Playboy Interview: Patricia Hearst

Before the night of February 4, 1974, few people had heard of Patricia Campbell Hearst. To those who knew her, she was a 19-year-old Berkeley college student majoring in art history and living with her fiancé, Steven Weed, 26, a graduate student in philosophy. Her family, of course, which controls America's largest privately owned media-and-land conglomerate, is well-known, not least because of the exploits of Patricia's grandfather, the publishing lycoon immortalized in "Citizen Kane." But until that night, Patricia's own concerns didn't extend beyond the butterflies she felt over her impending high-society wedding.

Then, abruptly, her life turned upside down and her name became a household word. Kidnaped from her apartment and thrown into the trunk of a car, she disappeared for 19 months, and the question "Where is Patty Hearst?" became a national guessing game.

Her abductors were a group of eight people led by ex-convict Donald Defreeze, known as Cinque, who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army. They first achieved notoriety by claiming responsibility for the November 6, 1973, slaying of Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster. Two of the original S.L.A. group--Joe Remiro and Russell Little--had been arrested for the murder.

As Hearst would later tell it, she was originally kidnaped as a way of releasing Remiro and Little--a political swap, in other words--but when her kidnaping caused a world-wide sensation, the S.L.A. changed its objective. Thus began an extraordinary year and a half--for Patricia Hearst and for America.

For 57 days, this child of affluence and privilege was kept bound and blindfolded in two small closets as the S.L.A. demanded "reparations" for poor people and issued statements to the media. Then came an astonishing announcement: Patricia Hearst, according to her own taped statement, had decided to join her captors and fight against the "corporate ruling class": "I have been given the choice of being released in a safe area or joining the forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army and fighting for my freedom and the freedom of all oppressed people. I have chosen to stay and fight. . . . I have been given the name Tania, after a comrade who fought alongside Ché [Guevara] in Bolivia. . . . I have learned how vicious the pig really is, and [my] comrades are leaching me to attach with even greater viciousness."

A short time later, another shock: The S.L.A., armed with automatic weapons, robbed the Hibernia Bank branch in San Francisco, wounding one person. There, as photos taken by the bank's cameras later revealed, was Patty Hearst, holding a weapon and covering her comrades. Her conversion was apparently real.

As Patty would later testify, Cinque moved the group shortly after the bank robbery to Los Angeles, where they holed up in a "safe house" in a black neighborhood. Cinque sent his "soldiers" out on practice missions in three-person teams, and it was on one such expedition that Patty and her team members, Emily and Bill Harris, emerged again into the public spotlight. It was also the last time the three of them would see the rest of the S.L.A. alive.

Outside a Los Angeles sporting-goods store, Bill Harris was caught shoplifting and was wrestled to the sidewalk. In a van across the street, Tania "instinctively" reached for her automatic weapon and opened fire. Bill and Emily Harris escaped and the three took off, abandoning their van, hijacking another vehicle and eventually fleeing to a motel in Anaheim, near Disneyland, where they were to await a rendezvous with their comrades. In the motel room, they switched on the TV to witness the L.A. police and the FBI shooting their safe house into flames and smoke, killing all of the other S.L.A. members.

The remaining three embarked on what has become known as "the missing year." Squabbling among themselves, they returned to San Francisco, where they met Jack Scott, a sportswriter and radical sympathizer, who had previously helped another friend, Wendy Yoshimura. Scott offered to get them to New York and set them up at his Pennsylvania farmhouse. They agreed and Scott, along with his parents, personally drove Tania to New York.

The odyssey continued, eluding the FBI as they moved from their Pennsylvania hide-out to one in the New York Catskills and then back west again to Las Vegas and Sacramento. Though separated many times from her companions, Patty made no attempt to escape--and, indeed, never even considered it. As she explained at her trial, she felt there was no place to escape to. The FBI was after her, then-Attorney General of the U.S. William Saxbe had called her a "common criminal" and she believed her parents would want nothing to do with her.

In Sacramento, the three were joined by radical sympathizers Jim Kilgore, Kathy Soliah and her brother, Steven, Wendy Yoshimura and Mike Bortin. There they staged a holdup of the Crocker National Bank branch in Carmichael, during which Myrna Lee Opsahl, 42, mother of four teenaged children, was shot and killed. Patty did not directly participate in that robbery but, according to her book, did drive a getaway car. The group then decided to flee Sacramento and return to San Francisco. There they began a series of police-car bombings, and it was there, finally, that Patty was arrested on September 18, 1975.

Patty Hearst's fugitive life was over, but her ordeal continued. Her parents hired flamboyant attorney F. Lee Bailey to defend her. The trial became a carnival of psychiatric testimony, in which psychiatrists claimed that Patty was a victim of "coercive persuasion"--brainwashing--and wasn't responsible for her actions, while prosecutor Jim Browning argued that she fully knew what she was doing. In what was perhaps the most damaging evidence of all, an Olmec monkey-head charm that S.L.A. member Willie Wolfe had given to her was found in her possession, even though she claimed at the trial that she detested Wolfe. The little charm apparently was construed as proof that she had loved him--and had participated voluntarily in S.L.A. crimes.

Hearst was convicted of bank robbery in 1976 and sentenced to seven years in prison. After she had served nearly two years, her sentence was commuted by President Carter. Since it was not a pardon, Hearst is still trying to get her conviction reversed by the courts.

While she has been the subject of at least nine books, including ones by her ex-fiancé Steven Weed and her former guard, Janey Jimenez, her own story has just appeared for the first time, in a book she and author Alvin Moscow wrote called "Every Secret Thing."

Now married to one of her former bodyguards, San Francisco policeman Bernie Shaw, and the mother of an eight-month-old daughter, Patty agreed to sit down with Contributing Editor Lawrence Grobel (whose last "Playboy Interview" was with Henry Fonda in December 1981) and give her first indepth interview ever. Grobel's report:

"For more than 18 months, ever since I met Patricia and she agreed to an 'exclusive' interview, I had prepared myself for this. 'I'm not going to do anything else,' she told me. 'This will be it.' And then: silence. Her book publisher instructed her not to do any interviews because she'd be ruining the impact of her book. So she told me we'd have to wait until the book was completed. Once it was, she was under pressure from her publisher to maximize publicity. She'd give me the longest, most serious interview, but it would no longer be exclusive.

"Well, that's showbiz, I thought, although I wondered why Patricia would let herself be manipulated for the sake of book sales. But, to be fair, Patricia insists she has more than just money on her mind. She feels she's suffered a great injustice and she wants the record corrected. She knows that people perceive her as a weak, submissive, easily persuaded young woman with little mind of her own, and she's determined to change that image.

"We arranged to meet in a suite at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in San Mateo, a five-minute drive from where she and her husband, Bernie, live. The first day, she was late because her baby had overslept, but once she arrived, we talked for nearly six hours. During breaks to feed and change her daughter, I noticed from one of the windows two police cars on the rooftop of the building next to the hotel. It was shortly after the capture of a Weather Underground fugitive, Kathy Boudin, in New York, and it occurred to me that the police might again be interested in Patty. At least, the cops inside the cars seemed to be looking in our direction. . . . Patricia was skeptical about my fears, but when the wind made the door to the adjoining suite creak, Patricia looked up with a start--then wondered seriously if someone might be listening to our conversation.

"After a few days in San Mateo, we picked up our interview sessions in Los Angeles. For more than 20 hours, I grilled her. She was everything I expected her to be: arrogant, sarcastic, conservative, forceful . . . yes, funny and likable. But being interrogated was nothing new to her: She had gotten used to it after months of probing by the FBI, court-appointed and personal psychologists and psychiatrists, lawyers, D.A.s and prosecuting attorneys. I couldn't help thinking of T. S. Eliot's lines in 'Prufrock': 'When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall / Then how should I begin / To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?' Patricia had been through at least a few circles of hell and had managed not just to survive but to persevere. And she was only now beginning to spit it all out."

[Q] Playboy: Simply put, after all this time, why the book--and the media blitz surrounding it?

[A] Hearst: Because I just wanted to get on with my life. It was actually fun to finally be able to just write what happened. I didn't have to say, "Well, the prosecutor said this, but what really happened. . . ." Forget it! They had their day in court, and I don't have to answer anything they said! I just had to say what happened. And any old lie they want to tell, they can, but not in my book.

I answered some major things, like, was I a bad girl all my life? No, I wasn't.

[Q] Playboy: How many of the books about you have you read? Shana Alexander's book, Anyone's Daughter?

[A] Hearst: Oh, no. Is that book about me or about her? I have lawyers who read books like that. If you think it's about me, I can't help it.

[Q] Playboy: What about the book by your former guard, Janey Jimenez--My Prisoner? Or Jean Kinney's book on Willie Wolfe? Or Steven Weed's book?

[A] Hearst: [Laughing] No, I haven't read any of those books. I don't feel I have to prepare myself to answer questions about someone else's work. That's probably why I don't read them, so I don't have to waste my time.

[Q] Playboy: You've got your own book to plug.

[A] Hearst: Yeah, I've got my own.

[Q] Playboy: With the $80,000 you received for your book, plus whatever sums you'll get from the paperback and possible movie rights, and the $50,000 Look supposedly paid you for exclusive pictures of your wedding, it certainly seems like you're cashing in on your celebrity with a vengeance.

[A] Hearst: No. With Look, our attitude at the time was kind of like, why not? We didn't get the full $50,000. But it was a nice little chunk of money and it paid the down payment on our house. As for this book. I didn't want some schlocky, high-powered promotion. That would be cheap and sensational and I've had plenty of that. I just wanted a nice, lowkey promotion and that's what I got. I'm not going on the Johnny Carson show to sit and listen to those dumb jokes. I'm not an entertainer.

