Operation Chaos:
From Monterey Pop to Altamont
OPERATION CHAOS
The CIA's War Against the Sixties Counter-Culture
by Mae Brussell, November 1976
(unpublished)
I DEATH, DRUGS, AND DEPRESSION
II THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
III THE ENEMY
IV THE BATTLEGROUND
V THE FINALE...Helter Skelter, Gimme Shelter
I DEATH, DRUGS, AND DEPRESSION
American and British pop/rock music during the 60's created an art form that has been described as one of the most important cultural revolutions in history.
Within a few years, between 1968 and 1976, many of the most famous names associated with this early movement were dead. Mama Cass Elliott (earlier with the Mamas and Papas), Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Brian Jones (helped form the Rolling Stones with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards), Janis Joplin were all at the Monterey Pop celebration, summer 1967.
Duane Allman Berry Oakley (helped form Allman group with Duane and Gregg Allman), Tim Buckley, Jim Croce, Richard Farina, Donald Rex Jackson (road manager for Grateful Dead) Michael Jeffery (Jimi Hendrix' personal manager), Brian Epstein (Beatles manager), Al Jackson (drummer for Wilson Pickett, back-up drummer for Otis Redding), Vinnie Taylor (Sha-Na-Na) Paul T. Williams (choreographer for the Temptations, and one of the original Temptations), Clarence White (Byrds), Robbie McIntosh (drummer Average White Band), Jim Morrison (Doors), Pamela Morrison (Jim's wife), Rod McKernan "Pig Pen" (Grateful Dead), Phil Ochs, Gram Parsons (Byrds, Flying Burritos, International Submarine Band, singing with Emmylou Harris), Sal Mineo, Meredith Hunter (victim of ritual killing at Altamont Festival), Steve Perron (lead singer of Children, wrote hit songs for ZZ TOP), and Jimmy Reed (influenced many groups, combined harmonica with guitar) were a few possible victims.
Family and friends accepted the musicians depressions or accidents as having to do with alcohol, drug usage, or both. Was anything added to their beverages or drugs to cause personality changes and eventual suicides?
Almost every death was shrouded with unanswered questions and mystery.
Persons around the musicians had strange backgrounds and were often suspect.
All of these musicians were at the peak of a creative period and success at the time they were offered LSD. Their personalities altered drastically. Optimism and gratification were replaced with doubt and misery.
Why would young people with so much talent and influence as Phil Ochs, Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons, or Brian Jones wallow in suffering, self doubt, and despondency? They were all loved, doing important contributions to their concerts and compositions, cutting new records, recognized for their talent. It just doesn't make sense.
Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass Elliott, Steve Perron choking from their vomit? I doubt it!!
Phil Ochs just happened to be touring Africa when a native "robber" jumped after him and cut his throat so that it affected his singing? The most political symbol of protest against the war in Vietnam, songwriter for Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and many others, is selected from millions of U.S. tourists for assault to his vocal chords. Incredible!!
Way back in 1966 the American Broadcasting Co. was planning to merger with International Telephone and Telegraph Co.(ITT). ABC had put aside $100,000 advance for the first television special by writer-poet Bob Dylan. The production was to climax the season.
On Saturday, July 30, 1966, Bob Dylan had a motorcycle accident. Dylan never got on the air, and ABC never merged with ITT. The merger required a lack of protest from the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. No comment. By now you know what I am thinking!!!
In addition to Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton, and the Dave Mason band, many others suffered near fatal accidents.
The nine years in which the musicians allegedly overdosed, drank themselves to death, drove over cliffs, hung themselves, choked, crashed their motorcycles, went insane, or freaked out without any reasonable explanation, were the same years that the FBI and CIA waged a domestic war against any kind of dissent.
Was Lennie Bruce the first victim? How about Jack Kerouac? Did Bruce pay his dues for comparing United States police to Hitler's Gestapo. Was all the fuss about dirty words only a cover story?
An important part of neutralizing any group is to kill or discredit the leaders.
Monterey Pop set the combined Government agencies in motion.
"Never again was there a festival such as the one that took place that weekend of 1967. Never was there another event where over thirty rock groups were inflated by no more that the joy of an enraptured audience and the gorgeous pleasure of performance itself. There were eight, nine, ten times as many people running rock festivals taking place only two years later. There was never another Monterey! The weekend was too intoxicating, too radiant, too pure."
"Janis Joplin, Buried Alive"
Myra Friedman
Myra Friedman
Chrissie Shrimpton described how Mick Jagger's mind was affected after he started taking acid. Jagger had a nervous breakdown in the United States, June 1966, some months after he started taking acid. His collapse came just weeks before the start of a new concert tour.
Several friends from America visited Jagger and Chrissie and surreptitiously slipped acid into her drink. She was literally out of her mind. A short while later, Chrissie attempted to kill herself.
"Henry Schneiderman, a sinister American, or Canadian...he had so many passports no one was certain of his origin, brought to Keith Richards home a suitcase...which contained several pounds of heroin, cannabis, pills acid, DMT, every herb and chemical to stab or stroke the mind...along with choice LSD from San Francisco.
Schneiderman had let believe he was really bending the law all over the world. He was on a James Bond thing, the CIA or something."
"Mick Jagger"
Tony Scaduto
Brian Jones had a complete personality change after taking LSD.
Janis Joplin's first LSD was administered surreptitiously. When she discovered what happened, she ran to spit it out.
Before Watergate, long before our understanding of Government agents interfering with our privacy or right to assemble, many autopsies and descriptions of mental conditions were never challenged. Today there is healthy suspicion.
When Tim Buckley died, following a successful concert in Dallas, Texas, his death was first attributed to a heart attack. Ten days later, Buckley's cause of death was discovered to be brought on by a drug overdose.
UCLA graduate student Richard Keeling was finally charged with murder after it was discovered that Buckley had sniffed heroin-morphine-ethanol. A police eyewitness actually saw Buckley ingest the powder.
Robbie McIntosh sniffed cocaine at a party.
