Episode 1: It Didn’t Go Off

Rip Current is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those if the host, producers, or parent company listener discretion.

Is it vie.

Are California.

Just before ten am on September fifth, nineteen seventy five, President Gerald Ford walked with a security detail on a path through Capitol Park on the grounds of the California Capitol Building in Sacramento. The path was lined with members of the public. State policemen were president at intervals along the route. A small woman wearing a bright red dress maneuvered her way through the crowd and approached the President as he passed.

She had a gun.

Her name was Lynnette from.

Good Evening in CALIFORNI you today. President Ford looked down the barrel of a loaded automatic held by a red haired woman in a long red dress. But the gun didn't go off, and he's all right. The woman was wrestled to the ground by a secret serviceman and the President was hustled away. She is being charged with attempted murder of the President. She is twenty six year old Lynette Alice from nicknamed Squeaky.

Less than three weeks later, on September twenty second, a woman named Sarah Jane Moore stood in a similar crowd assembled across the street from the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco. The President emerged from the side entrance and walked towards his waiting limousine. Moore fired a single shot before she was wrestled to the ground.

This is a CBS News special report.

Here CBS News correspondent Walder Cronkait.

A woman fired a shot at President Ford in San Francisco this afternoon, but a policeman deflected the pistol and the President was not hit. The woman was in a crowd across the street about thirty five or forty feet away. As the President was leaving the Saint Francis Hotel to enter his limousine to return to Washington. Witnesses heard the sound and saw a puff of smoke. The woman, identified by police as Sarah Jane Moore in her forties, was

In nearly two hundred and fifty years of United States history, there are only two times that we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a US president. The two attempts were separated by seventeen days and less than ninety miles.

I'm Toby Ball and I'm Mary Catherine Garrison, and this is rip current.

I saw a woman start to go down and her arm go back, and I saw the gun, the big black gun.

I got it out of her hand, and she.

Kept saying, easy fellas, Easy fellas.

It didn't go off.

It didn't go off.

Episode one, it didn't go off.

So the idea for this podcast came as I was doing research on a related topic, radical groups in the nineteen seventies. I was going down these different rabbit holes, and at the end of one I came across Sarah Jane Moore and from there Lynette From.

I came to this story by way of Broadway. I played Lynette Squeaky From in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins Charlie Dahn.

As I dug into the research, I found that there was a bigger story here than just a historical oddity. This was the story of two women navigating the fringes of radical society. How had they arrived at this place in their lives? Why was California in nineteen seventy five the setting for these attempts? Why target Gerald Ford? And

When you read Time each week, you know more you understand.

From before World War II until the rise of the Internet, Time magazine was a powerful cultural force. Their annual Person of the Year issue was a big deal. This was the person or people Time deemed quote to have done the most to influence the events of the year. On January twelfth, nineteen seventy, Time magazine named Middle Americans as its Men and Women of the Year for nineteen sixty nine. Who were the Middle Americans?

The American dream that they were living was no longer the dream is advertised. They feared that they were beginning to lose their grip on the country. Others seem to be taking over. The liberals, the radicals, the defiant young, a communications industry that they often believed was lying to them. This, they will say, with an air of embarrassment that such a truth need be stated at all. Is the greatest country in the world. Why are people trying to tear it down?

Time Magazine took a sympathetic, though also critical view of Middle Americans, those who saw the changes in the social, cultural, and political landscape. Basically, the things we associate with the sixties as threatening to create a country alien to the one that they knew. There's racism, which shows itself in concerns about the civil rights movement, but in other ways as well.

The article says, the rising level of crime frightens the Middle American, and when he speaks of crime, though he does not like to admit it, he means blacks. And then the idea of sacrificing their own children's education to a long range improvement for blacks appalls them.

Time's comfort with a certain level of racism is jarring, such as here talking about Middle Americans who voted for the overtly racist, segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace.

They are not extremists of the right, despite the fact that some of them voted for George Wallace in nineteen sixty eight.

I say segregation, MA, segregation, the MA, and segregation forever.

But the Middle Americans' concerns go beyond the impacts of the civil rights movement. They're worried that the radical young, as Time calls them, fundamentally challenge their belief in the goodness of America.

Middle Americans education does not dwell upon the agonizing moral discrepancies of American history, the stories of the Indians or the Blacks, or the national tradition of violence. He cannot believe that the society he has come to accept as the best possible on earth. The order he sees as natural contains wrong so deeply built in that he does not notice them. Middle Americans believe that the radical young are operating on a fast misunderstanding of their nation.

