Direct Link to Latest News

 

The CIA Created the Drug Culture

April 12, 2008

Leary (From May 2005)

In the 1950's, the CIA experimented with LSD for use in interrogation and as a weapon.

In the 1960's they used this weapon to divert idealistic Americans from the path of social responsibility to one of introspection and self-gratification, i.e. "spiritual liberation."

They neutralized my generation by turning social activists into "flower children" advocating "peace and love."

The mantra of the age was "Tune in, Turn on and Drop Out". The prophet was psychologist, Dr. Timothy Leary (1920-1996).

Was Leary working for the CIA?

Writer Mark Reibling put this question to the aged guru in 1994 after a speech in Gainesville Florida.

"They never gave me a dime," Leary replied with a pained expression, and then avoided his questioner.

In fact, Leary did get money from them but not very much. When I visited him about 1990 he was strained for money. More later.

While not a CIA agent, Reibling makes a convincing case that Leary was their dupe. The CIA promotes people who believe in a cause but are unaware they are advancing the New World Order agenda.

Like most intelligence agencies, the CIA does not represent national interests. It was created by British intelligence and serves the London-based central bankers.

The CIA said they sponsored radicals, liberals and leftists as "an alternative to Communism." This is not true. They did it to introduce a different style of Communism.

Behind the rhetorical facade, Communism is state-monopoly capitalism, controlled by the bankers and administered by the state. The people who own the US Federal reserve also control Russian industry and resources.

Funds and drugs for Leary's research came from the CIA. In his autobiography, "Flashbacks" (1983), Leary credits Cord Meyer, the CIA executive in charge of funding the lib-left and counter culture with "helping me to understand my political cultural role more clearly."

Elsewhere he says the "Liberal CIA" is the "best mafia you can deal with in the Twentieth Century." (These references are from Reibling's groundbreaking must-read article: "Was Leary a CIA agent?" ) Leary clearly was working for the CIA but was doing what he wanted-turning on.

Like Leary, we were all dupes.


A GENERATION OF MARIONETTES


When I was a child I used to lie in bed at night and read TIME and NEWSWEEK from cover to cover. At the age of 12, I helped organize marches for world hunger relief. At 14, the marches were for Negro Civil Rights.

In 1964, while still concerned with the American Negro, I noticed that I was dancing alone. The party had moved to another room. Vietnam was now the cause celebre. It was as if someone (i.e. the CIA-controlled media) had mysteriously blown a whistle.

I participated in a rising crescendo of anti-war activity. In 1968, after the gut-wrenching assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy, LBJ's decision not to seek reelection (his CFR handlers told him to go) and the clubbing of protesters at the Democratic Convention in Chicago deflated the anti-war movement.

Then, acting in unison like a flock of birds, my generation gave up on social change, became "alienated" and "turned inward." Maybe we needed to change ourselves, we reasoned, before we can change the world. Thanks to the CIA, drugs were plentiful and Leary's mantra was echoed in the mass media.

Although it was another ten years before I tried marijuana, I experienced the "Summer of Love" hitchhiking across Canada in 1967. Maybe it was time to "hang loose" and focus on personal things. The 1970's became the "Me Decade."

The protest years weren't a complete waste. Before getting into bed, my first lover made me recount the history of the Vietnam War in detail to make sure I "was serious."

My sister and brother-in-law turned me on to marijuana on my 26th birthday. I saw myself as a choo-choo train ascending a steep grade billowing black smoke. My life was a strain. Marijuana was a revelation. It helped me get "out of myself." I took up yoga.

Although I have never experienced LSD, I embraced the utopian vision of Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley. With considerable justification, they believed that "mind expanding" drugs could provide a genuine visionary experience and release mankind's spiritual potential. In experiments, theology students had life changing revelations; alcoholics were cured. For millennia, many cultures have used drugs to promote spirituality.