The cocaine was laced with heroine and strychnine. Host Kenneth Moss was charged with murder.
In the cases of rock musicians becoming ill or passing away, there were so many variations of possibilities that could have been narrowed down toe facts if the doctors had been aware of all the circumstances. Jimi Hendrix was given a tab of acid just before his show at Madison Square Garden where he was playing with Buddy Miles and Bill Cox. The audience, as well as Hendrix, were completely freaked out by his irrational behavior. The result was that Hendrix was discredited.
The effect of one LSD dose could cause permanent brain injury. Anything Hendrix did after this experience, up to and including the time of his death, could be attributed to that earlier event.
Government manufactured LSD included countless combinations of chemicals.
New York State Psychiatric Institute was granted the first known contract for research into psychochemical drugs. The purpose was to determine the psychological effect of psychological chemical agents on human subjects. These subjects were given derivatives of LSD and mescaline. Other chemicals that were tested, which could be distributed at a later date included morphine, demerol, seconal, scopolamine, ditan, atrophine, psilocybin, BZ (benzilate), glycolate, atrophine substitutes, dimethyl, tryptamine, chlorpromazine, LSD with Dibenzyline (blocking agents), LSM (Lysergic acid morpholide), LSD like compounds, psilocybin, and various chemical glycolate agents.
It is no easy feat to alter society's consciousness. An arsenal of weapons was available.
Included among the chemicals were also choking agents, nerve agents, blood agents, blister agents, vomiting agents, incapacitating agents and toxins.
"The glycolates cause incapacitation by interfering with muscle, gland functions and the central nervous system, they depress or inhibit nervous activity. In addition to delirium there is physical incoordination, blurred vision inhibition of sweating and salivation, rapid heart rate, elevated blood pressure, increased body temperature and , at high doses, vomiting, prostration, and stupor or coma. The onset may be minutes, hours, or days."
U.S. Army "Use of Volunteers in Chemical Agent Research"
Released from the Pentagon March 1976
II THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
"How does it feel
to be
One of the
Beautiful people?"
The Beatles "Baby, You're Rich Man"
Magical Mystery Tour Album
Magical Mystery Tour Album
Robert Hall, a private detective in Hollywood, was killed by a single bullet on July 22, 1976.
So far, there has been a wire service news blackout on the implications of Hall's murder for obvious reasons. The facts in this case should expose more than the tip of Watergate. What was going on is Los Angeles is part and parcel of the Washington, D.C. scandals.
If one Army report alone exposes that millions of dollars were spent using and testing chemical combinations for operational purposes, then somebody has to be around to distribute the poison.
Managers of seven rock groups, seven different groups, had hired private eye Hall to find out how their stars were getting "stoned."
Turning on or feeling "high" doesn't warrant hiring the professional assistance of a detective. That they were obviously complaining about was that the stars were being altered in such a way that it hampered with their public appearances, credibility, personal lives, and recordings.
Hall's inquiry revealed the drugs were coming from two pharmacies with which he had been employed.
Hall used to own a drug store in Hollywood with co-partner Jack Ginsburg, an admitted pornographer, who was charged with Hall's murder.
Gene LeBell, 44, the other man arrested along with Ginsburg, refereed the Muhammed Ali bout with a Japanese wrestler in July, '76. LeBell, a professional wrestler, is the son of Aileen Eaton, a well known boxing promoter who owns and operates the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles.
The reports that Hall concluded for the managers of the rock musicians included the names of two physicians and one dentist as having supplied false prescriptions. The cause of apparent freaking out was centered in a small area of operation.
This information was turned over to the proper authorities for arrests before Hass was murdered. No actions were taken by the police. No arrests have been made.
The same frustrations plagued Robert Hall that bothered Phoenix, Arizona reporter Don Bolles. The higher-ups get police and law protection. The investigators get killed.
Don Bolles and Robert Hall were investigating some of the same people, an actual who's who of the cold war.
Hall's contacts were important because they touched the prime movers of our politics, movies, electoral processes, entertainment, and also our tastes in music and in sounds.
Within moments of Hall's murder, his name was linked with possible murder for hire, kidnapping plans for millionaire financier Robert Vesco's son, gun running to Vesco in Costa Rica, the unsolved stabbing of actor Sal Mineo, blackmail, the lost safe deposit box of Howard Hughes that could contain his original will, Beverly Hills financier Thomas P. Richardson (recently convicted of a $25 million stock fraud), Hollywood's most famous celebrities in drug and sex scandals, exposures of televisions stars and high Washington officials, drug traffic from Los Angeles to the Malibu community, international sports events, the Los Angeles Police Department (one of their former agents is now retired, heads the Police Science Department at L.A. Valley College and supplied the fatal weapon used to kill Hall), Los Angeles Police Department Chief Ed Davis (because of his links to the FBI and CIA) a possible plot to kidnap Bernard Cornfeld (associate of Robert Vesco), past contacts with Mickey Cohen, the long drug addiction of singer Eddie Fisher, contract employment of Hall by Howard Hughes Summa Corp., the two burglaries of Hughes headquarters in Van Nuys and on Romaine Street. The burglary on Romaine Street set off the Glomar Explorer scandal of Hughes fronting the contract for the CIA.
Hall sent his pals to New York. Dr. Max Jacobson, titled Dr. Feelgood, the source of John F. Kennedy's happy time vitamins. Roy B. Loftin, contractor for NASA, Texan, with a long association and friendship for Bobby Baker, Lyndon Johnson's protege, knew Hall.
Investigations into the slain Burbank private detective caused Beverly Hills Police Captain Jack Eggers, on the force seventeen years, to resign.
Hall worked as a double agent for the Beverly Hills Police and the Los Angeles Police.
The relationship between law enforcement, drug traffic, and personalities as varied as politicians and musicians makes it sometimes impossible to get an impartial investigation of certain deaths. What appears as suicide can be murder.
At the time of Hall's murder, his possessions included tranquilizer guns, drug loaded darts that fire gas canisters, electronic bugging equipment of all kinds, and a wide variety of chemical formulas.
