C.I.A. Man

[Matthew Koch]

5 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Cliff's right about the counter culture starting in the Bay Area. 

I'm a huge John fan but Allen's right about John Lenon. Understandably John was trying to emerge from his Beatle bubble phase and he wasn't an expert to ask about any of this stuff. By the time John got on to his political phase "Writing songs for the revolution" and "Power to the People", that revolution was largely over.

 

 

You're right Kirk, people don't write songs like this anymore! Of course you and Cliff don't believe in Dave McGowern (facepalm) 

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by Matthew Koch
added comma

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

You're right Kirk, people don't write songs like this anymore! Of course you and Cliff don't believe in Dave McGowern (facepalm) 

 

Who’s Dave McGowern and why should we believe in him? 

[Matthew Koch]

5 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Who’s Dave McGowern and why should we believe in him? 

He's the Author of the Book Cliff

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

38 minutes ago, Matthew Koch said:

He's the Author of the Book Cliff

 

Hmmm

Sounds like you're infinitely better off listening to us.

We're thinking of going Twitter-Elon and adopting a subscription model for the top thread because it is time consuming for us correcting all the fallacies that pop up every day. We' currently are  in sensitive negotiations right now with the mods here about sharing the revenue. We think we might be able to beat Elon's $8 monthly price tag, but we'll see.

 

heh heh

Don't mean to hijack!

 

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Matthew Koch said:

He's the Author of the Book Cliff

 

Dave McGowern?  C’mon Matthew, you can do better than this...Learn your rocknroll history, son.

[Matthew Koch]

25 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Hmmm

Sounds like you're infinitely better off listening to us.

We're thinking of going Twitter-Elon and adopting a subscription model for the top thread because it is time consuming for us correcting all the fallacies that pop up every day. We' currently are  in sensitive negotiations right now with the mods here about sharing the revenue. We think we might be able to beat Elon's $8 monthly price tag, but we'll see.

 

heh heh

Don't mean to hijack!

 

Kirk, I thought if you could remember the 60's you weren't really there? 

I know music history pretty well, London is the original scene, SF comes after that, and then the rest of the country and world got "turned on" after that. Cliff is technically right about the elevators, but the guy in their band got put in a mental hospital for smoking marijuanna and they only released that album and didn't tour. I used to be a big vinyl collector and went through a psychedelic collecting phase for a year or two. Hendrix was the best at it, but IMO alot of the "psychedelic" music at the time would have been better if they weren't dropping acid (Their Satanic Majesty's Request comes to mind)  I agree with some other posts in the thread that the author McGowen needs to be fact checked and that he isn't an expert on the topic. But he's on to something and he had a mysterious death so someone else will have to expand on it.  Charles Manson and the process cult seem to be a part of this along with Jim Jones and RFK assassination..  

 

[Cliff Varnell]

4 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

Kirk, I thought if you could remember the 60's you weren't really there? 

I know music history pretty well, London is the original scene,

The original psych scene?  Name one British psych band from 1965...

4 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

SF comes after that,

Wrong.  SF led the psych scene in 1965 with the Airplane, the Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother & the Holding Co.  Then came Roky Erickson in Austin with The Spades and 13th Floor Elevators.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13th_Floor_Elevators

4 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

and then the rest of the country and world got "turned on" after that. Cliff is technically right about the elevators, but the guy in their band got put in a mental hospital for smoking marijuanna and they only released that album and didn't tour.

If you’re referring to Roky that’s badly misinformed.

4 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

used to be a big vinyl collector and went through a psychedelic collecting phase for a year or two. Hendrix was the best at it, but IMO alot of the "psychedelic" music at the time would have been better if they weren't dropping acid (Their Satanic Majesty's Request comes to mind)  I agree with some other posts in the thread that the author McGowen needs to be fact checked and that he isn't an expert on the topic. But he's on to something and he had a mysterious death so someone else will have to expand on it.  Charles Manson and the process cult seem to be a part of this along with Jim Jones and RFK assassination..  