In Mexico, Leary took magic mushrooms. The experience convinced him the normal mind was "a static repetitive circuit."

"It was above all and without question the deepest religious experience of my life. I discovered that beauty, revelation, sensuality, the cellular history of the past, God, the devil, all lie inside my body, outside my mind."

This LSD-fueled vision of utopia was put into practice at the highest levels of the US government. In 1963, Cord Meyer's estranged wife Mary Pinchot Meyers was having an affair with President John F. Kennedy who had embraced LSD. Mary approached Leary for supplies and advice. She and her friends were turning on "some of the most powerful men in Washington."

In Dec. 1963, Meyer called Leary and said they killed JFK because "they couldn't control him anymore. He was changing too fast. They've covered everything up. I'm afraid. Be careful." In Oct. 1964, she was murdered.


MY WEEKEND WITH TIMOTHY LEARY


I had a serious case of hero worship when I visited Timothy Leary around 1990. I had contacted him through his publisher and he phoned me. I wanted to meet the guru to see if the utopian vision he represented was still alive.

I was disillusioned. By this time Leary was fixated on the benefits of the "information superhighway." His pantry table was crammed with bottles of alcohol. He told me his "vision of God" was depicted in the last scene in William Gibson's book "Neuromancer."

"At the end of the world, all the information stored in all the computers will rise up into Cyberspace and mingle together." he said. "That's God."

Wonderful, I thought. All those airline reservations mingling together.

At lunch, I tried to remind him of his original vision: using drugs to awaken our spiritual potential and become more God-like in behavior.

"What do you think God is?" he scoffed. "An old man with a beard?"

Prophets sometimes lose their vision. I think this is what happened with Leary.
But he was very generous with his time and hospitality. He was a genuine idealist.

I ferried him around Los Angeles in my rented car. He was appearing in a music video made by an obscure band. He was to earn $300. He lived in a nice house but he was not rich. I took him to see his daughter by his first marriage. She lived in public housing in the valley.


CONCLUSION


The effects of marijuana and LSD vary wildly. Depending on the individual, the setting and quality, people can have positive or negative results. Similarly the drug culture has been a mixed bag. It has given millions the opportunity to escape the suffocating box of modern materialism and discover their spiritual birthright. It has been a gateway to religion. In my case, it confirmed Christ's message that God is Love.

But too many have given up on protest and social change. They feel that "fighting the darkness" just "brings me down."

For me, detachment from the world was a limbo in which I drifted for years. I now believe in the Path of Service. We gain meaning by doing our Creator's work. We become human beings by becoming God's agent in matters large and small.

Our world-view and concerns are totally manipulated by the London-based Masonic bankers through the CIA, mass media and public education. For example, the Iraq War hasn't aroused a protest similar to Vietnam. Why? The answer lies in the treatment in the mass media. The bankers want Iraq to succeed; they wanted Vietnam to fail.

We are marionettes. The environment, fe-manism, diversity, you name it. The bankers are pulling our strings. In the case of the drug culture, they made us self absorbed and quiescent. They didn't expect many of us to find God.

It's time to rediscover social responsibility and uphold the Divine Order against the satanic New World Order.

--------------------------
Note: A reader has drawn my attention to an interview in the book "Mass Control" by Jim Keith where Leary admits to being a "witting accomplice" of the CIA.


Note For more information, read "Acid Dreams: The Social History of LSD. CIA, the 60's and Beyond" by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain.

Also: "Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream" by Jay Stevens.




Scruples - the game of moral dillemas

Comments for "The CIA Created the Drug Culture"

James said (May 3, 2005):

Dear Dr. Henry,

Interesting article I think...Have any of us read "Do It" by they late Jerry Rubin? In this book, he states that Marijuana is a communist drug and that his group got "Esso Money"....this should tell us the true intentions of what the bosses of Big Business wants from their customers, or yet what the US wants from its peoples of the different races....

