US:A woman who tried to assassinate US president Gerald Ford in 1975 as a statement against what she claimed was the US government's war against the American left, has been released from a California jail, 32 years into her sentence.
Sara Jane Moore, now 77, finally succeeded in persuading a review board that she was no longer a risk to the public, 22 years after she first applied for parole. She was released on Monday from a women's prison outside San Francisco.
She gained nationwide notoriety on September 22nd, 1975, when she raised a 38-calibre handgun and pointed it at the president from 12m (39ft) away as he stood outside the St Francis hotel in the centre of San Francisco. Her action was spotted by a Vietnam veteran, Oliver Sipple, who dived at her and forced her to miss her target.
Another woman, Lynnette Fromme, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson, tried to kill Ford on September 5th, 1975, when she disguised herself in a nun's robe and with a pistol strapped to her leg. Fromme, who remains in jail, aimed at the president from 60cm (23in) away at a rally in Sacramento but there was no bullet in the chamber.
Nobody has succeeded in fully explaining Moore's actions, which reflected personal psychological problems mixed with the heady intensity of radical politics on the west coast in the mid-1970s.
Asked whether she was sorry, she replied: "Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life. And no, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger."