Ford's Would-Be Assassin Mourns His Death

A woman who once tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford says she regrets the murder attempt and joins Americans in mourning his recent death.

Sara Jane Moore was only 40 feet away from Ford outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco when she fired a single shot at him on Sept. 22, 1975.

As she raised her .38 caliber revolver, Oliver Sipple, a disabled former U.S. Marine who was standing next to her, pushed up her arm as the gun discharged. The bullet flew over Ford's head by several feet, ricocheted off the side of the hotel and slightly wounded a cab driver in the crowd.

"I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try," Moore, now 76, told KGO-TV on Tuesday in a phone interview from a federal prison in Dublin, where she's serving a life term for the attempted assassination.

Just 17 days before Moore's attempt, Ford had survived the first attempt on his life in Sacramento by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson.

Moore said she was blinded by her radical political views at the time, convinced that the government had declared war on the left.

"I was functioning, I think, purely on adrenalin and not thinking clearly. I have often said that I had put blinders on and I was only listening to what I wanted to hear," she told KGO.

Moore expressed sadness at news of Ford's death at 93 last week. The 38th president had his final homecoming Tuesday night in Grand Rapids, Mich., where he would be laid to rest Wednesday.

"People kept saying he would have to die before I could be (paroled)," Moore said. "I did not want my release from prison to be dependent on somebody, on something happening to somebody else, so I wanted him to live to be 100."