Oliver Sipple
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Listener supported. WNYC Studios. This story contains a couple moments of profanity, cursing. Just a few. Know that before you go in. Wait, you're listening? Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From WNYC. See? See? Yeah.

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad. So today I want to play for you really one of my favorite stories we've ever done on Radiolab. It's one of those like perfect stories where all the different things you want in a story come together all at once. Like you've got this single human being going through something truly unique and difficult. But inside that single human being story is in that kind of universe in a blade of grass sort of way is everything.

You know, it's that kind of story comes from Latif. This is back in the days when Latif was a producer. And this is before he was hosting the show with Lulu Miller and I. It's back the time when I was hosting the show with Robert Krolwich. So I don't know. Let's just let it roll.

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krolich. This is Radiolab. And today we are going to start. Okay, so let's start with our producer, Latif Nasser. Yeah. Well, let's just go back to San Francisco on a particular day at a particular time. And a particular woman. Hello. Hi. Is this Sarah Jane? Yes, it is. A woman named Sarah Jane Moore. Sarah Jane. Okay. So this is San Francisco. The particular date was September 22nd. The particular time. 1975.

It's a Monday morning. Was it a nice day? Oh, yeah. I don't remember anything different, so I assume it was a nice day. Okay, all right. Sure, sure. I was kind of, you know, in my own head. So Sarah Jane, on this Monday morning, she wakes up early, drops her nine-year-old off at school, runs a few errands,

Then she drives downtown to this big fancy hotel. What was the name of the hotel? I think it's the St. Francis, isn't it? I'm 87 years old. Don't expect me to remember little details like that. Okay, all right. Fair enough. But at any rate, you know, I parked in the parking garage across...

Right across from the hotel is a park, but there's a parking garage underneath. Walked over and walked across the street. There were sidewalks on both sides of the street. There were people on both sidewalks. She joins the crowd across the street from the hotel. It was very crowded. A couple thousand people. It's like a big scene. And there was a barrier, a rope barrier, right, keeping us back on the sidewalk. And my plan had always been to be back in the crowd, uh,

And I was dressed like every other middle-aged woman that was there. What were you? Do you remember what you were wearing? I mean, I'm sure there's... Oh, there are pictures of it. Yes, I was wearing slacks. That was at the beginning of when it was natural for a woman to wear slacks. I had a coat on, and I was carrying a purse, and I went back into the middle of the crowd, as I had planned to do. Anyway, I felt a man come up against me, and

socialized as I was in that day and time, I spun around to slap his face. She sees this guy there, big, strong guy, blonde hair. Looked at him and realized that it was crowd pressure, that he had not done anything out of ordinary. So I turned back around and went on about my business. I was then pushed up. The crowd pressure was such I tried to stay back in the crowd.

But I got pushed up almost onto the ropes in the front, right up on the curb of the sidewalk. That's where I had not planned to be. And he apparently was still right behind me. So maybe he was pushed up by the crowd also. And so Sarah Jane is just crammed into this crowd and she's just standing there. Yes. And were you nervous? Oh, no. You set out to do something and I was just...

going about doing what I had set out to do. So she waits and she waits and an hour goes by and two and three and then finally...

Out of the hotel comes none other than the president of the United States, Gerald Ford. And he has police and Secret Service and they're all coming. They're walking out of the hotel to get in his car, which was parked there on the street. But he sees the crowd. Sarah Jane actually says he looks directly at her and he waves. He waves to the crowd and everyone starts applauding and cheering. Now, right at that moment,

Sarah Jane reaches her right hand into her purse. And pulled the gun out of my purse. A .38 caliber revolver. She cocks it, and then she takes aim right at Gerald Ford's head. And then...

Thank God. Thank God. There's been a shot. There's been a shot. But Mr. Ford did not fall. I remain pushed back by the police. The bullet flies a few feet to the right of Ford, chips the wall behind him. Ford freezes in place. Sarah Jane... Never planned to take a second shot. Now she's just still standing there. With my hand still in the air holding the gun. Looking over the smoking barrel of the gun, and she's got enough time if she wants it, but...

Before she can take that second shot, the blonde man behind her lunges at her, grabs her gun arm, pulls it down, and deflects it for just that crucial second that these police officers nearby need to get to her. They tackle her, they take her gun, and they pin her to the ground. So I couldn't move. And by that point, the Secret Service has whisked off the president into the limousine. And I was immediately picked up and carried across the street. Into the hotel. Arrested. Arrested.

And eventually she went to prison and she served 32 years in prison. And then after that was released on parole. And then we talked to her.

I'm not prepared to be told a first-person narrative from the perspective of someone who's about to assassinate the president. That was not what I was expecting. I was hoping that. Wait, can you explain, though, why it is she decided to shoot the guy? Yeah, why did she shoot? Well, Sarah James never fully explained that.

And in fact, when I asked her, she was like, I'm not going there. This is not an interview about what was driving me or about what I did or why I did it. This is an interview about Mr. Sipple.

Sipple? Yeah, Oliver Sipple. He's the random blonde guy who just happened to be standing next to Sarah Jane Moore that day. The guy who grabbed her arm and saved the president's life. And he paid dearly for that. I actually called up Sarah Jane and had her tell that whole story because I was actually interested in what happened to Oliver Sipple after that. Because had he not reached out and put his hand on my arm... Somebody fire a shot at me!