 

You get some points back for the Bill Hicks vid.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Cliff Varnell

[W. Niederhut]

I'll defer to Cliff and Kirk when it comes to the details of Bay Area counter-culture history.

Geez, Kirk has even conversed with Ken Kesey!

But let me toss this out there.  I've read a lot of the Beat literature over the years-- Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Rexroth, et.al.-- and I always had the impression that the counter-culture originated in the Beat generation. 

Ginsburg even talked openly about "passing the (Beat) torch" to Bob Dylan.

So, the Bay Area Beat poetry scene was, obviously, an early epi-center of the counter-culture-- especially after the CIA introduced LSD into the area, at Stanford and Haight Asbury.

But it seems like another important epi-center of the counter-culture was the folk scene in Greenwich Village, where Dylan first came to national prominence, along with a lot of other folksters from NYC and New England (e.g., Newport Folk Festival) -- Pete Seeger, Ginsburg, Van Ronk, Simon & Garfunkel, et.al.  Simon & Garfunkel were performing at Folk City in the Village as early as '62, if I recall correctly. Some of my closest friends and fellow musicians in college (at Brown) were the last of the New York/New England folksters in the 70s.  Then punk and the New Wave music (Talking Heads, et.al.) took over in the late 70s.

And Sidney Gottlieb also set up a CIA/MK-Ultra LSD "research" brothel in Greenwich Village at the same time he established the first CIA LSD brothel on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

I'll defer to Cliff and Kirk when it comes to the details of Bay Area counter-culture history.

Geez, Kirk has even conversed with Ken Kesey!

But let me toss this out there.  I've read a lot of the Beat literature over the years-- Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Rexroth, et.al.-- and I always had the impression that the counter-culture originated in the Beat generation. 

Add LSD and rocknroll to Beat and ya got yr counter-culture.

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ginsburg even talked openly about "passing the (Beat) torch" to Bob Dylan.

I’d say Neal Cassady passed the Beat torch to Ken Kesey.

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

So, the Bay Area Beat poetry scene was, obviously, an early epi-center of the counter-culture-- especially after the CIA introduced LSD into the area, at Stanford and Haight Asbury.

But it seems like another important epi-center of the counter-culture was the folk scene in Greenwich Village, where Dylan first came to national prominence, along with a lot of other folksters from NYC and New England (e.g., Newport Folk Festival) -- Pete Seeger, Ginsburg, Van Ronk, Simon & Garfunkel, et.al.  Simon & Garfunkel were performing at Folk City in the Village as early as '62, if I recall correctly. Some of my closest friends and fellow musicians in college (at Brown) were the last of the New York/New England folksters in the 70s.  Then punk and the New Wave music (Talking Heads, et.al.) took over in the late 70s.

And Sidney Gottlieb also set up a CIA/MK-Ultra LSD "research" brothel in Greenwich Village at the same time he established the first CIA LSD brothel on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.

 

A big difference between SF and NY ‘65 - ‘67 was the drug of choice.  Here they did Cid, in NY heroin.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Cliff Varnell

[Gene Kelly]

On 11/6/2022 at 9:08 PM, Paul Cummings said:

Please not another Bob Dylan thread. lol

Paul

I hate to share this but can't resist.  I once met Dylan when I was in graduate school, living in Teaneck NJ and attending Farleigh Dickinson University in 1973.  One of my fellow students had an apartment in Manhattan and invited me to a party he hosted where Dylan was present.  Bob sat all by himself and seemed withdrawn and unsociable.  My friend asked us not to approach him 

More on point, Tom O'Neill's book "Chaos, Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties" is excellent.  It covers Jolly West and some of Gottlieb's legacy, and also provides new perspective on Manson and his cult an MKUltra research project gone haywire. O’Neill also highlights that Vincent Bugliosi hid evidence and propagated the popular falsehood (in Helter Skelter) that the motive for these brutal crimes was to ignite a race war.  O'Neill makes a credible case that Manson and the Family were being protected by law enforcement at a high level.  He found records from UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute archives, showing that Dr. Jolyon West was a long-term contractor with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and the MK-Ultra program ... techniques of mind control, automatic obedience, and the induction of amnesia and mental illness. Manson often visited his parole officer, one Roger Smith, at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic where Smith was running something called the Amphetamine Research Project, a study of the role that drugs played in psychotic violence.