[Q] Playboy: Well, low-key promotion or not, you certainly have been in demand by journalists and the media. What's your opinion of those of us who want a shot at your story?

[A] Hearst: I have a very hard time respecting reporters. That seems like such a sleazy job. chasing people, a pencil and pad in your hand, annoying people. They're so undignified. In New York, they're nuts. I have never seen in my whole life a more unsophisticated press. They just cannot control themselves. We had one girl jumping on Bernie's back. Then they hit our car. These were people from the press wanting an interview! Then there was a National Enquirer reporter who came running at me at my home. I didn't know who he was, just this scruffy, scraggy man who jumped out of a car and leaped at me. I ran inside and called the police. Within minutes, they came, threw him over the hood of it and frisked him. They found out he was from the Enquirer. Yuk! So then, of course, they ran an article about how I lived in terror!

[Q] Playboy: What about the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner--are there any reporters there you respect?

[A] Hearst: I don't know. They change. There's a big turnover in this reporting business. I don't read the by-lines. Hey, you know, anybody could write that stuff. Isn't that awful! I don't know who any of them are. And I'm not the only one in my family who doesn't know any of the reporters.

[Q] Playboy: Were the media guilty of overkill in your case?

[A] Hearst: It was getting to the point where people were so sick of me, they just couldn't stand it anymore. They'd go, "I don't care what happens to her. Please, no more! No more!" [Laughs] That's how I felt, too. I know how they felt!

[Q] Playboy: Well, before that happens again, let's turn over the tape and examine what happened to you.

[A] Hearst: This is the first time I've given an interview with a tape recorder. I absolutely have a thing about tapes. I'm always afraid that some jerk will get hold of them and play them on the radio. Funny thing, I don't know why! How odd!

[Q] Playboy: Since your story will have been retold often by the time this interview is published, we'll try not to cover details that are too familiar. But let's go back to that night of February 4, 1974. You and Steven were in your Berkeley apartment when there was a knock on the door. The next thing you know, you're being carried outside, screaming, and thrown into the trunk of a car. What was going through your mind?

[A] Hearst: I just remember screaming my head off as loud as I could. I wanted the whole world to hear. It's really hard to describe sheer terror. You just don't comprehend being kidnaped unless it happens to you. I don't believe there's anything quite like it. I just remember feeling cold, numb and scared.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you have a premonition four days before that you might be kidnaped?

[A] Hearst: Probably because they were following me all over the place: that's why I had that creepy feeling. When people are following you, you don't always know it. but you know how you feel. Suddenly, you will look over your shoulder and somebody will be looking at you. They said later they'd been following me for a long time, back and forth to classes. They thought it was a big joke to tell me, "You always take the same route home." They had been watching that apartment all day long.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever find it darkly humorous that Steven was shouting. "Take anything you want." to them and-----

[A] Hearst: Yes, of course, Right, "Gee, thanks, we'll take her." That's probably why I said, "No, no, not me." [Laughs] Take the stereo!

[Q] Playboy: Not long after, the Chicago Tribune titled an article, "hidden cyanide bullets found in patty's apartment." The implication was that the bullets were yours.

[A] Hearst: Not true. DeFreeze lost his bullets in the struggle and they got kicked under a bookcase, which is where they found them. Then, promptly, the FBI assumed they must be mine. Thanks a lot, you guys. This is, like, a day after I'm kidnaped, and they think I'm doing it to myself. And you can't get that out of people's minds. They read something like that and it doesn't matter what else they see--all they remember is that. "Well, you know, she had bullets in her apartment. Cyanide bullets!" Or, "She took her driver's license with her; she must have known she was being kidnaped." I didn't take my driver's license; they did.

[Q] Playboy: Do you still care what people think?

[A] Hearst: Yeah. I do, I care if somebody thinks that I kidnaped myself or knew these people beforehand. There was no way that I knew any of these people! There has never been any evidence or any presentation on the part of the Government that that was so. And yet, it's this incredibly long-lived rumor.

[Q] Playboy: Did you expect the S.L.A. to try to exchange you for Joe Remiro and Russell Little? Or to ask for a ransom?

[A] Hearst: The original plan was to exchange hostages. But then they got caught up in all the publicity and they started thinking of something else. They were media freaks. They just couldn't control themselves. The news, press, they were addicted to it! They never, ever really asked for anything as a ransom. The money [for the food program] was just a good-faith gesture: that wasn't even the ransom to them. Well, what kind of a hope is that? I was more scared when I started realizing they weren't going to ask for money for ransom. It was so hopeless then. "What are they going to do?" I asked myself. "Why me? I couldn't have been that bad!" [Laugh] i certainly hadn't been that good, either--a few minor transgressions, but I certainly don't think I needed some kind of testing.

[Q] Playboy: Most of the world knows you were taken to a house in Daly City, later transferred in a garbage can to an apartment in San Francisco and kept blindfolded in a small closet for 57 days, with the radio turned up loud to keep you from overhearing them and a foulsmelling mattress on the floor, Other than staying alive, did anything seem very important to you?

[A] Hearst: It seemed important to try and understand what they were talking about. They thought I was so stupid and bourgeois and horrible that, if I could understand what they were saying and spit it back at them, it would make it easier to get along with them. So that was important.

[Q] Playboy: Was that when they were calling you Marie Antoinette?

[A] Hearst: That's how they felt about me: that I was just so oblivious to everything: that by my lifestyle I was saying. "Let them eat cake." My lifestyle! I was just some dumb kid going to college!

[Q] Playboy: So you didn't see your kidnaping as a political act?

[A] Hearst: I don't think it's a very political act to kidnap somebody's daughter instead of her father, whom they could just as easily have kidnaped at that point. But [sarcastically] they were afraid to go kidnap the great big man, so they went after a little bitty girl.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that had they gone after your father it would have made as much news as their taking you?

[A] Hearst: It certainly would have. And it wouldn't have created all the lurid fantasies that went along with it: "Ah-hah, there's a black man there. Lots of women revolutionaries. We know what's really going on." If it had been my father, it could have been more to the point, but that's not how they operated. They wanted to sneak around. Their motto was, "He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day."

[Q] Playboy: At the beginning, did you see them as crazies or as revolutionaries?

[A] Hearst: At first, I thought they were just absolutely insane, and that in itself was frightening. Later, I stopped viewing them as being insane and decided they had some kind of purpose. But their purpose was really very confused. You just have no idea how creepy they were!

[Q] Playboy: During the first days, did you think you'd probably be rescued?

[A] Hearst: For a long time, I really thought I would be rescued--you know, a tunnel up through the floor or some Mission: Impossible type of rescue. But at the point where Cinque came to the closet and gave me my ultimatum--"Fight or die"--I started thinking I wouldn't be rescued for quite some time.

[Q] Playboy: Bill and Emily Harris say that you were never told to join or die.

[A] Hearst: Well, they're liars.

[Q] Playboy: In your book, you write that Cinque was alone in the closet with you when he told you that. So isn't it possible that the others--including the Harrises--never knew he said that?

[A] Hearst: It's true, they may not be lying. They may actually have not known that he said that. It's possible, yeah.

[Q] Playboy: And, of course, Cinque is dead, so we have to take your word for it.

[A] Hearst: Or else you can just not believe me. But he definitely said it. He said that in other revolutions, it's common practice to capture people and make them join, and they never see their families again. I never believed I had a choice. I still don't believe it. I'll never believe it.

[Q] Playboy: It's been well publicized that you were raped during your 57 days in the closet by both Cujo [Willie Wolfe] and Cinque. Emily Harris has said, "What is so disgusting is that Patty would just fabricate this tale about Willie's assaulting her."

[A] Hearst: More disgusting is the fact that he did it.

[Q] Playboy: Were you forcibly raped?

[A] Hearst: I sure was. And it was humiliating. There've been plenty of times I just wished I hadn't even bothered to say I was, because I get questions like, "Really raped?" When you're in a closet, blindfolded . . . . I'm sorry, I don't care what your definition of rape is--I don't care how willing somebody is to do it rather than be killed or whatever she thinks might happen--that's rape!

[Q] Playboy: During your trial, your attorney Al Johnson dramatically described a time when Cinque entered the closet and lifted you off the floor by your nipples. Did that happen?

[A] Hearst: By my nipples? Wow. That's amazing. I don't remember that. I wasn't lifted off the floor. I was pinched very hard, but I was not lifted. That's the kind of thing I try very hard to just forget.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have a fear that you were going to be a sexual pawn for them all--women as well as men?

[A] Hearst: Yeah, I did. But it didn't happen. One of the trial psychiatrists, Dr. Louis J. West, was so positive that I slept with women. He would have been the happiest man if I had said. "Yes, I did." I thought it was just too strange: Why does he want to hear me say this so desperately?

[Q] Playboy: Maybe he was trying to see if (continued on page 84)Patricia Hearst(continued from page 76) you had reached a point where you had repressed it and couldn't remember it at all.

[A] Hearst: Maybe that was it.

[Q] Playboy: How long did your fear of homosexual advances last?

[A] Hearst: Until after I got the blindfold off and started seeing exactly how they were interacting with one another. The women were too uptight to have forced sex with me. They were so repressed themselves, in spite of everything they said. It's one thing to have it with the men, but to force two women to have it, no way; they were just way too uptight.

[Q] Playboy: They couldn't have been that uptight. You describe in your book how all the women, including yourself, often walked around topless during the day.

[A] Hearst: It was a very conscious thing on their part to be casual about nudity, but it was not this relaxed atmosphere. They all thought it was revolutionary. They all did.

[Q] Playboy: During your captivity, did you ever worry about getting pregnant?

