The Gate ----------------------------------------------------------- Charles W. Bates -- Led Patty Hearst Friday, February 26, 1999 SF Gate Home Probe Stephen Schwartz ----------------------------------------------------------- Charles W. Bates, who was special agent Get a in charge for the FBI in San Francisco printer-friendly during the Patty Hearst kidnapping version of this case, died yesterday. Mr. Bates died at Sequoia Hospital in [Image] Redwood City after a long illness. He was 79. Charles Bates, led FBI hunt for Patty Hearst Mr. Bates became a major media figure in the Bay Area during his tenure in . the FBI's San Francisco office. In addition to the Hearst case, he covered the Chowchilla kidnapping of a school bus full of children in 1976. In addition, away from public view at the time, he directed a controversial FBI program against leftists and protesters. Mr. Bates was born in Dallas and graduated from Southern Methodist University, where he played on the football team. He joined the FBI in 1941. He served in Buffalo, Newark, and Washington, D.C., and as legal attache for the U.S. Embassy in London from 1958 to 1965. He was a special agent in charge in Omaha and Cleveland before being assigned to San Francisco in 1967. In 1970, he was transferred to Chicago, and in 1971 he was promoted by J. Edgar Hoover to assistant director for the general investigative division of the bureau. In 1972, with the adoption of a bureau policy under which headquarters officials returned to field duty, Mr. Bates returned to San Francisco. With the abduction of Hearst, which he referred to as ``the first political kidnapping . . . in this country,'' Mr. Bates became an internationally known figure. He was responsible for the bureau's mammoth investigation of the crime and its aftermath, which included various additional crimes such as bank robbery, firearms violations and interstate flight. Mr. Bates also supervised eight agents assigned to the local activities of FBI's counterintelligence program, known as Cointelpro, which was directed against Marxist and student-radical groups. In addition to the eight full-time agents, Cointelpro employed 22 informants on campuses throughout the Bay Area. Targets included the Young Communist League, then known as the W.E.B. DuBois Club; the Young Socialist Alliance; Students for a Democratic Society; the Black Panther Party and a number of anti-draft and peace groups. Mr. Bates signed off on memorandums assailing mainstream media for an alleged leftist bias, and he proposed the mailing of fake letters, printing of false documents, and creation of fraudulent legal complaints to disrupt the Black Panthers and SDS. He retired from the FBI in 1977 and joined Burns International Security Services as a consultant. He also worked as an investigative reporter for KGO-TV, operated his own private investigation firm, and ran unsuccessfully for law enforcement offices on the Peninsula. Funeral services are pending. ©1999 San Francisco Chronicle Page A25
