MOORE'S CONFUSED MANIFESTO

"My name is Sally Moore. I am a Communist. I am also a former undercover agent. The two are not unrelated. What was I doing there and how did I get here?" So begins a confused attempt by Sara Jane ("Sally") Moore to explain herself to her new radical friends, who had ostracized her after learning of her FBI activity. Last spring she tried to interest California newspapers and radio stations in carrying her story, but she met with no success.

TIME has obtained a copy of a 34-page document bearing the careful editing marks of Moore, who sought to portray herself in the best possible light. At one point, where she apologizes for her conventional upbringing, she inserted the words "upper middle class" to describe her social status. Moore also had second thoughts and crossed out some of the most revealing passages from her first version. In the text that follows, one portion that she deleted is enclosed in brackets. Since Moore nurtured the vain hope that the radicals would read her story and readmit her to their ranks, she set down some weird and garbled thoughts about business and economics, and wrote of her adventures as an FBI spy and gradual conversion to radical politics. But the document, though self-serving and not al ways accurate, does provide glimpses of the mental processes that led six months later to her attempt to shoot the President. Excerpts:

MOTIVATION: My life in suburbia, which had seemed stale for a long time, now seemed absolutely inane. Things were going on, things being done, and I was reluctant to leave where I felt the action was. [Also--and this is the most difficult admission for me to make--I had always been a deeply religious person and attended church. I have a guardian angel theory, and I had felt during the program, and still genuinely feel, that the guardian angel had a purpose for me in being there. Bert (her FBI contact) is a devout Roman Catholic, as is Catherine Hearst and to a lesser extent Randy Hearst. I was a devout Episcopalian, but there really isn't that much difference. When Bert asked me about my participation in the program, I explained that it was partly my religious feelings and he accepted it as a valid point.]

BACKGROUND: I had been aware for a long time in this country for the need for qualitative change and had devoted a great deal of my life to working in ways that I thought would bring about such qualitative change. I went through many of the things that a lot of middle-class or upper-class people do or particularly women. We have kind of more time and more freedom and in a male chauvinist world, I don't think people pay a great deal of attention, or didn't, as to what we did and nobody took it terribly seriously. I had worked very hard in civil rights, I had worked hard in the antiwar movement. Admittedly in both of those movements I was involved quite early and then re-involved when it became quite an In thing to be involved in.

I knew nothing about Communism.

Sure there have been some people in civil rights, people in the antiwar movement who called themselves revolutionaries, have called themselves Communists, and who talked about changing this society. Those for the most part who were saying that were people who could not organize their own lives. Much less the revolution.

THE FBI CONNECTION: I also had a raging curiosity and a kind of a burning hunger to learn some more about things that were simply hinted at by members of the Movement. I frankly thought that participation with the Bureau might help me. I could use them to do some of the things that I wanted to do. Of course, they were using me to do some of the things they wanted to do.

FBI INITIATION: I was given a code name. I was told that my real name would be known only to my contact and his supervisor, that I was always to use my code name when I called in. I was given a phone number--a special phone that rang directly on the desk of one of the agents. Reports were rendered both in oral and written fashion. I was given an emergency phone number and was told not to write down this number but to memorize it. That if the number were found on me it could be dangerous. They told me that their particular areas of interest with people in organizations was money and weapons. They were interested in where their money was coming from and whether any of it came from external sources, in other words from foreign countries.

They were honest about wanting to neutralize these people. They were hon est about saying they were dangerous and, you know, could destroy the system we had. They were right. There are many ways to neutralize an enemy. You can kill him--that's the ultimate neutralization. Discredit him so he can't do any work--that's another way. You can hassle him until he gets burned out and leaves voluntarily.

ON THE MOVEMENT'S MORALS: I did not particularly like the world I was in with the black man [Wilbert ("Popeye") Jackson] who had made the offer to help Randy Hearst. You know, the murky world of drugs, of wholesale screwing, of filthy language. I was beginning to have my doubts that the man I was dealing with . . . It seemed to me he was trying only to help himself.

CONFESSING HER ROLE TO TOM:

At the end of the evening I just simply said: "I'm a pig." He said: "S.F.P.D.?" I said no. He said, "State?" I said no. He said, "Federal?" I said yes. And he says, "Treasury Department?" And I said no. "CIA?" "No." "FBI?" "Yes." He asked me if I had been assigned specifically to him, and I said yes. He asked me why I was telling him, and I told him that it was primarily because of the study group, that I wanted to continue learning.

HER CONVERSION TO MARXISM: No one needed to tell me of the futility of the things that I had been doing; I just know that I began to feel a kind of conviction and in a strange way a kind of peace. A kind of: O.K. now, I know where I'm going. All kinds of things came back to me in the course of this. I remember one time someone in a speech or something said that if General Motors decided today that discrimination was bad for business, tomorrow there would be no discrimination. I thought that's right. I had never, of course, understood why General Motors did not stand up and say that discrimination is no good for business. My studies showed me that it was essential that the racism continue in order for business to be successful. Because the necessity for people at the bottom to keep wages depressed.

And I began to understand why these people were willing to risk their lives to struggling toward socialism. And you know, strangely enough, it was the Bureau who seemed to stress the importance of what was only an idea, an idea that is so dangerous. Of course, what is so dangerous about the idea that is so logical, human and so right? But that it would mean the end of an order with the kingpins on top. Him what has the power isn't about to give it up. So for me, the power, the ability of an idea to fight the people in power was part of what told me how important an idea it was.

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