[A] Hearst: I sure did.

[Q] Playboy: How would you describe your living conditions with the S.L.A.?

[A] Hearst: I was living in fifth.

[Q] Playboy: Did you all actually share a communal toothbrush?

[A] Hearst: Isn't that disgusting? All those horrible people and all their cooties! But it was bourgeois to think that you needed your own toothbrush.

[Q] Playboy: How similar were you to the S.L.A. women?

[A] Hearst: Probably brought up fairly similarly. I don't think that they were necessarily better educated than me, though. I had an awfully good, solid background in high school and was doing all right in college.

[Q] Playboy: Would you consider them feminists?

[A] Hearst: No, I don't think they were feminists at all. They mouthed a lot of feminist slogans, but their behavior was sexist. And it was a weird kind of sexism, too. Like: We're really feminists, but in order to be revolutionaries we have to be macho. Most feminists are not heavily into violence. These women thought that they needed men to teach them, because men are more violent and that's really the best way to be. That's not my idea of any kind of feminist. Women are historically the pillage of war, and so I was just one more bit of plunder.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about the women who were involved in your kidnaping. What was Patricia Mizmoon Soltysik, who was called Zoya, like?

[A] Hearst: She was a scary person, because she was very, very cold, just icy cold, to everyone. Unapproachable and cruel. She'd turn on the charm and be sweet occasionally, but not very often. She talked about slitting a chicken's throat once and the blood going all over everybody, how it was good practice for killing people, a toughening, ritualistic blood bath. You know, people read these descriptions in papers, like, they were just a bunch of nice college kids--a little mixed up, but nice. They just weren't nice.

[Q] Playboy: Let's go on to Gabi: Camilla Hall.

[A] Hearst: She would have been very nice had she not been involved in this group. She was an artist, but DeFreeze thought her artwork was bourgeois and didn't want her to talk about it. She was forced to repress her artistic feelings. You could see she was upset. It was really crummy.

She didn't seem to belong there at all, not just artistically but sexually. DeFreeze was very, very uncomfortable with her homosexuality. It's like he was afraid of her, almost phobic when it came to her, and since he was the leader, that made it awfully hard for her. It's really sick the way they treated her. She was miserably unhappy, but she didn't leave. She was in love with Patricia Soltysik and followed her into this happy little band of weirdos and ended up getting killed in L.A.

[Q] Playboy: Were she and Soltysik still lovers?

[A] Hearst: No, that had ended. And when Zoya would sleep with DeFreeze, Camilla Hall would cry. It was a terrible, terrible situation for her.

[Q] Playboy: What about Gelina: Angela Atwood?

[A] Hearst: I describe her as being giggly. She was livelier than the rest, the comedy relief of the S.L.A. She was the only one who would joke around with DeFreeze. Like, if he told her to do pushups, she could give him a phony, silly salute and not get knocked across the room. She'd still do push-ups. She was definitely the easiest to pass the days with. She was Joe Remiro's girlfriend and she wanted nothing more than to get him out of prison; that's what she was doing there. She'd sit and practice drawing her gun and then say, "The prison pigs are dead!"

[Q] Playboy: Her purpose, then, was romantic? A love story?

[A] Hearst: She was romantic, but she was also political. I hate to call it radical politics, because it wasn't. It was terrorist. The purpose was anarchy, and that is antipolitics.

[Q] Playboy: Nancy Ling Perry, who was called Fahizah?

[A] Hearst: She was much more mystical than the rest of them, in a weird way. She worshiped DeFreeze, really believed he was a prophet from God.

[Q] Playboy: Yolanda and Teko--Emily and Bill Harris--are still in prison, and we'll be talking more about them as we go on, since you were intimately involved with them throughout your 19 months underground. Is there anything you want to say about them now, before we get to Cujo and Cinque?

[A] Hearst: Just that I now think I know them better than they know themselves.

[Q] Playboy: They'll love to read that.

[A] Hearst: Oh, of course. They're so busy lying about themselves. Like, when they stood in the courtroom and Emily cried, "I'll miss my wonderful husband so desperately." This is their plea at sentencing? Come on! Those two were hardly together even when they were arrested. They loved and hated each other. But to use that as a ploy! All my family wants them dead. My mother is the one who really thinks they ought to be dead. She would like to kill them. The satisfaction of getting her own hands on them! [Laughs] She says she'd like to slap their sassy faces.

[Q] Playboy: And yourself?

[A] Hearst: I feel about them like I do about a terribly sick dog, that they'd be so much happier if they were put out of their misery [laughs]--put them to sleep.

[Q] Playboy: In your book, you repeatedly say you'd like to have killed the Harrises.

[A] Hearst: Yeah. Thank goodness I didn't. I'd probably be charged with their murder and executed for it. [Lauglis] It's hard to believe that they will really be out of prison soon. They got a terribly good deal in their sentences in Alameda County. They were extremely lucky. Maybe after my book, something will happen; maybe charges will be brought against Emily Harris.

[Q] Playboy: We're jumping ahead of our story now, but let's go to the killing of Mrs. Myrna Lee Opsahl, the 42-year-old mother of four who got shot during the Crocker Bank robbery in Carmichael. You say, unequivocally, that Emily Harris killed her. Did you witness it?

[A] Hearst: No. She admitted to me right after she did it that she'd done it.

[Q] Playboy: What was said, exactly?

[A] Hearst: Jim Kilgore said something about the woman who was shot. I said, "Who did it?" And Emily said, "I did." Now, Doubleday's lawyers are confident enough to leave that in the book. Doubleday's not having any problem with that. If they thought for a second that it wasn't true, it wouldn't be in there. The fact of it is, it's true. It's been told to the FBI. It's been told to the Sacramento County D.A.'s and Sheriff's offices.

[Q] Playboy: Why, then, wasn't Emily Harris brought to trial on a murder charge?

[A] Hearst: Hey, don't ask me. I'm not with the D.A.'s office. They haven't done it. They should do it. I feel what they've done is hope that by not thinking about it, it will just go away. I mean, they could conceivably try me for it for writing about it in the book and saying that I know about it. But it's not right for them to just pretend it didn't happen and try to ignore it. Here she goes and kills someone and immediately justifies it by saying, "Well, she was just a pig, anyway, her husband was a doctor." Well, God!

[Q] Playboy: Did you all know immediately that the woman had been killed?

[A] Hearst: Emily says it was an accident because her finger must have slipped on the trigger. Well. She couldn't have been more than nine feet away with a shotgun going off, and they always used double-ought buck, which isn't exactly bird shot. It's a shotgun shell with nine pellets in it, and each pellet is the size of a .30-caliber slug. Anybody would get killed from that.

[Q] Playboy: When Emily told you that, did it make you feel you were in deeper than ever then?

[A] Hearst: It made me feel very worried for myself, because when they really do it, and you're right there, they'll kill anybody; they'll kill me. Yeah, they killed Marcus Foster, but I wasn't around then. With this woman, I was right next to Emily as she's saying she's done it. It's just so much more immediate, the smoking gun is still in her hand.

[Q] Playboy: The way it stands now, both Bill and Emily Harris are due to be released in 1983. Is there any chance they won't be?

[A] Hearst: I doubt it. There's no rethinking. Her sentence expires. She's served all her time.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you'll ever see them again? Think they might try to get in touch with you?

[A] Hearst: Oh, they had best hope not. I have no intention of seeking them out.

[Q] Playboy: So, no compassion for your fellow man?

[A] Hearst: I'm not talking about compassion for my fellow man; I'm talking about total hatred for two specific people who are still alive. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Then, put it this way: They were your comrades, so to speak, for a long time. Do you think there's any chance they can become decent members of society once they're released?

[A] Hearst: I think there's more of a chance for Bill Harris to be a responsible member of society than there is for Emily. Just my own personal reaction. Emily's just too determined that this revolution of hers is right. She'd never say, "I made a mistake." Whereas Bill would never say it out loud, but he might think it and do something else.

[Q] Playboy: We'll return to Bill and Emily, but since you mentioned it, who killed Marcus Foster?

[A] Hearst: I was told that it was Mizmoon and Nancy Ling Perry and DeFreeze. DeFreeze had a shotgun, so he would be the one who shot Robert Blackburn. Nancy had a Rossi and she missed Foster, and then Patricia Soltysik shot him.

[Q] Playboy: Did they ever talk about that at all?

[A] Hearst: Those three did not talk about it. The only ones who actually talked to me about it were Bill and Emily, and they were not there at the time. They were all upset that they hadn't been part of it.

[Q] Playboy: Where were Remiro and Little, who are doing time for that killing?

[A] Hearst: I was told they were in a van waiting for the three others. But they are not innocent of murder. They were there as backup.

[Q] Playboy: The Harrises have said that they told you a hundred times that that was not true, that Remiro and Little weren't there as backup.

[A] Hearst: [Laughs] And they are so credible and reliable! For a while, Bill and Emily Harris got to be more credible than me, which is incredible!

[Q] Playboy: Let's get back to the S.L.A. We finished discussing the women--would you say that the S.L.A., as a whole, was antiwomen, despite the fact that five of the original eight were women?

[A] Hearst: Yes. They really hated women with much more passion than they hated men. They saw successful women working within the system as bigger pigs than any head of any corporation. They hated Jane Fonda because she was too liberal; she pacified people. And Angela Davis. Gloria Steinem, boy, they hated her! When they talked about assassinating Evelle Younger [then attorney general of California], there was more emphasis on, "Maybe we could get his wife."

[Q] Playboy: OK, let's move on to Cujo.

[A] Hearst: Yes [heavy sarcasm], the love of my life.

[Q] Playboy: In the book, you seem to go out of your way to make him look negative.

