FORD'S SECOND CLOSE CALL

On the night of Saturday, Sept. 20, Sally Moore, an estranged FBI informant, late convert to radicalism and an efficient but troublesome bookkeeper, telephoned San Francisco Police Inspector Jack O'Shea. She had helped him before in investigating reports of fraud in last year's $2 million program to distribute food to the San Francisco Bay Area's needy, as demanded by the kidnapers of Patty Hearst.

Moore's typically rambling discourse with O'Shea was vague. She said she had been "hassled by the system," and added: "I'm going to "see if the system works equally for the left as well as the right. I'm going to Stanford to test it." O'Shea was puzzled by the "system" reference, but mention of Stanford meant much. That was where President Ford was to speak on the following day. "A red light went on in my head," O'Shea recalled later. The bulb glowed more brightly when she said, "I'm going to ask you something that will make you recoil in horror. Can you have me arrested?"

O'Shea quickly recalled that Moore had a gun. She had gratuitously offered to help "set up" the man who had sold it to her, Mark Fernwood, 29, leader of the John Birch Society chapter in nearby Danville, Calif., for a possible arrest on illegal gun sales. San Francisco police had also informed the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) of Moore's allegations about her gun purchase. O'Shea told Moore she could indeed be arrested if she carried a concealed weapon.

Alarmed after Moore hung up, O'Shea called the FBI. He related the conversation, described Moore, reported the license number of her 1970 tan Toyota, and expressed his concern that she might be dangerous to the President. The FBI assured him that it would notify the Secret Service. When a Secret Service agent called him Saturday evening, O'Shea reported Moore's cryptic remarks about going to Stanford.

Next morning, when Stanford University police and Santa Clara County sheriffs deputies met with Secret Service agents to coordinate security plans for Ford's visit, they discussed Moore. The security team broadcast a B.O.L. (Be On the Lookout) for Moore on its radio network.

Still worried, O'Shea called the Secret Service again on Sunday morning, asking whether agents wanted Moore picked up. Prudently, they said it "might be a good idea." At the time, however, Moore was pursuing her voluntary undercover work. She was in Danville visiting Fernwood's home gun shop, where he makes replicas of antique weapons for sale. Ostensibly, she had gone there to get in some target practice with Fernwood. Actually, she had taken along an ATF man whom she introduced only as "Chuck."

They decided merely to look at guns. "Chuck's" interest was in finding out whether Fernwood, who is not a licensed gun dealer, was violating any gun laws.

By the time Moore arrived back at her rundown two-story apartment building in San Francisco's multiracial Mission District at about 2:30 p.m., two police officers, at O'Shea's suggestion, were waiting for her. "Do you have a gun?" one of them asked. "Yes, in my purse," said the unsurprised Moore.

In the purse was an unloaded .44 Charter Arms revolver and eleven cartridges. The policemen found two boxes of ammunition in her car. They read the standard recitation of rights to her, then took her to the Mission police station. The gun was confiscated, and she was cited for possession of a concealed weapon--a misdemeanor under California law. A police lieutenant called the Secret Service to ask if the federal agents wanted her detained. "They said it won't be necessary, that they'd go talk to her," a senior San Francisco police officer reported. So Moore was released at 4 p.m. --about the time Ford was to speak 30 miles away. Immediately, she called O'Shea to complain: "You did that to keep me away from Stanford."

Secret Service agents called Moore that night and asked to see her. They picked her up and took her to their offices in the Federal Building. While she was there, an agent telephoned O'Shea and put Moore on the line. "I guess I'm in a fine kettle of fish," she told him. O'Shea advised her to "tell them what you told me and you'll be all right." The agent called O'Shea again and asked for more information on Moore. O'Shea repeated his earlier warning.

Then the Secret Service committed what could have turned out to be a fatal mistake. It made no effort to detain her further or to place her under surveillance while Ford was in California. Its officials have refused to explain why. A Washington spokesman would say only that the interview showed she "was not of sufficient protection interest to warrant surveillance." San Francisco police believe, however, that the federal agents were satisfied with Moore's claim that she had needed a gun for fear of reprisal from radicals for informing on their activities to the FBI. The agents were also apparently influenced by the fact that Moore had worked with the FBI and local police. Moreover, however irrational, she seemed to have no motive for wanting to hurt Ford.