One of the people who performed studies that summer (on sabbatical from the University of Oklahoma) was Dr. Louis Jolyon West, a psychiatric researcher from Oklahoma. According to Tom O'Neill, West was never really clear about what he was studying there; he was vague and said he was going to write a book about LSD and its influence on youth. He was given an office at the clinic to recruit “hippies” to study for his LSD research. West actually created the blueprint for how they were going to operate/hide their research ... at prisons and universities and psychiatric hospitals, and other venues.  In the Haight, West arranged for the use of house on Frederick Street where he set up what he described as a “laboratory disguised as a hippie crash pad” in June 1967, at the dawn of the summer of love. He installed six graduate students in the pad, telling them to dress like hippies and “lure” itinerant kids into the apartment. This “crash pad” was funded by the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry, Inc. ... a front for the CIA.

On the night of August 8, 1969, four Manson family members drove to the home of Roman Polanski where his 8-month-pregnant girlfriend, actress Sharon Tate, along with her friends, were murdered.  The very next night, the same group set out to kill again … and snuck into the home of grocery store executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary, murdering the couple. Toward the end of that summer, they murdered others who are less well known. The Monterey Pop Festival had been in the summer of 1967, and Woodstock would happen just one week after the alleged Tate murders. The alleged Tate murders were on August 9th and Woodstock would open August 15th. People's Park at the University of Berkeley, California, opened in April of 1969, and was used for anti-war speeches and gatherings.

O'Neill relates several interesting back stories involving Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day, and a producer for Columbia Records who managed The Byrds and Paul Revere and the Raiders. When Terry became serious with Candice Bergen in ’67, Mark Lindsay moved out and Candice moved in. Where the story gets more interesting is how Sharon Tate's murder was relayed to her personal photographer and friend Shahrokh Hatami by telephone, from an intelligence agent named Reeve Whitson, ninety minutes before the police were called to the scene. Whitson and Bugliosi then coerced Hatami’s testimony by threatening him with deportation. Sheriff interviews with witnesses were withheld from the defense team, and detectives claimed that important evidence was destroyed by their superiors (including a taped confession describing murders that were never discovered) which the LA district attorney’s office seizes before it could be heard. 

Reeve Whitson’s lawyer, Neil Cummings, said that he was in a 'top-secret arm of the CIA', even more secretive than most of the agency. Richard Edlund, a Hollywood special effects man, said: “He operated in the CIA – I believe he was on their payroll.” Others who alleged that Whitson was part of the CIA, include LAPD detective Mike McGann. Author John Irvin said he was “on the fringes of very far-out research” for the government, “not discussed openly because it verges on the occult.” Whitson's job, it seems, was to infiltrate hippie groups for intelligence purposes ... his social circle also included Curtis LeMay and Otto Skorzeny (obviously no ordinary longhairs). 

O'Neill and others also relate Robert and Art Linkletter to the story, including their participation in producing surf and folk music, and connections to Terry Melcher and the Manson family. Robert Linkletter is alleged to have been the Zodiac Killer. He also mentions an Island in Canada operated and run by Linkletter associates and frequented by Allen Dulles.  Manson, JFK, Zodiac, Sirhan ‘, MLK all have a common Toronto/ Canadian link with drugs, musicians, hypnotic programming and mind altering for ongoing Intelligence Operations (see William Weston's June 2020 article "Linkletter, Whitson, and Manson: Agents Provocateur for the Helter-Skelter Plot"). 

