Oliver Sipple's Final Years

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These historical advertisements illustrate a hidden era of black cultural development when performers started to reclaim harmful narratives, and demands for all black casts signal ed a trend toward more diverse mainstream audiences. On view until september sixth, learn more at posterhouse. org slash studios. W NYC studios is supported by the new museum. See the art of tomorrow today at Manhattan's only museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art. New humans, memories of the future, the first exhibition to fill the new museum's entire recently expanded campus, brings together the work of more than two hundred artists from around the world to consider what it means to be human in the face of major social and technological change. Get tickets or become a member today at newmuseum. org. Hey, it's Latif. Today we have a story about someone attempting a crime so big and so brazen that if they had pulled it off , it would no doubt have changed the world . But they didn't pull it off because one random guy stopped it. And instead of changing the whole world , it just changed the world for this one guy. The story took place in the nineteen seventies, we originally reported it back in twenty seventeen , but people keep attempting this same crime as of this taping literally twice in the last month. I'm being vague on purpose just so I don't spoil the surprise, but it'll all make sense in a second. Here we go. Listening to radio lab . Radio from W NY Just a quick note, this story contains some profanities here and there, or here and there's a couple. So just know that before we get going . Hey, I'm Jad Abumrod. I'm Robert Krowich. This is radio lab. 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. Woman named Sarah Jane Moore. Sarah Jane. Okay. So this is San Francisco. The particular day was september twenty second , the particular time nineteen seventy five. 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. 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 a St. Francis isn't it? I'm eighty seven years old. Don't expect me to remember little details like that. Okay, all right, fair enough. Yeah . But at any rate, you know, I parked in the parking garage across right across 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 of thousand people. It's like a big scene. And there was a barrier, a rope barrier keeping us back on the sidewalk. And my plan had always been to be back in the crowd , you know, and I was dressed like every other middle aged woman that was there for the long time. Do you remember what you were wearing? I mean, I'm sure there's oh there are pictures of it. Yes, I was wearing I was wearing slacks. was That at the beginning of when it was natural for women 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 so cialized as I was in that day and time, I spun around to slappy's 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 that . 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 pes in the front, right up on the curb of the sidewall. 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 cramm ed 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 there 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 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 thirty eight caliber revolver . She cocks it and then she takes aim right at Gerald Ford's head and then it. But a shot , put a shot. But mister Ford did not fall. I was being pushed back by the bully. 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 hands 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. And eventually , she went to prison, and she served thirty two years in prison. And then 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 be satisfied the president. That was not what I was expecting. I was hoping that. Can you explain though why it is she decided to shoot the guy? Yeah, why did she shoot? Well, well, Sarah Janes never fully explained that . And in fact, when I asked her, well, this is not 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, none of this would have happened to him . Wait, what happened to ? So Oliver Sibel actually died in nineteen eighty nine, but before we get to the story, I just want to give you a picture of the guy. So just Google search, Oliver S ipple Ford or something. Wait, okay, wait, I see the picture. Look at that. He's a muscular guy, kind of blonde hair. He's a he's a 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 twenty second , nineteen seventy five . Sarah Jean Moore fires that shot. Oliver Sipple grabs her arm, the police wrestle more to the ground, and then the police actually grab Oliver two, 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 . 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. He was just like, Oh, 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 are 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 real was a gun, reacted quickly, instinctively , and then you guys all pulled me in here. That's how I came to be here. So he's questioned for three hours. He goes home to his fourth floor walk 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 . 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 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? Like, let's keep that under wraps. Quote, I'm no hero or nothing . But But the next day yesterday in San Francisco a shot fire. 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. Marine, Oliver Sipple on the front page of newspapers where there's headlines like X Marine deflects weapon as women 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 Caine, a longtime San Francisco columnist walked into his office and on his answering machine two messages saying, Hey, that guy Oliver Sipel, the hero who saved the president's life is gay . Huh . Was he was he out? Well, he was sort of out and sort of not. What does that mean? Well, to explain, you 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, it's thrives. San Francisco, sometimes labeled with the Sky capture Queen City of the West. So San Francisco 's great day. It's a gay day. Happy day. It was one of the first cities in America to have a gay pride parade and in the seventies, that's a wonderful setting . Boys got 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 nineteen came to San Francisco from Kansas. I escaped from Kansas because what the West offered ethereal promise, if you will , of reinvention . You could cross a line in which your past stayed behind you. It was a place where you could be out, but to the people you left behind, you could still be in. 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 Sylke came to San Francisco or was there a different reason? It may have just been because Harvey Milk was there. The Harvey Milk, you know, famous gay activist, San Francisco politician. He was friends with Harvey Milk, a 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 inspir ation for sugar plum fairy. Sugar plum fairy came and hit the streets in Louid's Walk on the wild side. Look at the soul food and a place to eat. Just a fun fact, just a fun fact. That's it. But Oliver Har andvey , 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 seventies, 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 and but this I'm sorry. 