'We Thought San Francisco Was the World, and It Wasn't'

Doesn't sound like much has changed in San Francisco. They're still living on their own planet.

The woman who fired a gun at President Gerald Ford in 1975 and spent the next 32 years in prison said in an interview Thursday that she believed the country would change only through a violent revolution.

Sara Jane Moore told NBC's "Today" that she now realizes that her actions were "wrong ... a serious error."

The appearance was Moore's first TV interview since she was released on parole in late 2007, NBC said.

In September 1975, Moore, then around 45, fired on Ford as he waved to a crowd in San Francisco. A man near her knocked the pistol out of her hand and the shot went astray. It was the second failed attempt on Ford's life in less than three weeks.

Moore was sentenced to life in prison but released on parole in December 2007. She has lived in an undisclosed location since then.

It was during the long years in prison, she said, that "gradually I began to realize that I had let myself be used. ... I definitely think that it was wrong. I think I was misled. I think I was mistaken. I think I made a serious error."

Moore, who had been loosely associated with leftist groups in California, said she `wasn't prepared" for the things she learned about the extent of poverty and other problems.

"It was a time that people don't remember. You know, we had a war ... the Vietnam War, you became — I became — immersed in it," Moore said Thursday.

"We were saying the country needed to change. The only way it was going to change was a violent revolution. I genuinely thought that (shooting Ford) might trigger that new revolution in this country."

On politics, she said she now knows she was hearing only one side of the story. "We thought San Francisco was the world, and it wasn't."

Curious how long the left has sought change. Rather amusing to see how she was loosely affilated with leftist groups.

I always thought the left was all about peace and tolerance?

Be assured if a would-be assassin was loosely affiliated with a rigt-wing group we'd never hear the end of it.

Would-be Ford Assassin Freed

Happy New Year!

A leftwing radical who tried to murder President Ford walks free.

Woman who tried to kill Ford freed

SAN FRANCISCO - Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at President Ford in a bizarre assassination attempt just 17 days after a disciple of Charles Manson tried to kill Ford, was paroled Monday after 32 years behind bars. Moore, 77, was released from the federal prison in Dublin, east of San Francisco, where she had been serving a life sentence, the Bureau of Prisons said.

Bureau spokeswoman Felicia Ponce said she had no details on why Moore was let out. But she said that with good behavior, inmates sentenced to life can apply for parole after 10 years.

Moore was 40 feet away from Ford outside a hotel in San Francisco when she fired a shot at him on Sept. 22, 1975. As she raised her .38-caliber revolver and pulled the trigger, Oliver Sipple, a disabled former Marine standing next to her, pushed up her arm. The bullet flew over Ford's head by several feet.

Two weeks earlier, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of Manson's, tried to kill the president in Sacramento.

In recent interviews, Moore said she regretted her actions, saying she was blinded by her radical political views and convinced that the government had declared war on the left.
...
In the 1970s, Moore began working for People in Need, a free food program established by millionaire Randolph Hearst in exchange for the return for his daughter Patty, who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974.

Moore soon became involved with radical leftists, ex-convicts and other members of San Francisco's counterculture. At this time, Moore became an informant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

She has said she fired at Ford because she thought she would be killed once it was disclosed that she was an FBI informant. The bureau ended its relationship with her about four months before the assassination attempt.

"I was going to go down anyway," she said in a 1982 interview with the San Jose Mercury News. "If the government was going to kill me, I was going to make some kind of statement."

Moore was sent to a West Virginia women's prison in 1977. Two years later, she escaped but was captured several hours later.

OK, so the woman is 77 and has served a long stretch. Still, I think an attempt on the life of a president deserves life.

Via the Moore Wikipedia entry.

“I do regret I didn't succeed, and allow the winds of change to start. I wish I had killed him. I did it to create chaos.”

Check out Making of a Misfit.

Through her involvement with PIN, Sara Jane Moore soon became a kind of radical groupie. During the next 18 months, as she wandered through the small, semiclandestine parties, splinter groups and cells that make up "the Movement" in the Bay Area, Moore turned from enchanted novice into an FBI informer and then into a Marxist convert, only to be ostracized as a despised pariah after she confessed her informant role. The atmosphere of conspiracy and danger provided a sense of action and purpose that her life was lacking. "I was really nervous, but I was intrigued by the whole thing," she once said. "It was like a grade-B movie."

Ford: Clinton a Sex Addict

Certainly this comes as no surprise to anyone who's ever seen Bill Clinton in action. Except maybe his adoring wife, who was shocked to find out he was being serviced by a fat intern, and blamed it on the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Gerald Ford was disturbed by Bill Clinton's skirt-chasing ways - and thought he should check into a sex addiction clinic.

A new book on the late 38th President reveals he had strong views about the Clintons: He thought Hillary wore the pants and that Bill couldn't keep his zipped.

"He's sick - he's got an addiction. He needs treatment," Ford told Daily News Washington Bureau Chief Thomas M. DeFrank, author of "Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford."

Of course, Clinton never got any treatment, and he and his wife continue merrily along, lying through their teeth each and every day.

"I'll tell you one thing: He didn't miss one good-looking skirt at any of the social occasions," Ford said later.

"He's got a wandering eye, I'll tell you that. Betty had the same impression; he isn't very subtle about his interest."

Nevertheless, when the Monica Lewinsky sex-and-perjury scandal erupted and barreled toward impeachment, Ford was willing to help Clinton - to a point.

After the House voted to impeach Clinton but before the Senate's decision on whether to convict him, the sitting President phoned the ex-President.

"He said he needed my help and wanted to know if I could help," Ford recalled not long after.

Ford had written two Op-Ed pieces in which he called for Clinton to admit he had lied to federal investigators in exchange for censure over impeachment.

He told Clinton that he would help him, if he agreed to such a deal.

"Bill I think you have to admit that you lied. If you do that, I think that will help - and I'll help you. If you'll admit to perjury, I'll do more," he said.

"I won't do that," Clinton told him. "I can't do that."

Ford was stunned by Clinton's lack of contrition. "It's a character flaw," he concluded.

Meanwhile, these two charlatans were up in Harlem Saturday campaigning at a church, which is always condemned when Republicans do it, but just fine for Democrats. Naturally, they kept up their habitual lying, something the both of them are addicted to.

Sen. Clinton - greeted with a standing ovation and a maroon-robed choir singing "Victory is Mine" when she took the pulpit - said it was time to return America "to the basics" of providing jobs and revitalizing the economy.

"Let's end the cronyism and the no-bid contracts," she said, as she attacked the Bush administration for marginalizing the middle class, children and other groups.

"This president is perfectly happy to give no-bid contracts to Halliburton while he vetoes health care for children in America," she said.

Of course, it was Bill Clinton who doled out no-bid contracts to Halliburton long before the current president did, but let's not let the facts get in the way.

Rather than perpetuating the myth of an Iraqi civil war, she might also want to read up on what is actuially happening there, not that she cares.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit links. Thanks!