Al of this coincided with CIA’s infamous CHAOS begun in 1967 and then expanded by Richard Nixon in 1969, directed by Richard Helms and run by James Angleton.  It was characterized as going into its tightest security mode in July of 1969, the month before the Tate murders. The so-called War on Drugs was used for the same purpose at the same time. Mae Brussell concluded that all of these persons involved were agent provocateurs; appearing at a time to increase violence, in order to make law and order necessary to protect us from the hippies and anti-war demonstrators at large in our society ... and like Oswald, Sirhan and Ray, Charles Manson was a patsy.

Tom O'Neill also connects some dots with Jack Ruby. West, at OU at the time of the assassination tried to insert himself almost immediately into the proceedings by petitioning Judge Joe Brown to examine Ruby for the court but was rebuffed. Three times West (in his files) referred to being told to do this, but never identified by whom. When Ruby was convicted of murder, he fired his attorney's and hired one of their team for the appeal; Hubert Winston Smith, a psychiatrist with a law degree ... one of his first actions was to bring in West for a reexamination of Ruby. Afterwards he claimed Ruby had an "acute psychotic break" in the last 48 hours ("a man completely unhinged who, hallucinated, heard voices.")  Prior to West's visit, a half dozen psychiatrists found him "essentially compos mentis (i.e., sane)". Colleagues at OU described West as a "devious man", "egotistical" and a narcissist. O'Neill talked to Dr. Jay Shurley, West's friend of 45 years who worked with him, one of the few he interviewed to admit West was CIA. He asked if he thought West would accept an assignment to scramble Ruby's mind ...  his gut feeling, was “yes".

Gene

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Gene Kelly said:

Paul

I hate to share this but can't resist.  I once met Dylan when I was in graduate school, living in Teaneck NJ and attending Farleigh Dickinson University in 1973.  One of my fellow students had an apartment in Manhattan and invited me to a party he hosted where Dylan was present.  Bob sat all by himself and seemed withdrawn and unsociable.  My friend asked us not to approach him 

More on point, Tom O'Neill's book "Chaos, Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties" is excellent.  It covers Jolly West and some of Gottlieb's legacy, and also provides new perspective on Manson and his cult an MKUltra research project gone haywire. O’Neill also highlights that Vincent Bugliosi hid evidence and propagated the popular falsehood (in Helter Skelter) that the motive for these brutal crimes was to ignite a race war.  O'Neill makes a credible case that Manson and the Family were being protected by law enforcement at a high level.  He found records from UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute archives, showing that Dr. Jolyon West was a long-term contractor with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and the MK-Ultra program ... techniques of mind control, automatic obedience, and the induction of amnesia and mental illness. Manson often visited his parole officer, one Roger Smith, at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic where Smith was running something called the Amphetamine Research Project, a study of the role that drugs played in psychotic violence.

One of the people who performed studies that summer (on sabbatical from the University of Oklahoma) was Dr. Louis Jolyon West, a psychiatric researcher from Oklahoma. According to Tom O'Neill, West was never really clear about what he was studying there; he was vague and said he was going to write a book about LSD and its influence on youth. He was given an office at the clinic to recruit “hippies” to study for his LSD research. West actually created the blueprint for how they were going to operate/hide their research ... at prisons and universities and psychiatric hospitals, and other venues.  In the Haight, West arranged for the use of house on Frederick Street where he set up what he described as a “laboratory disguised as a hippie crash pad” in June 1967, at the dawn of the summer of love. He installed six graduate students in the pad, telling them to dress like hippies and “lure” itinerant kids into the apartment. This “crash pad” was funded by the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry, Inc. ... a front for the CIA.