I have for some time believed that the CIA is a group which wants to destroy the rugged make up of the North American people, this won't matter whether what race or group one is a member of. they want to destroy us all.

Tim was only a cog, and FBI agents like G. Gordon Liddy at the time was a person who was a tool of this conspiracy to fool right thinking people into beliveing that the US government was really concerned about the moral decay of it's society, while in fact, the government is sponsoring it's downfall....

Thanks again for another good and insightful article. We must be always watchful...

Yours,

James


Stuart said (May 3, 2005):

Just read your article on the drug culture.

I understand you are driven to write what you do, because you respect truth/justice.....and also God is love.

When will you realise that you are going about what you wish to see the wrong way.

Please consider thinking on love - and love alone.

Let the clutter and noise fall away.

Write about love and invoke the senses.

"there is nothing in the intellect, that was not first in the SENSES" - aristotle.

ps.....art fuels peace (proveable)

there is nothing to fear, for love knows no fear (but knows of it)

the trick is.....don't allow the negativity of others be your effect.....play your own game, afterall, you did invent one.......so play the game of love.

Peace is love understood. Love is the cause, peace the effect.

Since world governments talk about peace, freedom and liberty......aspects of love.....why aren't any talking about love?...surely this would be vital?

you could try this website for inspiration

www.spiritualoracle.com

art2: "I think, therefore, I am" - Descartes....."be"

"fear will be mankinds' greatest setback" - Sirach

si2 - biblical abbreviation, Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach.

fear is reverse psychology of self on the unconscious mind (a psychological weapon)

free fear, disable the weapon.

if you free your fears, you will ultimately acquire bliss.

God is love......how far from love is fear?

What propaganda is to war, art is to peace, for their is duality in all things.

(diamond theory proves it, and also proves that philosophy is the first science)....thought comes before action.

stART the pARTy - its about love.

love is beautiful.....art affects the sense of beauty....."there is nothing in the intellect, that was not first in the SENSES" - Aristotle.

BE LOVE, and you will see Gods' beauty.

To see is to sense, and ultimately know.

The world is coming into consciousness.

Love stu


Charles said (May 3, 2005):

trust me, you haven't a clue.

but it will all make much more sense,

once you do!

christianity makes people far more compliant and willing to accept
abuse than any drug in existence.

very simple prospectus, "forego pleasures and needs in this life in
exchange for infinite happiness as a corpse"

good luck with that.

charles spencer !! www.charlesspencer.com
loveslap recordings !! www.loveslap.com


Kyle said (May 2, 2005):

Hi Henry, I just read your latest article. You wrote "The CIA promotes people who believe in a cause but are unaware they are advancing the New World Order". This reminded me of hearing Dr. Deepak Chopra interviewed on NPR a while ago. He was talking about a program to get people to form peace groups all over the world. I do believe that the more peace and love we have on a planet the better, yet when I put deepak chopra peace groups into a search engine I saw an article about the kick off event for this thing and the keynote speaker was Al (blood drinking) Gore. hmmmmm I passed. You also wrote "...Communism is monopoly capitalism..." which reminded me of this quote (I dont' recall who it is attributed too)---"In Communism man exploits man, in Capitalism its just the opposite". Kyle


Geneva said (May 2, 2005):

Interesting comments. I came to the same conclusion you did about the drug
culture. Neuromancer, IMO, was one of the most grim and unreadable sagas
ever written.

Everything Leary wrote from ExoPsychology onward suggested that his mind had
left for space migration well in advance of his body. I finally heard him
speak at UVic in 1993. He did okay when narrating the script for his video,
but when asked a direct question, he could hardly string two sentences
together. (Much like our White House resident!) I asked him how global
poverty figured into his futurestic utopia, and it was clear from his reply
that he had never given it a moment's thought.

However, I suspect that by then he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
He even joked about how senility is like an LSD trip, in that that your mind
can recap the whole process of evolution on your way to the fridge.