The chemicals were possibly a combination from the many tested by the U.S. Government from 1953 to 1963.
III THE ENEMY
Why were Hippies such a threat, from the President on down to local levels, objects for surveillance and disruptions?
Many of the musicians had the potential to become political. There were racial overtones to the black-white sounds, the harmony between people like Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, and Jimi Hendrix. Black music was the impetus that got the Rolling Stones into composing and performing.
The war in Vietnam was escalating. What if they stopped protesting the war in Southeast Asia and turned to expose domestic policies at home with the same energy? One of the Byrds stopped singing at Monterey Pop to question the official Warren Report conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a "lone assassin."
Bob Dylan's "Bringing it All Back Home" album has a picture of Lyndon Johnson on the cover of Time.
By 1966, LBJ had ordered all writers and critics of his Commission Report on the JFK murder to be under surveillance.
That research was hurting him. Rock concerts and Oswald. What next?
While preacher preach of evil fates
teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
to stand naked.
Bob Dylan
"It's Alright Ma"
Bringing it All Back Home album
John and Yoko Lennon were protesting the Vietnam war. The State Department wrote documents describing them as "highly political and unfavorable to the administration." It was recommended their citizenship be denied, and they be put under surveillance.
Mick Jagger, before he was offered Hollywood's choicest women and heavy drugs, was concerned about the youth protests in Paris, 1968, and the anti-war demonstrations at the London Embassy.
"War stems from power-mad politicians and patriots. Some new master plan would end all these mindless men from seats of p
power and replace them with real people, people of compassion."
Mick Jagger
Woodstock, summer of 1969, was the turning point of rock festivals. Time magazine described this happening as "one of the most significant political and sociological events of the age."
One half million American youth assembled for a three day rock concert. They were non-violent, fun-loving hippies, who resembled the large followings of Mahatma Gandhi in India and Rev. Martin Luther King in the USA, both strong advocates of non-violence. And both assassinated.
It is important to understand the kinds of drugs and agents available to stifle dissent, the mentality of people hell-bent on changing the course of history, in order to comprehend that cultures and tastes can be moved in directions according to game plans in the hands of a few people.
Adolf Hitler's first targets in Nazi Germany were the Gypsies and the students. LSD was a youth oriented drug; that was perfected in the laboratory. When it was combined with other chemicals, and given the wide distribution necessary all that remained were the marching orders to go to war.
IV THE BATTLEGROUND
July, 1968, the FBI's counterintelligence operations attacked law abiding American individual's and groups.
The stated purpose of these assaults was to disrupt large gatherings, expose and discredit the enemy, and neutralize their selected targets.
Neutralization included killing the leaders,if necessary. Preferably, turn two opposing segments of society against each other to do the dirty work for them.
Remember that among these dangers to the security of the United States were persons with "different lifestyles" and also "apostles of non-violence and racial harmony."
CIA Director Richard Helms warned National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Feb. 18, 1969, that their study on "Restless youth" was "extremely sensitive" and "would prove most embarrassing for all concerned if word got out the CIA was involved in domestic matters."
The FBI sent out a list of suggestions on how to achieve their goals. They can all be applied to what happened to musicians, youngsters at folk rock festivals, and hippies along the highway.
Gather information on their immorality. Show them as scurrilous and depraved. Call attention to their habits and living conditions. Explore every possible embarrassment. Send in women and sex, break up marriages. Have members arrested on marijuana charges. Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them. Send articles to the newspapers showing their depravity. Use narcotics and free sex to entrap. Use misinformation to confuse and disrupt. Get records of their bank accounts. Obtain specimens of handwriting. Provoke target groups into rivalries that may result in death.
"Intelligence Activities and Rights of Americans"
Book II, April 26, 1976
Senate Committee Study with Respect to Intelligence
The IRS admitted that "people who attend rock concert festivals" were listed among targets for investigation by its special staff. Agent Leon Levine said that "ideological groups such as rock festival patrons were to be watched."
A San Diego police officer was penalized for throwing rocks at a concert that injured a 17 year-old girl. She was treated for a fractured nose and facial lacerations.
John and Yoko's legal problems began when marijuana was planted in some binoculars while moving. After Mr. Schneiderman showed the British police his full suitcase of drugs during the bust with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Robert Frazier, Schneiderman left town. He was never arrested. The Stones went to jail. Mick Jagger was then put on the International Red List as a possible narcotics smuggler every time he went through customs.
Cable Splicer III, martial law plans, set to control civil disturbances, May 1970, described as dangerous "love-in type gatherings in the parks where in large numbers freak out, peace marches, rock festivals where violence is commonplace and sex is unrestrained."
Chicago Police Chief Rockford, overall commander during the police clashes at 1968 demonstrations, was also in charge of the police who fired a volley of shots, wounding one youth in a riot at the 1970 rock festival in Grant Park.
Louis Tackwood, agent provocateur with the Los Angeles Police Department, exposed CREEP and the Republicans who were going to turn San Diego into a scene of violence during the conventions in 1972. Part of the plans were to seal off and them bomb a hundred thousand demonstrators attending a rock concert on Fiesta Island in Mission Bay, San Diego.
Employees at the CIA's Langley, Virginia, headquarters don't have to stand in line to get tickets to these events. They have a top-secret ticketron outlet for rock concert appearances.
A similar top-secret ticketron outlet is administered by the National Security Agency at For George Meade, Md.
Howard Hughes organization ordered "all rock concerts prohibited in Las Vegas."
Fortune, January 1969, described the Movement as encompassing "hippies and doctrinaire Leninists, anarchists and populists, revolutionaries, whose domain is the human mind, rock bands and cultural guerrillas."
During the 1968 riots in Washington, D.C. group singing was outlawed by the police department. They were aware that people "get high" singing together.
Records of Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, Alice Cooper, Simon and Garfunkel, Jethro Tull and others were burned at the Hollywood Christian Academy in Hollywood, Fla. Rock music was described as being "of the devil, having no place in a Christian life."
