FBI informant, and if they were so goddamned stupid as to talk to me, they needed to be taught a lesson.

[Q] Playboy: One might make the same observation about the FBI agents. If they thought you had converted to the left, why did they trust you?

[A] Moore: Oh, all right, I can give you an answer to that. Number one, I had told them I had become disillusioned with the left. Number two, the stuff I gave the FBI was hard information. I never fudged with them; what I gave them was accurate. I had done something very valuable for them in the fall of 1974. That was one of the few times that I didn't have any struggle with my conscience. I will intrigue you a little with this: That was the point at which the seed of what finally happened on September 22, 1975, was planted. That was the one time when my political beliefs, what I wanted to have happen, coincided with something that the bureau and the Secret Service wanted.

[Q] Playboy: You have intrigued us. What was it?

[A] Moore: Maybe sometime I'll tell you about it. Not now.

[Q] Playboy: Why are you telling us these other incriminating things now? That, in particular, though you claimed to have been converted to the left, you had continued serving as an FBI informant?

[A] Moore: What I'm trying to do now is tell the truth. Be honest. The FBI is likely to make sure that I'm uncomfortable, but so what? At this point, I really don't care. I'm in jail. There isn't anything more anybody can do to me except kill me.

You see, all this period, when I was doubling, was a very freaky one in my life. Nobody knew I was doubling. There were actually not two but three Sally Moores operating at that point: one, the Sally Moore moving toward armed protest and starting to work with people dedicated to violence, telling no one--not the FBI, not friends on the left; two, the Sally Moore, converted informant, struggling to find acceptance with the theoreticians and "respectable" Communists; and, three, Sally Moore, FBI informant, reporting on who was asking me what about my "past," as well as on the new groups and people I was meeting.

People on the left said to me, "You've got to write your experiences down. You've got to reduce to writing what happened. Write down how you got involved, what you did for the FBI, whom you involved--you've got to reduce it to writing."

[Q] Playboy: What did the FBI say about that?

[A] Moore: They first said enough was enough, that I should "stonewall" all further conversation about my past. When I refused, saying I couldn't get anywhere without some public statement, I was asked to, one, stay with the story I had previously told, revealing no more and, if possible, even less than I had already admitted, and, two, be honest about their instructions to me, their treatment of me. In other words, to avoid telling any more than I had to, but what I did tell, make it the truth.

So I tried to reduce my entire FBI experience to writing. The written statement was very important to people on the left. There was some talk that my statement could either be circulated among the leadership in various cadre groups on the left or be given general circulations, depending on what was in it. There were six people who saw the first draft. Everyone said, "No. It's too dangerous; it's too hot." I thought they were talking in terms of what law enforcement might do to me, not to people on the left. I never used Popeye's name in the statement, but he was instantly recognizable. When he was killed, all I could think about was that I had fingered him. When I hung up the phone after hearing the news, my immediate thought was, "Oh, my God, I've killed Popeye." That same week, I got another call. The voice on the other end said, "You're next."

[Q] Playboy: Is that when you decided to buy a gun?

[A] Moore: I bought both of my guns from a man named Mark Fernwood. He's one of the leaders of the John Birch Society in the East Bay Area. Of course, had he been on the left or even a liberal, he would now be in jail, charged with conspiracy or as an accessory, instead of out there making money. He was dickering at one point with the U. S. Attorney to have the gun I shot at Ford with returned to him; he was going to sell it as a collector's item.

[Q] Playboy: How did you make connections with Fernwood?

[A] Moore: Well, I lived in the East Bay for a while, in Birch country, and I knew a lot of Birch people. I could see there were people on the radical right doing the same things that the FBI was arresting people for on the left. The FBI was very interested in guns, who had them, where they got them, how they used them--things like that. So every now and then, I would talk to them about somebody I knew who had guns, somebody who was anti-Government, and they'd get really interested. "Who was it?" And I'd tell them, "A member of the John Birch Society," and I'd get a lecture on the right of citizens to bear arms and protect their homes and such. I got angrier and angrier at things like that, so I got ready to get a gun. The only reason I did was that my life was in danger. As a matter of fact, I asked the FBI for advice on what kind of gun to get. I asked my contact officers in the FBI and I also began asking other people.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't that indiscreet?

[A] Moore: What's the point of getting a gun to protect yourself and keeping it a secret? I wanted people to know I had the goddamn thing. People already realized I knew how to handle weapons: That was one of my attractions to the left.

[Q] Playboy: When did you learn how to handle guns?

