http://web.archive.org/web/20010622204448/www.lektrik.com/grist/jr000208.htm
There is the scent of cold, calculating cynicism hanging about the Soliah camp lately.
Last Friday, Susan B. Jordan, Soliah’s attorney, went into court seeking an order to take testimony from Jack Scott, variously described as a ‘sports guru’ and writer who had been instrumental in hiding Patty Hearst, Bill and Emily Harris and Wendy Yoshimura from authorities during the summer of 1974. Scott, who lived in Eugene, Oregon, was suffering from throat cancer and he could not travel to California because of his rapidly fading health, Jordan pleaded. Indeed, two days later, Mr. Scott did pass away.
Ms. Jordan told the court that Scott’s statements to the FBI and to the defense team back in October directly contradicted Ms. Hearst’s account of events during her time with the SLA. His testimony was, according to Jordan, necessary to impeach Hearst’s veracity.
Given the fact that Mr. Scott’s medical condition has been known to the defense team for months, one has to wonder why Jordan waited until he was at death’s door before seeking the court’s involvement. Indeed, given that Ms. Jordan waited until the last minute and then blew Friday’s hearing by citing the wrong section of the California Penal Code as the authority for Judge Ideman to order a court-sworn deposition out of state, it’s tempting to wonder if there was ever any intent to record and use his testimony, or if the entire drill was a charade to take advantage of Scott’s imminent death to build sympathy for Soliah and to lay the blame on the prosecution for opposing Jordan’s request.
Sometimes drawing a 'foul' is good gamesmanship. Certainly, Jordan’s timing provides more opportunity to dominate the news cycle for a few days and to spin the story than a careful review of her Friday filing ever would.
The details of what she hoped to prove from Scott’s testimony can be read elsewhere. It has the flavor of new revelation about it, but to anyone familiar with the Hearst saga, most of it is old news – or, to be more precise, no news.
According to Jordan, Scott would have testified that he and his parents drove Hearst cross-country and, though she had the opportunity to leave and go home, she didn’t. This, says Jordan, impeaches Hearst’s earlier testimony that she was unable to leave her captors.
Anyone who has read Hearst’s book knows there were dozens of opportunities after the first four months to wander off, go home, whatever, and she didn’t take advantage of any of them. Hearst, herself, notes that during that trip she was the one who was hyperconscious of security and avoiding the authorities, even though no one forced her to assume that role. There’s nothing new here.
Hearst’s failure to flee is the enigma of the kidnapping. You either buy her brainwashing defense or you don’t. The 1975 trial court didn’t and Hearst served two years. President Carter may have bought it when he commuted her sentence, or he may simply have believed that, whatever Hearst’s state of mind, her criminal behavior began with her violent kidnapping, a fact that could not be ignored. It remains the case that Hearst’s frequent choices to stay are consistent with being either a true-believer or a brainwashed zombie. That she stayed is both common knowledge and inadequate to make Jordan’s case. But then, Jordan’s blowing smoke.
Likewise the ‘inconsistencies’ surrounding Hearst’s claim that she was raped by Willie Wolfe (and Cinque) – both killed in the LA shootout -- and her alleged confession to Scott that she had fallen in love with Wolfe. "She described Wolfe as the most kind and gentle man she had ever met," Jordan charges.
Duh!
Jordan wants us to believe that she’s offering us some new insight available only from her dying, surprise witness, but she’s actually plagerized it from Hearst’s own book. That phrase is almost verbatim from the SLA communiqu� issued after the LA conflagration. There’s nothing new here – just more SLA theatrics.
If you accept Hearst’s defense that the LA shootout convinced her that the FBI was out to kill her and that there was no longer a way back to her family and former life, then her statements regarding Wolfe are classic examples of the Stockholm Syndrome –- the phenomenon of kidnap victims forming primary trust relationships with their captors. Scott, channeled through Jordan, is telling us nothing new. We know all this from Hearst herself. It is simply a ploy – packaged as "new evidence" – to raise doubts about Hearst’s truthfulness.
