Screed 22: THE APRIL FOOL COMMUNIQUE
Patricia Hearst's diatribe against her family and the "corporate fascist state" was read over many radio and television stations and published in many newspapers. It caused a new burst of headline publicity, and gave many more people, especially among non-white political and pressure groups, a chance to compete for star billing with the media.
The reactions of men and women who had already gotten into the picture were predictable. The Hearsts, Steven Weed, A. Ludlow Kra and the shoguns of WAPAC and the other Coalition groups, still p fessed to believe that they could do business with the SLA. Under premise, they organized a massive shift in the character of the Hearst PIN food program. Kramer's social-service dream of a "supplemental" and "ongoing" foundation which would help thousands of hard-pressed families over many years was abandoned in favor of the big-party one-scramble, food dream of the SLA. About one million dollars ha been disbursed from Hearst's original gift; the new idea was to spend the rest in a single distribution.
One million dollars worth of high-quality food was accordingly assembled, packed into cartons stamped with the SLA snake, and shoved forth from seventeen distribution points. Once again the chief beneficiaries were Blacks, for by now collection of the Hearst food had become a sort of ghetto game. There was heavier pilferage than ever before, and great deal of new violence, as well as some bad feeling between the races. It was particularly noticed that whole families of Blacks would enter lines, so that one group might collect six or eight of the forty-pound boxes, and that many individuals and families drove from point to point, filling their trucks or automobiles during the course of the day. This practice was especially noticed in Chinatown. Oriental organizations had opposed the food plan from the beginning, and refused to take any part in it. Their spokesmen now hastened to point out that the food distributed at the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Chinatown distribution point, went almost entirely to "other races" who had invaded the district for the one day.
When the second' million was gone, Kramer and his staff went back to their homes in Washington State. Fearing violence in the PIN head-quarters, the PIN head gave his final news conference in a downtown hotel. Kramer was by then embittered. According to him, the program had been run in "an atmosphere of violence" from its beginning. He averred that most of the people who had dealt with the PIN had done so for selfish reasons, as a means of acquiring publicity and power in their communities, and alluded to simple thefts and highjackings amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. In his reports, however, just as in the reports of the Coalition leaders, it was stressed that so far as the means went, the sudden-shower food demand of the SLA had been met. If the SLA agreed, it did not say so. Its silence continued for a nerve-racking three weeks.
The heavy reportage of these three weeks was mostly by way of personalia. Radicals, criminals, professors, psychiatrists, and leaders of the various minority groups were interviewed, gave their theories, and enjoyed their little day of fame. The issue of Remiro and Little also made heavy news. Though denied their national television show, and duly indicted for the murder of Foster, the two SLA soldiers joined those who theorized the situation, and issued a string of manifestos and communiques of their own. Randolph Hearst and the Hearst Corporation completed the ransom arrangements by putting another four million dollars in escrow, to be used for the SLA or PIN programs, but only on the condition that Patricia Hearst be actually released. Though the Hearsts, Weed, and the run of radical and militant spokesmen still hoped for peace with the SLA, and for the happy return of Miss Hearst, the concept of mere good-will gestures was now worn out.
On April 1st the SLA leader, Cinque, broke his long silence. This time he sent his message through a sex-oriented counter-culture newspaper, the San Francisco Phoenix, with a bouquet of roses. The Phoenix had been honored in this way because of the long "interview with the SLA" which it had published the week before. John Bryan, the editor of the Phoenix, now rose to stardom, and was photographed with the Hearsts and widely interviewed. "It is," he said in wonder, "the greatest scoop of my career". The article which had so impressed the SLA turned out, however, to have been a cruel hoax of his own. Short of copy for the Phoenix, Bryan had concocted the whole interview himself. But the message, this time a typed one labeled "Communique No. 7," was real enough.
[Transmittal to the Phoenix]
This communication is to be sent through you to the people. You are hereby directed by the Court of the People to notify immediately radio stations KPFA, KSAN and KDIA concerning the complete contents of this communication, understanding that you must not cooperate with the FBI by turning over this communication or by providing them with any information.
Protect your rights as reporters by refusing to reveal your sources of information.
Communique No. 7
March 29, 1974
Symbionese Liberation Army, Court Order: Release of the
Information and IntelligenceCodes of War of the SLA. Court
Unit No. 4Order issued by the Court of
Subject: negotiations and releasethe people.
of the prisoner.
Herein enclosed are the Codes of War of the Symbionese Liberation Army, these documents as all SLA documents are to be
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printed in full and omitting nothing by order of this court in all, forms of the media. Further communications regarding subject prisoner will follow in the following 72 hours. Communications will state the state [sic], city and time of release of the prisoner.
Signed:1.1. Unit 4
General Field Marshall Ci SLA