On Monday morning Moore telephoned Fern wood. She told him that a woman friend of hers also wanted to buy a gun for "self-defense." Fern wood asked to meet the friend first. Moore claimed that the woman was getting ready to go on a mountain outing and did not have time to see him. But the friend knew how to handle handguns, Moore assured him.

Before driving the 28 miles to Danville to buy the second gun, Moore apparently made several attempts to hint at what she had in mind so that someone would stop her. She twice called her regular contact on the San Francisco police department. At least twice she telephoned the Secret Service. Once she phoned the FBI. But her incessant chatter muffled the danger she posed. Her calls were shrugged off by officers too busy for idle talk from a middle-aged woman who seemed to like playing conspiracy games and just wanted attention. They had more important duties that day: the President was in town.

Unchecked, Moore proceeded with her plan. She arrived in Danville about 11 a.m. to purchase a chrome-plated .38 Smith & Wesson revolver from Fernwood for $145. She paid by check. He found her "in good spirits," although she claimed she was in a rush. "I had no way of suspecting that this gal was going to go out and commit the completely crazy act that she did," he insisted later. "Can you imagine it? A John Birch officer selling guns to radical kooks." Moore also picked up some cartridges, although she seemed concerned when he had only target loads of lesser charge available. "Will they do the job?" she asked. "Oh yes, they'll work," he replied, convinced that she was thinking about short-range defensive uses for the gun.

Fernwood was sure Moore could handle such a weapon. When she bought the first one, he had taken her to a nearby firing range to check her out. Moore, who claimed to have had training with guns as a WAC, "did rather well," Fernwood said. She had paid $125 for the first gun, also by check.

As she left Danville to drive back into San Francisco shortly after 11 a.m., Moore made a final desperate but still indirect effort to have her deadly mission averted. She headed west in her Toyota along Route 24 toward the Oakland-Bay Bridge and jammed down the accelerator, speeding at about 70 m.p.h. At the same time, she slipped six soft-nosed cartridges into her new revolver. "I was driving fast, loading the revolver and hoping I would get stopped for speeding," she claimed later. But no one stopped her, and she drove directly to the Union Square underground parking garage across the street from the St. Francis Hotel.

Moore emerged from the parking lot at 11:39 a.m. and stood on the corner in her neatly pressed blue raincoat. She lounged about, her hands in her pockets, her black purse on her arm. She chatted with San Francisco Examiner Reporter Carol Pogash, who had known her from the food program set up by Randolph Hearst, Pogash's former publisher. "You know, the Secret Service visited my house yesterday," Moore blurted out. "They kept me for an hour and questioned me. You know, they could have kept me for 72 hours if they had wanted to." Pogash thought she knew Moore too well to take her seriously and did not want to encourage her nonstop chitchat.

Moore trudged on. She walked up Powell Street, crossed Post Street and took up a position next to a small boxed tree in front of the Mexicana Airlines office. She had a fine view of the side entrance to the St. Francis Hotel directly across the street. Gradually the crowd grew, swelling to about 2,000. As her vigil continued, she was joined in the line at about 1 p.m. by Oliver Sipple, a man she did not know and, surprisingly, did not engage in conversation.

Sipple had arrived at his pivotal destination wholly by accident. He had left his apartment some seven blocks away shortly after a 10 a.m. breakfast of cereal and coffee. Unemployed and fond of long walks on nice days, he had considered strolling to Fisherman's Wharf. Instead, he wandered toward Union Square, where he was surprised at the number of demonstrators protesting such conditions as high oil prices, poor schools and U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He asked why they were there. "What's the matter with you, stupid?" one replied. "Don't you read the papers? Ford's here."

Figuring that Ford "was from Detroit just like me," Sipple decided to get a look at the President. He joined the crowd across the street from the hotel and, as others got tired of waiting, found himself in the front row. As he shifted from foot to foot and chain-smoked, he was crowded against Moore. Shortly after 3 p.m., about 100 Secret Service agents and police lined both sides of the street and faced the waiting crowd. The spectators began jostling in anticipation, and Sipple was pushed behind Moore. All the activity suggested that the President might soon appear.

