Los Angeles — Patricia Hearst said that Sara Jane Olson and members of the Symbionese Liberation Army charged with murder in a 1975 bank robbery were dedicated revolutionaries who had their "own little jihad" going.
The newspaper heiress who was kidnapped by the 1970s radical group and later joined them told CNN's Larry King on Tuesday that she believed Olson, Bill and Emily Harris, Michael Bortin and James Kilgore "wanted to bring down the country," and she promised to testify against them.
Patricia Hearst is seen on CNN's "Larry King Live" talk show in this image from television. Hearst, who appeared on the show Tuesday, is believed to be the only former SLA member still alive who can implicate four recently arrested members in a 1975 bank robbery that left a customer dead.
"They wanted to overthrow the government of the United States. They called themselves an army. They planned on forming cells and going on until they started a full-scale war in this country," Hearst said.
At one point during the hourlong interview, she compared the SLA to the bombers of the Oklahoma City federal building and the violent 1960s Charles Manson cult.
Emily Harris' attorney, Stuart Hanlon, denounced Hearst's remarks, saying Hearst was trying to ensure his client and the others would not get a fair trial.
"It seems that all she does is minimize her own actions and her own responsibility," he said. "When you've lied for this long, the reality has gotten lost."
Olson made a court appearance Tuesday in Sacramento, Calif., on a first-degree murder charge, four days after she was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for attempting to blow up Los Angeles police cars.
Olson and the four other SLA members were charged last week with killing Myrna Opsahl, a 42-year-old mother of four, during the April 21, 1975, bank robbery in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael.
On Wednesday, Bortin, 52, of Portland, Ore., waived extradition to California. Kilgore has been a fugitive since the 1970s.
Prosecutors have said much of their case will be based on testimony from Hearst, who was kidnapped by the SLA and later joined them in several bank robberies. She said she drove one of the getaway cars during the Carmichael robbery, but she was granted immunity from prosecution as a condition of her 1991 grand jury testimony.
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