FTR#1305 How Groovy Was It Really?

Explor­ing aspects of the “counter-cul­ture” of the 1960’s against the back­ground of the CIA and mil­i­tary’s exper­i­men­ta­tion with mind-alter­ing sub­stances and var­i­ous mind-con­trol tech­niques, this pro­gram asks the ques­tion: “Was it real­ly good?”

Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include:

1.–Details con­cern­ing SPAN, the oper­a­tional code-name for the dos­ing with LSD of the entire town of Pont St.-Esprit in South­ern France.

2.–The sto­ry of William Hay­ward, the direc­tor of the ’60s cult film Easy Rid­er. Hay­ward was the vic­tim of psy­chi­atric con­fine­ment by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

3.–The mon­i­tor­ing of Ken Kesey’s LSD events by mem­bers of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

4.–Former OSS agent Gre­go­ry Bateson’s stew­ard­ship of the intro­duc­tion of Ken Kesey to LSD.

5.–Sourcing for the infor­ma­tion about the Bateson/Kesey dynam­ic and dis­cus­sion of CIA and mil­i­tary exper­i­ments with mind-alter­ing sub­stances at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont.

6.–CIA oper­a­tive George Hunter White’s sur­rep­ti­tious dos­ing of unwit­ting sub­jects with LSD.

7.–George Hunter White’s arrest of jazz singer Bil­lie Hol­i­day for opi­um pos­ses­sion in 1949. Drug arrests destroyed Hol­i­day’s abil­i­ty to work in estab­lish­ments that served alco­hol.

8.–The sto­ry of a San Fran­cis­co event fea­tur­ing the cream of the psy­che­del­ic bands of the time. The event ben­e­fit­ted the Hare Krish­na cult.

9.–Discussion of the fas­cist phi­los­o­phy of the leader of the Hare Krish­na cult.

10.–The biog­ra­phy of John Per­ry Bar­low, for­mer cam­paign man­ag­er for Dick Cheney and lyri­cist for the Grate­ful Dead. Bar­low’s role with the EFF, an orga­ni­za­tion with many wor­thy mem­bers and rep­u­ta­tion but one which, nonethe­less, has worked for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

11.–Barlow’s inter­ac­tion with the CIA and NSA and an exam­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his stew­ard­ship of social media.