None of this would have happened to him. Wait, what happened to him?

So Oliver Sibyl actually died in 1989. But before we get into the story, I just want to give you a picture of the guy. So just Google search Oliver Sibyl Ford or something. Wait. Okay, wait. I see the picture. I see. Look at that. He's a muscular guy, kind of blonde hair. He's a handsome guy. Yeah, he's a little bit James Dean and –

Marlon Brando had a baby, kind of? He feels like an All-American. He feels All-American. There's something All-American about him. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. We're bringing in another All-American for this story, Daniel Lutzer. An editor at Oxford University Press. And a few years ago, it was like probably more than five years ago, I wrote an article about Oliver Sipple. But anyway. To get back on track. September 22nd, 1975. ♪

Sarah Jane Moore fires that shot. Oliver Sipple grabs her arm. The police wrestle more to the ground. And then the police actually grab Oliver too, pull him inside the hotel to question him. Because there's initially some confusion about what he was doing there and some thought that, you know, he might have been a suspect. And so he's in this hotel trying to light a cigarette, but he just couldn't do it because he was shaking so hard. Hmm.

Turns out Oliver had served two very rough tours in Vietnam. Loud noises would make him very unhappy. I think this is the sort of thing we might call post-traumatic stress disorder now. But when eventually Oliver started to calm down, the Secret Service were like, what are you even doing here?

It was kind of hard for him to answer because it's like he didn't even really know. It was just like, I don't know. I was taking a walk. And I just bumped into this huge crowd of people, asked what was going on. And people were like, oh, like Gerald Ford is going to be here. You know, the president is going to be here. So he said he thought I might as well see him. And then he was standing there for a couple hours until... He saw a flash of metal. Realized it was a gun. Reacted quickly. Instinctively. And then... You guys all pulled me in here. That's how I...

So he's questioned for three hours. He goes home, home to his fourth floor walk up, and there's a reporter there waiting for him. But he just wants to sort of be left alone. And he told this reporter, quote, I'm a coward. I don't know why I did it. It was the thing to do at the time. Hmm.

And then even after that, he just keeps getting phone calls from reporters. And some of them learned that he was a Marine. And so they would ask him questions like, oh, was it your, you know, was it your training? Is that why you did this heroic thing? But he said like, oh, you know, listen, don't mention any of that stuff about the Marines. You know, let's keep that under wraps. Quote, I'm no hero or nothing. But...

The next day... Yesterday in San Francisco, a shot fired. Oliver's story shot across the country. The aim deflected by an ex-Marine, a Vietnam veteran named Oliver Sipple. His name's on television. That Marine, Oliver Sipple. On the front page of newspapers, where there's headlines like, Ex-Marine Deflects Weapon as Woman Shoots. That's the LA Times, Chicago Tribune. Hero Tells How He Deflected Woman's Arm. And so despite his best efforts, Oliver becomes a national hero.

for a day. And it appears that he sort of thought that would be it. Maybe his friends would give him a pat on the back, buy him a couple rounds. And then, you know, over the next couple days, it all sort of like rippled out of control.

Because that very same day that Oliver was being painted as a hero, this guy named Herb Cain, the longtime San Francisco columnist, walked into his office and on his answering machine were two messages saying, hey, that guy Oliver Sipple, the hero who saved the president's life, is gay. Huh.

Was he out? Well, he was sort of out and sort of not. What does that mean? Well, to explain, you've got to understand this particular time and place. So let's just, you know, take a magic carpet ride. Close your eyes and let the sound take you away. ♪

A city has emerged where homosexuality is not only tolerated, but thrived. San Francisco, sometimes labeled with a sly caption, Queen City of the West. So San Francisco... It's a great day, it's a gay day. Happy day. Happy day. ...was one of the first cities in America to have a gay pride parade. And in the 70s... It's a wonderful city.

Boys go to bed with boys and girls go to bed with girls. For gay people, San Francisco was like this shelter from the storm. Many of us were immigrants from somewhere. This is Ken Maley. Longtime San Francisco resident. And gay activist who at the age of 19 came to San Francisco from Kansas. I escaped from Kansas because what the West offered was the ethereal promise, if you will, of reinvention.

It was a place where you could be out, but to the people you left behind, you could still be in. And so for Oliver, you know, he came from Michigan. From a working class family. He had a lot of brothers and sisters. I think he was one of eight children.

And so after the war, when he got to San Francisco, he actually started going by the name Billy. Billy, Billy Sipple. And he was perfectly open about his sexual orientation and would tell anybody who asked that he was a gay man. But, you know, he never told his family. And so Oliver lived, like a lot of gay people at the time, this double life. Yeah, yeah. And do we know that this is the reason why Sipple came to San Francisco or was there a different reason? It may have just been because Harvard

Harvey Milk was there. The Harvey Milk, you know, famous gay activist, San Francisco politician. He was friends with Harvey Milk. The New Yorker.

An immigrant from New York. Turns out Oliver had actually met Harvey a decade earlier in New York. And I just want to mention this because I think it's so cool. At different points in time, they actually dated the same guy. Who was the inspiration for Sugar Plum Fairy. Sugar Plum Fairy came and hit the streets. In Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side. Looking for soul food and a place to eat. Just a fun fact. Just a fun fact. That's it. But, um...