[A] Hearst: I don't have to go out of my way, you know. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: At any time throughout your time with the S.L.A., did you and Wolfe develop a relationship?

[A] Hearst: No. I mean, we developed a relationship, but not a love relationship. The relationship was that I was essentially his personal property.

[Q] Playboy: In the tape you and the Harrises made for the media after the fire and shoot-out in L.A., you said, "Neither Cujo nor I ever loved an individual the way we loved each other, probably because our relationship wasn't based on bourgeois, fucked-up values." Was that all bullshit?

[A] Hearst: Yeah, completely.

[Q] Playboy: Did your lawyers ever tell you that if you admitted to love for Wolfe in court you'd lose your case for sure?

[A] Hearst: No. No. no, no. They would never have said something like that.

[Q] Playboy: During the trial, when the prosecutor pressed you about your feelings toward Wolfe, you dramatically replied, "I couldn't stand him." Was that a triumphant moment for you?

[A] Hearst: That was a pretty good answer in a good place, I must say.

[Q] Playboy: What was Wolfe like?

[A] Hearst: Very nervous, kind of bouncing-around nervous. He was younger than all the others. He had the most romantic notion of being a revolutionary. He'd say things like, he'd be satisfied with just being a colonel, because that was the rank that Ché Guevara had.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about the Olmec monkey head Willie gave you. When it was brought out at your trial that you'd kept it, the jurors apparently thought it proved you were lying about your feelings for Willie and convicted you. When did he give you the Olmec monkey head?

[A] Hearst: Shortly after the blindfold was off.

[Q] Playboy: What did he tell you about it?

[A] Hearst: He said an archaeologist friend of his had given it to him and that it was 2500 years old. I kept it because I was an art-history major and had a very strong feeling about destroying things just because you don't like them. It's like going through the Vatican and cutting the penises off all the Greek statues and putting plaster fig leaves on them.

[Q] Playboy: It was hard for the jury to accept that you kept it strictly because you thought it was valuable--especially after Willie was killed.

[A] Hearst: I just can't help that it was hard to accept. I told the lawyers that the monkey head existed but was pretty well ignored about it. I didn't think it was any big deal and it turned out to be an incredibly big deal. The immediate assumption was that I had lied, that it wasn't 2500 years old. On the other hand, nobody bothered to think that maybe he'd lied about it, that he told a big story to make it sound like it was more valuable than it was. I do not totally trust the Government's little witnesses who testified it was a dime a dozen, buy 'em at roadside towns. It's easy enough to prove that it was old. I have considered assessing it for my own satisfaction. If wouldn't surprise me if it was old.

I could have made up a much more plausible explanation, but the truth is, that's what it is. A more plausible explanation would be that I was afraid to get rid of it--which is partially true. I was asked to produce it on several occasions.

[Q] Playboy: By whom?

[A] Hearst: By Bill Harris. He wore a little fist thing around his neck as a symbol, and he wanted to see if I still had mine. I assumed he would want me to produce mine as a symbol of getting in contact, like a secret code word.

[Q] Playboy: How many times did he ask you to produce it?

[A] Hearst: Once, twice.

[Q] Playboy: Did you wear it?

[A] Hearst: No, I carried it. I wore it until they were killed and then I carried it.

[Q] Playboy: All right, let's move on to the leader of the S.L.A., Donald DeFreeze, better known as Cinque.

[A] Hearst: I was scared to death of him. Totally, totally terrified of him. But it's hard to look back now and figure out what it was that they saw in him, because now all the contempt that I would normally have felt is free to surface. He was really pretty ordinary. I don't know how much of it was him and how much was them just wanting a black leader and having one who was willing to lead. He loved it. He did it happily and didn't take any back talk from people.

[Q] Playboy: Did all three men beat you?

[A] Hearst: I can't say beat. Slapped or punched or knocked down, but not beaten. Mostly for bad attitude. It reminded me of when I was in jail later and started meeting lots of prostitutes-- the S.L.A. men really reminded me of the pimps. Especially Cinque. When we talked about not showing disrespect for our leader, it was just like prostitutes talking about not being disrespectful to their pimp.

[Q] Playboy: Why weren't there more blacks in the S.L.A.?

[A] Hearst: Hey, a lot of blacks ask that question. DeFreeze couldn't find any to follow him. And he could not handle the competition of another black man.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't there a rumor that DeFreeze had been an informant for the L.A. police?

[A] Hearst: I think he was a paid informant. His crimes were average crimes, they weren't anything spectacular or revolutionary. He was a two-bit crook. He got caught on an earlier charge and started informing to keep from going to jail.

[Q] Playboy: DeFreeze eventually wound up in prison and was later released. There were some theories at the time of your kidnaping that there might have been a connection between DeFreeze's release and what happened next. Any thoughts about that?

[A] Hearst: I think I was very much a distraction from what was going on in Washington. At the time, there was Watergate and we were losing a President quickly. That's another reason why people got so emotional and angry about me. They felt betrayed by the Government, by the President--and here I was, sticking my tongue out at them. It was just too much. I was a target for a lot of people who were still mad at their kids who were hippies in the Sixties. I came to symbolize a youth rebellion that I wasn't even a part of! [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: What about the conspiracy theories, though? Do you give any credence to the idea that the CIA helped set up the S.L.A. to create the kind of diversion you're talking about?

[A] Hearst: Well, in the book. I kind of gloss over when I say that it was never really explained to me the way DeFreeze escaped from prison. But it was very odd. He was transferred from one prison to another. A trustee at the new prison who had a boiler-room job had been there for months and was taken off work for no reason at all. DeFreeze is suddenly put on in his place and escapes that night. The old trustee is put back on the job the next day. It sounds a little suspicious. I've been in institutions; they don't do things like that. No one has ever adequately explained it. It's improbable enough that it hardly seems worth worrying about. On the other hand, it is strange. Plus, he went straight to Oakland, to Russell Little at the Peking House, and nobody ever went there to look for him. They never checked his visiting list to see Little's name on it, to figure out where he might have gone. I mean, they could have found him within 48 hours if they'd looked.

[Q] Playboy: So he was double-crossed, you feel? He served his purpose, news was made, Nixon was pardoned and the Government went on?

[A] Hearst: Isn't that what's supposed to happen to CIA agents in all the movie plots?

[Q] Playboy: It makes for fascinating speculation. But truly, in your heart, do you believe such a conspiracy existed?

[A] Hearst: No, I'm afraid that the CIA is really not capable of such brilliant ploys. That's the main hole in the fabric. And if it were, there wouldn't be all these Chiles and Bays of Pigs. And it doesn't keep quiet about it, either, even if it had done it. It'd never be able to keep quiet. Somebody would tell. In general, I think there're plenty of nuts running around, that you don't need a conspiracy to cause the death of somebody.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel that way about the assassination of John Kennedy?

[A] Hearst: That a plot was so brilliantly put together that nobody has been able to totally expose it? You should talk to my father. He thinks the Mafia did it.

[Q] Playboy: Let's go back to that time just before the S.L.A. interrupted your life. Were you living what the S.L.A. would call a very bourgeois life?

[A] Hearst: No, it was a very nice life and most people would love to have a life like that.

[Q] Playboy: Were you sheltered?

[A] Hearst: Yes, but I don't think that's necessarily bad. Nor that being kidnaped is exactly the way to bring someone out of her isolation.

[Q] Playboy: How long had you and Steven been living together?

[A] Hearst: Two years, It was a really happy time.

[Q] Playboy: That brings up one of the things that are hard to understand: the way you completely dropped Steven Weed after your kidnaping. Did you think of him much when you were captured?

[A] Hearst: When I was with the S.L.A., I really did not think about him. It's like a psychological break, too. There was a lot that I didn't remember about our life together, what we did, and I still don't have total recall about that; it was completely pushed out of my mind and suppressed. Sometimes, I think I wouldn't even recognize him if I saw him.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever seen him again?

[A] Hearst: I've never seen him again. He just passed out of my life. He really totally drifted out of my mind some time after the bank robbery. As far as I know, he's married and living on the Peninsula. When I was arrested, he was writing his book, and I saw the first chapter. It had been typed on my typewriter. I remember feeling really annoyed about that because I have a special type face, so I knew he'd used it. I thought, Well, how rude!

[Q] Playboy: So now the real story comes out: He used your typewriter-----

[A] Hearst: And he had all my photo albums.

[Q] Playboy: Pictures of which he used in his book without your consent?

[A] Hearst: That's right. And I didn't think that I was subject for a book written by him.

[Q] Playboy: Did your parents have any influence on the kind of men you dated?

[A] Hearst: Only in that they were concerned that their daughters marry real, manly men instead of creeps. They decide immediately whether their daughter's beau is a manly man or not. It's really hard for some boyfriends to pass the manliness test.

[Q] Playboy: Who was the first of your men they thought manly?

[A] Hearst: Probably Bernie [Shaw]. None of the others were manly men.

[Q] Playboy: Well, he's a cop.

[A] Hearst: Yeah, that's a pretty manly-man job.

[Q] Playboy: What did you hear later about how your family held up after you were kidnaped?

[A] Hearst: The family was depressed. When they'd get these tapes, they'd have to listen to this guy [Cinque] rant and rave and they'd just think. Oh, this man is so horrible. Poor sister. Then they'd listen to me and think, Well, at least she's still alive. Then afterward, they'd start joking about what the guy said. They said my cousin Willie [Hearst] did a mean imitation of Cinque. They invented this Symbionese "Navy," and he'd do a whole act about being its admiral and all.

[Q] Playboy: Nice to hear they were able to maintain some humor about it.