On the night of August 8, 1969, four Manson family members drove to the home of Roman Polanski where his 8-month-pregnant girlfriend, actress Sharon Tate, along with her friends, were murdered.  The very next night, the same group set out to kill again … and snuck into the home of grocery store executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary, murdering the couple. Toward the end of that summer, they murdered others who are less well known. The Monterey Pop Festival had been in the summer of 1967, and Woodstock would happen just one week after the alleged Tate murders. The alleged Tate murders were on August 9th and Woodstock would open August 15th. People's Park at the University of Berkeley, California, opened in April of 1969, and was used for anti-war speeches and gatherings.

O'Neill relates several interesting back stories involving Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day, and a producer for Columbia Records who managed The Byrds and Paul Revere and the Raiders. When Terry became serious with Candice Bergen in ’67, Mark Lindsay moved out and Candice moved in. Where the story gets more interesting is how Sharon Tate's murder was relayed to her personal photographer and friend Shahrokh Hatami by telephone, from an intelligence agent named Reeve Whitson, ninety minutes before the police were called to the scene. Whitson and Bugliosi then coerced Hatami’s testimony by threatening him with deportation. Sheriff interviews with witnesses were withheld from the defense team, and detectives claimed that important evidence was destroyed by their superiors (including a taped confession describing murders that were never discovered) which the LA district attorney’s office seizes before it could be heard. 

Reeve Whitson’s lawyer, Neil Cummings, said that he was in a 'top-secret arm of the CIA', even more secretive than most of the agency. Richard Edlund, a Hollywood special effects man, said: “He operated in the CIA – I believe he was on their payroll.” Others who alleged that Whitson was part of the CIA, include LAPD detective Mike McGann. Author John Irvin said he was “on the fringes of very far-out research” for the government, “not discussed openly because it verges on the occult.” Whitson's job, it seems, was to infiltrate hippie groups for intelligence purposes ... his social circle also included Curtis LeMay and Otto Skorzeny (obviously no ordinary longhairs). 

O'Neill and others also relate Robert and Art Linkletter to the story, including their participation in producing surf and folk music, and connections to Terry Melcher and the Manson family. Robert Linkletter is alleged to have been the Zodiac Killer. He also mentions an Island in Canada operated and run by Linkletter associates and frequented by Allen Dulles.  Manson, JFK, Zodiac, Sirhan ‘, MLK all have a common Toronto/ Canadian link with drugs, musicians, hypnotic programming and mind altering for ongoing Intelligence Operations (see William Weston's June 2020 article "Linkletter, Whitson, and Manson: Agents Provocateur for the Helter-Skelter Plot"). 

Al of this coincided with CIA’s infamous CHAOS begun in 1967 and then expanded by Richard Nixon in 1969, directed by Richard Helms and run by James Angleton.  It was characterized as going into its tightest security mode in July of 1969, the month before the Tate murders. The so-called War on Drugs was used for the same purpose at the same time. Mae Brussell concluded that all of these persons involved were agent provocateurs; appearing at a time to increase violence, in order to make law and order necessary to protect us from the hippies and anti-war demonstrators at large in our society ... and like Oswald, Sirhan and Ray, Charles Manson was a patsy.

Tom O'Neill also connects some dots with Jack Ruby. West, at OU at the time of the assassination tried to insert himself almost immediately into the proceedings by petitioning Judge Joe Brown to examine Ruby for the court but was rebuffed. Three times West (in his files) referred to being told to do this, but never identified by whom. When Ruby was convicted of murder, he fired his attorney's and hired one of their team for the appeal; Hubert Winston Smith, a psychiatrist with a law degree ... one of his first actions was to bring in West for a reexamination of Ruby. Afterwards he claimed Ruby had an "acute psychotic break" in the last 48 hours ("a man completely unhinged who, hallucinated, heard voices.")  Prior to West's visit, a half dozen psychiatrists found him "essentially compos mentis (i.e., sane)". Colleagues at OU described West as a "devious man", "egotistical" and a narcissist. O'Neill talked to Dr. Jay Shurley, West's friend of 45 years who worked with him, one of the few he interviewed to admit West was CIA. He asked if he thought West would accept an assignment to scramble Ruby's mind ...  his gut feeling, was “yes".

