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.

FTR#1304 Albert Hofmann, The Nazis and The CIA

Trans­formed into some­thing of an icon dur­ing the “Psy­che­del­ic Era” of the 1960’s, San­doz’s Albert Hoff­man’s polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from his “Peace and Love” per­sona mint­ed dur­ing that time.

The real­i­ty of that time is fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from the sur­viv­ing cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal nar­ra­tive.

This pro­gram sets forth dis­turb­ing facts about Hoff­man, his rela­tion­ship with the CIA and the San­doz fir­m’s activ­i­ties in World War II.

“. . . . In the same inter­view [Gor­don] Was­son said that Albert Hof­mann ‘worked in some way with the CIA’ and that Hoffman’s ‘dis­cov­er­ies were impart­ed in whole by San­doz to the U.S. gov­ern­ment. San­doz want­ed to be on the right side of things.’ Hofmann’s con­nec­tion to the CIA has nev­er been offi­cial­ly con­firmed by the CIA, which main­tains a pol­i­cy of not com­ment­ing on or reveal­ing infor­ma­tion on for­eign cit­i­zens who find their way into its employ­ment. For­mer agency offi­cials have com­ment­ed anony­mous­ly that sev­er­al San­doz sci­en­tists and offi­cials, includ­ing Hof­mann, main­tained a close rela­tion­ship with the CIA, but the ‘Agency nev­er ful­ly trust­ed the Swiss’ and ‘always held a dual insur­ance pol­i­cy with San­doz’ by vet­ting and plac­ing covert employ­ees with­in the firm’s lab­o­ra­to­ries and admin­is­tra­tion. . . .”

Ele­ments of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The World War II indict­ment of San­doz for col­lab­o­rat­ing with Nazi Ger­many; Hof­man­n’s work for the CIA; the pres­ence of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare per­son­nel in France at the time of the dis­as­trous Pont St.-Esprit ergot/LSD out­break; Hof­man­n’s pres­ence in Pont St.-Esprit in the imme­di­ate after­math of the out­break; Hof­man­n’s mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the cause of the out­break, attribut­ing it to the use of a mer­cury com­pound used to pre­serve seeds: ” . . . . ‘The mass poi­son­ing in the south­ern France city of Pont-St. Esprit in the year 1951, which many have attrib­uted to ergot-con­tain­ing bread, actu­al­ly had noth­ing to do with ergo­tism. It rather involved poi­son­ing by an organ­ic mer­cury com­pound that was uti­lized for dis­in­fect­ing seeds]’ . . . .”; Hof­man­n’s dis­cus­sion with doc­tors inves­ti­gat­ing the out­break in the imme­di­ate after­math of the event–a dis­cus­sion in which the mer­cury poi­son­ing the­o­ry was dis­missed: ” . . . .The doc­tors at the meet­ing agreed that mer­cury poi­son­ing was not evi­dent in any man­ner, spe­cial­ly because of the per­sis­tent lack of kid­ney or liv­er dam­age. . . .”; an account of the Pont St.-Esprit out­break.

A Final Flipping of the Bird to “The Summer of Love” 50th Anniversary Celebration

In FTR #991, we detailed the eso­teric fascist/Nazi phi­los­o­phy of Hare Krish­na cult founder and head guru A.C. Bhak­tivedan­ta Swa­mi Prab­hu­pa­da. On 1/29/1967, Prab­hu­pa­da and his cult were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of monies gen­er­at­ed by a con­cert and dance fea­tur­ing the lead­ing San Fran­cis­co psy­che­del­ic-era rock bands. The event also fea­tured par­tic­i­pa­tion by LSD guru Tim­o­thy Leary. Leary’s activ­i­ties and career are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the CIA. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

John Perry Barlow (Grateful Dead Lyricist, Dick Cheney Campaign Manager, George Wallace Voter), the CIA, and the Genesis of Social Media