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 or two but se thegue to that. Oh, perfect. Okay, go yeah, yeah, go this older other, 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. Because according to Ken, the activism came when in the late sixties, early seventies, you had young gay men and women who came out of the Vietnam War protests into the world Take 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 women said queer fagot, we're going to beat the shit out of you something 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, 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 in came the activists like Harvey. Ponytail mustache. He was a banker turned hippie. You know you're lying. You know you're changing his statements around. He was very outspoken. A question, what is your real motive behind it? Very militant and stop this phony issue that you know is a phony issue. And De Harvey, we are saying that a gay person should have the right to say gay people were living in a half life opportunity. I am gay that is a part of society, period. Not being able to be who they were. Every gay person come out . 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 the stores you shop in. And Lunch , once you do, you will feel so much better . And so cut back to september twenty second, nineteen seventy five. In the blink of an eye, Oliver Sibil 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 Caine isn't there so Milk leaves a message on his answering machine and he basically says look , I'm a friend of Oliver Siples. I've known him for years . Oliver Sipple worked on my campaign for 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 lusters. 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 kaka about molesting children and hanging out in bathrooms . Wasn't there somebody said, No, no, no, no, you gotta ask the guy for it. You can't just do that. Harvey just did it, really . Yeah, he just did it. So So the next morning, Cain arrives at his office, he listens to the message, and Cain tries to call Sibil, but he can't reach him. But there was another guy who is a gay activist. His name was the Reverend Ray Broshersi , he was the head of what was called the Lavender Panthers . And he also independently called Herb Caine to say, oh that guy over all SIP everyLone's talking about the on news . Yay. So you got two independent sources, both of people who said that they were friends with Sipel and that he was gay . And for Kane, I think , this was juicy. This was a juicy thing. And he let me just like go back and get this. So two days after the assassination attempt, Cain'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 grabs 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 Brosheers, head of helping Hand Center and gay politico Harvey Milk, who claimed to be among Sipples' close friends, described themselves as proud, maybe this will help break the stereotype . And then that day, this guy named Darryl Lemke. Lemkey, LEMBKE picks up his issue of the chronicle, sees Herb Kane'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 without recipal. 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 onto it was because it was kind of cont roversial . So the night that Cain's article comes out, Darryl goes to Oliver's house. Oliver's there. Two reporters from the Sentinel were there also. Sentinel ? That right there is Darryl. Sure. So they're all sitting in Oliver's living room and what the reporters are all 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. They offered, you know, they had me brought back to the White House where you go. Certainly . Would you like to meet me ? Well, yeah, I stood in line for three hours to see what I'd like to . And that voice right there , that's Oliver. He didn't have time to meet you at that occasion ally have you heard from the mayor? No. I've heard from nobody . No, I've heard only from the press and reporters and reporters in the press and that you have been hard to get hold of really have to dig or two holds. 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 round? Yeah , okay . For some reason, San Francisco Police Department has now referred any inquiries about you to the sex crimes in this in person's detail . That's something I think you should know . Something Oliver should know because this is again this at a time when the assumption was that all gay men were just pedophiles, pervert. And I when said background, this is information that cannot be printed. Well, can I call Lamb Cathroom about it? Daryl actually asks if he can call somebody and ask about it. Yeah, would you check it right now? Yeah No, I don't want to damn right there. There are reasons as to why. The number is five, five, three, one, three, six one . Who's the guy to talk to? Hawker is Sullivan or Heathrick I found out Darryl calls local authorities, but he can't get a hold of anyone. He said to call back around one. 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. I've never been arrested, Marks have been drunk a couple times. But I don't think there's no marine war. Hasn't been drunk . Would you like us to check that out further to see if there's more 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 she detective Valley? Yeah, well, my name is Oliver S ipel, 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 of 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 turn ed over to sex and crimes acts. What the hell was 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 is going on? Okay , thanks a lot, guy. Yeah . Just the officers, one of the officers that was involved with the assassination, or assassination of Tim is in that department, that's all . That's why it's being turned. Does that make any sense to you? That merely shook up, young man . Well I'm just about to go downtown and whip some ass somewhere . We find out any more about our let's matter . Now 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 okay I'm going to talk to you guys about my sexuality. But then he had said to Darrell , I don't want you to write anything about that . I don't want that in a national paper . Darrell says he doesn't remember that, but then right here in this interview, this thing happens where Darryl says I'll make one more try on the gay thing . I'll make one more try on the gay thing. don You't don't you 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 on that Maybe we quote you as saying homosexuality has nothing to do with this ? Even quoteman is saying that if I were homosexual, I was not. You can quote me on that. It doesn't make me any less of a man than what I am. But I think that it has nothing to do with the actor or itself . So I don't think it should be pushed any further than that. That means cool . And eventually that's great . Okay , interview ends, and Darryl says that when he left that interview, he felt like when it came to all of her 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 in thanking him for saving his life. And Darrell thought that all of her sexuality, the fact that he was gay, might have something to do with that, because just seven months earlier . On march sixth, Sergeant Leonard Metalvitch disclosed to a supervising officer at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia that he was a homosexual and wanted to stay in the Air Force. 