[A] Moore: I'd had some weapons training when I was younger, mostly rifles and shotguns. Target shooting, skeet. I was surprised that I retained as much as I did. It's like riding a bicycle, I guess: Once you learn, you never forget. Anyway, because I could handle weapons, the FBI loved me. I was an accountant who knew about guns and they thought the left wouldn't be able to resist me. It was almost true. Anyway, I was trying to figure out what kind of gun to get. I really hadn't had much experience with handguns. The consensus was that it should be a revolver. Actually, the .44 was a little more gun than I wanted, a heavier caliber, but I tried it and it wasn't that bad. I thought it was going to have a lot more kick than it did. I liked that particular gun.

Originally, I was going to go down to the local gun exchange--to a perfectly open and legitimate place--and sign my name, wait my five days and get my gun. All of a sudden, everybody said, "You don't want to do that, because they report all those to the police." I thought, "Well, I've already told the police I'm going to get the gun," but I wasn't saying that to anybody else. Everybody seemed to be freaked out about the fact that I was thinking of walking into a store and legally buying a weapon. I just couldn't understand that. Not everyone I know is a revolutionary, but all I heard was, "You know how the police are about guns." I said, "No, tell me how the police are about guns." But a conservative friend of mine said, "What's wrong with giving your business to friends?" and told me he had a friend who sold guns.

[Q] Playboy: That was Fernwood. Where did you meet him?

[A] Moore: At his house. You know, just going into the house, you would never know that he sold guns. You had to be introduced by a friend. It was very much like it would be on the left--they have a clandestine group on the right, too. They have a secret shooting range, secret firing range. One of them even told me I should never buy ordinary ammunition; I should use dumdums. There's a diagram that you've probably seen in the paper of how the dumdum goes in and makes a three-inch hole. You talk about bloodthirsty people! No one on the left is as bloodthirsty as those right-wingers. This is the thing that makes me angry. I spent those two years since the Hearst kidnaping getting angrier and angrier. Part of it was what I was learning on the left; part of it was Marxist theory, which was really turning me on.

[Q] Playboy: Did you practice shooting on the Fern wood range?

[A] Moore: Well, yes, I did shoot there once, but I had shot elsewhere, also.

[Q] Playboy: You say your initial purpose in buying guns was to protect yourself. At what point did you decide, "Aha, now I've got a gun. I'm going to use it on Ford"?

[A] Moore: That is the part that I don't think I can talk about. I just haven't figured out a way to talk about it and protect everyone. I'm not saying that anyone helped me plan it. I'm just saying that there are other things--which means there are other people, though not in terms of a conspiracy. There are areas I'm still not willing to talk about for a lot of reasons.

[Q] Playboy: You said that you'd been threatened, that you were afraid for your life. Did that push you to the point of wanting to kill Ford?

[A] Moore: I wasn't pushed. What the death threats that had been made against me did was give me freedom. In other words, I genuinely felt, I still do feel, that I was going to be killed. I don't feel it as strongly now. Someone asked me if my attempt on Ford wasn't really suicide. I said, "Hell, no." I knew it then, but I really know it now, because I had none of the depression or anything afterward. It was a risk that I was running. But the risk wasn't that great, because it was a question of how I was going to be killed, anyway. Was I ever that much in danger? I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: Why couldn't your protest have taken some less lethal form?

[A] Moore: I tried other things. Before the assassination attempt, I talked to a New York Times reporter and offered to set the FBI up by filing an unsigned report and getting Worthington to set up a meet, which the Times would have photographed, showing me signing it. The reporter wanted to do the story but was afraid of a setup. He was afraid of what the FBI would do to him. I was stunned. He was afraid that they would question him or subpoena him for doing the story, to find out what I might have told him. I told him the FBI knew what I knew and would probably assume I had told him everything, but since they weren't particularly interested in making it public, they would have nothing to gain by subpoenaing him. He was very much afraid that the FBI would see us together. I never felt good about him and so I told him I wasn't interested in doing the story.

[Q] Playboy: Did you try anything else before shooting at Ford?

[A] Moore: I tried to go underground, started attempting to contact one of the guerrilla groups. I had made the first contact with them--and then Popeye was killed. After that, things moved too fast. The underground accused me of fingering Popeye; the FBI warned me that I was in danger and should contact the S.F.P.D. for protection. The FBI also told me not to talk to the police about Popeye's death; if they asked, I was to use my First and Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions. That made me more scared. An offer of police protection came from the S.F.P.D.; I refused almost in a panic, telling them that, in effect, they would be signing my death warrant. A journalist who was writing a story about me decided it was necessary to interview my FBI control officer. The FBI did not know of the proposed story, so I begged the writer not to place me in danger. "I don't think you understand the forces you're going to set in motion," I said. The reply was that I was already in danger, according to reports from movement contacts. [The journalist in question contacted Playboy and denied the allegation.--Ed.] The interview with the FBI took place. They warned the interviewer that I was probably in real physical danger if the story was done. I heard the tapes on which they said that--the journalist played them for me.