In FTR #854, we not­ed John Per­ry Bar­low’s back­ground as Dick Cheney’s cam­paign man­ag­er and George Wal­lace sup­port­er in 1968. In FTR #895, we dis­cussed the fact that the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion embraced tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by CIA-linked insti­tu­tions. Bar­low found­ed the EFF. It turns out that Bar­low was invit­ed to CIA head­quar­ters in 1992 and advanced con­cepts that may well have lead to the devel­op­ment of social media–”. . . Let’s cre­ate a process of infor­ma­tion diges­tion in which inex­pen­sive data are gath­ered from large­ly open sources and con­densed, through an open process . . . The enti­ty I envi­sion would be small, high­ly net­worked, and gen­er­al­ly vis­i­ble. It would be open to infor­ma­tion from all avail­able sources . . . It would rely heav­i­ly on the Inter­net, pub­lic media, the aca­d­e­m­ic press, and an infor­mal world­wide net­work of volunteers–a kind of glob­al Neigh­bor­hood Watch–that would sub­mit on-the-ground reports. . . . It would use off-the-shelf tech­nol­o­gy, and use it less for gath­er­ing data than for col­lat­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing them. Being off-the-shelf, it could deploy tools while they were still state-of-the-art. . . .”

How Hip Can You Get? Grover Norquist Heads to Burning Man

Pre­vi­ous­ly, we have mused about GOP pro­mo­tion for the Burn­ing Man Arts Fes­ti­val and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that “Haight Ash­bury II”–as we dubbed it–might actu­al­ly be anoth­er “op” with ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and orga­nized crime col­lab­o­rat­ing to exper­i­ment on the unwit­ting adher­ents of the so-called counter-cul­ture. Now, we learn that none oth­er than Grover Norquist is plan­ning on attend­ing this year’s gath­er­ing.

Privacy Concerns Got You Down? Well Then, Enjoy This!

Decades ago, we under­took to chron­i­cle the fright­en­ing mind con­trol pro­grams that U.S. and oth­er intel­li­gence ser­vices have imple­ment­ed. As read­ers peruse the items excerpt­ed below, they should remem­ber that mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence estab­lish­ments are almost always way ahead of the civil­ian sec­tor in cut­ting-edge sci­en­tif­ic research and devel­op­ment. New research has per­mit­ted sci­en­tists to suc­cess­ful­ly implant faulty mem­o­ries in test ani­mals. Portable brain scan­ning devices are being mar­ket­ed for casu­al con­sumer use. Suf­fice it to say, that we are enter­ing into a tech­no­log­i­cal age which will not only ren­der con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy obso­lete, but will change and negate the very con­cepts under­ly­ing our phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive exis­tence and civ­i­liza­tion.

FTR #725 Leak This! WikiSpooks and the World of Stieg Larsson

Wik­iLeaks inex­tri­ca­bly linked with intel­li­gence ser­vices around the world; A founder of the group says they act like “spies”; Wik­iLeaks’ Swedish base of oper­a­tions over­laps the Swedish fas­cist polit­i­cal milieu por­trayed in the Stieg Lars­son books and movies.

FTR #724 Wiki of the Damned

Wik­iLeaks king­pin Assange appears con­nect­ed to pow­er­ful mind-con­trol cult; Aus­tralian intel­li­gence involved with the cult? Mem­bers die their hair blonde, have mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties, pass­ports, birth­dates. Pos­si­ble Third Posi­tion ori­en­ta­tion of the group.

FTR #323 The Unabomber

Lis­ten: Side 1 | Side 2 High­light­ing an aspect of “the Unabomber” case that has attract­ed com­par­a­tive­ly lit­tle atten­tion, this pro­gram doc­u­ments con­vict­ed Unabomber Theodore Kaczyn­ski’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in an exper­i­ment at Har­vard while an under­grad­u­ate. This exper­i­ment may very well been part of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s psy­cho­log­i­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion and mind con­trol pro­grams. 1. Short­ly before […]