Yes, Leary was a great disappointment. But at least Ram Dass is still
keeping the faith!

Did you see the article about how the FBI engineered the downfall of The
Farm, Stephen Gaskin's commune in Tennessee?


Linda said (May 2, 2005):

Regarding CIA and drugs.. besides defusing protest, drugs also funneled lots of money to black budget CIA doings. See the Gary Webb info.

And it seems to me now that the prevailing message is hate. Red against Blue, keep us fighting against the other political party so we don't see that both are doing the bidding of the ruling class and multinational corporations and the defense-industrial complex. We made the textbooks that trained the jihadists. We make the video games that provide ever more real
training in killing for our youths. Any school shootings, or planes into towers just bolster the bottom line for the security and defense contracts and allow passage of ever more restrictive laws that reduce or eliminate
our Constitutionally guaranteed rights. Corporate rights are always protected [witness judicial nominees], individual rights vanish. All this is good and necessary if you intend to take away the social supports and fear the little people might not approve [if they ever turned off their "reality TV" and looked at the off-screen reality].

Throughout, the question is "who does it serve", or "who benefits" and of course "follow the money".


Tom said (May 2, 2005):

Hello Dr.Makow; Concerning your article "The CIA Created Drug Culture," I found this to be very interesting and clearly reflective of the reams of evidence indicating the way that the CIA operates.

I find that smoking Marijuana after not having smoked it for at least four days gives me a greater level of intelligence, because I have an enhanced balance between reason and emotion. So for one thing, my memory and my imagination are superior.

However, to continue smoking it day after day, throws me right off balance, and I am then unable to avoid being more emotional than rational, and my greater abilities are gone. This ofcourse would not bother most people because they are smoking it for entertainment, the same reason that alcohol is consumed.

It is sad that for so many people, entertainment is found by the destruction of one's greater and more refined sensitivities. So when I see that I have lost my emotional balance from smoking Marijuana, I stay away from it for four days, and then just have one or two puffs, and that's it for the day.

I have found that the emotions released by this method are decidedly far more spiritual than the regular daily emotions which I would experience without it.


Eric said (May 2, 2005):

Henry,
I really enjoy reading your articles. I started in August 2002 to really look at 9-11 for the scam it really was. I had heard that 33% of Germans thought 9-11 was an inside job. I knew that their had to be reason that they all had this same idea. So I decided to investigate these allegaions and my world view changed forever. Thanks for the great articles, although I do not always agree with you 100% I do like to get your perspective on all things related to the NWO.

I had the pleasure of watching a debate between G Gordon Liddy and Timothy leary in 1990 at a Massachusetts University.
It was enjoyable but not very informative. Liddy came off much better than Leary because Leary could not really follow a thought to completion, he was all over the place.

What made me laugh even more was the fact that these two supposed enemies were business partners and travelled around the country together and put on these rehearsed debates.

That alone indicates to me that Leary was in the US governemnt camp from the begining.

Heck he probably did not even think he was in the government camp but he was just happy to have a traveling partner that would help him to earn decent paychecks for being a spaceshot.


Tom said (May 2, 2005):

You poor guys from the 60s .... I grew up watching you guys as a kid get beaten up by cops in those 60s protests and learned to work within
the system but to be cynical of it and very wary of it. No idealism, just pragmatism. And so, many thanks to you guys for running the
gauntlet for me and springing all the traps safely ahead of me. By the time I was old enough to protest, I knew it was better to subvert from within. You often eventually get what you want, and you get paid all
along for getting it. No jail cell. No legal fees. No missed work.

Win from within.


Jason said (May 2, 2005):

Jim Keith wrote the book Mass Control: Engineering Human Conciousness. In it there is an interview with Timothy Leary that he was connected with the CIA. He was in his words " A witting accomplice." I suggest the book if you have not already read it. His connection with them is pretty clear cut.