Gerald Ford's blue and silver jet had landed at the remote Bayside Coast Guard facility of San Francisco International Airport at 10:16 that morning. As he emerged after a pleasant weekend stay at the Monterey home of U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Leonard Firestone, the security lineup was impressive: Secret Service agents, highway patrolmen, military police, county police and a special San Mateo County S.W.A.T. (Special Weapons and Tactics) sniper squad with rifles and camouflage gear. As the motorcade headed into town, every overpass was guarded by two officers with rifles at the ready. A security helicopter chopped overhead.

After Ford's first stop at the Hyatt Hotel on Union Square, he was wisked by limousine to the St. Francis Hotel, even though it was an easy one-block walk. The ride took 24 seconds. He sped past one sign: FREE PATTY HEARST, ARREST GERALD FORD! Six agents jogged beside the bulletproof car. Police with binoculars and rifles looked out over the Union Square park from atop high-rise buildings. Two crouched under a lofty FLY THE FRIENDLY SKIES OF UNITED sign.

Ford smiled and waved at the crowd as he entered the St. Francis at 11:25 a.m. At a jammed preluncheon cocktail reception for Ford, invited guests were startled by the apparent lack of security precautions. They flashed their tickets but underwent no check against guest lists, no opening of purses or X-raying of briefcases. "There's more security on an airliner than there was for the President at that moment," recalled John Chase, a Transamerica Corp. vice president. A perspiring Ford pushed through the milling guests.

It was a full four hours before Ford finally got into an elevator to descend to the lobby. He had been willingly detained by a local television interview, which he thought had gone nicely. The increasingly restless crowd outside had no way of knowing when he would emerge from the Post Street exit. But at 3:29 p.m. Ford strode briskly down the 14 final steps and out onto the sidewalk.

Only moments before, a man who looked like Ford had preceded him out of the door. "Some people began to clap," Moore recalled. "I pulled my gun halfway out of my purse, and then I realized it wasn't he." Shaking, she jammed the revolver back in her bag. No one had seen the hostile motion.

Now Ford looked to his left and right, moving briefly to acknowledge the cheers of smaller groups of about 50 spectators on both sides. He walked toward his car, saw the larger crowd across the street, smiled and hesitated. "It looked like he couldn't make up his mind whether to cross over or not," recalled Patrolman John Gleeson. Actually, Secret Service agents did not like the looks of the weary crowd and had advised him not to approach it.

Then it happened. "When he finally did come out, he was right there almost in front of me," said Moore. "There was a while when it was so crowded I wasn't sure I could get a clear shot. But it was so easy, it was unbelievable. I pulled my gun out, took careful aim very slowly." She held the gun shoulder-high with her right hand, bracing it with the left. She said she rushed the shot "by a few seconds. I realized after I fired, I aimed high. If I had my .44, I would have caught him."

Actually, Moore's aim was not too high. Astonishingly, her bullet whizzed harmlessly between a TV crew and agents, striking the wall of the hotel 5 1/2 ft. above the sidewalk. But it had been deflected just enough to her left to miss Ford by about 5 ft. at roughly head level as he bent to get in his limousine. The deflection was caused by the swift reflexive action of Oliver Sipple.

"Ford came out and started to wave," Sipple recalled. "I started to applaud. At that point, I seen this arm with the chrome-plated gun at the end of it right in front of me. I don't know why I did it. Reaction, I guess. I lunged with both hands. I grabbed her arm down. I don't know if it went off before I grabbed her or not." Other officers were certain the lunge was in time. "There's no question he did deflect the weapon," said Lieut. Frank Jordan. "Just as she shot, he pushed it aside. It was a very slight deflection, but it was enough."

Ford stared straight at the attacker.

He looked startled, almost dazed.

Instantly he crouched, then was shoved to the sidewalk by Secret Service Agents Ron Pontius and Jack Merchant. This placed the car between Ford and the gun-wielding woman. An agent opened the rear door of the limousine, and other agents almost threw Ford inside and to the floor. Agents Pontius and Merchant leaped into the vehicle, followed by Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld. All three shielded Ford's prone body as the car sped away.