Time uses shorthand to get this point across.

While the rest of the nation's youth has been watching Dustin Hoffman and Midnight Cowboy, Middle America's teenagers have been taking in John Wayne for the second or third time in The Green Berets.

Midnight Cowboy is the story of a male sex worker and his pimp trying to eke out a living in the sedious corners of New York City.

Oh Hey, I'm a hustler.

You didn't know that.

It received an X rating due to quote the homosexual frame of reference and quote its possible influence on youngsters. In contrast, The Green Berets was an anti communist, pro Vietnam War movie. Critics observe that The Green Berets reduced the ongoing war into a simple conflict of good versus evil.

Successful nation Mikey Yeah, but very gustly.

Roger Ebert gave it zero stars, but Middle America apparently ate up the raw patriotism. We'll continue to use these terms Middle America and the Radical Young as a shorthand to broadly describe these two political and social groups in the US in the late sixties and seventies.

Lynette From and Sarah Jane Moore's stories are very different in many ways, but they share two fundamental similarities. Both women had lived much of their lives in the culture of Middle America, but their experiences there were difficult, and then they suddenly, disorientingly became part of the most extreme frontiers of the radical Young. For Sarah Jane Moore, this meant immersing herself in the revolutionary philosophy the underground militants

If you think American society of the twenty first century or the twenty twenties was dangerous and.

Violent, it's nothing.

Compared to what California was in the nineteen seventies.

Many, many people all of the world are due to be assassinated.

This is just at the beginning.

What starts as a hippie love called transmigraphied into a violent criminal enterprise.

Of course, would have been imber.

The people will be shot on prevent any.

Primate, any plague.

The worst thing in that underworld is to be an informant, a snitch.

These people aren't just a bunch of mouths.

They're perfectly willing to die for what they're doing.

I'm not saying i'd try to take a shot.

I didn't take a shot without a show in the chamber.

I had two feet from him.

I could have shot twice. I was the person in the intent was exactly as I stated in court, to wilfully and know.

Any assassinate Gerald off Or the Pressman of the United.

States, Gerald Ford, the thirty eighth President of the United States, arrived in Sacramento for the last stop of a two day fundraising trip to the West coast. He had already raised money in Seattle and Portland.

It was September the fifth, nineteen seventy five, and it was to be a red letter day in the city of Sacramento. The President of the United States, Gerald R. Ford, was to pay us a visit.

This is senior US District Court Judge William Shubb speaking at a twenty thirteen panel discussion of Lynnette From's trial.

The town was all a bustle.

In the morning.

The President was scheduled to speak to a large group of California business leaders at the annual host breakfast to be held in the newly constructed Sacramento Community Center.

Traditionally, the governor had always come and spoken to the breakfast. Jerry Brown was in his first year as governor in nineteen seventy five.

The people in chacrament all the people in California and out in the West, can make the difference.

You don't even governor about eight or nine months at this time, as a matter.

Of fact, are you get out and vote on Tuesday.

And invited him to come and speak, and he didn't respond. He kind of put him off, and it angered the sponsors. My name is Dan Walders. I'm a political columnist for a non fuck with journalism group called Calmatters dot Org. I'd been a journalist for over sixty years, and in nineteen seventy five I had just begun covering the capitol for the Sacramento Union. They were mostly Republicans. They kind of angered him that this kind young snotnoas kid governor

Ford received a warm welcome from the group of businessmen and gave a speech guaranteed to appeal to their political sensibilities.

In recent years, a disproportionate percentage of new jobs has come from the public sector rather than the private the result has been the creation of a bureaucracy that contributes very little to America's prosperity and productivity. It simply shares it.

His message of reducing regulatory burden was well received by the largely Republican audience. Here is an unidentified attendee reacting to Ford's speech.

Well, I think the President gave a very determined statement on which he stated that we're raither going to become free Americans again and cause our economy to grow, or we're going to go further and further in the direction of a planned, a socialistic type economy.

Following the speech, Ford returned from the convention Center to the Senator Hotel for a brief rest before heading to the state Capitol to meet with Governor Brown and address the state legislature. Here's Ford testifying about that day months later.

And what time did you leave the hotel?

Approxtantly ten am that morning?

As I understand, you crossed the street and you were proceeding along the walkway.

Towards the state capital. Is that correct?

That is correct. I left the hotel, walked across L Street and up a walkway from L Street to the entrance to the State Capitol on my way to meet the government.

