Gerald Ford shooter breaks cover

Sara Jane Moore, the woman who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, has said she hoped killing him would spark a revolution.

In her first television interview since being released on parole in December 2007, Moore (pictured above in 1975 and today) told NBC's Today show that she now believes her actions were wrong. However, she insisted that if she hadn't attempted to kill Ford, someone else would have.

In fact, three weeks before Moore's attempt on Ford's life, someone else already had. Lynette Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, went to Sacramento's Capitol Park on September 5, planning to shoot the president with a Colt .45. She was arrested by Secret Service agents before she could fire a round.

I genuinely thought shooting Ford might trigger a revolution in this countryThen in San Francisco, on September 22, Moore, a 45-year-old suburban mother-turned-leftist activist, fired a revolver at Ford from a distance of 12 metres. She missed and a bystander hit the gun out of Moore's hand. She was sentenced to life in prison and paroled 32 years later.

Now, after 18 months living anonymously in an undisclosed town, the 80-year-old has broken cover, because "one gets tired of being thought of as a kook, a monster, an alien".

Explaining her actions, Moore says: "It was a time people don't remember. We had a war in this country, the Vietnam War... We were saying the country needed to change. The only way it was going to change was a violent revolution.

"I genuinely thought that [shooting Ford] might trigger that revolution in this country."

Later, during seven years in solitary confinement, she realised she had been used by the San Francisco radicals she had fallen in with. She even wrote to Ford, saying she was glad she hadn't succeeded in her assassination attempt. "We thought San Francisco was the world, and it wasn't," she explained in her interview.

Since being released, she has been struck by the kindness of people - although most don't know what she did. That will all change after today.

"I hope they're okay with it," says Moore. And if they're not? "Write your congressman and ask that the law [on mandatory parole] be changed." ·