ALDERSON, W.Va., Dec. 25 – Federal agents issued a national alert for West Virginia prison escapee Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme on Thursday while the U.S. marshal’s office offered protection in Sacramento to a judge who sentenced her for the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford.

Fromme, 39, a follower of mass murderer Charles Manson, eluded more than 50 prison officers and agents with bloodhounds after she was discovered missing from her room at the Alderson Federal Prison for Women Wednesday evening.

Prison warden Ron Burkhart said Fromme may be hiding in rugged terrain outside the all-female prison compound, which includes 69 buildings on 93 acres in an isolated region of the Appalachian Mountains.

Burkhart said officers had saturated the only three roads in and out of the area. “When she steps out, we hope to be there,” he said.

But federal agents, concerned that Fromme might be headed toward Sacramento, contacted U.S. District Judge Thomas MacBride, who sentenced the cult member to life in prison after she attempted to assassinate Ford on the grounds of the state Capitol on Sept. 5,1975.

“I didn’t ask for any protection — they called me,” MacBride said. “I’m not worried — I don’t think she had any animosity toward me — but if anything looks bad, or if they think she’s headed in this direction, I’m sure they’ll be back in touch with me.”

In Palm Springs, a spokeswoman for Ford declined comment — although the U.S. marshal’s office in Washington confirmed it had been monitoring the situation.

California corrections officials “ordered a close watch” of six imprisoned members of the “Manson Family,” including Manson himself, who is serving multiple life terms in San Quentin for four murders.

Corrections Department spokesman Bob Gore said Fromme had “frequently corresponded with Manson,” and mail between the two was “always monitored.” Gore said Fromme did not mention escape in her letters to Manson, “although she frequently made statements in interviews in the past that she wanted to get Manson out of prison.”

Manson — mastermind of grisly mass slayings in the homes of actress Sharon Tate and wealthy grocer Leno LaBianca — remains in a high-security “administrative segregation,” where he has been incarcerated for the last two months, Gore said.

“He’s been very uncooperative, very unruly. He’s in a prison within a prison. It has nothing to do with Fromme’s escape,” Gore said.

Manson declined requests for interviews Thursday — although Gore said the Department of Corrections was conducting its own investigation.

“We are taking the possibility of Squeaky showing up in California seriously,” he said.

Agents began searching for Fromme after she failed to show for a routine body count in her dormitory-style cottage. Burkhart said “a couple” of inmates reported seeing her about 10 minutes before she is thought to have disappeared.

The West Virginia facility — surrounded by an 8-foot chain-link fence topped by barbed wire — “had extra security” because of Christmas activities, the warden said.

But the fence, said Burkhart, is not “very formidable.” It could be scaled, he said, “if a person was reasonably athletic.” Burkhart said 15 inmates have escaped in the last two years, although all but three have been captured.

Burkhart said the prison has no armed guards, except for a night surveillance crew that monitors the perimeter of the facility, where most inmates are considered “low or medium-security risk.” Fromme, authorities said, was considered “medium to high.”

Assigned housekeeping duties at the prison, Fromme had served two stretches totaling nine and a half years without incident, Burkhart said. Because of her seniority, she was assigned a room to herself.

Sentenced Dec. 12, 1975, Fromme was sent to the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego. She was transferred to Alderson in July 1977. Approximately one year later. Fromme was transferred to the federal prison in Pleasanton. While there, Fromme struck another inmate with a hammer, and she was sent back to Alderson.

Alderson officials — as well as MacBride — said they doubt Fromme enlisted assistance to escape.

“There have been occasions where inmates have had assistance from the outside from friends or relatives,” Burkhart said. “We don’t have any reason to believe that happened in Miss Fromme’s case.”

MacBride, who established a tenuous rapport with Fromme during the trial, ventured Thursday: “For some reason or other, I think she’s still on the premises … I don’t think she has any organization, that is, any group that would be sufficiently organized to help her get out of there.”

Although MacBride was offered heavy security during the trial, he said he has never received a threat from Fromme nor had any threats against him been mentioned in any of Fromme’s monitored correspondence to members of the Manson family.

Fromme shared a cluttered but clean apartment on P Street in Sacramento during the early 1970s with a fellow Manson family member, Sandra Good. Good, convicted of sending threatening letters to corporate executives, also served time in Alderson. She was paroled in 1985, and was questioned Thursday by Secret Service agents in Vermont.

In later interviews, Fromme contended that frustration about environmental issues caused her to accost Ford, who was in Sacramento to speak at a business people’s gathering.

According to witnesses, Fromme, in a flowing red robe, pulled a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol from a leg holster, pointed it at Ford and squeezed the trigger — but the gun did not fire.

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Heller, who prosecuted the case, said that Fromme — who was subdued by Secret Service agents — bemoaned: “It didn’t go off. It didn’t go off. Do you believe it? It didn’t go off!”

At Alderson, in an Aug. 28, 1980, interview, Fromme told The Bee that she and Good did not want to be released from prison until Manson won his freedom.

“I’m not going out,” she said. “We don’t want out until Charlie’s out … so we wanted to be inside with him until he gets out.”

Good told The Bee that some fences in the area were low enough to step over. At one point, she said, she was able to position her leg so that it was “hanging over the fence… People leave here when they want,” she said. “If you can stand the poison ivy.”

Heller blamed the federal prison system for Fromme’s escape. “I think she just walked away. I think the federal Bureau of Prisons absolutely is incompetent in the way they deal with a dangerous person,” he said.

In a book entitled “The Manson Women, A ‘Family Portrait,’ ” author Clara Livsey. M.D., describes both Good and Fromme as “humorless.”

“As they talked,” Livsey wrote, “I found myself upset and overwhelmed by the waves of rage coming from them as they calmly expressed their feelings. … Lyn (Fromme) insisted that she is reacting only because her life is endangered by those who poison our air and our waters.”

Both mentioned that their lives had not begun until they fell in with Manson. “Sandra insisted that people who pollute the environment should be ‘butchered.’ Lyn stated, “I must attack back to defend myself.”

By RICHARD ABRAMS and CHRIS BOWMAN