Oliver and Harvey, they were pretty good friends. They corresponded, stayed in touch when they lived in different places in the country. Actually, Harvey even loaned Oliver money sometimes because Oliver didn't have a job. He, you know, collected disability from his time in the Marines. But anyway...

By the beginning of the 70s. When Oliver got to San Francisco, reconnected with his old friend. Harvey was, shall we say, evolving into. A huge figure there. A gay public figure. Ken was actually friends with Harvey, worked on one of his campaigns. But this, I'm sorry. No, no, no. And I'm just thinking like one of the things we were talking about on the phone was about sort of the kind of two different schools.

I was just about to segue to that. Oh, perfect. Yeah, yeah, go for it. This older, I would say older, but other generation of gay, mostly men, was that they were content to go to tea with the mayor or public official of some kind. They would show up to like a rally. Wearing jackets and ties. And like ask for their rights politely. They really weren't, shall we say, activists. Right.

Because according to Ken, the activism came when in the late 60s, early 70s, you had young gay men and women...

We came out of the Vietnam War protests into the world. Took a look around. The CBS News survey shows that two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort, or fear. The police are still raiding bars. What they consider discrimination in jobs and housing. People are still getting beaten. One of them has said, queer faggot, we're going to beat the shit out of you. Some to that effect, we're going to kill you.

both violently and non-violently. Got up in the middle of the street, they knocked me down and started beating me with their hands and their feet, their elbows. Tried to muffle my screams. And after a while, a body of people get to a point where they just will not take oppression anymore.

So... Oh, Harvey! In came the activist like Harvey. Ponytail, mustache. He was a banker turned hippie. You know you're lying. You know you're changing the statements around. He was very outspoken. I question what is your real motive behind it? Very militant. And stop this phony issue that you know is a phony issue. And to Harvey...

Gay people were living in a half-life opportunity. Not being able to be who they were.

As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family, you must tell your relatives, you must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends, you must tell your neighbors, you must tell the people you work with, you must tell the people in the stores you shop in. And once you do, you will feel so much better.

And so, cut back to... September 22nd, 1975. In the blink of an eye, Oliver Sibyl becomes this hero. And that same night, Oliver's friend Harvey hears about all this news and kind of senses, wait, maybe there's an opportunity here. So...

He picks up the phone and he calls the columnist Herb Cain, a very, very well-known, well-loved gossip columnist. And Cain isn't there, so Milk leaves a message on his answering machine. And he basically says, look, I'm a friend of Oliver Sipple's. I've known him for years. Oliver Sipple worked on my campaign for Supervisor. Supervisor.

So basically, without Sipple's consent, Harvey outed him. Milk outed him. But what was Harvey Milk thinking that he would do this?

Well, for Harvey... I think the stereotypes, the lies, the innuendos... Of gay people as limp-wristed and drag queens and stuff. The distortions. All gay people are child molesters. Well, here's a true gay hero. A square-jawed, heroic Marine. Who seemed to be a sort of, like, regular, like, red-blooded American.

And so Harvey said, and this was written down by his biographer, who I'm quoting, it's too good an opportunity for once we can show that gays do heroic things, not just all that caca about molesting children and hanging out in bathrooms. Wasn't there somebody said, no, no, no, no, you got to ask the guy for you can't just do that. Harvey just did it. Really? Yeah, he just did it.

So Cain, the next morning, Cain arrives at his office. He listens to the message and Cain tries to call Sipple, but he can't reach him. But there was another guy who was a gay activist. His name was the Reverend Ray Brochures. He was the head of what's called, what was called the Lavender Panthers. And he also independently called Herb Cain to say, oh, that guy Oliver Sipple everyone's talking about on the news?

So you got two independent sources, both of people who said that they were friends with Sipple and that he was gay. And for Kane, I think this was juicy. This was a juicy thing. And he was let me just like go back and get this. So two days after the assassination attempt.

Kane's column comes out. And the way that he wrote it up, this is the precise paragraph. One of the heroes of the day, Oliver Billy Sipple, the ex-Marine who grabbed Sarah Jane Moore's arm just as her gun was fired and thereby may have saved the president's life, was the center of midnight attention at the Red Lantern, a Golden Gate Avenue bar he favors. Reverend Ray Brochures, head of Helping Hand Center and gay politico Harvey Milk, who claimed to be among Sipple's close friends, described themselves as proud menopause

Maybe this will help break the stereotype. And then, that day, this guy named Daryl Lemke. Lemke. L-E-M-B-K-E. Picks up his issue of the Chronicle, sees Herb Cain's column. Read it, and I reported it to the office. The office of the Los Angeles Times. I was a reporter for the LA Times in San Francisco, and so my office told me, get an interview with Oliver Sippel.

But really quickly before we get there, we actually managed to find the recording of this very specific interview in the LA Times collection at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles. And I think the reason they hung on to it was because it was kind of controversial. So the night that Kane's article comes out, Daryl goes to Oliver's house. Oliver's there. Two reporters from the Sentinel were there also. From the Sentinel, okay.

That right there is Daryl. So they're all sitting in Oliver's living room. And what the reporters are wondering is, have you heard from the president? The president hadn't bothered to thank him at that point. The president can award what they call medals of freedom to people for outstanding acts. He offered, you know, to have you brought back to the White House. Would you go? Certainly. Would you like to meet him?