And as you were walking you were exchanging cordialities.

With the people and shaking their hands. Is that correct?

That is correct? As I went along the walkway, the crowd had been assembled on my left as I walked toward the Capitol, and they were held back by a rope. And as I walked toward the Capital, I was shaking hands and speaking to people in this group on the left hand side.

As Ford moved along the route, he was accompanied by Secret Service agents, city and state police officers, and a group of journalists and camera operators, including Sacramento Television Channel ten reporter Roger Lindberg.

Beginning our series of reports on today's events in Sacramento with a near assassination of the president.

Here is Roger Lindberg.

Roger, Well, it is the sort of thing that you hear about, but you never really believe you will ever see.

Roger Lindberg, former KXTV reporter back in seventies. So my assignment at the time was to be with the president leaving the hotel, which was across the street from the Capitol, and then go with him into the Capitol building. You have to cross a major street, and then you walk through this garden that is on the eastern side of the Capitol building, and then you go up the step into the Capitol. We come in the back door, not the front of the Capitol. So that was my assignment

President Ford was smiling and shaking hands as he moved across from the Senator Hotel.

Towards the Capitol Building.

It was crossing the street, walking up a path that led to the back entrance of the Capitol.

I remember it was an incredibly nice day. It was bright and sunny, typical California day. We walked across the street with him. We entered the park on the northern side, and we were walking along a path at meanders between big trees and rose garden, etc.

There was a moment of confusion at the entrance to the park. The security plan called for the Sacramento City Police to aid the Secret Service and escorting the President

I was about fifteen feet from where the president was moving down the line of people shaking hands, and he reached out to shake hands with a young woman. And just about that time there was another person, a redheaded woman, moved toward him.

When he reached the halfway mark in the path, the crowd suddenly shifted violently, and President Ford flinched back, his hands thrust in front of him. Ford saw what few others could. A woman dressed in a long red skirt pointed a forty five caliber pistol at the president.

Here is Gerald Ford again from his testimony, Where.

Was Lynette from when you first observed her?

If you recall approximately halfway between L Street and the State Capitol, I noticed a person in the second or third row in a brightly colored dress, who appeared to one who either shake hands or speak, or at least wanted to get closer to me.

Do you recall anything about the condition of her face when you first observed her? Was it flushed, pale, weathered? I know you've used the term weather before. Is at your recollection?

It looked weathered, but there were many faces that the brightness of the dress attracted my attention, and then the process of noticing the dress. I thought her face did appear to be.

Somewhat weather, though four doesn't mention it, and photographs taken at the scene, Lynette is wearing a strange hat that matches the red of her dress. The hat is made of fabric and a shape like a cone, though most of it is folded down like a limp, which's capped to the right of her face. Her appearance was so unusual that even as Ford moved through a crowd of people, she stood out.

I would say that she was three to four feet from me when I first noticed her. She appeared to want to come forward. I had the impression she did come forward. I didn't see the precise movement. I stopped because I had the impression she wanted to speak to me or shake my hand, And as I moved to either shake hands or speak to her, I then noticed the gun as I indicated it in her hand was approximately two feet.

From where exactly, if you recall, was the barrel of the weapon point.

I could not tell.

The weapon was large. It covered all or most of her hand as far as I could see. And I only saw it instantaneously because almost automatically, one of the Secret Service agents lunged, grabbed the hand and the weapon, and then I was pushed off by the other members of the Secret Service detail.

Do you know who it was that grabbed a hold of her arm?

It was one of the Secret Service detail, mister Larry boondor.

My position at the time was right at his left shoulder. So he's walking along shaking hands. I'm concentrating on his hands. Don't want to have anybody grabbed too long, take his watch whatever.

We tried to interview Larry Bundorff, who was long retired from the Secret Service, but the Secret Service Press office turned down our interview request. Boondorf was next to Ford, keeping an eye on the hands reaching for the president. He would not have been expecting when that thrusting forward a gun, but he acted immediately.

As he's shaking hands. Suddenly I see this hand come up with something in it, and it wasn't At that time, didn't know it was a weapon, but I stepped in front of the President to stop the hand from coming up because I didn't want him to get.

Hit with whatever it was.

The minute I hited it, I knew it was a gun, so I yelled out, gun. All my very best friends that are with the President, they leave. She's screaming in the crowd. Its screaming, and I got hold of her hand and I got the gun. I got the gun here pushing right. Didn't have my vest on, So I'm thinking that I don't know if there's more to this than it's going to happen, but I know I'm not letting go older.

Hey, you heard Bundorf yelling a lady with a gun?

Forty five.

This is retired Secret Service agent Doug Duncan, who was part of President Ford security details, speaking at a commemoration of the assassination attempt the.

President Duck and I looked over his shoulder and I could see that Larry had the gall in custody. He had his hand over the gun pointed at the ground. His left hand was around her, so he had her under control.

All of this happened in front of the assembled crowd. To some it appeared to be just a commotion. Others who were closer saw more clearly what happened. Dan Walters, we had a.

Reporter out there by the name of Vita fied Rigi and I saw Vita and I said, what happened? She said, what she tried to kill Ford or something like that, and I said, you've got it right.

This is Vita being interviewed by local news immediately after the.

Attempt, And all of a sudden, I was standing maybe three feet from Ford, behind two people. All of a sudden, I saw the Secret serviceman right behind Ford just reach out and push, and I saw a woman start to go down and her arm go back, and I saw the gun, and I didn't watch what Ford was doing. And they wrestled through the ground and were slapping cuffs on her and this big black gun. They got it out of her hand, and she kept saying, easy fellas, easy fellas.

It didn't go off.

It didn't go off.

The president right after it happened, turned around and kind of looked back at the spot, and it was clear to me at least that he was aware of what had happened. He seemed to me was done be will they something like that, and it was clear that he knew what had happened.

Six Secret Service agents forced the president into a crouch and hurried him the remaining hundred yards to the capital's rear entrance and inside to safety. Meanwhile, Larry Bundorff and others brought Lynnette to a tree to isolate her from the crowd.

Roger Lindberg, the Secret Service hustled her to a large tree that was in the garden, and I think because of my age, wearing sunglasses and having a suit on, which was unusual for reporters, I.

Ended up just standing right next to her and I started interviewing her. I started talking to her. Her words to me were, damn it. It didn't go off. The gun, it didn't go off. I was scribbling notes as quickly as I could, and then the Secret Service realized that I wasn't Secret Service and got me away from the tree.

Woman I didn't find as Manson Paul Lynn Allen Squeaky from of Sacramento was held by Secret Service and police while the President continued on to the Capitol. Witness has heard Miss Brown say at one point it didn't go off. Can you believe it didn't go off?

An eyewitness told a local television reporter that Lynette kept talking even after Roger Lindberg had been moved away. What was she saying when they got her tied behind this tree?

She kept saying that he's not a public servant.

He's not a public servant.

From was taken to Sacramento Police headquarters, where she was questioned. At four o'clock, she appeared at the Sacramento Federal Court. The one page complaint charging her with the assassination attempt was read, and then US Magistrate Esther Mix asked From if she had any statement before bail was set. From replied no in a barely audible voice. She was then sent to the Sacramento County Jail, where she was confined

Serious crime rose eighteen percent for the nation as a whole.

After the speech to the Legislature, Ford left for McClellan Air Force Base, where Air Force one waited on the tarmac to take him back to Washington.

Ford boarded the plane directly from the limousine.

The President paused.

Only at the door of the craft to wave a warm goodbye to the people.

Tonight, President Ford is enrud back to Washington, and apparently he will continue his campaign schedule, including a return trip to California in about two weeks.

Though President Ford had left Sacramento unscathed, authorities and the public were left with pressing questions. Who exactly was Lynette from six years after the arrests of her guru Charles Manson, What had compelled her to attempt an act of sensational violence, and why had she targeted Gerald Ford next time on.

Rip current.

Was very good person.

Manson did things so much on instinct of how to survive.

I always felt like Glynnette was kind of this right hand woman, and she was also.

Very very dedicated to him. We did not have sex orgies and drug orgies or cult.

Eating five persons, including actress Sharon Tape were found dead at the home of Mistape and her husband, screen director Roman Polotsky.

When Manson was arrested, Lynette essentially emerged as the recognized leader of the group.

Manson told his followers that this would be a bloodbath in the streets of every American city.

Was created and written by Toby Ball and developed with Alexander Williams. Hosted by Toby Ball with Mary Katherine Garrison. Original music by Jeff Sannoff. Show art by Jeffney as Goda and Charles Rudder. Producers Jesse Funk, Reema O'Kelly and Nolas Griffin. Supervising producer Treviie Young, Executive producers Alexander Williams and Matt Frederick. Recorded at In Your Ear Studios, Richmond, Virginia, engineered by Paul Bruski and Spotland Productions Nashville, Tennessee, engineered

Thank you very much.