Carlos said (May 2, 2005):

think Timothy Leary was performing a crucial organic psychosociological role in advocating a qualitative leap in consciousness. If I buy a motor car is it to be supposed I apply to the nearest general hospital to have my legs amputated? If I sell the car and the buyer stages a bank robbery thereafter am I a facilitator, accomplice? The legacy of the psychic impact of Puritanism is rampant. The heinous, torturous antics of the RC church was bad enough. Other than the Inquisition there was the first Black Death as a result of exterminating cats as agents of the Devil, resulting in rats rampant. Let us remember the rat in democracy.

Unfortunately T Leary expired prematurely from prostate cancer. Not nipped in the bud. I suggest the pursuit of the industrial-military complex involvement in proliferating ease of availability of LSD is bootless and fruitless. It is, in the final analysis, squandering invaluable mental resources on subjective trivia. That is one of the reasons so many such sites are allowed to stay in operation. Simply because they promote dissipation on welters of information, some, indeed much of which is fact but which accomplishes in terms of rational objective change in the qualitative nature of the social institutions within which Mankind has its being, negligible change. That, in the final analysis, is it.


Ridge said (May 2, 2005):

just read your article on your meeting with Tim Leary.

Yes, it was sad his infatuation with the cyber godhead. I understand from mutual friends though that later he regretted his endorsement of computers ~ that the technology is ultimately vacuous and a horrible means of control.

I met him briefly once after a disappointing public speech to college students: I expected more… but he did say “Tune in. Turn On, and Take over” Abandoning constructive activity was never really part of the psychedelic philosophy whether ersatz or genuine, nor however ad hoc it was, at least as far as I understood it.

The internet is abuzz with rumours of the Tavistock Institute and the Beatles, mind control and the CIA. Taking it at face value, if “they” brought us LSD and the Beatles I can only conclude they love us. On the other hand if “they” brought us the Rolling Stones and crystal meth I am sure they hate us. With all the coke and heroin the CIA traffics it is clear they mean us ill.



Jack said (May 2, 2005):

Just read your article on Rense, thanks! It hit a cord with me. Remember LSD was the drug of choice for the 1st Marine Division, pure Sandoz, in Vietnam. The weathermen got Leary out of the US and he ratten them out. CIA very openly admits that they engineered crack cocain. Sometimes I wonder if anything is as it seems.

Thanks for your voice . . .

jack



Joe said (May 2, 2005):

From 1996 (maybe before?) till 1999 or 2000 florida was flooded with extremely high quality extacy. Most of the high-level distributors of this were jews or israeilis, coincidentally. It was extremely popular, kids who were not typically hard drug users (pot smokers, drinkers) were doing it. Cops were not really on to it, the law was lax and they didn’t check for it. A drug sniffing dog looked for marijuana, heroin, or cocaine. I don’t remember ever hearing someone being convicted of an x offense during this time.

Then suddenly there is a federal law which is 3rd degree felony (the worst) for handling x, and the quality was horrible, and it was impossible to find. The chemical is pure serotonin, it’s like eating 10000 prozac pills at once. I never had a bad experience but many users crash the next day – not physically like with many drugs, but psychologically. They are so depressed.

I have a theory that this was all a way to promote pharmaceutical legal drugs like prozac and Zoloft, sure it is more complicated than that, but definitely this is an easy way to get a generation hooked on your product. There is little difference between x and prozac except prozac is subtle, less strong, legal, and MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE.

The rave culture was not like the flower power culture, comparatively we were quite pathetic, and I think not many noticed that at every rave party there was always some much older male (40’s or 50’s) surrounded by a group of high on x kids listening to him rant about the government.

My questions are: who controls the pharmaceutical companies, and how could they be connected? How were these distributors able to import virtually limitless supplies of an illegal substance and then suddenly STOP? What long term side effects are there for these kids? Etc. etc.