[A] Hearst: There was lots of humor about it. I mean, they couldn't help it. There were so many weird people who came out of the woodwork. There were these swamis; then the extortionists who'd get the house number and call up. My sister Vicky kept one running from phone to phone until the FBI narrowed it down and found him in a phone booth, still talking to her! [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: During the time you were gone, your father seemed to have been treated rather well in the press, didn't he?

[A] Hearst: Yeah, he was. But my mother was always treated badly. Even through their separation and now their divorce, she's one of those people who get blamed for "the terrible things she's doing to Randy." I just don't think it was that way at all. By the time they split up, they weren't getting along at all. They were being destroyed by the marriage. I think my mother is happier now than my father is. Definitely.

[Q] Playboy: You said some savage things about your mother on the tapes--even though you say you were forced to.

[A] Hearst: My mother is one of those people who everybody likes to attack. It's true. She got it from the S.L.A. She got it from me through the S.L.A. She got it from the press. She got it when she was a [University of California] regent. It's because she's got very strong opinions and she'll stand by them. And she's very conservative. A lot of the press is very liberal. They just don't like her; especially during the Sixties at Berkeley, they hated her.

[Q] Playboy: Is she too conservative for you?

[A] Hearst: No. No way.

[Q] Playboy: Are you conservative?

[A] Hearst: I was a liberal before I was kidnaped. Now I'm pretty conservative.

[Q] Playboy: Are you closer to your mother in temperament, behavior and values than to your father?

[A] Hearst: Yes. My father has a tendency to just lose his temper and then expect people to say, "That's all right." But once words have been spoken, you can't take them back. And his brothers do it, too, so it's not like something he just does. Somehow, my father comes across as being really friendly and open, and my mother as being more strait-laced and somebody you can insult. But she is the most charming and witty woman-- you wouldn't think she'd be the target of insults.

[Q] Playboy: You say you can't take back spoken words; yet when you were speaking your insults on the tapes, did you think your parents believed what you were saying?

[A] Hearst: No, I know they didn't. But yeah, I was afraid that they did.

[Q] Playboy: Have you talked with them much about what happened to you?

[A] Hearst: No. mother read the manuscript of my book. My father, I didn't show it to him at all, any of it. Because he's overly critical. He'd just look at it like, "Well, it isn't finished." So there was no point in having him rain on my parade. I haven't even told him about this interview!

[Q] Playboy: Will it upset him?

[A] Hearst: I hate to think. Well, I thought that he would be negative enough that I didn't tell him about it.

[Q] Playboy: Haven't your parents been curious, though, about what happened to you?

[A] Hearst: Usually when we talk about it, we focus on the ridiculousness of it. That really is the best way to deal with it. It makes it so much easier. My father doesn't really want to ask me about it. He figures if I wanted to talk about it, I'd be telling him. He was really good in that way, respecting my feelings. My mother never asked me questions, either. It was such a horrible experience for them, too.

[Q] Playboy: The S.L.A. demanded that your father help feed the poor and he came up with an initial $2,000,000, with a backup promise of $4,000,000 more once you were released. But when the food program failed, did you feel that your life was over?

[A] Hearst: Yeah, I did. I mean, it didn't happen, but I did feel that.

[Q] Playboy: And it wasn't very long before you stopped thinking of yourself as a victim and began considering yourself a comrade, was it?

[A] Hearst: You're talking about two months. That may have seemed short to you, but let me tell you, it's a lifetime. Time is so relative, especially with what was going on to me. It was completely distorted.

[Q] Playboy: Were you pretending when you said you wanted to join them, or did you really want to join?

[A] Hearst: It was a conscious act. I didn't have to pretend desperately to want them to say, "Yeah, you can join." The appropriate S.L.A. line on my conversion was that my parents had been horrible and they were so decadent and I was being rescued from this terrible bourgeois life that I was leading and aren't I the lucky one to have been chosen by them? That was the approved story: my terrible mother and fascist father . . . and if you believe this, maybe we can interest you in some swampland in Florida. But people did believe it!

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel it took guts to join the S.L.A.?

[A] Hearst: No. It would have been crazy not to have joined, because they would have just killed me. It would take much more guts to say, "Never, I'd rather die." I'm sorry, I'm a coward. I didn't want to die.

[Q] Playboy: Under more ordinary circumstances, do you consider yourself a courageous person?

[A] Hearst: Yeah, I suppose. I drive on these California highways every day! I'm sitting here doing this interview. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: When you became Tania, you must know that it captured the imagination of a lot of people.

[A] Hearst: Maybe you liked it.

[Q] Playboy: Well, she was a symbol of defiance, antagonism, liveliness, antiestablishment at a time when many people were feeling that way.

[A] Hearst: It amazes me to sit here and hear you say that it was a lively image. It was a terribly violent image. It was the result of a violent kidnaping. For you to say it's a lively, antiestablishment image. . . Tania never really existed except as a fantasy for most people. She existed as a propaganda tool for the S.L.A. She was created by them and she lived as long as they could keep her living.

[Q] Playboy: So you see her in the third person?

[A] Hearst: Yeah, I do. I look at her and think, Gosh, how maddening that they could get me to do that! And it upsets me; or I'll just laugh, depending on my mood. But it's a terrible thing to think that people can do that to you. And most people think. They could never do that to me. Even right now I would say, "Oh, they could never do that to me again." But in the back of my mind, I say, "I don't know if they could or not." I'm not going to say it could never happen again. I hope it doesn't.

[Q] Playboy: If it ever did happen again-- if a van stopped in front of you and someone with a gun said get in-- would you react differently, having gone through what you've gone through?

[A] Hearst: I wouldn't get in the van. Forget it. I'd rather be dead. At this point, I've got to assume I would not live through another experience like I went through.

[Q] Playboy: But if you were kidnaped again?

[A] Hearst: I don't know how I'd behave, I think I'm much better prepared emotionally, and because I've had an education in thought control, I'm better informed.

[Q] Playboy: Were you-----

[A] Hearst: [Angrily, referring to the earlier exchange] You have a really odd idea about the S.L.A.! Like other people, you have this romantic notion of what they are like, that it was all one great adventure! You lived it vicariously and it's just too exciting for you and you can hardly control yourself, and it's so disturbing to find out that I don't even think Tania lived except in people's imaginations like yours--and she still lives in yours!

[Q] Playboy: You're getting mad--is that a hint of the angry Tania the rest of us saw, and you say never existed?

[A] Hearst: There's no part of Tania that you saw except what the S.L.A. invented. That's what you saw. It was a total invention. And while you saw a photograph of this person with the machine gun, the rest of the time what you didn't see was me sort of being weepy and meek and not strong or angry at all. Listen to the tapes again; I don't think they're that tough and angry. I'm reading a script. Shoot, I can do that. They were rehearsed!

[Q] Playboy:Were you brainwashed?

[A] Hearst: Yeah, if that's what you call the process that happened. Coercively persuaded, brainwashed . . . yeah, I was! By brainwashed, I mean I was incapable of making rational decisions on my own. I was not in control of myself, in spite of the fact that you probably could have come in and seen me and talked to me and said, "Wow, she seems OK, just got some crazy ideas." But I didn't start out with crazy ideas.

[Q] Playboy: Did you start out by thinking you were fooling them into thinking you believed as they did?

[A] Hearst: Sure. I thought for a long time that I was fooling them and leading them on, but somewhere along the line I got lost. I got confused and lost and caught up with what they were doing. I lost complete touch with reality. My reality became their reality.

[Q] Playboy: Shortly after you joined them, you were caught up in a bank robbery. Were you threatened by the S.L.A. before joining in the robbery?

[A] Hearst: They said if I didn't do it, they'd kill me. And if I didn't do it the way they wanted it done. I did my best, but I still didn't do everything right.

[Q] Playboy: You mean you didn't say all that they had wanted you to say?

[A] Hearst: Yes. But I did well enough. Who are you to criticize? [Laughs] They thought it was OK!

[Q] Playboy: Were you all elated after it was over?

[A] Hearst: They were positively giddy afterward. I was so relieved. They felt that once again, people were seeing the people's force as victorious in an action against the Government, because the bank is insured by the Federal Government. Therefore, they were attacking a Federal institution.

[Q] Playboy: Was the real purpose of the robbery to get money or to show you off?

[A] Hearst: It was a dual purpose. They deliberately picked a bank with a camera so that I would be photographed. That was absolutely part of the plan.

[Q] Playboy: And there was an irony involved, as the head of that bank was your best friend's, Trish Tobin's, father. Have you ever found out how he felt about it?

[A] Hearst: He was not at all pleased with the FBI's handling of it. The still photographs that were taken in the bank were put together and made into a movie. There were only two copies of that. He had one and the FBI had the other. He turned on the TV and there was this film running, and it didn't come from him. That's the way these Federal agents seem to operate; they just run to the press: "Lookee, lookee, lookee what we've got!"

[Q] Playboy: Why do you suppose the FBI does that?

[A] Hearst: Just to show they're on the job. Nothing else was happening in my case. They weren't finding me.

[Q] Playboy: Do you trust the FBI today?

[A] Hearst: No, I do not trust them. I think they're just pathological liars; they can't control themselves. Police don't trust the FBI, either. The FBI just sort of loses touch with reality. I don't know what happens to them. They're under diminished capacity [laughs] . . . or coerced persuasion.

[Q] Playboy: And at the time you were with the S.L.A.?

[A] Hearst: Well, the FBI was really the center of all of the paranoia. According to the S.L.A., the FBI tapped phones; the FBI was looking at you through your TV screen. I mean, the FBI could do anything.

[Q] Playboy: At some point, you became the S.L.A.'s weapons expert, didn't you?