And that voice right there, that's Oliver. Yeah.

I've heard only from the press and reporters and reporters in the press. Of course, you have been hard to get a hold of. Of course, we really have to dig in order to get a hold of you. But then I'm sure the mayor could find you. He has access to police records that know where you are. Okay, can we go on that one? Yeah. Okay.

For some reason, San Francisco Police Department has now referred any inquiries about you to the sex crimes and missing persons detail. That's something I think you should know.

Something Oliver should know, because this is, again, this is at a time when the assumption was that all gay men were just pedophiles, perverts. And when I said background, this is information that cannot be printed. Well, can I call in and ask him about it? Daryl actually asks if he can call somebody and ask about it. Yeah, would you do that right now? Yeah. No, I don't want to. Well, you won't. You're damn right I do. They're not giving any reasons as to why. The number is 553-1361. Okay.

Who was the guy to talk to? Talk to either Sullivan or Hetrick. No, he got found out. Darrell calls local authorities, but he can't get a hold of anyone. I don't know anything yet. He said he called back around 1. I have said nothing to you about that. Do you have any sex crimes on your record? I've never had a sex event in my entire life. I've never been arrested, except for being dropped a couple times. But I don't think there's no Marine in the world that hasn't been dropped a couple times. Would you like us to check that out further to see if there's more they're giving you?

And then the tape recorder goes off, comes back on. Well, who do I call with some authority with the police department? And now Oliver's on the phone with the police department. Yeah. Is this Detective Allen? Yeah, well, my name is Oliver Sipple. And I'd like to know why I've been turned over to your department, Sex Crimes and Missing Persons. This is May, yes. That's correct, sir. Yes, sir. I'd like some information. A bunch of press came over. Well, not a bunch. Just three people from the press came over this afternoon.

And they said they were trying to get some information about me from the police department. And I was turned over to Sex and Crimes Acts? What the hell is all that about? Oh, I see. Well, Jesus God. I mean, I said, what the hell is going on? Okay, guy. I tried to call the mayor's office just now. And I tried to call the chief of police office just now. And I said, what the Sam hell is going on? Okay. Thanks a lot, guy. Yeah. Just the officer, one of the officers that was involved said,

with the assassination or assassination attempt is in that department that's all that's why it's being turned is that making sense to you you got me very shook up young man well i was just about to go downtown and whip some ass somewhere we find out anything more about i'll let you know

Now, the reason this tape is so controversial is because according to Oliver, before the interview began, before the recorder started rolling, he had said to the reporters from the Sentinel, OK, I'm going to talk to you guys about my sexuality. But then he had said to Daryl, I don't want you to write anything about that. I don't want that in a national paper. Right.

Daryl says he doesn't remember that. But then right here in this interview, this thing happens where Daryl says, I'll make one more try on the gay thing. I'll make one more try on the gay thing. You don't want to change your mind on it? You don't want to change your mind on that. No, I just don't want to change my mind. May we quote you as saying homosexuality has nothing to do with this?

And eventually... Okay.

Interview ends and Daryl says that when he left that interview, he felt like when it came to Oliver's sexuality... He didn't want to be quoted. That was it. Like, just don't quote me on it. But still... I was trying to report from all sides about it. The big side for me was that he was a hero and the president of the United States was very slow on the take side.

And Daryl thought that Oliver's sexuality, the fact that he was gay, might have something to do with that. Because just seven months earlier... This Air Force sergeant named Leonard Matlovich, who had the Purple Heart, had the Bronze Star, he comes out that he's gay...

and he's kicked out of the Air Force. In conversations here, people say that, you know, we're distrusting this queer or that queer, throwing them out of the Air Force. On the inside, I just burn up with, you know, just, am I a coward here and I'm just going to stand here? And never really coming up to protection of my fellow minority group and just keeping quiet. My conscience just wouldn't let me do it anymore. I had to come forward and say, no more America.

And now you've got this former Marine, saved the president's life, and it's two days later, he still hasn't heard from the president. So for Daryl, even though Oliver had said, don't make this about my sexuality. I still thought it was a national story, and it was pretty hard to ignore it after Herb Koehn had started the ball rolling.

So that night, after the interview, Darrell calls in his story to the L.A. Times office, and he uses this phrase. He says that Oliver is a former Marine who was, quote, a prominent figure in the gay community. Put it down a ways in the story, but the rewrite guy put it in the lead. Really? And made it the big thing. And so three days after the assassination attempt, the L.A. Times runs the story with the headline, Darrell.

And so Daryl's story, it goes, I mean, it goes everywhere. Headlines are like...

Gay vet or homosexual hero. It's been reported that the ex-Marine who deflected Mrs. Moore's shot on Monday is well known in San Francisco's gay activist circles. And so it was not just running in Los Angeles. It's also running in Chicago. It's running in Dallas. It's running in Indianapolis. And it's running, you know, of all places in Oliver Sipple's hometown in Detroit.

I guess what I'm wondering is if you have a guy who says, please don't talk about this. This has nothing to do with what I did yesterday. Shouldn't that play some role in what you decide to write or not to write? Well, you know, news sources are always reluctant to talk. And so I guess I took it as my duty to...

