But there was a missing link--the murder of Wilbert "Popeye" Jackson, leader of the United Prisoners Union. He had been killed, together with a companion, Sally Voye, while they sat in a parked car at 2:00 in the morning. I learned from impeccable sources that the hit was known in advance within the California Department of Corrections, the FBI, the San Jose and San Francisco police departments. But now--in mid-February 1976, while the Patty Hearst trial was in process--a similar charge was made in the company of some unusual accusations when a Berkeley underground group called Tribal Thumb prepared this statement:

It has become known to the Tribal Thumb orbit that the CIA, FBI and CCS [Criminal Conspiracy Section] have made undercurrent moves to establish a basis for the total eradication of the Tribal Thumb Community . . [They] are involved in working overtime to unravel the mystery of Popeye Jackson's execution in an effort to plant Tribal Thumb in a web of conspiracy in that execution . . .

The FBI's heavy involvement in the case of Popeye's death largely is due to the death of Sally Voye, who in actuality was moonlighting (outside her employment as a teacher) as a narcotics agent for police forces. Moreover, she was Popeye's control agent. Popeye was an informer on the movement.

Several days ago, Patty Hearst was slipped out of her jail cell by the FBI and Mr. Randolph Hearst and taken to a nearby jail to identify a man being held there (we're withholding his name for now) who was allegedly closely associated with Tribal Thumb, to make an identification of this man's alleged trafficking of large quantities of arms to Tribal Thumb and the Symbionese Liberation Army. The result is that Miss Hearst pointed the comrade out as the trafficker of such weapons . . .

Donald DeFreeze escaped from the California prison system with help from the FBI and California prison officials. His mission was to establish an armed revolutionary organization, controlled by the FBI, specifically to either make contact with or undermine the surfacing and development of the August Seventh Guerrilla Movement.

We make note of the fact that the first communique issued by the SLA under the leadership of Donald DeFreeze was in part a duplicate of a communique issued by the ASGM. Further examination of those communiques establishes that the ASGM had surfaced and was in the process of developing some kind of operational format, when the SLA hastily moved, hard pressed for something spectacular to cut off this thrust by the ASGM. The result was the incorrect and unfounded death of (school superintendent) Marcus Foster.

It is evident that the FBI through its sources of information knew of the underground existence of the ASGM and that the movement was obviously making plans to become public knowledge via armed actions against the imperialist state. Having had their attempts to infiltrate agents into the ASGM's mainstream frustrated, they sought the diverse method of establishing an organization they could control. So they made three approaches: Donald DeFreeze, who was in contact with Nancy Ling Perry, who worked at Rudy's Fruit Stand, from whom Patty Hearst often bought bagels and fruit juice.

DeFreeze was let loose and given a safe plan to surface as an armed guerrilla unit. That plan was to kidnap Patty Hearst--strategized by the FBI, Randolph Hearst, Patty Hearst and Nancy Ling Perry. The format of that plan of kidnapping Patty Hearst was extracted from a book, published by a publishing company named Nova owned by the Hearst Corporation, entitled Vanished [Tribal Thumb may have meant Black Abductor, by Harrison James, pseudonym for James Rusk, Jr., published by Regency Press, not affiliated with Hearst].

On April 8, after Patty was found guilty, there was a front-page story in the San Francisco Examiner:

Would-be presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore and the Patricia Hearst case are intricately linked in the web of evidence that led to yesterday's arrest of the accused murderer of militant prison-reform leader Wilbert "Popeye" Jackson, authorities have told the Examiner.

These sources said Ms. Moore, now in custody in a Federal prison in San Diego, will be a star witness in the trial of the accused slayer . . . And it was the arrest last September of Miss Hearst . . . that led to the break in the case, according to the primary investigators in the case . . .

Booked into the San Francisco County Jail yesterday afternoon was Richard Alan London, 26, an ex-convict who has been in the Santa Clara County Jail in San Jose since last summer on an armed-robbery charge . . . London is a member of a revolutionary band called the United Prisoners Union . . .

Federal and local authorities flatly denied a report circulated by Tribal Thumb sources that Miss Hearst, convicted of bank robbery on March 20, was taken to the Santa Clara jail to identify London last week . . .

Last week? Why this change in chronology? The original Tribal Thumb statement alleged that Patty had identified London as a gunrunner for the SLA and Tribal Thumb more than a month-and-a-half previously. The truth is that she secretly began to turn state's evidence early in her trial. Usually, defendants tell what they know before trial, so the prosecution can decide whether or not to plea-bargain and avoid a trial. But this particular trial had to be held, if only to avoid giving any impression of plea-bargaining. Patty Hearst had been gangbanged behind the tent at the Hearstling Brothers Browning & Bailey Bread and Circus by both teams, prosecution and defense, while they were adversaries in a trial that was more carefully staged than a TV wrestling match.

Judge Oliver Carter had once sentenced Hedy Sarney to two-and-a-half years for bank robbery. She claimed at her sentencing that Tribal Thumb had made her do it. Now F. Lee Bailey reminded the judge that he had commented that her claim of coercion came too late and that she had refused to testify against the people she accused of forcing her to commit the crime, whereas, in the case of Patty Hearst, Bailey said cryptically, "Your Honor has been made aware of some facts which are relevant to him."