The rock group Black Cat won a $570,000 slander suit against a minister in Arkansas. Their concert had been prevented, claiming they were a "mongrel group of Satanic origins."
Following the slaying of two Americans in South Korea in August, the government issued tighter controls on long hair and "decadent music." Korea has a list of 260 decadent rock-folk and protest songs. Among them is "I Shot the Sheriff" and "We Shall Overcome." A survey of Quebec policemen showed that more of them were hostile to hippies or beatniks than they are toward criminals.
Art Linkletter, a television personality, told a Congressional committee investigating drug abuse that the "Beatles were the leading advocates of an acid society." This is an example of turning one hostile group against another. There is every reason to believe that the LSD that caused Dr. Frank Olson and Diane Linkletter to leap from buildings to their death could be manufactured from the same laboratories. With justified anger, Linkletter became a mouthpiece. Meanwhile, the so-called straight society Linkletter was defending, spent sixteen years and millions of dollars perfecting LSD into an operational weapon.
Los Angeles Police arrested 511 persons attending the Pink Floyd concert. There were no mass arrests at Elton John's performance in the same city, around the same time.
Somebody is selecting their targets, because there is plenty of grass at Elton's concert.
"Peace Pills" were distributed at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds for a folk-rock festival. Youngsters were hospitalized. A strange drug was handed out freely and poured into drinks.
All of those who took the drug were treated, but sent home without any knowledge of the psychological damage.
This pill was blamed for the death of Mrs. Loid Dodd de Lattre, wife of a beatnik priest. Mrs. de Lattre's heart burst under the stimulation of the drug. Under its influence, she tore out her hair and threw herself on the floor.
A man had jumped on the musician's platform and announced they had 4,000 pills to hand out. The pills caused "marked disorientation as to time and space, inability to sustain directed thought, presence of a trance-like state."
This kind of scene was so common that large groups were discouraged from performing in the manner they had before these assaults took place.
The irreplaceable loss of lives and talent has been noticed by persons sensitive to the rock-folk music.
We can't bring them back to life. We might take time to examine their deaths, if only to stop the still going attack upon certain artists and musicians.
Some of my information on the details of these deaths is incomplete. The circumstances surrounding them caused me to ask some hard questions.
JOHN CARPENTER, 45 yrs, Sept. 18, 1976, killed by hit and run driver, Ben Lomand, Calif. Part of the earliest rock scene, once managed Grace Slick, wrote for Rolling Stone from issue one through eight, disc jockey at KPFK, music critic for L.A Free Press. Got "totally crazed" and committed himself to a mental institution for a while.
TIM BUCKLEY, 28 yrs, June 29, 1975, Los Angeles. Just returned from a concert in Dallas, Texas, about to make a movie of Woodie Guthrie's "Bound for Glory." Death caused by heroin-morphine-pentathol. Police eyewitness to his taking the drug. Joe Falsia, Buckely's manager "never knew Tim used drugs." Richard Keeling charged with his murder.
THE CHASE, August 11, 1974, Four in rock group killed, airplane crash. Bill Chase, Jazz trumpeter with Woody Herman, Walt Clark, drummer, John Emma, guitarist, and Wallace Wouhne, organist. Three years ago the Chase had a single, "Get It On," that became a hit. Popular with radio stations. Played often in Las Vegas, Japan, Africa, released three albums.
JIM CROCE, 30 yrs. old, Sept. 20, 1973. Airplane crash, Louisiana. Recorded hit albums, including "Bad, Bad LeRoy Brown." Degree in psychology from Villanova U., sang at small colleges. Croce's widow filed a $2.5 million suit against Federal Aviation Administration. Allegations that preparation of maps on the airport runway were faulty, leaving a tree unmarked which the fatal plane struck.
BRIAN JONES, July, 1969, London. One of the original members of the Rolling Stones. Unique musician, helped the group get started, under control of drugs by 1966, took LSD that caused personality changes and depression. Seemed to have brain damage and disintegrated. Compared his arrests and planted grass to the treatment Lennie Bruce had received, forced to drop from the group. Keith Richards, of the Stones, said,
"Some very weird things happened the night Brian died. We had these chauffeurs working for us, and we tried to find out. Some of them had a weird hold over Brian. I got straight into it and wanted to know who was there and couldn't find out. The only cat I could ask was the one I think who got rid of everybody, and did a whole disappearing thing so that when the cops arrived, it was just an accident. Maybe it was. I don't know. I don't even know who was there that night, and finding out is impossible. It's the same feeling with who killed Kennedy. You can't get to the bottom of it."
"Mick Jagger"
Tony Scaduto
MAMA CASS ELLIOT, 33, former member of Mamas and Papas, London. Found dead in her apartment. "Probably choked to death on a ham sandwich," or "possibly of heart attack. The coroner said it "appears the singer had not died of natural causes." She was propped up in bed, and had been dead for a considerable time before her body was found. Had just completed two weeks at the London Palladium, was ready to tour Britain, was in excellent mental spirits. Performed at the Monterey Pop.
JANIS JOPLIN, 27 yrs., Oct. 3, 1970, Los Angeles. Cause of death listed as "drug overdose, accidental." Lawsuit in 1974 claimed "it was possible that something unknown triggered a fatal reaction." Fought alcohol and drug usage most of her adult life. Body at autopsy didn't show large amounts of morphine. The night she died, Janis was with a mysterious character who accompanied her to the Landmark Hotel, L.A. She made three calls to her drug "connection" on the hotel switchboard. No arrests or effort to locate this party. Went to the lobby, bought cigarettes, talked, walked back to her room, and fell on the floor inside the door. Was taking pills to stop drug habit? Engaged to be married, slim, tan, recording what was to be a tremendous success, Pearl, happy with her band, climbing out of darker days when she dropped dead. Sang at Monterey Pop with Big Brother and the Holding Company. One of the top blues-acid rock stars.
DONALD REX JACKSON, 31, Sept. 28, 1976. Automobile accident. Manager for the Grateful Dead, just set group up for a national tour. Car swerved off the road, killed instantly.