Take up that angle, especially since it involved the President of the United States. Right. But... If you were to do it all over again, would you do anything differently? I don't know. I hadn't taken into account maybe the potential harm of saying it. I don't know if I'd do it over again or not, but not able to turn back the clock for something like that. The clock marches forward.

after the break. My name is Jazz Adam, and I'm calling from Los Angeles. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. This is Radiolab. We're back with the story of Oliver Sippel from reporter-producer Latif Nasr. So the assassination attempt was on Monday, and

And on Thursday, Sipple and his lawyer call a press conference. Well, I think you all know this is Oliver Sipple who saved the president's life. And he has a prepared statement on a subject that's appeared in the press today. In the past few days, I have been asked many questions having to do with my sexual preferences to it. I have been asked whether or not I am gay or homosexual.

This is my reply to the line in question. The first reason you are interested in me is the fact the woman who tried to shoot the president... See, I'm sorry. I'm so nervous. Excuse me.

This is a handwritten statement and he's having a little difficulty reading it. We xeroxed it in order to get it to you this afternoon. The reason you were interested in me is the fact that I deflected it. Oh, okay. I couldn't get the word there. My sexual orientation has nothing at all to do with saving the president's life, just as the color of my eyes or my race has nothing to do with what happened in front of the St. Francis Hotel on Tuesday.

My sexual... Sexuality. My sexuality is a part of my private life. And I have not, I have no... And has no. And has no bearing on my... Response. Response to the act of a person seeking to take the life of another. I'm first and foremost a human being who enjoys and respects life. I feel that a person... A person's worth. Worth is...

determined by how he or she responds to the world in which they live, not on how or what or with whom a private life is shared. He basically says, like, stop, stop. It's kind of as simple as that. But there's something else that happens in the press conference that makes the whole thing, I mean, so much more...

And it actually was the very reason that Oliver called the press conference in the first place. I want you to know that my mother told me today that she could not walk out of her front door or even go to church because of the pressures she feels because of the press stories concerning my sexual orientation. Naturally, I never anticipated such things.

interference with my family's relationship, which I, when I supposedly saved the president's life. Oliver would later say that when he was talking on the phone with his mother, she said to him, I don't want to speak to you ever again. And she hung up on him. And also hung up.

Did you call him Uncle Oliver? Yes, I called him Uncle Oliver. This is George Sipple Jr., Oliver's nephew. He told me that most of Oliver's family stayed in Detroit. Oliver's two brothers and his dad worked together at an auto plant there. They all worked for General Motors. And the stories that I've heard is that... The day after Oliver saved the life of President Ford... They walked in and everyone wanted to buy them a beer and...

You know, everybody on the factory floor was congratulating them, patting them on the back. You know, your brother's a hero, your son's a hero. You know, when they would take their shift break, this is the old days, right? They'd take a shift break and they'd go to the bar and everybody wanted to like buy them a round of drinks. So then the news comes out, whatever, a couple of days later that he's this gay Marine and the...

There's teasing on the factory floor. Teasing? Mean teasing or teasing? Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And George says what happened is reporters back in Detroit just sort of descended on Oliver's parents. To get more of the story. And so they kept knocking on my grandmother's door and

and she, I guess, apparently told them to go away. I guess neighbors were harassing her. She thought the media was harassing her. My grandmother just said, I don't want to deal with it, and so don't come knock on the door. Leave us alone. They just wanted it to go away. It won't go back to their private lives. Now, one of the things that I found, actually, after talking to George, were these interviews done with Oliver's family after the news broke that Oliver was gay.

And there's just – I just want to read you this one particular passage here. Have you talked to any other members – this is from George F. Sipple who is Oliver Sipple's brother. Have you talked to any other members of your family since September 1975 about Oliver? I mentioned it once to my father. Question, and what was his response? What did he say? And if you can remember.

I was on afternoons then and I had seen him because I had come in early. And he mentioned the fact that the next person that even said he had a son named Oliver, he was going to literally break their damn neck. Whoa. So his dad was like, this is his brother talking about his dad's reaction? Brother talking to the dad. Yeah. And then so then the brother says, and he told me quite clearly in two letter words, just forget you got a brother. And I let him alone.

I never anticipated such interference with my family's relationship, which I, when I supposedly saved the president's life. This is all I have to say on this subject. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Any questions that go to the minister or to my lawyer? I'd like to ask Mr. Simple a question. What would you like to see happen now? I don't know. I'm just, I'm very shook up.

I might even have to go even see a doctor over this. I'm very emotionally shook up and I just, I feel very sorry for my family too. It's awful. Just awful. Nothing more to say. Can you tell us the story of the letter? Well, I wish I would have brought it. I do have it, but I didn't bring it today.

The same day as that press conference, which was three days after the assassination attempt, Gerald Ford actually did write a letter to Oliver Sipple, which was then released publicly. It's a nice letter. It's White House stationery, White House envelope. It's basically Ford telling my uncle that, you know, he's thankful to him for this heroic deed and...

And he signed it Jerry Ford, which I've been told that Gerald Ford signed different ways. So if he signed Jerry Ford, it meant something. It was like a personal touch. Yeah.

Well, there's this other chapter where your uncle says to the president, I guess writes to the president. Yeah, so we found a letter. We found a letter in the Gerald Ford Library. It's from your uncle to the president. Wow. Yeah. I did not know about that letter. Really? I have the letter right now. So the date on it is September 30th, 1975. So here's what it says.