Gene

The dark side of America. 

Scary dark.

[Gene Kelly]

Joe

I actually spoke with Tom O'Neill, and we traded some email conversations.  He was born/raised near where I live (in Philadelphia) and was familiar with my college (Villanova).   His story of that book, and how it came to be, is quite a story in itself.  he started out trying to simply understand the Manson murders, but his work took him into areas that he never anticipated or dreamed of.  As I recall, he was an entertainment reporter in 1999 who began a three-month assignment from the film magazine Premiere to write about how the Tate–LaBianca murders changed Hollywood. It took him another 20 years to complete the work (he obviously missed his deadline) but continued to investigate the murders. This led him into the dark side of CIA's CHAOS project and twenty years of "meticulous research, hundreds of interviews, and fallings-out with publishers that led to financial and legal repercussions".   I would highly recommend reading his book. 

Jolyon West was head of the UCLA Violence Project which was approved by Ronald Reagan when he was Governor of California, but later shut down by public protest. West was a CIA and military contractor, and an expert on multiple personality.  He tried to set up the UCLA violence center and at the Vaccaville State Prison was implantation of brain electrodes in violent sex offenders. Very scary stuff... 

O'Neill demonstrates that Bugliosi was trying to eliminate the drug angle to rob the defendants of a diminished capacity defense, and to cut it out as a motive, to cut off that connection to the drugs/film/music scene.  One writer compared what he did to the Warren Commission ... he threatened a witness with deportation unless he went along with the false narrative.  O'Neill believes that Bugliosi should have been disbarred, which is why he threatened people. he also thinks that Bugliosi was blackmailed into his various legal antics by the federal government:

“I don’t like to speculate,” offers O’Neill, “but some pretty serious researchers—and there are serious assassination researchers out there—are convinced that Bugliosi was, let’s just say, obligated to certain federal agencies, or had been for his entire career, to write a book like Reclaiming History, and to present a false narrative like he did in Helter Skelter.”

Gene

[Joe Bauer]

2 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

Paul

I hate to share this but can't resist.  I once met Dylan when I was in graduate school, living in Teaneck NJ and attending Farleigh Dickinson University in 1973.  One of my fellow students had an apartment in Manhattan and invited me to a party he hosted where Dylan was present.  Bob sat all by himself and seemed withdrawn and unsociable.  My friend asked us not to approach him 

More on point, Tom O'Neill's book "Chaos, Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties" is excellent.  It covers Jolly West and some of Gottlieb's legacy, and also provides new perspective on Manson and his cult an MKUltra research project gone haywire. O’Neill also highlights that Vincent Bugliosi hid evidence and propagated the popular falsehood (in Helter Skelter) that the motive for these brutal crimes was to ignite a race war.  O'Neill makes a credible case that Manson and the Family were being protected by law enforcement at a high level.  He found records from UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute archives, showing that Dr. Jolyon West was a long-term contractor with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and the MK-Ultra program ... techniques of mind control, automatic obedience, and the induction of amnesia and mental illness. Manson often visited his parole officer, one Roger Smith, at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic where Smith was running something called the Amphetamine Research Project, a study of the role that drugs played in psychotic violence.

One of the people who performed studies that summer (on sabbatical from the University of Oklahoma) was Dr. Louis Jolyon West, a psychiatric researcher from Oklahoma. According to Tom O'Neill, West was never really clear about what he was studying there; he was vague and said he was going to write a book about LSD and its influence on youth. He was given an office at the clinic to recruit “hippies” to study for his LSD research. West actually created the blueprint for how they were going to operate/hide their research ... at prisons and universities and psychiatric hospitals, and other venues.  In the Haight, West arranged for the use of house on Frederick Street where he set up what he described as a “laboratory disguised as a hippie crash pad” in June 1967, at the dawn of the summer of love. He installed six graduate students in the pad, telling them to dress like hippies and “lure” itinerant kids into the apartment. This “crash pad” was funded by the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry, Inc. ... a front for the CIA.