AL JACKSON, 39 yrs., October, 1975. Former drummer with Booker T. and the MG's. Back up drummer for Otis Redding. Shot to death five times, Memphis, Tenn. Cause of death "apparent robbery." Produced Stax Records.
JIMI HENDRIX, 27 yrs., Sept. 18, 1970. Cause of death clouded. Suggestions of drug plants, mafia connections, murder. Kidnapped shortly before he died. Surrounded by groupie females, one of whom boasted giving him his first acid trip. Affected by acid, depression, interfered with performances. One of top stars at Monterey Pop. Into rock-blues, jazz. Media assumption of "suicide" or "drug overdose" like Joplin. Earned millions. Freaked out and couldn't do his serious music.
JIM MORRISON, 27 yrs., July 3, 1971. Paris, France. Lead singer for the Doors. Cause of death "heart attack," or "pneumonia" or "died peacefully of natural causes." Best known hit "Light My Fire." Author "The Lords," "The New Creatures." Poet, UCLA graduate, writer, musician, politically controversial. Completed tour of Europe, South Africa, writing a movie script in Paris. Sometime irrational behavior on stage. Harassed by police, some false arrests, some charges later dropped. Described as "appearing to be in a hypnotic trance." Found guilty of using "lewd and lascivious conduct" in Miami, Florida, March, 1969. His arrest the excuse for "rally for decency" by singers, TV personalities. Deeply affected by the death of Brian Jones. (Janis Joplin died a month after Jimi Hendrix. Jim Croce died a day after Gram Parsons.) Group broke up after Morrison's death.
PAMELA MORRISON, April 27, 1974, Hollywood, Calif. Wife of Jim Morrison. Cause "an apparent drug overdose." A hypodermic syringe discovered in the apartment. No mention of drugs in her system or if there were needle marks.
RICHARD FARINA, Carmel Valley, Calif. Motorcycle crash. Author, musician, just completed a book, attended autographing party, drove down the road, met fatal crash. Brother-in-law of Joan Baez, married to Mimi. Recorded a new album "The Falcon." "Celebrations for a Gray Day," as described on the jacket, "Goldwater was about to win the California primary and the skies were somewhat uneasy."
ROBBIE McINTOSH, 28 yrs., Sept. 23, 1974, Los Angeles, died from heroin and strychnine that he believed was cocaine. Host Kenneth Moss, Freelandia Airlines, might have been singled as the target. Moss formed new charter, low cost airline. Cher Bono at the party, saved the life of Alan Gorrie. Gregg Allman working for Jimmy Carter's nomination at the time. Allman's drug arrests just before elections, Cher's attending a party where drugs with poison administered, might have caught McIntosh as innocent victim. Moss was charged with murder. (Janis Joplin's known drug connection was not held for her death.)
SAL MINEO, 1975, Los Angeles. Stabbed in back. One time singer, actor, whose next role was to play Sirhan Sirhan. Controversial movie about the hypnotic state of Sirhan, and LAPD suppression of evidence on the Robert Kennedy assassination. Robert Hall was allegedly following Mineo the night he was killed.
ROD McKERNAN, "PIG PEN" 27 yrs. old, March 1973, Corte Madera, Calif. Member of Grateful Dead, organist, singer. Body found in an apartment by neighbor who hadn't seen him for a few days. Coroner's office reports, first accounts probably natural causes, probably liver disease. Had been suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, swelling of blood vessels in his throat. No explanation for his sudden death, or why not at the hospital, or gone for help. Hadn't touched alcohol for two years.
PHIL OAKS, 35 yrs. old, April 1976, New Jersey. "Death by hanging." No suicide notes, nobody sure why Oaks died. Active during Vietnam war, got depressed 1971, using alcohol. Sang at Madison Square Garden, with Bob Dylan, "An evening with Salvadore Allende" in 1974, obsessed with JFK assassination. Developed two personalities, John Train and Phil Oaks. Talked of death, had erratic behavior. "Band of robbers" in Africa one of the reasons for his depression. Oaks was attacked Hendrix was kidnapped just before his death. Known as the troubadour of the "New Left," one of the FBI's target groups.
STEVE PERRON, 28 yrs., Aug. 8, 1973. San Antonio, Texas. Died from inhaling vomit fumes during sleep. Composer, writer, lead singer for Children. Was off drugs, preparing to cut new album for Ode Records. Wrote "Francine" for ZZ TOP, hit records. Composed over 100 songs. Married, child, happy, productive composing when died.
GRAM PARSONS, 26 yrs., Sept. 19, 1974, Calif. Cause of death shrouded in mystery. Autopsy report "inconclusive." Body taken off airplane on way to Louisiana, cremated 200 miles away from L.A. Composer, singer, musician. Former theology student from Harvard who went into country-western music, sang with the Byr
Byrds, Flying Burritos, Submarine Blues, and Emmylou Harris. Made some informal recordings with actor Brandon DeWilde, child star of "Shane" and "Member Of The Wedding", who died in July 1972 in a car accident in Denver, Colorado. DeWilde was driving to a stage play performance of "Butterflies Are Free", in which he was starring.
Once happy family life, conventional, turned on to LSD, drugs, alcohol, became depressed, left mysteries about what happened to him. Phil Kaufman, ex-convict charged with drug smuggling, lived with Charles Manson two months, managed Parsons. Kaufman took Gram to Joshua Tree Inn, where he died, and removed the coffin to the desert, where the body was assured of never having another autopsy.
OTIS REDDING, 26 yrs., December 1967. Airplane crash over Wisconsin. First star of Monterey Pop to die. Brought soul to every American city. Best known hit record "By the Dock of the Bay." A poll before his death claimed Redding the most popular musical star in Europe.
JIMMY REED, 50 yrs., Aug. 29, 1976. Natural causes, "died the night before he was set for a California tour." Blues writer, harmonica player, influenced Dylan, Steve Miller, Grateful Dead.