Dear Mr. President. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah. You said it was what? It was when? September 30th, 1975. So that would be a couple days after he got the letter from Ford. This was, so obviously, obviously he got, my grandmother must have hung up on him. Right.

And then he wrote the letter. Yeah, it sounds like. Because he couldn't. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. Okay, yeah. Well, then stop me anytime if you have thoughts or reactions. Dear Mr. President, thank you for taking the time to write to me. In view of some of the events since the unfortunate attempt on your life on Monday, September 22nd, I really appreciate your publicly thanking me.

As you probably know, there have been a number of stories concerning my personal sexual orientation in the news media. These stories have caused great anguish to my parents and to the rest of my family, I am sure. My mother hung up on me when I first called her after these stories began to be published. I know you are concerned with very many matters which are too important and pressing for you to be concerned with the details of my private life.

However, the unexpected and glaring publicity which has been given to my private life has very seriously disrupted my family relationships. Mr. President, it is a very hard thing to have your mother and family not want to have any contact with you. I know that your schedule is heavily occupied, but I respectfully request that you take the time to see my family or at least call my family. The telephone number is 313-

Zero, I love my family and I do not want to be separated from their love and companionship. Your help will be gratefully appreciated. Respectfully, Oliver W. Sibyl. Wow, that's sad. Sadder to think that nothing came of it, you know? Yeah.

We tried really hard to find out if Ford ever made that call. The archivists at the Ford Library, they went through his call logs and there was no evidence that he ever made that call. And then we talked to George Jr. and he talked to, you know, everybody in his family and they don't remember it either. Anyway, you can't say for sure, but as far as we can tell, that call never happened.

But we did find out that the same day that Oliver sent that letter back to Ford, he and his lawyer filed a $15 million lawsuit against the press. Really? Yeah.

Saying what? That the newspapers, when they publicized that he was gay without his consent, they violated his privacy. Okay, walking out of Civic Center BART onto Civic Center in San Francisco. It's just, it's one of those cases where it pulls your head in one direction and it pulls your heart in the exact opposite direction. Yeah.

And so we wanted to get into the legal case files, and we could not find them. We looked and looked and looked, and then we found them. You found them? We found them. Where did you find them? So the clerk's office is, I guess, not surprisingly, right off City Hall. They were at this court.

in San Francisco. And so we recruited this guy, this researcher, historian of the, you know, gay movement in San Francisco, great name, Joey Plaster. And he... Okay, so I'm going to need your ID. Okay. Went and got the files for us. And then when we found them, it turned out there were like thousands and thousands upon thousands of pages. And is that everything? This is everything. That's everything, okay. Yeah.

So the issue, you know, it's a very fundamental issue for those of us in journalism. And to help us make sense of the arguments, you know, lurking in those pages. What is privacy and what is invasion of privacy? We talked to Dan Morain. Editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. He actually first heard about the case in journalism school and also wrote about Oliver Sipple way back in the 1980s. So anyway.

Okay, so here's the first page of the file. The lawsuit was against the Chronicle. The case is Oliver W. Sipple, plaintiff, versus the Chronicle Publishing Company. It was against the LA Times. The Des Moines Register, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Denver Post, the Indianapolis Star, and the San Antonio Express. Wow. Let's see. So this is the deposition of Oliver W. Sipple. Let's see.

So one of the arguments that the lawyers for the newspapers were making is that Oliver's sexuality was not actually private. Lawyer, were there any people that you knew in San Francisco in, say, September 1975 who knew that you were homosexual?

Sipple, yes. Lawyer, approximately how many people? Sipple, I have no idea. More than 10? Yes. More than 50? Yes. More than 100? Yes. There were people in New York who knew he was gay. There were people in Dallas who knew he was gay. And it kind of, they settle in the like, in the hundreds. Did you tell anybody before September of 1975 that you were a homosexual? If I were asked...

I am asking you. I don't know what you are asking. And they make the argument, the newspaper's lawyers, that, hey, this was already somewhat public a fact. But his personal business was his personal business. I have never attempted to obtain publicity for the fact that I am gay or predominantly homosexual in my sexual orientation. He was a private citizen. I have made my home approximately 1,800 miles away from home.

of my parents and my family so that I could move somewhat freely in the gay community without the fact of my sexual orientation getting back to my parents and family. And it goes on. But the newspapers made this other argument that was like, okay,

Whether or not you're living a double life, whether or not you wanted to or whether or not you had to, there's something here that's bigger than that, that's bigger than you. Which was he was a private citizen who thrust himself as anybody would hope they would do. He ran toward, he went toward danger. And when he did, he also thrust himself into the public eye.

And a journalist, when you're in the public eye, you become something else entirely. You become a public figure. Yesterday in San Francisco, a shot fired. When that happened to Oliver, he lost his right to privacy. I'll make one more try on the gay thing. And the newspapers argued, when it came to Oliver's sexuality... You don't want to change your mind on that.

No. It was news at the time. It is, was, and at all pertinent times has been my judgment that Mr. Sipple's activities in the gay community are highly significant and newsworthy for two important reasons. First... On March 6th, Sergeant Leonard Matlovich disclosed that he was a homosexual. So, like we said, when Daryl Lemke was writing that article about Oliver, you had this big story about the U.S. Air Force trying to kick this guy, Leonard Matlovich, out because he was gay. Would you like to meet him? And...