On the night of August 8, 1969, four Manson family members drove to the home of Roman Polanski where his 8-month-pregnant girlfriend, actress Sharon Tate, along with her friends, were murdered.  The very next night, the same group set out to kill again … and snuck into the home of grocery store executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary, murdering the couple. Toward the end of that summer, they murdered others who are less well known. The Monterey Pop Festival had been in the summer of 1967, and Woodstock would happen just one week after the alleged Tate murders. The alleged Tate murders were on August 9th and Woodstock would open August 15th. People's Park at the University of Berkeley, California, opened in April of 1969, and was used for anti-war speeches and gatherings.

O'Neill relates several interesting back stories involving Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day, and a producer for Columbia Records who managed The Byrds and Paul Revere and the Raiders. When Terry became serious with Candice Bergen in ’67, Mark Lindsay moved out and Candice moved in. Where the story gets more interesting is how Sharon Tate's murder was relayed to her personal photographer and friend Shahrokh Hatami by telephone, from an intelligence agent named Reeve Whitson, ninety minutes before the police were called to the scene. Whitson and Bugliosi then coerced Hatami’s testimony by threatening him with deportation. Sheriff interviews with witnesses were withheld from the defense team, and detectives claimed that important evidence was destroyed by their superiors (including a taped confession describing murders that were never discovered) which the LA district attorney’s office seizes before it could be heard. 

Reeve Whitson’s lawyer, Neil Cummings, said that he was in a 'top-secret arm of the CIA', even more secretive than most of the agency. Richard Edlund, a Hollywood special effects man, said: “He operated in the CIA – I believe he was on their payroll.” Others who alleged that Whitson was part of the CIA, include LAPD detective Mike McGann. Author John Irvin said he was “on the fringes of very far-out research” for the government, “not discussed openly because it verges on the occult.” Whitson's job, it seems, was to infiltrate hippie groups for intelligence purposes ... his social circle also included Curtis LeMay and Otto Skorzeny (obviously no ordinary longhairs). 

O'Neill and others also relate Robert and Art Linkletter to the story, including their participation in producing surf and folk music, and connections to Terry Melcher and the Manson family. Robert Linkletter is alleged to have been the Zodiac Killer. He also mentions an Island in Canada operated and run by Linkletter associates and frequented by Allen Dulles.  Manson, JFK, Zodiac, Sirhan ‘, MLK all have a common Toronto/ Canadian link with drugs, musicians, hypnotic programming and mind altering for ongoing Intelligence Operations (see William Weston's June 2020 article "Linkletter, Whitson, and Manson: Agents Provocateur for the Helter-Skelter Plot"). 

Al of this coincided with CIA’s infamous CHAOS begun in 1967 and then expanded by Richard Nixon in 1969, directed by Richard Helms and run by James Angleton.  It was characterized as going into its tightest security mode in July of 1969, the month before the Tate murders. The so-called War on Drugs was used for the same purpose at the same time. Mae Brussell concluded that all of these persons involved were agent provocateurs; appearing at a time to increase violence, in order to make law and order necessary to protect us from the hippies and anti-war demonstrators at large in our society ... and like Oswald, Sirhan and Ray, Charles Manson was a patsy.

