CRIME: The Cobra Strikes

Three months ago, not even police undercover agents in San Francisco had heard of a terrorist outfit called the Symbionese Liberation Army. Now, the bizarrely named group has burst into prominence across the U.S. by convincingly claiming responsibility for two spectacular crimes in the Bay Area.

The first was the November murder of Marcus Foster, the black superintendent of Oakland's public schools. After Foster was gunned down in a darkened parking lot, the S.L.A. issued "Communique No. 1," taking credit for the gangland-style execution. The S.L.A. said that Foster had "been found guilty of supporting and taking part in crimes committed against the children" in Oakland's schools.

Last week the S.L.A. sent out another communique boasting of a second major crime and backed up its claim with a persuasive piece of evidence. Enclosed in an S.L.A. message mailed to a Berkeley radio station was a Mobil Oil Co. credit card issued to Randolph A. Hearst, 58, chairman of the board of Hearst Corp. and the youngest son of Founder William Randolph Hearst. Sixty hours earlier Hearst's daughter Patricia, 19, a sophomore at the University of California at Berkeley, had been dragged screaming from her off-campus apartment and driven off by kidnapers.

According to police, the abduction began when Peter Benenson, a 31-year- old Berkeley mathematician, was way laid by as many as five attackers as he unloaded a car full of groceries at his home. Forcing Benenson to the back seat floor, three of the gang drove his car to the $250-a-month duplex apartment in Berkeley that Patricia shared with her fiance Steven Weed, 26, a graduate student in philosophy. A young white woman persuaded Weed to open the door so that she could report an auto accident; when he did, she and two black men barged in.

"In seconds they had me face down on the floor, and they kept kicking me in the face," the badly beaten Weed later told police from a hospital bed. They also blackjacked him with a wine bottle. When a neighbor ran in to investigate the commotion, two of the three attackers beat and bound him. Then they forced Patricia, who was wearing only a blue bathrobe, to their commandeered car. Horrified neighbors, driven back by gunfire that the men pumped steadily into nearby windows and cars, heard her screaming "Please not me, please!" before she was stuffed into the trunk of the car. Minutes later, the group transferred to a station wagon reportedly occupied by two other people.

The middle of five daughters, Patty Hearst is stunningly attractive. She was the first of the Hearst girls to decide against going through the deb rituals of San Francisco society, and she recently delivered a blunt critique of the daily Examiner to its editor, who also happens to be her father. Complaining that the paper neglected issues that interest young readers, she said: "Nobody under 80 reads the Examiner any more."