The irony in this is that Jordan originally made her mark in legal circles by winning acquittal for a woman who killed her rapist. Inez Garcia never told the police about what had been done to her, but she took it on herself to get a rifle and to track down and execute her attacker. She was found guilty at trial – in part because of her own outbursts of rage where she made it clear that she had killed the man. Jordan was successful at getting the conviction overturned. She helped establish rape as a crime of violence and not just a sexual offense. (http://web.archive.org/web/20010622204448/http://www.guerrillalaw.com/blackrage.html– Scroll down to "Chapter 4: Women’s Self Defense").
After Garcia’s retrial, Jordan wrote: "We addressed the prevailing myth that rape victims 'ask for it' head on. Despite Garc�a's sexy appearance, no woman should be subjected to sex against her will, and once raped, a victim is still entitled to respect, at the police station and in the courtroom."
Jordan is conveniently ignoring her own admonitions about ‘appearances’ in order to paint Hearst as an ‘asked-for-it’ woman – all to diminish the value of her testimony in the Soliah trial. She never questioned the fact of Garcia’s rape – which was called into question at trial – but she speaks of Hearst’s dismissively. She never demanded that Garcia’s testimony be impeached because she did not tell the police about her rape – how is Hearst’s rape charge impeached by her alleged failure to tell Jack Scott of hers?
Jordan blathers on: Hearst has testified and stated repeatedly over the past 20 years that her treatment by the SLA was brutal. In his statement to the FBI Scott related that: "Hearst said that she stayed with the SLA not because they treated her badly, but rather because they treated her so well."
A stretch, Suzie. Hearst describes both times of good and bad treatment during her time with the SLA – both before the shootout and afterwards. After LA, she is clearly not coerced to stay – but we know that from her own writings. Again, she was brainwashed and/or she was a true believer. Take your pick. Her actions are consistent with either explanation and Scott offers nothing new to parse that vexing question.
Dittos for Scott’s claim that Hearst appeared to be the ‘most zealous member of the SLA.’ Hearst’s zeal-at-the-time is evident in her book. She, herself, describes the creation of daily ‘death lists.’ Hearst did not hide the craziness nor her participation in it. To anyone with moderate reading comprehension skills, it is obvious that she would have characterized herself quite differently at the time than she did later with the benefit of time and freedom. So would have Inez Garcia.
Jordan (and Scott?) has, to this point, done nothing more than glean tidbits from Hearst’s book to create an aura of truth about what is her real zinger. Because "Scott’s new revelations" are already confirmed by Hearst’s own words, we, like sheep, are supposed to swallow whole the bombshell that Jordan wants to place before the court – and the press. Namely that Hearst told Scott that she actually staged her own kidnapping 26 years ago last Friday to get out of an unhappy relationship with live-in boyfriend Steven Weed.
[Note to Paul Simon – Make that ’51 ways to leave your lover].
Go ahead. Laugh. See why Jordan included all these already-known-and-confirmed-by-Hearst-revelations? Had she come into court or to the press without their cover and made a straight-up charge that Hearst masterminded the whole thing by convincing Nancy Ling Perry and Cinque – who had earlier plotted the assassination of a public official – to kidnap her and not tell the other SLA members she was in on it, she would have been a laughingstock. Of course, the knowledge of their little private, practical joke died with them in the LA fire, which is why Bill and Emily Harris still believe they committed a real kidnapping (for which they served eight years in prison).
Yep, happens all the time – on I Love Lucy! "Patty, you got some splainin’ to do."
No wonder Jordan waited until Scott had no possible opportunity to be deposed by both the defense and prosecution. A drugged and dying Scott would have been an incompetent and unbelievable witness alone – under the slightest questioning and probing, he would have been reduced to an idiot. The defense’s cynical timing will pay more dividends that an actual deposition ever would have.
Or as the Church Lady would say: "How conveeeeenient...."
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Jack Golan is Editor of Lektrik Press, an Internet newspaper published in Sacramento, California. His articles appear in the weekly (or so) Grist for the Mill column at www.lektrik.com