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 discharging this quer that queer thrown out of air force. I mean, inside just burn up with, you know, just am I a coward here? I'm just going to stand here and never really coming up to protection of my fellow minority group and just keeping quiet and 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 save the president's life , and it's two days later. He still hasn't heard from the president . So for Darryl, even though Oliver had said, don't make this about my sexuality. I still thought it was it was a national st ory and it was pretty hard to ignore it after Herb Cane had started the ball rolling . So that night after the interview, Darryl calls in his story to the LA 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 away 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 LA Times runs a story with the headline no call from president, hero in Ford shooting active among SF gays. And the LA Times got a news service. And so Daryl's story, it goes, I mean, it goes everywhere. Another strange twist of the story. Headlines are like gay vet homosex ual 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 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 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 Radio Lab is supported by AT and T. Summer is great for many reasons. The best reason are plans we made finally making it out of the group chat because there's more time to fit everyone in. Whatever you've got in store this summer capturing those memories is a must. And AT and T has your summer essential in the iPhone seventeen Pro. Its center stage front camera auto adjusts the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. 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We make stories, old fashioned stories that hopefully pull you in the be atginning with funny moments and feelings and people in surprising situations and then you just want to find out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening . That's right. I'm talking about stories that make you miss appointments and ignore your loved ones , this American life every week, wherever you get your podcast . This is Radio Lab. We're back with the story of Oliver Sipple, from Reporter producer Latifasar. So the assassination attempt was on Monday and on Thursday What ? Sibel and his lawyer 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 wit . 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 my in me is the fact the woman who tried to shoot the president . See, I'm sorry, I'm so nervous excuse me . I don't know . 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. First First, the reason you are interested in me is the fact that I deflected okay I couldn't get the word there . Don't go right from wherever I am . 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 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 , 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. Yeah, but there's something else that happens in the press conference that is makes the whole thing I mean, so much personal finally 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 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 concerned concerning my sexual orientation . Naturally, I never participated such interference interference with my family's relationship which I when I suppose 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. She hung up on him and also hung up . Did you call him uncle, uncle Oliver ? Yes, I called him uncle Oliver. Yeah. 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 like buy them a beer . 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. When, 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 date a couple of days later that he's this gay marine and there's teasing on the on the factory floor. Teasing teasing or teasing Yeah . 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 she 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. They wouldn'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 nineteen seventy five 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 . Woah , 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 participated such interference interference with my family's relationship which I suppose 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 you go to minister or to my lawyer? I'd like to ask Mr. Simple a question if I could . What would you like to see happen now? I don't know. I'm just I'm very shook up. I may even have to go even see a doctor over this. I'm very emotionally shut up and I just I'm feeling very sorry for my family today. It's awful. Just off nothing more . Can you tell us the story of the letter? Well, I wish I would have 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 stationary White House Envelope. It's basically Ford telling my uncle that, you know, he's thankful to him for this heroic deed 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 . Well, there's this other ch apter where your uncle says to the president, I guess, writes . So yeah, so this is we found we found a letter. We found a letter in the Gerald Ford library. It's from your uncle to the president. Wow Yeah . And I did not I did not know about that letter. Really? I have the letter right now. So it's the date on it is september thirtieth, nineteen seventy five. So here's what it says . Dear Williaitam Wait, wait, wait, w, wait, wait, wait. You said it was what it was when september thirtieth, nineteen seventy five, so that would be a couple days after you 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, yeah. It sounds like he could he couldn't yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah. Well, and 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 twenty second, I really appreciate your public ly 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 in 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 three hundred 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. Sibble That's sad . Sadder to think that nothing came of it You know , yeah , 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. And anyway, you can't say for sure, but as far as we can tell , that call never happened. But we did find out the same day that Oliver sent that letter back to Ford , he and his lawyer filed a fifteen million dollars lawsuit against the press. Really? Saying 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 Bert , 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. 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, a 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? That's everything. Okay . 