[Q] Playboy: What did the FBI say to you?

[A] Moore: They descended on me and threatened me--told me to get out of town, read me the riot act about going public. Charles Bates, special agent in charge of the San Francisco office, told me if the FBI did not like anything in the proposed story, they would ask some higher-ups at the publication to edit it out, that they had done this before.

[Q] Playboy: And did they make such a request?

[A] Moore: I don't know, but I kept looking, in vain, for the story. Now, that little episode simply set me up for the next chapter. When the FBI, along with everyone else--maybe even at their direction through informants in various groups--told me to get out of town, I said I had no money. They, the FBI, wanted the information I had on the underground, so they made a generous money offer for it. When I demurred, they added the inducement of relocation for my son and me--even new identities, if I insisted. I was tempted, mighty tempted. I was scared, and I also wanted an escape from the course I had embarked on.

But I found I had finally reached a point at which I couldn't trade someone else's freedom for my own. And so finally the fence walking ended--and the course ahead was set. The many other things I'd considered as actions I might take against the FBI and the Government were discarded as not really forwarding the cause of revolution. I felt that assassinating Ford would. I never doubted that I would succeed if I got a clear shot at him; I'm a good shot.

How the plan went wrong from the beginning was really like a two-reel comedy. I wanted to get away and go underground; I started telling people I was tired, that I needed to get away for a while. I made arrangements for friends to take my son, but those went awry. I planned to sublet my flat, but that fell through.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't you just leave the flat?

[A] Moore: It had everything I owned in it, some things that were precious to me: paintings, furniture, all the adult equivalents of a child's Teddy bear. Besides, I had an unexpected house guest during the week that I had intended to destroy papers, including that list that says I planned to assassinate the President. And good old Squeaky Fromme did her thing. If it hadn't been for that incident, Ford would probably have crossed the street to shake hands and I would have had a better chance.

[Q] Playboy: Why hasn't your version of events been more widely publicized?

[A] Moore: I get so goddamned mad. I made statements and nobody printed them. Are the members of the press forgetting that many of them have in the past told me I was sensible, reliable, accurate, honest and reasonable--even likable? Or, to badly paraphrase Shakespeare, is it that the mistakes and frailties of men live on in the press, while the good is often interred beyond recall? There are two or three things I feel I ought to say to people, particularly about the callous, deliberate, manipulative techniques of the FBI, whose agents are not, as I had always believed, impartial investigators but instruments of political action--using people as expendable tools for the repression and harassment of honest dissenters. I wrote a poem about the FBI. I'd like to read it to you:

Said the FBI, "You are a mother,help us.

If they truly love the people, howcan theydeliberately cause such anguish?"

Said the FBI, "You are a patriot,help us.

If they truly love the people, howcan theydeliberately cause such chaos thattearsat the very fiber of our community?"

Said the FBI, "You are moral andChristian, help us.

If they truly love the people, howcan theykill and steal and bomb?"

So I went out among the people asyour agent.

To look for the kidnapers, to talk to the killers, to know the thief, to find the bombers.

And I heard from the kidnapers,who even intheir running had a message ofconcern and lovefor their brother, not knowing hewas beinga Judas to protect his own child.

And then they died in flames--yourflames.

You are parents and yet you killedand overkilled.

Where was your concern for theanguished motheror innocent kidnap victim?

You are the killers: killers ofhope, killersof freedom, killers of children.You--smug,protective and self-righteous.

Yes, I learned to know those youcall thieves,who take back for the people thatwhich wastorn from them, first with whips,then with oppression,in the name of "progress through profits."

And finally I found the bombers andembraced themas comrades, and now withflameswe speak ourlove and our hate.

"A government that uses assassination as a tool--whether in other countries or against its own citizens--has to expect to have that tool turned against it."

"One thing about the FBI, it's very specific. If they really decide they want to know about you, they'll know how often you go to the bathroom, I swear to God."

"I started actively reporting to the FBI again. But my heart and mind were with the revolutionaries. This is the part I do not understand about myself."

"When I hung up the phone, my immediate thought was, 'Oh, my God, I've killed Popeye.' I got another call. The voice on the other end said, 'You're next.'"

"Squeaky From me did her thing. If it hadn't been for that, Ford would probably have crossed the street to shake hands and I would have had a better chance."