Lol at the subterfuge, cheers Ig!
@luka an appraisal - it’s a bit like a more evil version of C Paglia’s position that the counterculture‘s advocacy of psychedelics fried the best minds of her generation. Agreed, the paper illustrates much darker forces were at work. Indisputable re Midnight Climax, but did they succeed? I don’t think so. The genie got out of the bottle. Wasson unintentionally created the opposite of his original intentions. Equally, I’d imagine American military intelligence (and many others) to have been all over mind altering substances since day one. For every good cause there are legacies like Mel Lyman or the Process Church.
A decade earlier (as the Yage Letters prove) Burroughs intuited and elucidates on the full potential of these compounds. He knew (after a full dose) these chemicals could undermine Control, hence Control’s role in attempting to usurp the terrain internally, “by any means”. That a figure like Kesey mistrusted Leary, Owsley describes him as a fool drunk on fame, is only part of the mosaic. I think the knowledge that, being around the Dead could get you seriously dosed, can also be seen as part of a defence mechanism. See their relationship with the HA’s as another form of community defence, which backfired on the group too. Still, even into the mid 70’s Garcia was doing benefit gigs for Angels members. JPB was a lifelong Republican, so who knows on that individual’s front.
But there’s a 3rd way too, that US intel wanted to ferment a veneer of manageable protest that could make the nation appear far more free and civilised to outside agencies and societies. And if you cast that interpretation over today’s culture wars and social media maelstroms, these dark arts are still going strong. Anyway, if you want a laugh at the Dead, just look what their ‘organisation’ has green-lit recently