[A] Hearst: Yeah, I was great. I knew about all their guns. They were so busy saying, "You're so stupid. Study this. Read this weapons manual. Learn how to break this gun down." By the time they got through, I did know all about guns.

[Q] Playboy: But hadn't you been around guns all your life?

[A] Hearst: I went hunting once with my father when I was around 12. It was a 28-gauge shotgun, a little bitty thing. We went duck shooting. A 28 gauge is very small. Twelve gauge is what most people shoot. There were always guns in the house, always loaded, and we knew father would kill us if we touched those guns. We never went near them, but they were no big secret or hidden. We had a collection on the wall, and my father had a gun in his bedside table and one in his closet and hunting guns all around the house.

[Q] Playboy: When Cinque moved you all down to L.A. and made you a member of a team with Bill and Emily Harris, you had a chance to use the weapons. We're thinking of the incident at Mel's Sporting Goods, when you protected the Harrises by firing an automatic weapon over their heads. How did you know where you were shooting?

[A] Hearst: I didn't. That's why it ended up leaping out of my hands. At the S.L.A. gun lessons, they practiced crouching and swinging the gun and pointing it, and claimed it didn't kick at all. But it's very different when you actually fire it. The thing just went leaping out of my hands.

[Q] Playboy: Which means you could have easily killed the bystanders--on the Harrises when they ran out of the store.

[A] Hearst: I'll say, Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: Did you think of that when you were shooting?

[A] Hearst: It was more like moving in a dream, not even thinking about it. I remember it happening almost in show motion. I look up and there's Bill Harris on the ground and Emily Harris looking down at him, and them both looking back over at the van [pauses], looking back toward the van . . . and then me.

[Q] Playboy: Did your eyes make contact?

[A] Hearst: No, they were just looking over at the van. Then I picked up the gun . . . first the automatic weapon, because that had the most firepower, then the semiautomatic, because that was faster than putting a new clip into the automatic. And then they were back at the car.

[Q] Playboy: You left out the shooting part.

[A] Hearst: I just remember it sort of jumping out of my hands and slamming bullets into the center divider, in the concrete . . . then I lifted it up higher . . . I was just trying to hold on to the gun. I wasn't thinking, I've got to kill these people so the Harrises can get away. It was like, I must fire over their heads to give them cover. I don't really remember people around me.

[Q] Playboy: Had you not opened fire at Mel's, there might not have been that shoot-out with the police. The Harrises would have been caught for shoplifting and the rest of the S.L.A. could have been traced. Isn't that true?

[A] Hearst: Right. I definitely think that was a real breaking point emotionally for me, too. It was like. snap. Everything that they'd ever told me had clicked into place at that point.

[Q] Playboy: And afterward?

[A] Hearst: My life was over then, as far as ever coming back. Until that point, I thought maybe, somehow, I would escape, but it was getting dimmer and dimmer. But at that point, it was over.

[Q] Playboy: But before you fired, you were in the van alone. The Harrises were in Mel's and you might have just driven off. We keep coming back to what you could have done to escape.

[A] Hearst: Yeah, I know. It's really hard to understand. I was totally under their control.

[Q] Playboy: You repeatedly say in your book that you feared and hated the Harrises, yet, at a moment of truth-----

[A] Hearst: I saved them! Didn't even have to think! Just saw what was happening, picked up the gun, fired. It was like a reflex. Training took over. Bang! I did it. And the next thing I know, we're off commandeering vehicles and running around L.A. and kidnaping this kid and this man, and racing down to Anaheim to watch everybody get killed on television.

[Q] Playboy: Before we get to that shoot-out, there's a point here we should take up. You've indicated that your life was in the S.L.A.'s hands, so you were ready to do anything they asked of you. Including killing someone to protect your comrades. Do you feel you have a moral responsibility not to take an innocent life, even if it means sacrificing your own?

[A] Hearst: Well, I'm sure glad I've never faced that one! [Nervous laugh]

[Q] Playboy: You came close to facing it.

[A] Hearst: Maybe there is a responsibility. I guess. Sure . . . I'll say right now, yes, there is.

[Q] Playboy: Let's not be facetious.

[A] Hearst: [Laughs again] Let's be realistic. That is a moral dilemma. What do you do?

[Q] Playboy: You give the impression you would have obeyed them.

[A] Hearst: I don't think that's the case.

[Q] Playboy: You say in your book, "In trying to convince them, I convinced myself. I felt that I had truly joined them. My past life seemed to have slipped away." You told us that joining them was a "conscious act." You were not pretending then. You became a believer.

[A] Hearst: I became as much of a believer as I was capable of becoming. But you're talking about someone who really has no defenses, no free will anymore. That's when we're getting into that thing about traumatic neurosis with dissociative features.

[Q] Playboy: What is that?

[A] Hearst: It's the technical name for what happened to me, what everyone calls brainwashing. It is a phenomenon that does exist.

[Q] Playboy: And, in your case, the phenomenon wasn't believed by the jury.

[A] Hearst: The trial was a big mass of confusion, because what the jury was presented with was just so much junk. And I just can't talk about it; I'm under a gag order not to.

[Q] Playboy: You've written that before the S.L.A. accepted you, each member interrogated you, and you filled them with blatant and preposterous statements that they believed.

[A] Hearst: Yes, I did. They loved it.

[Q] Playboy: Now, were you that much smarter than they all were that you could do that?

[A] Hearst: No, I wasn't. That's the thing. I thought I was doing everything just right and really kidding them. And I was getting-----

[Q] Playboy: Getting caught up in it? Then at all times in the S.L.A., you did know what you were doing? You knew you were robbing a bank. You knew you were firing an automatic weapon. You knew you were making a tape. It wasn't like you were in a fog.

[A] Hearst: Oh, no, it wasn't like I was in a fog and didn't know what was happening. At the same time, mentally and emotionally, I was not fully in control of myself.

[Q] Playboy: But you felt that you must stay alive above all else, even if it meant killing other people-----

[A] Hearst: No! Killing other people did not enter into it for me, and that was not anything that I ever had to do or face.

[Q] Playboy: But what if you had hit somebody at Mel's? Killing other people was a very strong possibility there.

[A] Hearst: Not in my mind! Not in my mind! If they said, "Shoot this person," I don't believe I could have done that. It never came up.

[Q] Playboy: It came close, though.

[A] Hearst: When did it come close?

[Q] Playboy: At Mel's.

[A] Hearst: It didn't come close at Mel's.

[Q] Playboy: You shot above people and below them.

[A] Hearst: That's right.

[Q] Playboy: That's close, Patty.

[A] Hearst: There was never a thought of kill or be killed, though. Never!

[Q] Playboy: All right, we're not going to resolve this here. Let's go on to what was referred to as that barbecue in Los Angeles, the fiery shoot-out.

[A] Hearst: Barbecue! My sisters all called them crispy critters.

[Q] Playboy: You were in a motel room in Anaheim when you saw, on TV, the house--and your comrades--being incinerated. Hadn't the S.L.A. predicted that was the way they would die?

[A] Hearst: Yeah. It was exactly what they said would happen. Every time something they predicted happened, it helped me believe them. They said a warrant would be issued for me after the bank robbery; they said the police would shoot up the house without worrying if I was in there. Yeah, it helped make their reality my reality. And enough of what they said was reality that it became difficult to sort out what was real from what wasn't.

[Q] Playboy: After the shoot-out, did it sink in that they were all dead?

[A] Hearst: Somehow, in my mind, it wouldn't have surprised me to have run into them on the street. It really wasn't until I saw that thing that Willie Wolfe wore around his neck that I knew, once and for all, they were all dead. Completely, totally, here is the evidence . . . they are gone!

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel they deserved to die?

[A] Hearst: I really do. In fact, that may be too good for them. [Laughs] They deserved to die the death of 10,000 screams for what they'd done.

[Q] Playboy: Do you equate kidnaping with loss of life?

[A] Hearst: I'm really for the death penalty for kidnaping people. It's purely personal. My personal reaction is, yeah, they deserved to die. Because you could never change people like that. Never.

[Q] Playboy: You don't think the FBI and the SWAT teams and the other police overreacted in destroying the house as well as those inside?

[A] Hearst: I think the Government went overboard in burning down the house. It was a little too . . . spectacular. But I think that they asked to die. That they chose to die. I don't think that was necessarily the proper way for it to happen. The Government could have held out, tried isolating and talking to them. How long was their ammunition going to last? In other countries, they talk to them, run a phone line in, negotiate. Eventually, people break down. I think that the FBI reacted incorrectly. But you don't see me crying about it. What the heck, I can be generous about it. [Laughs] I'm not gonna change anything!

[Q] Playboy: Do you think it would have made any difference had you been in that house?

[A] Hearst: I bet if I'd been there, I would have been brought out with a gun to my head, and none of them would have been killed. They would have asked for a plane to who knows where. I don't think they would have just started firing hopelessly. Because there was no hope of their escaping when they took their stand in that house.

[Q] Playboy: After that shoot-out, you, Bill and Emily returned to the Bay Area and met radical sportswriter Jack Scott, who quickly convinced you to head east. How did you all come to trust Scott?

[A] Hearst: Bill had no choice but to trust Jack Scott, because he seemed to have money and a way of getting everybody out of the area where we were being hunted.

[Q] Playboy: What was your impression of Scott?

[A] Hearst: Kind of a game player. He had taken Wendy Yoshimura across country and she was a radical. He liked to play sort of a dangerous game of being the underground railroad for the radicals. He really thought that that was an exciting position to be in. Because he had control then, but he wasn't really involved. A strange man.

[Q] Playboy: Whom did you fear more during that "missing year," the police or the Harrises?