Oliver has heard nothing from the president. The president later said that that had nothing to do with Oliver being gay, but to people at the time... The suggestion that the president's expression of gratitude to Sipple might have been affected by rumors of Sipple's activities in the gay community. That was news. News secretary Nesson was asked if that was the reason President Ford has not yet personally thanked him. Second... Lies, the innuendos... Sipple's public display of heroism and saving the life of the president of the United States... The distortions...

"All gay people are child molesters." Presented an image... "That gay people are like everybody else. That they're heroes." An image certainly contrary to the stereotype of persons associated with the gay community as weak and unheroic figures.

which is to say this is newsworthy, this is worth knowing, and it is something that the whole country wants to know, and the value of that is more than the value of this individual person's privacy. Do they make it that explicitly? I mean, sort of putting it in terms of the public benefit outweighs the private privacy? Yeah. So Oliver's case, it dragged on for nine years, so from 1975 to 1984, right?

But this is, I'm quoting the judgment.

The record shows that the publications were not motivated by morbid and sensational prying into appellants' private life, but rather were prompted by legitimate political concerns, i.e. to dispel the false public opinion that gays were timid, weak, and unheroic figures, and to raise the equally important political question whether the president of the United States entertained a discriminatory attitude or bias against a minority group such as homosexuals.

So the court tossed Oliver's case out. He lost. He didn't get a dime. I mean, if you think about it, it is weird that a journalist can just take a person's most private details and then if it feels relevant, like if they can make that argument, they just put it out there. If we were to go silent because somebody says, don't say that about me, and the government backs him up. But if it's meaningful, then the person –

out of which the meaning is being pulled painfully has nothing to say about it? That's just weird to me. It's really hard. I mean, I was thinking about this, like, even sort of on the train coming over here. Again, Daniel Lutzer. And it's like, the thing that, like, makes journalism law so complicated and the things that make an invasion of privacy discussion so difficult is that, like...

What makes something not an invasion of privacy is not that it's okay. It's that it's politically, you know, relevant. So like the fact that the story – the fact that the private details of his life are politically relevant means that it's not an invasion of privacy. You know, it doesn't mean that it isn't rude or that it doesn't hurt. It means that it's an appropriate story to, you know, to publish, right?

But I do think like why should the journalist be the only ones to decide what is newsworthy? It's not like why is it that then journalists, you just pick up a notepad and a pencil and all of a sudden you have so much more power to say what's sayable than anybody else.

Well, I mean, we have this sort of long tradition of that in the United States. I mean, like, that's like what the First Amendment is. I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's like, yeah, sure. Like, it's like, why do journalists get to decide that? Well, like, who would you rather have decided? It's not a perfect system, but it's, you know, it kind of works. So is Oliver just like this? This is producer Tracy Hunt, who was in on the interview. Somebody whose life is basically kind of sacrificed to the altar of the First Amendment, and it's like...

Sad way? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it feels like he was sacrificed from all sides, actually. Yeah. It feels like there's this one kind of man in the middle, and then there are all these forces around him, these like...

these larger-than-life forces, like the White House, there's the gay movement, there's the freedom of the press, and all these people are sort of batting around all these enormous and important abstractions. And then in the middle of it, there's this guy that just is trampled by all of them. And so what ends up happening to him in the end? Well, apparently, some people in the gay community during and after the lawsuit

felt that he was trying to go back in the closet. So they sort of turned their backs on him. He, surprisingly, he was friends with Harvey Milk till the end. Like, when Harvey Milk was assassinated, Oliver Sipple went to his funeral. And he did have one brother, George Sr., who stuck by him throughout, but his parents did not. And they never fully accepted the fact that he was gay. And

When his mom died, it was so bad that Oliver Sipple's father didn't let him go to the funeral. And because he sort of – he had so few people, I guess, at the end and because there weren't –

you know, a lot of news articles about him and because a lot of people in the gay community from that time have died because of the AIDS crisis. It was really hard to find out what happened to Oliver Sippel in those last five years of his life. Yeah.

And the only way we could was because when we were talking to Daniel Lutzer, he mentioned this interview that he did with this guy named Wayne Friday. He was a friend of Oliver's. Wayne Friday was sort of like a pillar of the community in San Francisco, like a pillar of the gay community and then also a sort of political figure and he was a

cop and, you know, he was sort of fingers in every pie kind of thing. Wayne died last year, but Daniel still had the transcript of their conversation about Oliver Sipple's last days. And so... We found an actor, the very gifted Gordon Pinsent, and we had him read it for us. Okay, let me have a go.

I forget, was it 1975, the Sarah Jane Moore? Yeah, that I met him around '73. He was a swamper at a gay bar called the Cockpit Swamper. They used to clean the bars at night. You know, they set the bar up for the next bartender in the morning. That's what he did. He did it at two or three different bars. He was always at the bars. I'd see him. We actually became friends because we discovered we were both from Michigan. Bill was a good guy.

He was just a fucking alcoholic. I mean, he'd get his disability check once a month, and he'd go down to one of the bars in the Tenderloin where he used to hang out. It was called Queen Mary's Pub. He'd go in there the day he got his check. Swear to God, he'd spend his whole fucking check on everybody. And he'd get broke the rest of the month. He just couldn't control himself. And he was a little bit of a blowhard, you know. He'd get drunk and loud, and he'd get tossed out of bars.