Watching Ford fall, the crowd had no way of knowing that he had not been hit. Spectators screamed. Agents and police rushed toward the wisp of smoke drifting up from Moore's gun. "Lynch the bastard!" someone shouted. "Kill him now!" yelled someone else, unaware that the assailant was a woman. San Francisco Policemen Timothy Hettrich and Gary Lemos dove at Moore, knocking her to the ground. Hettrich grabbed the cylinder of the revolver so that it could not turn and bring up another bullet. Patrolman William S. Taylor grabbed her hair. "Goddamit! Goddamit!" one officer shouted as he pounded on her back.

John Ludwig, an off-duty cab driver, felt a pain in his groin. "The wind was knocked out of me," he said. "I saw something fall from my pants. I picked it up and asked a policeman what it was. He said, 'Hey, that's the bullet!' " It had ricocheted off the wall, passing behind Ford within a few feet and hitting Ludwig, who was not seriously hurt.

Ford's limousine roared away toward the airport at up to 70 m.p.h. Not until the car reached a freeway was Ford permitted to sit up. As the hotel was left far behind, the car slowed to let motorcycle escorts catch up. At 3:47 p.m. Ford pulled up to the ramp of Air Force One and warmly thanked local and state police for "all your help."

Betty Ford, unaware of the close call, arrived from Monterey. "Have you had a good time?" she asked. Ford turned to Rumsfeld. "You tell her, Rummy," he said. Mrs. Ford winced as she heard the news. Then she sighed, "Thank God she was a poor shot."

Shoved like a battering ram into the St. Francis Hotel by officers, a bleeding, handcuffed and barefoot Moore was thrown into a mezzanine reception room. She had lost her cowboy boots when overpowered, and her tan slacks had been split open. She was helped into a chair, and her handcuffs were removed. After she was assured that her son would be picked up at school, she waived her right to an immediate lawyer. Displaying remarkable casualness about her assassin's role, she declared that if Ford had not left the hotel when he did, she would have abandoned her shooting vigil to go pick up her son.

She told agents that no one else was involved in the plan. She related how she had bought the two guns, even producing the check stubs from her purse. But she could not, or would not, say why she had tried to kill Ford.

Later, in her San Francisco County jail cell, she tried to explain. As always, her thoughts were disjointed. "It was kind of an ultimate protest against the system," Moore told Los Angeles Times Reporter Ellen Hume. "I did not want to kill somebody, but there comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun." She rationalized, "I was driven to act."

Somewhat more specifically, she said she had been rejected by the FBI, also by the radicals she had come to admire, and she had hoped to break out of this "isolation" and regain her radical friends. On the shooting itself, "I had set a course for myself that I hoped I would not be permitted to do. But the security was so stupid. It was like an invitation." Yet Moore added, "I'm glad he didn't die."

Moore was arraigned on a charge of attempting "to kill the President of the United States by the use of a handgun." She asked for and was given a public defender, James Hewitt, as her attorney. U.S. Magistrate Owen Woodruff set bail at $500,000 and, with the concurrence of both Hewitt and the U.S. Attorney's office, ordered her to undergo psychiatric tests at Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego. That may take 60 days. Said one top police official: "This looks like completely a mental case, and if that's what finally comes out, that should wrap it up." -

The other woman who aimed a gun at Ford passed her sanity tests last week. Squeaky Fromme, the Charles Manson family follower who is being held in the Sacramento County Jail, was adjudged mentally competent to stand trial, set to begin Nov. 4. Federal Judge Thomas J. MacBride ruled that she can act as her own lawyer, as she wishes, working with Public Defender E. Richard Walker. Referring to some of the extraneous issues Squeaky had cited as vaguely behind her decision to flash a revolver from out of a Sacramento crowd, the judge said he would bar any "ecology statements on how bad things are as far as trees, air, water or land are concerned." In an earlier court appearance, Squeaky had lectured MacBride about environmental pollution and urged him to "save the redwoods." She apparently will not be allowed to repeat any such theatrical threats as her warning to all polluters: "There is a gun pointed, and whether it goes off is up to all of you."

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