ALDERSON, W. Va., Mar. 12 — When Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, convicted would-be presidential assassin and disciple of mass murderer Charles Manson, arrived at the federal women’s prison in Alderson last summer, she had a request for the warden.

“She watched the men mowing the grass, and she talked to me about it,” said then-Warden Carson Markley. “She said grass is a living thing and should be allowed to grow and grow.”

Miss Fromme, who is serving a life sentence for pointing a gun at President Ford in 1975, is currently crusading on behalf of the environment from inside Davis Hall, a new maximum security facility.

From behind a fence fringed with razor-tipped coils, Miss Fromme portrays herself as an apostle of Manson-as-Christ and a martyr willing to sacrifice her life to save the world.

“We are prepared to lose our bodies — we have given our bodies and our total selves — in the understanding that Christ gave all and to give any less to the love or the Christ in all is to cut ourselves short, see?” said Miss Fromme in an interview.

Located below a community of 1,300 straddling the Greenbrier River, the prison is nearly a continent’s width away from the Los Angeles movie lot that spawned the Manson “family”. Nevertheless, Miss Fromme maintains that the family is intact.

“See, our heads belong to him — with willingness on our part, see?” she said.

Seven years after the Tate-LaBianca murder trials ended, a cross is still etched on Miss Fromme’s forehead. Just as indelible, she said, is her dedication to Manson’s belief that the environment is sacred.

“What kind of a person would cut trees that are thousands of years old and that can never be on earth again?” asked Miss Fromme, the daughter of a Santa Monica, Calif., aeronautical engineer. “That’s like cutting their own children, and that’s just one example of how our children’s world is being sold.

“And what we say is, let Manson and our family out, and we’ll show you a real mother and father’s concern for life,” she added.

She is still frail, but her small face, usually framed by a kerchief, is now lined, making her seem perpetually anxious.

Living with her in the dormitory-like building are Sara Jane Moore, also convicted of pointing a gun at Ford in a different incident, and two other women associated with the Manson cult — Sandra Good and Susan Murphy. All were transferred to Alderson from prisons in California.

Miss Good, who shared a Sacramento attic apartment with Miss Fromme, and Miss Murphy were both convicted in 1976 of conspiring to send more than 2,000 threatening letters to leading industrialists and businessmen in an effort to force them to halt “plans to kill the earth for their own profit.”

Miss Good and Miss Fromme move freely between their separate rooms but are not close to the other inmates, including Miss Murphy, whom they say was never actually part of the family that once numbered about 100 members.

They are not allowed to communicate with Manson, who is incarcerated in the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. Calif. “We’re not in verbal communication but we’re in mental communication with Manson,” said Miss Good.

The two friends (Miss Murphy would not consent to an interview) speak in slow, deliberate and cryptic paragraphs, with Miss Fromme, once Manson’s chief lieutenant, clearly in charge.

They said they view themselves as islands of sanity in a world gone amok.

“We see that people all over the world are starting to go crazy because they’ve lost their reason for life,” said Miss Good. “Manson’s hand is the only one that can stop it. Nothing you are trying outside will work.”

Miss Good, whose forehead also bears a scar in the form of a cross, labeled the Manson trial a “coverup” but acknowledged, in answer to a question, that Manson’s role in the slaughter itself was not a fabrication.

“No, there were nine dead bodies in L.A.,” she said flatly. “And we didn’t deny our participation in those murders. And there was a purpose for those murders and nobody knows why.” She explained that the truth would emerge only if Manson, who becomes eligible for parole this year, and key family members gained access to a tape recorder.

Both she and Miss Fromme said they feel no remorse for the victims of the 1969 killings, actress Sharon Tate and her friends, and Rosemary and Leno LaBianca as well as Gary Hinman and Donald “Shorty” Shea.

“We will be as vicious as we need to be to survive this money-minded machine that is murdering us, our earth and our children,” said Miss Good. “We don’t care about other people’s thoughts, we really don’t. We don’t live for others’ approval. All we do is be truthful, and I know nobody wants to hear the truth.”

Miss Fromme said there was a significance in the site of five of the murders.

“Hollywood has been a whore for years — w-h-o-r-e,” she said, spelling the word. “And you may not understand that, but you could come to understand that if you realized that Hollywood has sold a lot of our lives down the drain. And your lives, too.”

The two Alderson inmates said they have not forgotten that testimony by some family members sent Manson and others to prison.

“I’ll state briefly what Manson told us long ago,” said Miss Good. “‘No lies and no snitch. And if you lie or snitch, you leave yourself open to be killed.’

“And we remember what he said.”

By TERRY PRISTIN