I used to drive him home. He had an apartment on Van Ness, had a little studio, maybe a one-bedroom on the first floor at about Turk. He'd be drunker than hell at the bar, and I'd drive him home, so I always knew where he lived. And after this thing with Ford, it really fucked his mind up. Siffel was a broken guy after that. The whole thing worked him. The publicity of it all, and the fact that everyone knew he was a faggot, you know. He said to me a couple of times,

I went to the Marine Corps and I got hurt. And now what am I known for? For being a faggot. And I'd say, no, you're not. You're known for saving the president's life. He won't be known for what you did in bed, for Christ's sake. But he would get drunk and he'd start bemoaning that. I'd sit there in the bar with him and I'd talk to him about it. Hey, man, it is what it is. But he was just down to nothing. This thing happened and it overcame him.

It was too much for him to handle. And I think he got to feeling sorry for himself and his family. Just many a night I would sit in the bar with Bill Sibyl and he'd cry on your shoulder and you'd say, "Okay, Sibyl, it's time to go home." And then I'd drive him home. I remember it was raining. It was pouring fucking rain. Bruce called me at my office over at the DA's office and said, "Wayne, will you do a well-being check on Sibyl for me?" And I said, "Why?"

And he said, "Nobody's seen the dude. He hasn't been around for a while." So we go out there together and it was raining and I'm ringing the bell, ringing the bell, ringing. He doesn't answer. I notice on his door there were these little stick 'em things, post-its. And he had befriended this little old lady who lived next door. They kind of looked after each other. And she'd left all these notes, "Bill, call me. I can't get a hold of you." So I rang the manager's bell and there was a little Filipino guy

I showed him my badge and I said, "You gotta let me in." And so he did. And the door opened and I knew what was going on. It's the smell. It's a smell you never forget. It's a sickening sweet smell. Bill was sitting in the chair. He was bloated. He was bloated out real big. He had a bottle of Jack Daniels sitting there. And the television was still on. The coroner told me he'd been dead about ten days. As near as they could figure.

God, I didn't know he was only 47. I thought he was older than that. Anyway, I got the guy to open the door for me. And the minute he did, I said, close it. And then I had to stand there and wait for the coroner. I remember it was over here at the Campbell Funeral Home on Market Street. And then we buried him out in Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. And I remember it was very small. The casket wasn't open.

The funeral was just... I mean, there were more media there than anything else. I've seen him buy drinks for more people than were at that funeral. He could have been buried in Arlington if they'd made an issue out of it. I mean, shit, there he was, this national icon, a gay whatever, and there were just a few people out there for the funeral. I believe in human life, and I think that this country stands for human values.

including life and freedom. I'm first and foremost a human being who enjoys and respects life. I feel that I... that... I feel that a person's worth is determined by how he or she responds to the world in which they live, not on how or what or with whom a private life is shared.

These are my words and they're my feelings. This is all I have to say on this subject. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. This story was reported by Latif Nasser and Tracy Hunt. It was produced by Matt Kielty and Annie McKeown with Latif and Tracy.

Special thanks to Bruce T.H. Burke, to Stacey Davis at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library, to the GLBT Historical Society, Stephanie Arias at the Huntington Library, James Crammond, who's Gordon Pinson's agent, and as long as we're on the subject of Gordon, the actor you heard just ending the piece, wow. Wow, yeah. Just wow. Yeah, thank you to Gordon. Special thanks also to Alan Jones, Denny Meyer, and Floyd Abrams. Thank you all.

We had original music in this story. We used a lot of music from a guy named Patrick Cowley. He was a guy who grew up in Buffalo, moved to San Francisco in the 70s like Oliver Sipple. And in 1982, he died of AIDS. This music was released posthumously by the label Dark Entries. We're super grateful to them and to Patrick Cowley, wherever he is, for the use of his music.

And last but not least, before we close, we just want to say a very sort of special belated goodbye to our senior producer, Jamie York. Who did a little of the legal research in this story, trying to, because we had to really probe fairly deeply to get the legal files. Thank you, Jamie, for doing that. And for everything, for guiding so many of our stories and our whole team for the last few years. Jamie, we will really miss you. Yes, even do, at this very moment, miss you.

All right. I'm Jad. I'm Umarad. I'm Robert Krowich. Thanks for listening. To play the message, press 2. Good afternoon. This is Daniel Luther. I guess the message is for Lateef. I'm calling in... Hi, this is Joey Buster in New Haven, Connecticut. To... Hi, this is Dan Moraine of the Sacramento Bee. To...

record the credits. Okay. Radiolab was created by Chad Abnerod and is produced by Soren Wheeler. So, starting now. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Rachel Cusack,

David Gable, Bethel Habte, Tracy Hunt, Matt Kielty, Robert Krolwich, Annie McEwen, Latesh Nasser, Alyssa O'Donnell, Ariane Wack, and Molly Webster. With help from Amanda Aroncheck, Shima Olihi, Shima Olanji, Shima Olihi, Nigar Fatali, Phoebe Wang, and Katie Ferguson. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris.

If there are any problems with that, please let me know and I'd be happy to record it again. But I think that should work fine with edits and stuff. Thanks a lot. Look forward to hearing the piece. Bye. End of message.

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