Tom O'Neill also connects some dots with Jack Ruby. West, at OU at the time of the assassination tried to insert himself almost immediately into the proceedings by petitioning Judge Joe Brown to examine Ruby for the court but was rebuffed. Three times West (in his files) referred to being told to do this, but never identified by whom. When Ruby was convicted of murder, he fired his attorney's and hired one of their team for the appeal; Hubert Winston Smith, a psychiatrist with a law degree ... one of his first actions was to bring in West for a reexamination of Ruby. Afterwards he claimed Ruby had an "acute psychotic break" in the last 48 hours ("a man completely unhinged who, hallucinated, heard voices.")  Prior to West's visit, a half dozen psychiatrists found him "essentially compos mentis (i.e., sane)". Colleagues at OU described West as a "devious man", "egotistical" and a narcissist. O'Neill talked to Dr. Jay Shurley, West's friend of 45 years who worked with him, one of the few he interviewed to admit West was CIA. He asked if he thought West would accept an assignment to scramble Ruby's mind ...  his gut feeling, was “yes".

Gene

I was in high school here on the California Coast ( 125 miles South of San Francisco ) during the late 1960s.

A certain percentage of kids from my high school and it seemed every other nearby high school, adopted the Beatles music influence with longer hair, and dress attire starting in the early 1960's. This conveniently evolved into what I guess you could call the "Hippie Movement?"

Volkswagon bugs and vans were prized symbols of hippie status.

There was a "Peace And Love", "Free Love" and "Flower Child" cultural identity started with it's own lingo. Groovy, right on, peace brother" etc. 

This was different than the 1950s Maynard G. Kreb's "beat" lingo of cool cat, squaresville man, crazy, like you dig? " etc.  Jazz stuff.

And then all of a sudden LSD came into the picture.

I knew some students who jumped right in. Right after high school several kids went off to live on communes. Lots of these up in Northern California and Oregon.

Many went up to the Haight, Berkeley. Lots of Bill Graham concerts. 

The Monterey Pop had that vibe although it looked to me to be mostly kids from slightly higher than middle class families who wore expensive hippie clothing. I hung outside the Monterey fairgrounds just to watch the crowd those three days.

By 1980 many of the commune people left those and jumped back into the capitalist world, although keeping the groovy vibe socially. A brother-in-law came back to our town completely fried from acid. He became a ward of the county and his SSI only covered a room at a local flop house. He died before his 36th birthday.

Just reminiscing about some peripheral Hippie Movement birthplace viewpoints from someone who lived fairly close to the Bay Area in the mid 1960's thru the 1970's.

I worked for Terry Melcher. In a removed and unimportant side story way.

Starting in 2001 I worked at a hotel in Carmel, Ca named "The Cypress Inn" which Melcher co-owned in partnership with his mother Doris Day and a private other owner.

I met Terry.

At his invitation we both sat down and talked at the hotel bar. I was on the clock. Our sons ( my biological son and his stepson attended the same private high school here.)

He was really down to earth and nice to me. No pretentiousness at all. 
He only came into town every now and then from L.A..

Carmel was like that back then. You might very well see Doris Day walking through a local supermarket with her cart and singing her songs to herself! She lived here.

You'd see Clint Eastwood fairly regularly. He was the Mayor of Carmel for 2 years in the early 1980's. He actually went to his Mission Ranch restaurant and bar fairly often. He'd even play the piano for the patrons.

Mae Brussels lived here. She broadcast out of a local Carmel radio station.

Harrison Livingston lived here for awhile.

Carmel was and still is a favored getaway for so many Hollywood types. Almost three times week someone would spot a celebrity walking the streets of Carmel or dining in one of their 50 top restaurants.

OOPS! Sorry. Drifting off subject here.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by Joe Bauer

[Cliff Varnell]

Bobby D skips the folk rock right into punk.

 

[W. Niederhut]

3 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Bobby D skips the folk rock right into punk.

 

Cliff,

     1)  Was this the Newport Folk Festival Dylan set where Pete Seeger cut the electrical cord with an axe?

     2)  Meanwhile, apropos of interesting posts by our resident Californios, I discovered this afternoon that Wikipedia has a fairly well written chapter on the Counterculture of the 60s.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture_of_the_1960s#cite_note-Lattin-143

     3) Is the Jim Derogatis book, Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock, worth reading?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0634055488/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1