VINNIE TAYLOR (CHRIS DONALD), 25 yrs., April 1974, Virginia. Lead guitarist for Sha-Na-Na. Found by National Guard in motel room following a concert in Va. On way to appear in Pittsburgh, Pa. for a sell-out performance.
CLARENCE WHITE, Car crash. Los Angeles, Calif. One of the Byrds. Close friend of Gram Parsons.
PAUL WILLIAMS, 34 yrs., Aug. 23, 1973, Detroit, Michigan. Found dead in the car, gun on his lap. One of the original Temptations. Did the choreography for Temptations. Had solved drinking problems, emotional crisis. Dead only a few blocks from Motown, where first records made.
V FINALE
Helter Skelter and Gimme Shelter
War, Children
It's just a shot a-way,
It's just a shot a-way
See the fire sweeping our very street today,
Barns like a red coal carpet, ma
Mad bull lost its way
Rape! Murder! It's just a shot away
Gimme Gimme Shelter
or I'm gonna fade away
Love sister,
It's just a kiss away.
Mick Jagger
Keith Richards
"Gimme Shelter"
Let it Bleed Album
By the end of 1969, the folk-music festival was killed in spirit and was over as a cultural happening. It never was the same again. There are musical performances, but it just isn't the same feeling.
The two most popular groups, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, would be identified, through media and factual distortions, with cold blooded murder and violence.
Helter Skelter, the name of a Beatles song, would become the title of Manson Family prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's book.
What a strange twist of fate!!
Gimme Shelter, the name of a movie depicting the ritualistic murder of a black man attending the Rolling Stones concert in Altamont Racetracks, California, is from a song by the Rolling Stones.
How did this all happen?
Coincidence or conspiracy?
There are so many published Government documents today, and Congressional Hearings exposing illegal CIA and FBI domestic activities, that it is almost impossible to ride the coincidence coat tails much longer.
Just as pocket calculators add numbers faster, history's dates also put pieces of the puzzle into better perspective.
FACT 1 Social structures are rearranged by architects. Politica, the game plan for overthrowing Salvador Allende's elected government in Chile was arranged by Abt. Associates, Cambridge, Mass., in 1965.
Abt. was a front for the Pentagon and CIA. They had another plan titled Camelot.
Was Camelot the military answer to future dissent in America that would follow other necessary assassinations? The war in Vietnam escalated Nov. 24, 1963, with no known provocation from North Vietnam. It was only a matter of time before the natives at home would find out what was happening, before Norman Mailer would be writing "Why are We in Vietnam?"
FACT 2 In 1972, at time the Watergate, E. Howard Hunt was employed by the White House to forge secret State Department papers. The sole purposes of this procedure was to distort history and make the late President Kennedy responsible for the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Vietnam. There would be attempts to blame Kennedy for the assassination plot against Fidel Castro, in spite of massive evidence to the contrary.
For all who remembered Kennedy kindly, who complained about his assassination, history was being arranged with a scissors and scotch tape.
Kennedy would come out a scummy killer himself.
This wasn't taking place in some strange office, or dark cellar, but in the same White House offices where Nixon was screaming "Manson did it."
If President Nixon went to so much trouble to identify murder with an innocent man like Kennedy, there is every reason to believe his hatred of anti-war hippies and their folk-rock musicians could also be identified with murder. Make them all look violent. Bring it all down.
FACT 3 In 1969, the combined agencies of the CIA, Army, and FBI, were put into full operational use. The Sharon Tate-La Bianca murders happened August, 1969.
The Altamont violence and filmed movie was Dec. 6, 1969.
CIA The CIA prepared for defense against American youth unrest in 1965, the same year as Camelot and Politica.
With full knowledge of their illegal activities, they joined forces with the CIA and the Army.
By August 1967, Special Operations group went after the youth. By July, 1968, Operation Chaos, identical to Chilean "Chaos," went after the "Restless Youth." This wasn't a study. It was an attack.
Mid-summer of 1969, one month before the Manson Family massacres, Operation Chaos went into the most tight security of any assignment ever accomplished inside the CIA.
From 1956-63, they had perfected enough LSD to cause every violent act or symptom associated with the violence in Los Angeles or at Altamont.
It was identical to giving poison candy at Halloween. LSD was the moving force, the cause for the Sharon Tate-La Bianca slaughters. It was fed at the Spahn ranch for a steady diet.
LSD was the moving force behind Altamont killing and violence Dec. 6, 1969. Thousands of tablets were distributed to the Hell's Angels, who then went totally berserk and started cracking skulls.
FBI May, 1964, after the JFK assassination, the FBI formed their COINTELPRO, counterintelligence program.
July, 1968, explicit orders went out to proceed, accompanied with instructions, to neutralize segments of our society, including those restless youth.
By 1969, the SSS, Special Services Staff of the FBI, combined with the Justice Department, and with CIA's Operation Chaos.
August, 1969, was the Sharon Tate-La Bianca slaughter.
December 6, 1969, was the Altamont concert of the Rolling Stones.
ARMY The Army began their chemical testing of LSD, the youth drug, in 1956, the same year they were planning Politica and Camelot in Cambridge, Mass.
Contracts for testing LSD and chemical agents continued through 1975.
January 21, 1969, the army reported "the LSD tests are rewarding. It is recommended that the actual application of LSD be utilized in real situations on an experimental basis."
Acid was distributed, surreptitiously, to large masses of the population. It was the chemical that was to link Helter Skelter and Gimme Shelter with blood and gore.
FACT 4 There is more to the creation of the Manson Family, and their direction than has yet been exposed.
There is more to the making of the movie Gimme Shelter than has been explained.
This saga has inter-connecting links to all the beautiful people Robert Hall was associated with.
The Manson Family and the Hell's Angels were instruments by which enemy forces could attack and discredit hippies and critical American youth who had dropped out of the establishment.
The violence came down from Neo-Nazi racists, adorned with Swastikas both in L.A. and in the Bay Area at Altamont.
The blame was placed on persons not even associated with the causes of death at all.