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 lurking in those pages, what is privacy and what is invasion of privacy? We talked to Dan Moraine, editorial page editor of the Sacramento B. He actually first heard about the case in journalism school and also wrote about Oliver Sipple way back in the nineteen eighties. So anyway, okay, so here's the first page of the file. The lawsuit was against a chronicle. The case is Oliver W. Sipple, plaintiff versus the Chronicle Publishing Company . Was it against the LA Times? The Des Moines Register, the Chicago Sun Times, the Denver Post, the Indianapolis Start, 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, nineteen seventy five , who knew that you were homosexual? Sipple, yes, lawyer. Approximately how many people SIPL, I have no idea. More than ten, yes. More than fifty, yes. More than one hundred, 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 settled in the in the hundreds. Did you tell anybody before September of nineteen seventy five that you were a homosexual . If I were asked, I am asking you. I don't know what you were 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 one thousand eight hundred 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 to journalists, 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 . And the newspapers argued when it came to all of her sexuality to change your mind. No, it was news at the time. It is was and at all pertinent at 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 sixth, Sergeant Leonard Metlavich disclosed that he was a homosexual . So like we said, when Darryl Lemke was writing that article about Oliver, you had this big story about the U. S. Air Force trying to kick this guy Leonard Matovich 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 SIPL might have been affected by rumors of SIPL's activities in the gay community. That was new. News Secretary Nesson was asked if that was the reason President Ford has not yet personally thanked him. Second, lies, the innuendos. Sipples public display of heroism in saving the life of the president of the United States. The distortions or gay people are childbolesters presented an image that g ay 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 , you know, this individual person's privacy. Do they make 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 nineteen seventy five to nineteen eighty four , but this is , I'm quoting the judgment . The record shows that the publications were not motivated by morbid and sensational prying into appellant's private life, but rather were prompted by log itimate 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 if they can make that argument, they just put it out there is the job like if we did if we were to go silent because somebody says don't say that about me then 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 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 makes journalism law so complicated and the things that make an invasion of privacy discussions 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 relevant. So like the fact that the story, the fact that 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 Fido to publish. But I do think like why should the journalists 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 anybody else . Well, I mean we have the 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 is producer Trace Huynt who is in the on interview. Somebody whose life is basically kind of sacrificed to the altar of the First Amendment in this 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 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? 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You don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support in therapy. Sign up and get ten percent off at better . health com slash radio lab. That's better elp. com slash radio lab . The economy never stops shifting. Markets move, global trade gets disrupted, and policies shift . And all these factors have a tremendous influence on the ways we live and work. I'm Kimberly Adams, host of Marketplace Morning Report, a daily ten minute podcast where a team of award winning reporters helps you make sense of our evolving economy. Listen to Marketplace Morning Report on your favorite podcast app. This is Radio Lab. I'm Jad Abumrod here with Robert Krow, getting back now to our story from producer Las Ev Nasser about Oliver Sipple, who, as we heard before the break, tried to sue a series of newspapers for outing him lost that suit. What happened to him after that? 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 turn 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 to when his mom died it was so bad that Oliver Sibyl'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 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 Sibyl in those last five years of his life . 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 any time to absorb it or just try to speak about it for a second in spine . 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 nineteen seventy five the Sarah Jane Moore or Yeah Yeah, that I met him around seventy three . He was a swamper at a gay bar called a cockpit . Swamper used to clean the burrows at night. You know, they set the bar for the next bar attend inant 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 checked once a month and he'd go down to one of the bars in the tenderloin where he used to hang out was called Queen Mary's Pub. He'd go in there the day , 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 blow heart, you know? He'd get drunk and loud and he'd get tossed out of bars. I used to drive him home , head an apartment on Van Ness, had a little studio, maybe a one bedroom on the first floor at about Turk . He'd be drunk to the hell at the barn 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. Syphil 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 fagot. And I'd say, No, you're not . You're known for saving the president's life . You won't be known for what you did in bed for Christ 's sake , but he would get drunk and he'd start meaning that. I'd sit there in the bar with him and I'd talk to him about it. Amen , it is what it is . But he was just 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 feel soringry for himself and his family . Just many a night I would sit in the bar with Pill Sipple and he'd cry on your shoulder and you'd say, Okay Sipple, 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 ple S forim 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, ring . He doesn't answer . I noticed on his door there were these little stickam things posted . 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 got to 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 forty seven 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 he was over here at the Campbell funeral home on Market Street and then we buried him out in Goldgate National Cemetery in San Bruno . And I remember it was very small . Casket wasn't open . The funeral was just I mean there were more media there than anything else. But 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