Christine said (May 1, 2005):

Years ago, I heard a tape by Ralph de Toledano, who was an agent for the OSS,
the World War II-era precurser of the CIA. He said that during his tenure, half of them were Communists and they had a few Nazis in there, too. You can only imagine what it's like NOW.

Joseph Douglass wrote excellent exposes of Communist efforts to use drugs to corrupt and weaken society in his works Red Cocaine and Betrayed. He said that the Reds regard drugs as a form of chemical warfare on the West. Additionally, the Chinese shoved drugs on their own people to soften them up before the Communist revolution there. Seems to be working here, too, doesn't it?

Regards,
Christine


Rich said (May 1, 2005):

hi henry, i was wondering what your opinion is on walmart and predatorial capitalism in general? i am a former walmart shopper who was obsessed with driving across town to get the " lowest prices". meanwhile the small busineses in my neighborhood are slowly going under! from now on my money goes to small business! please protest and boycott walmart! death to the new world order!! rich


Barry said (May 1, 2005):

Hi Henry! Your admirer Brian here. Just wanted to drop a line to say how much I enjoyed your thoughts on the '60's and 70's and your experience with Timothy Leary. I was there in those exciting years, when the American Dream was still vibrant and alive! I was the only Caucasian at a few black power meetings in Chicago and also marched with many thousands of others in the anti-war (Vietnam) protests in Chicago. They were years of righteous passion and hope! I played with my consciousness with a little help from marijuana (six "joints" in two years, proving it's not addictive), and learned about focusing my attention that has aided me since. Although I functioned well in the straight/professional world, I paid $600 to a hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, took the psychological testing, and had a 14 hour high dosage LSD/mescaline "mind expanding" experience in a safe, controlled, and guided environment. This isn't the place to discuss the experience, but it was incredible, and many lessons were learned that I value today, almost 40 years later.

I'm living in the "Buckle" of the American Bible Belt, surrounded by people who consider themselves Christians, who love George W. Bush and his war for oil and Zionists, who sport American flags on their gas hogs, dislike or distrust Christians in other denominations, and believe that God is a guy who looks like Charlton Heston, sitting on a golden throne somewhere between the moon and another galaxy.

Most "graduates" of controlled, high dosage LSD experiences have a much larger concept of God and the loving miraculous that surrounds us daily, than the churchgoers who try to "get" God by reading the Bible or other "Holy" books and want to convert the world to their limited beliefs.

LSD, if used correctly, was a great "tool" for human growth and understanding. It wasn't meant to be used indescriminately, as Timothy Leary advocated. Richard Alpert, PhD (Baba Ram Dass) and one time fellow Harvard Psychologist with Timothy Leary, used LSD the "right" way.... to get the "big" God message, then hang up and live life using what you learned for a greater good.

--Barry


Brendon said (April 30, 2005):

I had an experience of the divine at the age of 22...so intense i was lucky to survive it. It came without drugs.

In it I realised I was everything that ever was or would ever be...that i extended out to the fartherest reaches of the universe, that God was indeed infinite love, that "I" was in every cell of my body and not just the brain...I could count my red blood cells! Here i realised that the body turned against the mind when the mind refused the signals of the body.

I came to drugs much later...nothing came close to my initial drug free experience.

I came to a deeper understanding of Christ though i strayed for a while.

If it was'nt for a good mentor and the work of Carl Jung i doubt i would be here.

I continue to appreciate your work immensely Henry!

Best,

Brendon.


Robert said (April 30, 2005):

Henry, it is quite plain most of our ill is trying to do "God's work". I think if we let the gods fight their own battles, things might go better. What weak gods are these that require help?

Dear Robert,

Yours is a basic misunderstanding that keeps us in a child-like state, "waiting for "Godot." God's work won't be done unless we do it. Just because we have been duped in the past doesn't mean we cannot represent the Real Thing in the future. Don't give up on humanity! -Henry


Henry Makow received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto in 1982. He welcomes your comments at