Taking Aim at the President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Shot at Gerald Ford Hardcover – December 23, 2008 by Geri Spieler (Author)
Taking Aim at the President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Shot at Gerald Ford Hardcover – December 23, 2008 by Geri Spieler (Author)
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Winner of the 2009 San Francisco Book Festival Award (Wild Card category)
"I'm not sorry I tried...if successful, the assassination...just might have triggered the kind of chaos that could have started the upheaval of change." --Sara Jane Moore in 1976
Journalist Geri Spieler met would-be assassin Sara Jane Moore while she was in prison; Taking Aim at the President is based on over two decades of interviews as well as independant research. Spieler follows Moore's actions from her childhood in a small West Virginia town to her release from prison in December 2007. Moore's life was never conventional, and along the way she entered and dropped out of the military, was married five times, and was both a political radical and an FBI informant. Focusing on the complex psychology and motivations of a quintessentially desperate housewife and the only woman to ever fire a bullet at an American president, Spieler delivers a nuanced portrait of an elusive person and a fascinating glimpse back at a turbulent period in American history.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Spieler offers a portrait of an erratic, unstable woman with a protean capacity to shift identities, with the 1960s and '70s as a dramatic backdrop. Fans of true crime accounts or contemporary history will savor this portrait of the first woman to make an assassination attempt on an American president.” ―Publishers Weekly
“It is the obligation of the thoughtful journalist to tell us something meaningful that we don't already know. In Taking Aim at the President, Geri Spieler is more than up to the task. The byzantine tale of Sara Jane Moore's double, triple and quadruple lives, with so many bizarre groups - including the federal government - exploiting her vulnerabilities, is the stuff of Hollywood fiction. The fact that it's all true, and told with precision by Spieler, raises Sara Jane's story to something significantly more than a footnote to history.” ―Alan Weisman, author of Prince of Darkness: Richard Perle, The Kingdom, the Power & the End of Empire in America and Lone Star: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Dan Rather
“Geri Spieler has done a marvelous job of unraveling the details surrounding one of the most bizarre events in American history, Sara Jane Moore's attack on Gerald Ford.
” ―James Dalessandro, author of 1906 and Citizen Jane
“A well-written, fascinating story about an inexplicable moment in American History.” ―Carl Stern, Professor of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University, and former NBC News correspondent
“Talk about truth being stranger than fiction! Captivating.” ―The San Francisco Chronicle
Review
In the span of 18 months, Sara Jane Moore went from being a housewife in Danville to a wannabe political assassin in San Francisco.
Moore, who in 1975 became the only female to fire a shot at the president of the United States (Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme aimed at President Gerald Ford three weeks before in Sacramento but never got off a round), is the enigmatic subject of local author Geri Spieler's new biography, "Taking Aim at the President."
Moore's attempt on Ford's life outside the St. Francis Hotel is steeped in local history. It occurred in the strange wake of Fromme's attempt and Patty Hearst's arrest; the man who tackled Moore, Oliver Sipple, became a reluctant gay-rights icon after it was learned that the Marine who saved the president's life was also homosexual. Spieler, a journalist whom Moore first wrote to from her prison cell more than 30 years ago, details her tumultuous relationship with Moore and attempts to link the tell-tale signs of what makes a future assassin.
Yet not even psychiatrists and federal agents, who visited Moore in prison annually to pick at her psyche, could make sense of what led to the 45-year-old mother's murder attempt.
"You really can't underestimate who's a threat," Spieler said. "Sara Jane wasn't the stereotypical, 45-year-old white male, foreign-born loner. Her profile didn't fit." Spieler portrays a complex woman of intelligence (140 IQ) who was seductive but bad at relationships (five marriages), and masterfully elusive (one prison escape in 1979). Moore had five children and got involved in the Bay Area's radical underground movement in the late '60s and early '70s, even working as an FBI informant.
On the morning of the attempt, Spieler recounts Moore driving from suburban Danville to San Francisco along Interstate 680, loading bullets into a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver that she'd purchased hours earlier. Outside the St. Francis, Moore not only waited for the president, but also worried that she'd be late to pick up her son afterward.
How many would-be assassins have been distracted by maternal concerns?
Moore's bullet missed Ford by just six inches, Spieler reports. Had the gun's sights been properly adjusted, the president could have been killed.
"She figured, 'I'm a good shot. Let's go,' " Spieler said. "But if she'd tested it, it would have been a different piece of history."
Moore was released in 2007, and her whereabouts are unknown. But Spieler says Moore's unlikely profile forever changed the way the Secret Service investigates potential assassins.
"Sara Jane represents what we don't know about who will try to assassinate a president," Spieler said. "And that the Secret Service can never really let its guard down."
Justin Berton
Review
Review
From the Publisher
Some of our most beloved cultural leaders died at the hands of fellow Americans during that crucial time, making it a period that was as dangerous as it was inspirational.
The enclosed book reveals the life and fate of a woman whose story embodies the fascinating and frightening underbelly of America's cultural revolution.
In TAKING AIM AT THE PRESIDENT: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Shot at Gerald Ford (Palgrave Macmillan/ PUB DATE: Jan 12th, 2009/ Hardcover/ 0-230-61023-4), author and investigative journalist, Geri Spieler, chronicles the life and dives into the mind of would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, the only woman in American history to fire a bullet at a U.S. President, and the only one arrested for committing this level of crime to be released from prison.
After 30 years of contact while Moore was behind bars, Spieler paints a vivid personality assessment of this suburban housewife who was far from the profile of a skilled assassin, yet was still able to shoot at Ford on September 22, 1975.
In an interview, Spieler can discuss:
* How breakdowns in communication between local and federal authorities nearly led to Ford's murder. For example, police had actually apprehended Moore the day before the shooting, confiscated her first gun and then let her go;
* Her exclusive interview with President Ford about the assassination attempt in which he stated how turf battles and power struggles amongst government agencies lead to communication problems and raise the risk of threats to our security;
* Moore's role as an FBI/San Francisco Police Department informant and how it might have contributed to her deciding to try to kill Ford; and
* The turbulent 1970's, and the infamous Federal Bureau of Investigation's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).
This is far from a typical biography. Spieler's relationship with Moore spanned an incredible three decades, beginning when the newly imprisoned Moore requested to meet Spieler in prison after reading an article of hers in a local paper. From that point on, Spieler gained unprecedented personal access to a mind that is rife with ambiguity, cunning and a chilling ability to manipulate.
Spieler's one-on-one experiences with Moore, combined with years of independent research, deliver an intimate psychological portrait of a housewife turned double agent, at the same time granting readers a rich snapshot of the 1960-70s, one of America's most turbulent eras of cultural and political awakening.
From the Author
I also ran into many false leads and dead ends, which made me even more determined to find out the story behind this woman I thought I knew.
I faced many challenges while researching Sara Jane's life-- from her habit of distorting and withholding information as she pleased, to the fact that key documentation covering large swaths of her life was either unavailable or destroyed, and many details were impossible to corroborate. This obliged me, at times, to leave gaps in the narrative, and I have pointed these out in the text as they occur. Although the research process was frustrating at times, I always believed that Sara Jane's is an important story to tell.
My search eventually led me to a hilltop home in Charleston, West Virginia, where Sara Jane grew up. Her story must begin there.
About the Author
Geri Spieler is an investigative journalist and award-winning speaker. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Forbes. She has a strong professional relationship with her subject, Sara Jane Moore, who she has visited and interviewed in prison for the last thirty years.
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