C.I.A. Man

[W. Niederhut]

    A somewhat odd coincidence.  This afternoon, I just happened to finish reading Stephen Kinzer's 2019 biography of MK-Ultra mastermind, Sidney Gottlieb, Poisoner-in-Chief.

    So, looking for some lighter reading material this evening, I resumed Bob Dylan's new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, and eventually arrived at Chapter 27, pausing before each song/chapter to listen to the YouTube recording of the song for the chapter.  (One of tonight's chapters was about Marty Robbins' 1959 cowboy ballad, El Paso, which I knew by heart when I was a kid, but hadn't listened to for decades.)

    Anyway, chapter 27 is about the Fugs 1967 proto-punk song, C.I.A. Man.   I had heard this song before somewhere but I can't remember where.  Was it part of a movie soundtrack?   Punk rock historian Cliff Varnell probably knows.

    I was a bit surprised to hear in the lyrics that the Fugs, obviously, knew in 1967 about Sidney Gottlieb's MK-Ultra LSD research projects-- more than a decade before John Marks published The Search For the Manchurian Candidate, based on the MK-Ultra financial records.

    But, as Kinzer pointed out, John Lennon and other rockers also knew about the CIA's role in pushing LSD, because Lennon once said, "We must remember to thank the CIA for giving us LSD."

    Dylan mentions that the Fugs took their name from Norman Mailer's novel, The Naked and the Dead, where Mailer used "fug" for "f*ck" to circumvent obscenity allegations.  He also includes a photo in Chapter 27 of Allen Dulles' CIA photo ID card.

    The recording is raw and out-of-tune, like something Iggy Pop might have recorded in a garage, but it's funny.

 

Edited November 7, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Paul Cummings]

Please not another Bob Dylan thread. lol

[W. Niederhut]

3 minutes ago, Paul Cummings said:

Please not another Bob Dylan thread. lol

Actually, Paul, it's a thread about Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA and MK-Ultra.

But Dylan has, obviously, been interested in the subject, as we learned from his hit song, Murder Most Foul.

[Larry Hancock]

I'd also recommend Tom O'Neill's book Chaos, Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties.  I have no idea if it duplicates the Gottlieb material in the biography it surely has some inside information on Gottlieb and his experimentation that was brand new to me.  Clearly he should have been somebody's patient rather than a Doctor - and most definitely institutionalized at the same time. 

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Paul Cummings said:

Please not another Bob Dylan thread. lol

Haha

[W. Niederhut]

5 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

I'd also recommend Tom O'Neill's book Chaos, Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties.  I have no idea if it duplicates the Gottlieb material in the biography it surely has some inside information on Gottlieb and his experimentation that was brand new to me.  Clearly he should have been somebody's patient rather than a Doctor - and most definitely institutionalized at the same time. 

Kinzer covers some of the same ground as Tom O'Neill, but O'Neill's book has more detail about Jolly West and the Haight Asbury "clinic."

 

[Ron Bulman]

17 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

I'd also recommend Tom O'Neill's book Chaos, Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties.  I have no idea if it duplicates the Gottlieb material in the biography it surely has some inside information on Gottlieb and his experimentation that was brand new to me.  Clearly he should have been somebody's patient rather than a Doctor - and most definitely institutionalized at the same time. 

Like West OD'ing the elephant in OKC?

[W. Niederhut]

Just now, Ron Bulman said:

Like West OD'ing the elephant in OKC?

Tusko the Elephant and Jolly West are mentioned at the end of Poisoner-in-Chief.

Frank Olson's life and death are also covered in detail.

I didn't realize from watching Errol Morris's documentary, Wormwood, that Frank Olson had traveled with Gottlieb to visit some of the sites in Europe where Gottlieb's MK-Ultra experiments (and murders) were conducted.

[Ron Bulman]

30 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

    A somewhat odd coincidence.  This afternoon, I just happened to finish reading Stephen Kinzer's 2019 biography of MK-Ultra mastermind, Sidney Gottlieb, Poisoner-in-Chief.

    So, looking for some lighter reading material this evening, I resumed Bob Dylan's new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, and eventually arrived at Chapter 27, pausing before each song/chapter to listen to the YouTube recording of the song for the chapter.  (One of tonight's chapters was about Marty Robbins' 1959 cowboy ballad, El Paso, which I knew by heart when I was a kid, but hadn't listened to for decades.)

    Anyway, chapter 27 is about the Fugs 1967 proto-punk song, C.I.A. Man.   I had heard this song before somewhere but I can't remember where.  Was it part of a movie soundtrack?   Punk rock historian Cliff Varnell probably knows.