When it was all over, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the icing on this cake, this presentation, to rub musicians into a racist, neo-nazi plot.
By rearranging the facts, cutting here and there, distorting evidence, neighbors and family feared their own youth wandering through the communities.
Charles Manson made the cover of Life, with those wide eyes, like Rasputin.
Charles Watson didn't make the cover. Why not? He participated in all the killings. Manson wasn't inside the house. Because Manson played a guitar and made records. Watson didn't.
Charles Watson was too busy taking care of matters, at the lawyer's office prior to the killings, or with officials of the Young Republicans.
What were Watson's protections in Texas, where he remained until his separate trial prevented him from being psychologically linked to all the deaths he actually committed?
"Pigs" was written in Sharon Tate's house in blood. Was this to make blacks become targets and suspects for stalking white territory?
Credit cards of the La Bianca family were purposely deposited in the black ghetto after their massacre. The intention was to stir racial fears and hatred.
Who wrote the first article, "Did Hate Kill Tate?", blaming the Black Panthers for the murders? Army intelligence agent Ed Butler, Lee Harvey Oswald's old pal from New Orleans. They made a record together so that Oswald could pass himself off as a Marxist. Another deception.
Glasses were left on the floor of Sharon Tate's home the day of the murder. They were never identified.
Who moved all the bodies after the killers left and before the police arrived?
The Spahn ranch wasn't a hippie commune. It bordered the Krupp ranch, and has now been combined and incorporated to make a German Bavarian beer garden. Howard Hughes knew George Spahn. He went to this ranch daily while making The Outlaw.
Howard Hughes bought the 516 acres of Krupp property in Nevada after he moved into that territory. What about Altamont? What distortions and untruths forced that movie?
Why did Mick Jagger order "the concert must go on"?
There was a demand the filmmakers be allowed to catch this concert. It couldn't have happened the same in any other state.
The Hell's Angels had a long working relationship with some of the law enforcement, particularly in the Oakland area.
They became heroes of the S. F. Chronicle and other papers when they physically assaulted the dirty anti-war hippies protesting the shipment of arms to Vietnam.
The laboratory for choice LSD, the kind brought to England for the Stones, came from the Bay Area and could be consumed easily by this crowd attending their free love-in.
Persons at the concert said there was "a compulsiveness to the event." It had to take place.
Melvin Belli, Jack Ruby's lawyer, made the legal arrangements. Ruby had complained that Belli had prohibited him from telling the full story on why he killed Lee Harvey Oswald. (another media event) There are so many layers of cover-up, and there are just so many persons whose names reappear, only in different scripts.
Sen. Philip Hart, a member of the Senate Committee investigating illegal intelligence operations inside the USA, claimed that his children were telling him all these things were happening. He had refused to believe them. The Senator felt it was his obligation to defend his country rather than look at the evidence.
November 18, 1975, Sen. Hart realized matters were not only out of hand, but that the past has to be made believable in order to prevent the same things happening over and over again.
The trick now is for this committee to be able to figure out how to persuade the people of this country that indeed it will go on. And how shall we insure that it will never happen again? But it will happen repeatedly, unless we can bring ourselves to understand and accept that it did go on.
Senate Hearings, Vol. 6, p. 41
Meanwhile, it still does go on. Flo and Eddie, the musical group formed after the Turtles, had to cancel their fully booked one year tour of the U.S. and Britain.
Their lead guitarist either fell or was pushed from a ninth-floor hotel room of the Salt Lake City Hilton.
First notice of this murder appeared November 9, 1976, in a small column from the S.F. Chronicle.
John Austin wrote "the accident has not yet been reported, as the gendarmes are trying to keep the lid on it."
A few days before, their manager, Jim Taylor, was threatened.
There were hints the syndicate might be taking over the pop music business.
Was that the next process, once the counter-culture was removed?
Bibliography
I.
Department of the Army, Office of the Inspector General, Washington, D.C. Declassified March, 1976.
U.S. "Use of Volunteers in Chemical Agent Research" Chapter IX Intelligence Corps Experimentation with Hallucinogenic Drugs, pages 135-147.
Chapter X, Contracts with Civilian Institutions, pages 152-166. "Use of Volunteers in Chemical Agent Research."
Attachment "C" U.S. Army pages 212-247 Contracts for testing Chemical Agent Research. Section III, Contract Costs 1950-1975.
II.
Intelligence Activities. Book I, April 26, 1976 Foreign and Military Intelligence.
III.
Senate Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Book II, April 26, 1976 Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans.
IV.
Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the
United States. June 1975. Rockefeller Report.
Scaduto, Tony, Mick Jagger, David McKay, New York, 1974.
Friedman, Myra, Janis Joplin, Buried Alive, Bantam, New York, 1973.
DEPARTMENT OF ARMY REPORT ON THE USE OF CHEMICAL AGENT RESEARCH, INTELLIGENCE CORPS EXPERIMENTATION WITH HALLUCINOGENIC DRUGS.
Dept. of the Army, Office of the Inspector General and Auditor General, Released March 1976.
1950
LSD considered by Army as method for interrogation, and also for defense against enemy interrogation.
May 1956
CHEMICAL WARFARE LABORATORIES, EDGEWOOD ARSENAL, MD. Started tests on human volunteers.
Page 136, Army Report. "All beverages served to volunteers had included sufficient LSD, EA 1729, for effective dosage, or additional dosage administering before volunteering."
1956-1957
ARMY INTELLIGENCE, FT. HOLABIRD, combined with ARMY CHEMICAL CORPS, edgewood Arsenal, FOR LSD TESTS.
Tests included many other chemicals. Also included LSD on electrode implants. Doses as high as 1600 micrograms, normal LSD, street level, 160 micrograms.
March 1958
THE HEIGHT OF LSD TESTING
Used on memory impairment, motor reactions, affects upon isolation, stress under LSD.
