Symbionese Liberation Army

The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was a radical left-wing organization that operated in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles between 1973 and 1974. The group was led by Donald DeFreeze, a career criminal and LAPD informant who had been recruited at Vacaville Medical Facility by CIA psychological warfare specialist Colston Westbrook. The SLA never had more than approximately 22 members, and DeFreeze was the only Black member of the predominantly white radical group.¹²

Origins at Vacaville

At Vacaville, Westbrook ran the Black Cultural Association, a program that connected white radical leftist students from Berkeley with Black prisoners. Through this program, Westbrook mentored and recruited Donald DeFreeze, who was serving time as an armed robber and LAPD informant. DeFreeze obtained early release from Vacaville by performing a "favor" for prison authorities, a reference to submitting to psychiatric experiments. After transferring to Soledad Prison, DeFreeze escaped on March 5, 1973, and formed the SLA later that year.¹

The Marcus Foster Assassination

The SLA's first public act was the assassination of Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster on November 6, 1973. Foster, the first African-American superintendent of Oakland's public schools, was shot eight times with hollow-point bullets packed with cyanide. His deputy superintendent, Robert Blackburn, was critically wounded but survived. The SLA claimed they killed Foster over a proposed student identification card program they characterized as "fascist." Two weeks before the assassination, a neo-Nazi group had issued a flyer predicting Foster's death. "Black men" were witnessed fleeing the scene, but the arrested suspects were white, and blackface makeup was discovered in their apartments.¹²

The Patty Hearst Kidnapping

On February 4, 1974, the SLA kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst from her Berkeley apartment. Hearst was held blindfolded in a closet, subjected to intense political indoctrination, and repeatedly threatened with death. On April 3, 1974, Hearst released an audiotape announcing she had joined the SLA and taken the name "Tania." On April 15, 1974, she participated in the Hibernia Bank robbery in San Francisco, captured on surveillance footage wielding an M1 carbine. The kidnapping and Hearst's apparent conversion became one of the most sensational criminal cases of the twentieth century.¹²

Remote Viewing Investigation

During the search for Hearst, the Berkeley police asked Pat Price, a psychic at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), to assist. Price correctly identified the kidnapping as a political act and picked three SLA members, including William Wolfe ("Lobo"), from police mugshots, though his attempt to locate Hearst by remote viewing was unsuccessful.³

The May 17 Shootout

On May 17, 1974, Los Angeles police surrounded an SLA safe house. Over 400 law enforcement officers participated in the siege, which became one of the first major police operations broadcast live on television. Six SLA members, including Donald DeFreeze, died in the assault and the building burned to the ground. Remaining members, including Patty Hearst and the Harris couple, continued to operate until Hearst's arrest on September 18, 1975.²

The Intelligence Dimension

The SLA's campaign of violence had the effect of discrediting legitimate left-wing and Black liberation movements at a time when the CIA was running Operation CHAOS and the FBI was conducting COINTELPRO operations against domestic political organizations. Colston Westbrook's role in creating the SLA through the Black Cultural Association at Vacaville during the period of MKULTRA experiments, and his employment by Pacific Architects and Engineers, a confirmed CIA proprietary, raised questions about whether the SLA was a manufactured radical group designed to destabilize and discredit the left. The SLA placed Westbrook on its death list in April 1974, calling him a CIA agent and "torturer."¹