    I was a bit surprised to hear in the lyrics that the Fugs, obviously, knew in 1967 about Sidney Gottlieb's MK-Ultra LSD research projects-- more than a decade before John Marks published The Search For the Manchurian Candidate, based on the MK-Ultra financial records.

    But, as Kinzer pointed out, John Lennon and other rockers also knew about the CIA's role in pushing LSD, because Lennon once said, "We must remember to thank the CIA for giving us LSD."

    Dylan mentions that the Fugs took their name from Norman Mailer's novel, The Naked and the Dead, where Mailer used "fug" for "f*ck" to circumvent obscenity allegations.  He also includes a photo in Chapter 27 of Allen Dulles' CIA photo ID card.

    The recording is raw and out-of-tune, like something Iggy Pop might have recorded in a garage, but it's funny.

 

Kool song.  Reading Poisoner In Chief for the uninitiated is kind of like dropping acid itself.  Mind expanding.  This government official in charge of testing it on unsuspecting subjects for nefarious purposes along with other projects like shellfish toxins liked to drop acid himself and sample the wares at the SF safehouse with George White.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

I'd also recommend Tom O'Neill's book Chaos, Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties.  I have no idea if it duplicates the Gottlieb material in the biography it surely has some inside information on Gottlieb and his experimentation that was brand new to me.  Clearly he should have been somebody's patient rather than a Doctor - and most definitely institutionalized at the same time. 

And It was O’Neil who discovered how Bugliosi was compromised.

@W. Niederhut I can’t remember where I saw the podcast/video but, it was alleged that there was a CIA station in Lauren Canyon. And that not just a host of high profile musicians were in and out of the facility but, also actors. Lookout Mountain Air Base is fingered as the location. 
 

I can’t vouch for McGowan, after a qui k google search it seems he has written a book about it. 

Perhaps I am connecting too many dots here but, it seems possible that CIA mind control program did have a use for musicians, not just in terms of LSD testing, which when tested US military personnel made them very ineffective. The musicians which were seen as revolutionaries and heroes at the time, we potentially being used (some of them). It wouldn’t surprise me if Lennon and others knew it. 
 

What I do think is highly probable is that the CIA used these cults as testing subjects for mind control experiments and to determine efficacy. If you wanted to know if a a method would work on 1 million people, you might test it thoroughly on 20 or 30. 
 

Lyrics are a form of storytelling, what was the impact on the listeners of the lyrics of the time? 

 

[Guest]

@W. Niederhut

A bout of madness sweeps the French town of Pont Saint Esprit.

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

10 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Tusko the Elephant and Jolly West are mentioned at the end of Poisoner-in-Chief.

Frank Olson's life and death are also covered in detail.

I didn't realize from watching Errol Morris's documentary, Wormwood, that Frank Olson had traveled with Gottlieb to visit some of the sites in Europe where Gottlieb's MK-Ultra experiments (and murders) were conducted.

Yeah, then Gottlieb had him thrown out the window because he had a bad trip.  Freaked out.  A casualty of war.  The Cold War.  Collateral damage in fighting Communism.  Unfortunately, necessary in the pursuit of freedom and justice for all.  Or so we're told. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Ron Bulman said:

Yeah, then Gottlieb had him thrown out the window because he had a bad trip.  Freaked out.  A casualty of war.  The Cold War.  Collateral damage in fighting Communism.  Unfortunately, necessary in the pursuit of freedom and justice for all.  Or so we're told. 

From what I am told, isn’t LSD one of those things that of you are not aware its been administered, then you do totally go mad, like the people described Pont Saint Esprit video. I thought I saw a doc where it was suggested that Olsen was becoming increasingly depressed and uncomfortable with the work he was doing. Therefore they lured him to a gathering, spiked his drink, then threw him out of the window of a hotel room. 

[Matt Allison]

The Fugs have always been difficult listening, at best. From day one.

I always assumed Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey or Leary and the Harvard guys clued the underground into the CIA experiments with acid, as I think a few were participants.

[Ron Bulman]

22 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

From what I am told, isn’t LSD one of those things that of you are not aware its been administered, then you do totally go mad, like the people described Pont Saint Esprit video. I thought I saw a doc where it was suggested that Olsen was becoming increasingly depressed and uncomfortable with the work he was doing. Therefore they lured him to a gathering, spiked his drink, then threw him out of the window of a hotel room. 

Slow down here Chris.  The spiking his drink and throwing him out the window occurred several days apart.  He went to a retreat in the woods at a cabin by a lake with a half dozen or more coworkers, organized by Gottlieb.  He spiked the drinks of all the test subjects.  Only Olsen reacted negatively later.  He alone couldn't be trusted with the knowledge he possessed given his reaction.