READY TO BE USED FOR "OPERATIONAL ADVANTAGE"
Jan. 21, 1959
CONCLUSIONS: LSD TESTS REWARDING
"IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT ACTUAL APPLICATION OF LSD BE UTILIZED IN REAL SITUATIONS ON AN EXPERIMENTAL BASIS."
Jan. 8, 1960
ARMY FIELD INSTRUCTIONS FOR G-2, ADMINISTRATION OF LSD. TOLD TO COORDINATE WITH FBI, CIA.
Dec. 1960
CIA, ARMY INTELLIGENCE, U.S. CHEMICAL CORPS WORKING TOGETHER on LSD TESTS.
April 28, 1961
OPERATION THIRD CHANCE
Overseas "testing," LSD. Causing mental diseases, not recognized by physicians, to get diagnosis to discredit.
July 1961
LSD READY FOR OPERATIONAL PURPOSES.
Feb. 1962
OPERATION DERBY HAT
Hawaii military bases, LSD experiments.
April 19, 1963
LSD TESTING CONTINUED
No records of "volunteers"
Existing records "incomplete"
Most records "totally inadequate"
THE SENATE FOUND THIS REPORT AND MINIMIZED THE FINDINGS.
U.S. ARMY, U.S. CHEMICAL CORPS. SPENT $26,501,446
TESTS WERE FROM 1951 TO 1971
48 INSTITUTIONS WERE USED AS COVER: HOSPITAL, PRISONS, COLLEGES,
MENTAL HOSPITALS, ARMY PERSONNEL.
SUMMARY OF CIA TESTING OF LSD, CHEMICALS FOR ALTERING HUMAN BEHAVIOR WITH A WIDE VARIETY OF METHODS.
Foreign and Military Intelligence
Book I. April 26, 1976
Senate Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities.
1947
CIA EXPERIMENTS BEGIN FOR ALTERING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
1947, same year Nazi doctors brought to USA, continued their tests and experiments.
1947-1953
OPERATION CHATTER
For the purpose of interrogation.
1953-57
OPERATION BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE
Sodium Pentathol Injections, hypnosis Purpose; erase memory, create double, triple personalities, resist torture, conduct covert operations without memory later.
1/8/53
Death of Dr. Harold Blauer
Injections of Synthetic Mescaline Derivative. U.S. Chemical Corp. NY State Psychiatric Inst.
1967-70
OPERATIONS MKNAOMI
Provide stockpile of INCAPACITATING, LETHAL MATERIAL.
To be used by Technical Services Division. Make sure complete predictability of results. Toxins, shellfish, poison darts, pills, Biological weapons. Drugs to silence animals. Worked with the Army from 1952.
1953-1963
MKULTRA, CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL AGENTS
Radiation
electrode implants
Electroshock
LSD + electrodes
psychology
psychiatry
"10 years of tests," then operational. Tested all social levels of society. Native Americans, wide variety of persons used. Army Hospitals. Vacaville Prison, Calif. Lexington, Ky. National Institute of Mental Health.
1961-1971
MKULTRA BECAME MKDELTA: OPERATIONAL USE
Allen Dulles 100,000,000 LSD
Millions of Dollars
Universities, pharmaceutical houses, hospitals. State, Federal institutions.
Special and unique items for dissemination. Combined MKULTRA with Army, Projects Derby Hat, Project Third Chance.
Purpose: TO CONTROL BODIES, WILLING OR NOT, WHERE DRUGS COULD BE USED TO HARASS, DISABLE, OR KILL.
Dec. 1963
MKULTRA, MKDELTA
Used as an OPERATIONAL WEAPON
PRESIDENT, CONGRESS NEVER KNEW
Purpose "DISCREDIT, IMPLANT SUGGESTIONS, MENTAL CONTROL, ELICIT INFORMATION.
CAN PRODUCE A PSYCHOSIS IN CHRONIC FORM PARTICULARLY IN LATENT SCHIZOPHRENIA.
CAN CAUSE PERMANENT CONDITION OF INSANITY.
SUMMARY OF FBI COUNTER INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS AS APPLIED TO STATED "APOSTLES OF NON-VIOLENCE," "NEW LEFT," "ADVOCATES OF NEW LIFESTYLES"
Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans
Book II, April 26, 1976
Senate Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities
1964-1970
THE FBI JOINED WITH THE CIA, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY IN ILLEGAL, DOMESTIC ACTIVITIES.
1964, May
COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM STARTED
July 1968
ORDERS FROM FBI HEADQUARTERS: INSTRUCTIONS FOR OPERATIONS Selected "enemy" were to be 1) exposed 2) disrupted
3) neutralized.
METHODS SUGGESTED BY SUPERIORS FOR THESE OPERATIONS, PUT INTO WRITING, AS GUIDELINES.
Gather information on their immorality.
Show them as scurrilous and depraved.
Call attention to their habits and living conditions.
Explore every possible embarrassment.
Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them.
Send articles to newspapers showing their depravity.
Use narcotics and free sex for entrapment.
Have members arrested on marijuana charges.
Exploit the hostilities between various persons.
Use cartoons and photographs to ridicule them.
Use misinformation to confuse and disrupt.
Get records of their bank accounts.
Obtain specimens of handwriting.
Provoke target groups into rivalries that resulted in deaths.
1969
SSS, SPECIAL SERVICES STAFF
Started targeting groups, individuals
(After Woodstock, just prior to Manson Family and Altamont.)
FBI, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, COMBINED INTO A LARGER OPERATION, INTER-DIVISIONAL INFORMATION UNIT, IDIU, JUSTICE DEPT.
FBI, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, COMBINED INTO A LARGER OPERATION, INTER-DIVISIONAL INFORMATION UNIT, IDIU, JUSTICE DEPT.
Aug. 1969
FBI, PLUS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, PLUS NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, COMBINED WITH CIA'S OPERATIONAL CHAOS.
FBI and Justice Dept. knew CIA operations in USA were illegal.
They agreed to work together, keep it highly secret, not put CIA names on meeting memos, and give concealed names to keep CIA FROM BEING OBSERVED.
PRESIDENT, CONGRESS NEVER KNEW
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