[A] Hearst: I was afraid of the FBI and the police even more than of the Harrises. It's like the devil you know versus the devil you don't know. And they needed me to establish themselves and their credibility as the S.L.A. They could say, "See, we really are the S.L.A.; here's Tania." Otherwise, nobody knew who they were.

[Q] Playboy: Were you happier to be by yourself or with the Harrises?

[A] Hearst: I felt safer with them than by myself. I was terrified by myself. With them, they would take care of me, in spite of the fact that they were horrible.

[Q] Playboy: Throughout those long months, Bill and Emily were often fighting with each other. At the apartment on Walnut Street, you say that Emily refused sex with Bill nightly, but you never did. Why couldn't you have?

[A] Hearst: Why couldn't I have? This is the whole thing . . . I was not capable of it. I understand the puzzlement, but that doesn't mean I'm any better at explaining it. They were as compelling to me as DeFreeze; they were the leadership of the S.L.A. You know, why couldn't I have turned myself in? They were gone all day; surely it would have been just as easy to do that. I was a total zombie. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't walk out the door. It's really crummy to think about that.

[Q] Playboy: The astonishment in a lot of people's minds is that you never once made an attempt to escape during that missing year. You never even thought about it. Didn't you ever wonder about your parents, your sisters and your friends? Didn't you even consider calling to say you were still alive?

[A] Hearst: When I did have a thought like that, I would just put it out of my mind. That was a bad thought to have. And I actively kept myself from thinking bad thoughts. I shouldn't even be considering it. As far as escaping goes, in my mind, it would have been like saying, "Now I'll commit suicide." Because I really thought I was going to be killed any second by the police. There was no escape!

[Q] Playboy: After your return from Pennsylvania, you joined with S.L.A. sympathizers and participated in a second bank robbery, though you stayed outside this time. But you were, nonetheless, convicted for it later. Another participant in that robbery, Steven Soliah, like yourself, also stayed outside the bank. But at his trial, he got off because the Government insisted he was inside and he proved he wasn't. When you heard he was found not guilty, were you shocked?

[A] Hearst: I really was. I was upset. And I started crying. I just couldn't believe it. It's outrageous that the Government falsified the evidence against Steven Soliah. They could have convicted him, but they insisted on putting him in the bank and he just plain wasn't there. If they had used me as a witness, they could have put him away. They could have tried the Harrises, too.

[Q] Playboy: But you were being tried at the time, so you were not a credible witness.

[A] Hearst: That's right. They were too busy trying me. I was worth more to them in terms of headlines as a defendant than as a witness. They believed me enough to gather evidence from everything I told them, and they did. But to use me as a witness, they would have to publicly admit that, yes, I was credible. You can't say that you believe somebody publicly and then turn around and try her, too.

[Q] Playboy: Why would they falsify evidence against Soliah?

[A] Hearst: Because they had somebody else who looked like him who was inside. So they thought. Just put him inside. Then the defense produced the man he was mistaken for, so Soliah was acquitted.

[Q] Playboy: When you were finally caught, the picture that was seen around the world was of you raising a clenched fist. Why the gesture?

[A] Hearst: When I raised my clenched fist, all I was thinking about was pictures of [Weatherman] Susan Saxe. I remember it so clearly, pictures of her when she was captured. And that's not a rational person's reason for doing something like that. [Laughs] I wish I could think of a better reason for why I did it, something that would sound sensible, but there's no sensible reason.

[Q] Playboy: Not even some sense of defiant pride?

[A] Hearst: No.

[Q] Playboy: Once in jail, did you tell Trish Tobin that you'd speak only from a radical-feminist point of view?

[A] Hearst: How embarrassing! [Laughs] I don't believe in radical feminism. I barely support the E.R.A. In fact, I really don't.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Hearst: What I don't like about the E.R.A. is that there will be cases in court for years, because it's a poor piece of legislation. It says simply that rights won't be abridged on the basis of sex. So you'll then get cases saying, "I want to go to bed with my duck and they won't let me be a school-crossing guard and it's not fair, because they're discriminating against me."

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you being a bit extreme here?

[A] Hearst: You have to look at the extreme because you know it's gonna be in court forever. I realize this is a terribly unpopular thing to say. It's très chic to be pro-E.R.A.

[Q] Playboy: Your mother didn't, by any chance, convince you of this?

[A] Hearst: Oh, yeah, she did.

[Q] Playboy: Are we blaming your mother again?

[A] Hearst: I'm not blaming my mother. I'm thanking my mother! [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: You know, some might say this is another example of your being highly suggestible--ranging from joining the S.L.A. to using sex with ducks as a reason to kill the E.R.A.

[A] Hearst: Changing your mind on the Equal Rights Amendment can hardly be equated with joining the S.L.A.! You'll get letters from women on that one! [Laughs] It's really unfair to say that you can't change your mind and think that you were wrong about what you thought. You're saying that my mother got hold of me and twisted my normal thought process. No, she simply brought up another point and made me think some more about it, and I changed my mind. My poor mother! What would you have said if I'd told you it was my father who convinced me?

[Q] Playboy: The same thing.

[A] Hearst: You would not have. You hate my mother! [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: We would have pushed you even harder, suggesting that men have unduly influenced you all your life-- Steven Weed, the three S.L.A. men, Steven Soliah, your lawyers F. Lee Bailey and Al Johnson, all the psychiatrists. Your mother might actually be an aberration from a psychological point of view.

[A] Hearst: Aberration! [Laughing] You're calling my mother an aberration? How unfair to think that people can't think more about something and then change their minds. My mother's not the only person in this world who thinks that there's something wrong with the E.R.A. I can't help it. What can I say? [Sarcastic] I guess I'm just too uptight to face it and deal with it! So much worse stuff has happened to me in my life, who cares?

[Q] Playboy: All right. When you were captured, you were defiant and aggressive. But after the doctors and the lawyers got through with you, you seemed subdued, passive, almost a zombie. Was it a case of reverse brainwashing?

[A] Hearst: Deprograming? I don't think I needed deprograming as much as I needed to be away from the Harrises. The more I talked to the psychiatrists, I just started breaking down. I started realizing that I was terribly confused. More confused than I was able to admit to myself for a long, long time. It took a couple of years before I was really able to admit to myself that, yes, these people did a real number on me and it happened. But my reaction afterward was like, "No, no, they didn't do that to me!" It was almost better to think that I had willingly, happily joined them than to think that they had been able to play with my mind.

[Q] Playboy: Aside from the notoriety of your case, why do you think the psychiatrists were so fascinated with you?

[A] Hearst: Because for the first time they were getting a victim of coercive persuasion and sensory deprivation where it wasn't the result of the Chinese or something--it was domestic terrorists. They don't get to see a whole lot of that.

[Q] Playboy: One point many psychologists have made is that you will never be the person you were before your kidnaping. That, in essence, you're really three different people.

[A] Hearst: I think that's true. But I never got a chance to really become the first person, either, because I was so young when this was happening. I was just becoming.

[Q] Playboy: You never had a chance to become Mrs. Weed.

[A] Hearst: Yeah, whoever she would have been. Nineteen is hardly the age where you're fully developed--you're fishing around, experimenting, trying to become your individual self. And the second person was a zombie. So this third person that I am, I'm sure it's very different from what I would have become.

[Q] Playboy: And how do you think people perceive you now?

[A] Hearst: As this person who everybody told what to do. "Oh, her lawyers tell her what to do, her husband does. She'd never be doing anything on her own. She's not capable of any independent thought."

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that perception is shared by some of the people who are important to your future--for example, your father or the Hearst Corporation? Do you, in fact, have a future in the family business?

[A] Hearst: I doubt it. Right now, it doesn't appear that the Hearst family has much to do with the corporation. I don't see a place for me. Nor for my relatives who have worked for it for years. There are many family members who would like to be in positions of authority and that is not happening. No family member is being trained to learn the business adequately to be able to run it one day. My father and I had an argument about it the other night. I bring up that we'd like to be brought into the company and groomed, so we can one day have positions of power, and his response is, "Well, who do you think's going to take over now? Willie? You want him to run the company?" I tell him, "That's not what we're saying. We don't want him to run the company right now. But do you think that he's bright enough to learn the job? That's the question. Do you really think any of us are bright enough?" And I don't think they do!

[Q] Playboy: But if you could, you'd be interested in taking over the Hearst Corporation?

[A] Hearst: Right, I would be interested. But it's not going to happen. I'm quite confident from talking to my father that there's just no way. My sisters and cousins hold no positions of any responsibility.

[Q] Playboy: So you think they're viewed as irresponsible?

[A] Hearst: Yeah, maybe that's part of it. And it's unfair.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you'd be fully accepted into the family structure today, or are you the black sheep?

[A] Hearst: I probably would be more accepted than many of the other Hearsts, because I tend to think logically and I will listen to the advice of people.

[Q] Playboy: The media have likened you to your grandfather William Randolph Hearst in certain ways. Do you think you might be closest to him?

[A] Hearst: That's just people's fantasy. I don't know what he was like, except that he lived in a great big house stuck on a hill in the middle of nowhere.

[Q] Playboy: Did you grow up with stories about him? Was the book Citizen Hearst widely read?

[A] Hearst: He was sort of a taboo subject. That whole thing with Marion Davies. My father and mother didn't like it. When that book came out, my sister Anne got it for my father for a Christmas present. And he was so mad! "How could she do such a thing?" he said. "What would ever possess her? She's so strange!" I was surprised that he reacted that way.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think you were really tried?

[A] Hearst: Primarily for being a "bad girl." That was the main thing. We're getting into the gag order here, but I will say that far from my feeling any guilt, I think the Government should feel guilty for what happened, since they could have prevented the kidnaping in the first place. Why should I have this guilt put on me? If they had warned me right in the beginning, none of this would ever have happened.

