35 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
35 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
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tags:
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- Person
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- MKULTRA
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- CIA
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- SLA
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summary: "Leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a career criminal and LAPD informant who was recruited at Vacaville prison by CIA psychological warfare specialist Colston Westbrook before escaping Soledad and launching a campaign of political violence."
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born: 1943-11-15
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died: 1974-05-17
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location: Los Angeles, California
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created: 2026-06-03
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updated: 2026-06-03
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---
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Donald David DeFreeze, also known as "General Field Marshal Cinque Mtume," was the leader of the [[Symbionese Liberation Army]] (SLA). Born November 15, 1943, DeFreeze was a career criminal and informant for the [[Los Angeles Police Department|LAPD]] who emerged from the California penal system's [[Vacaville]] Medical Facility, where he had been during the time of the [[MKULTRA]] experiments. At Vacaville, DeFreeze came under the tutelage of [[Colston Westbrook]], a [[CIA]] psychological warfare specialist who ran the [[Black Cultural Association]] at the facility. Westbrook enlisted DeFreeze into the organization, which connected white radical leftist students from [[Berkeley]] with Black prisoners.[^1]
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### Escape and SLA Formation
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DeFreeze, an armed robber, had obtained early release from Vacaville by performing a "favor" for prison authorities, a reference to submitting to psychiatric experiments, before eventually being transferred to [[Soledad Prison]] from which he escaped on March 5, 1973, and formed the SLA in the Berkeley, [[California]] area later that year. The SLA was a radical left-wing group that committed a series of violent acts including assassination, kidnapping, and bank robbery. [^1]
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### The Marcus Foster Assassination
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The SLA went public with the assassination of African-American Oakland school superintendent Dr. [[Marcus Foster]] on November 6, 1973. Foster was the first African-American superintendent of Oakland's public schools. The SLA claimed they killed him over a proposed student ID card program they characterized as a surveillance tool. Two weeks earlier, a neo-Nazi group had issued a flyer predicting Foster's death. "Black men" were witnessed scurrying from the scene, but the arrested shooters were white. Blackface makeup was discovered in their apartments.[^1]
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### The Patty Hearst Kidnapping
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On February 4, 1974, the SLA kidnapped newspaper heiress [[Patty Hearst]] from her Berkeley apartment. On April 3, 1974, Hearst announced she was joining the SLA and took the name "Tania." She participated in a bank robbery on April 15, 1974, one of the most widely publicized crimes of the era. Hearst was later arrested, convicted, and sentenced to seven years in prison, though President [[Jimmy Carter]] commuted her sentence after two years.[^1]
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### Death
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On May 17, 1974, DeFreeze and five other SLA members were killed during a police siege of a [[Los Angeles]] safe house. The confrontation was one of the first major televised police operations in American history and resulted in the burning of the building.[^1]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Curt Rowlett, "Project Mind Kontrol: Did the U.S. Government Actually Create Programmed Assassins?," Steamshovel Press #16, 1998.
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