[Q] Playboy: Are you talking about the S.L.A. hit list, which the FBI knew about before you were kidnaped?

[A] Hearst: Yes. So did the Alameda County Sheriff's office. I'm not bitter about it, but they have some responsibility to take in this whole thing. If they had contacted me or my parents, I would have been out of that apartment in Berkeley and back home so fast. . . .

[Q] Playboy: Do you really think you'd have taken it seriously?

[A] Hearst: Wait a minute! We're not talking about being on just anybody's hit list, we're talking about people who had just killed the superintendent of schools and critically injured his assistant. Two people had just been arrested with a bunch of guns and literature. It wasn't just somebody who said he was going to kidnap you; it was people who had already murdered.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think the jury voted you guilty?

[A] Hearst: I really thought we could have won the case until the final argument. The prosecution had to prove reasonable doubt. Is it reasonable to assume that somebody who has been locked in a closet for 57 days after being kidnaped, brutalized, raped, abused, then they say, "You're going to rob a bank now"--is it reasonable to assume that that person had free will?

[Q] Playboy: Reasonable doubt came in afterward, once they had the pictures of you in the bank, your taped messages, your handwritten account, the Olmec monkey head.

[A] Hearst: Well, I disagree. We had virtually no closing argument. They had a very good, proper closing argument, point by point by point, and we had something that just didn't say anything about reasonable doubt. Just sort of, "Gee, don't convict her." That's why I'm back in court right now, because I feel the case should never have been lost, ever. And it's incredible that it was lost. When the second U. S. Attorney came to talk to me, he just plain couldn't believe it. And I have my own ideas on how they lost it, and I can tell you more off the record, but I'm not at liberty to talk about it openly.

[Q] Playboy: When you turned evidence against a lot of the underground people you met during your time as a fugitive, did you think it would get you a lighter sentence?

[A] Hearst: I did not. I thought I was performing my civic duty. I thought they would prosecute those people, but they never did. There was never any promise of any kind, like, "This will get you a lighter sentence, honey, if you just sing." In fact, they always assured me that was not the case.

[Q] Playboy: And except for your eventual commutation by President Carter, your sentence was not light. Are there any causes worth taking up from your prison experience?

[A] Hearst: Drugs. It's so bad. It's behind almost every single crime in prison. Everything is drug related--whether it's prostitution or forgery or bank robbery or smuggling, it all seems to boil down to, if they didn't want the drugs, they wouldn't be in there. And most of them are addicts themselves. It's by far the major cause of these crimes. I saw some one O.D. on cocaine. Blue. She was the color of your jeans.

[Q] Playboy: Did you get a lot of threatening mail in prison?

[A] Hearst: Oh, God, all the time.

[Q] Playboy: Charles Manson supposedly wrote you, right?

[A] Hearst: Al Johnson kept the postcard. It started out, "You write me." Everything was spelled wrong. Apparently, he is really very illiterate. He said he would help me, but I would have to do everything he said. Then I got letters from Sandra Good and Squeaky Fromme, who were in the same prison with me, saying Charlie was really a beautiful person, and they sent me some drawings that Charlie had done.

[Q] Playboy: What was it you called those two women?

[A] Hearst: Pencil-necked geeks. They were the kind of people you just never turned your back on. I never trusted them. They were kind of scary, but I was kind of scary, too. They are about my size, with Xs carved into their foreheads. They have terrible reputations. On the other hand, I had a horrible reputation, too. For all they knew, I could have been crazier than them, so it was to my advantage to act crazy, and around them I always did.

[Q] Playboy: After the Harrises pleaded guilty, you found a dead rat on your bed, didn't you?

[A] Hearst: Yeah. Stinky old dead rat. They moved me upstairs after that.

[Q] Playboy: And then your lung collapsed.

[A] Hearst: That was very serious. It took them two hours to get me to the hospital! By that time, I had gone into trauma and my heart was moving over and the other lung was in danger of collapsing. My mom was so mad, she could hardly control herself. They couldn't believe I could live this long and then have them almost kill me in jail by fiddling around for two hours. I was extremely depressed after that.

[Q] Playboy: But still, you obviously have a strong will to live.

[A] Hearst: Uh-huh. I don't feel suicide is the only honorable way out. But I think it's the only honorable way out for the Harrises. How's that?

[Q] Playboy: You certainly have it in for them. But they'll probably rebut your charges here and in your book.

[A] Hearst: So what? Do you really think that what they say is gonna be paid attention to? Of course they're gonna disagree. What do you think Emily Harris is gonna say when I say she killed somebody? She'll probably say I did it. OK, fine. Go ahead.

[Q] Playboy: In retrospect, can you find any good that came of your kidnaping?

[A] Hearst: I prefer to take the good out of experiences, no matter how rotten they are. I'm one of those people who thought nothing could ever happen to her hitchhiking, so once I was' hitchhiking as a teenager and I got picked up by somebody who I thought was perfectly normal. He was a weirdo who liked to masturbate while he drove girls around.

[Q] Playboy: What good came of that?

[A] Hearst: I learned never to hitchhike again! [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: You certainly don't seem terribly scarred from your experiences with the S.L.A.

[A] Hearst: No, I've come through them remarkably well.

[Q] Playboy: Do you see it as a miracle that you're still alive?

[A] Hearst: Oh, yeah. I don't know what a bookmaker would say to those odds: To be kidnaped, to survive the shoot-out, to have gone through all the months with them, to be arrested on top of that, to spend the time I spent in prison, and still be alive after all of that--I would say the odds were incredibly against me.

[Q] Playboy: And to marry your bodyguard as well--no sense taking chances with your future. Don't you and Bernie often go hunting together?

[A] Hearst: We go down to the ranch at San Simeon.

[Q] Playboy: How big is the ranch?

[A] Hearst: About 70-or 80-thousand acres.

[Q] Playboy: What do you shoot there, boar?

[A] Hearst: Oh, yeah, lots of pigs. Bernie shot a 600-pound boar there. They're big. But we eat everything we shoot. People who have never gone hunting have a tendency to look down on hunters and act like they're killing Bambi's father. Their argument is it's not much of a sport. You've got a rifle with a scope and the deer is just standing there. Well, the deer is not just standing there. You're very lucky if the deer is just standing there.

[Q] Playboy: Why not just buy steak?

[A] Hearst: Deer are not that easy to shoot. I keep trying to get Bernie to go duckhunting.

[Q] Playboy: You mean you want to shoot Donald Duck?

[A] Hearst: Donald Duck, Daffy Duck. . . . People never think of hunters as being conservationists. Hunters are some of the biggest conservationists, because they want to be sure there's enough wildlife around--

[Q] Playboy: For them to kill. What else would you feel satisfied shooting?

[A] Hearst: Oh . . . maybe you. I wouldn't be the only one! Every hunter will think I'm right. They'll think, Boy, what a jerk she is to talk to this guy! You probably think that guns should be outlawed.

[Q] Playboy: That idea has its appeal.

[A] Hearst: Ohhh, ugh!

[Q] Playboy: Do you keep loaded guns in your house?

[A] Hearst: Oh, yes, of course.

[Q] Playboy: If an intruder entered, would you use them?

[A] Hearst: In a second.

[Q] Playboy: Would you say this self-confidence is one of the positive aspects of your S.L.A. experience?

[A] Hearst: Yes. I used to be really, really shy, like, hardly-able-to-speak shy. And I just can't be that way anymore.

[Q] Playboy: You certainly can't be shy when you're plugging a book.

[A] Hearst: It is exciting to have a book out. It seems kind of amazing.

[Q] Playboy: What are you reading yourself these days?

[A] Hearst: Well, I hate to say it, but the last book I read was Miss Piggy's Guide to Life.

[Q] Playboy: Stimulating. What about magazines?

[A] Hearst: I read Time and Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful, Cosmopolitan, Connoisseur, Antiques and People. I read Playboy; we get it only for the articles. [Laughs] And Bernie gets Karate or Black Belt.

[Q] Playboy: How about movies?

[A] Hearst: I liked Star Wars. I loved The Muppet Movie. Movies I can see five or six times, because I always forget them. And I enjoy them just as much the fifth time as I did the first.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think there'll be a movie from your book?

[A] Hearst: People have written to ask about selling the movie rights. My lawyer has those letters. When it is time, I'll take appropriate steps.

[Q] Playboy: OK, we're about done. With the book out, and your life ahead of you, have you ever considered doing occasional TV commentary? As an expert on terrorism? ABC could bring you in during a crisis, saying. "All right, Patricia, they're bombing this building, what do you think is going to happen?"

[A] Hearst: That's a real funny one. What a strange idea! You know, you're not that far off base. They had [former FBI investigator] Charles Bates doing that for a while. Every time there was a terrorist bombing, they'd roll out Charles Bates and ask him, "Now, Charles, what's going on here?" "Well, you know, ummm, when I was on the Hearst case, we did it this way." [Laughs] I think I'd rather be on the cover of Playboy.

[Q] Playboy: All those covers on Time and Newsweek weren't enough?

[A] Hearst: Are you kidding? Any old jerk, like the Ayatollah or Charles Manson, gets on the cover of Time. Big deal.

[Q] Playboy: Joking aside, is this the end of your story? And so she lived happily ever after? You have your marriage, your child, your house, your book. There really is a happy ending?

[A] Hearst: You never know if you've got a happy ending until you finally die. I guess nobody's life has a happy ending if you look at it that way.

"I answered some major things, like, was I a bad girl all my life? No, I wasn't."

"I thought for a long time I was fooling them and leading them on, but somewhere along the line I got lost."

"I think the Government went overboard in burning down the house. . . . But you don't see me crying about it."