362 - Flashbacks

Program Notes §

Guest speaker: Timothy Leary

Today’s podcast features Dr. Timothy Leary reading a few selected chapters from his autobiography, Flashbacks. Interestingly, he begins this recording with Chapter 19, which details with his departure from Harvard.

[NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.]

“We agreed that as much as we loved and respected Harvard University, this finishing school for Fortune 500 executives was not the place for philosophic activists bent on changing practically everything.”

“The State of California should be run like a successful business enterprise… . Anyone smart enough to live in California should be paid a dividend.”

Books by and about
Dr. Timothy Leary

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361 - Catlin’s Salon

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Transcript §

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Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic

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salon.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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And I want to begin today by thanking all our fellow salonners,

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Stabila, Linda G., Jonathan T., and Maurice O., who have recently sent in donations to help offset some of our expenses here in the salon.

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And I really appreciate your support, as well as the nice comments that you also sent along.

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So, thank you all very much.

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Now for today’s program, I’m going to dip back into another old recording, which is one that

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was sent to me several years ago by the custodian of the Timothy Leary archive, most of which I’ve

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already podcast by now. Now for some of the old timers here in the salon, most of the stories by and about Dr. Leary are quite well known.

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But it may surprise you to learn that perhaps as many as half of our fellow salonners had never even heard of Timothy Leary,

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other than from an old Moody Blues song.

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And for those of us who were alive and kicking back during those so-called 60s, however,

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Dr. Timothy Leary was as well known as any rock star today.

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And if you were already aware of his exploits back in the day,

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well, I think that then you’ll really enjoy today’s program

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because it features the good doctor telling his stories the way he remembers them,

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rather than having them come at you second- hand from others who maybe weren’t there.

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At first I passed over this particular recording because the only information about it was

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that it was a reading from his autobiography, Flashbacks, but for some reason I just happened

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to think about it again the other day and previewed it and then thought that, well,

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you might enjoy listening to it as well.

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previewed it, and then thought that, well, you might enjoy listening to it as well.

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I’m not sure how or where or when this recording was made, only that it was among the items left in his archive. And at times it sounds like it’s a professional recording, but at other times I

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seem to hear very faintly people talking in the background as though they were maybe in the next room.

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And I was also kind of surprised to learn that it isn’t a complete recording of his book,

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but only selected chapters.

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So when you hear some chapters being skipped,

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well, that’s exactly the way it is on the original recording.

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My guess is that maybe he felt that these were some of the more interesting or perhaps more defining stories.

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Obviously, he felt strongly about them.

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And I should also probably let you know that Dr. Leary’s reading style calls for pauses

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between paragraphs that are a little longer than what I prefer.

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So, at first I thought about cutting them all down to half a second or so,

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but there were so many of them that I’ve now rationalized

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that this is exactly how the good doctor would want you to hear it read,

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just as if we were sitting in a room with him right now,

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which actually is a nice little image to hold in your mind

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as we listen to these interesting stories.

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And so I’ve left this recording completely unedited.

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This is just the way he left it in his archive, which, by the way, he even mentions in passing in this reading.

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This recording begins with a reading of Chapter 19, which details his departure from Harvard,

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along with his quite interesting assessment of the students there.

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And then, in Chapter 20, which he titled Earthly

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Paradise, he begins with their adventures in Mexico. And I found this particularly interesting

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because when I first read it many years ago, I hadn’t yet met Gary Fisher, who, along with his

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wife and three daughters, joined the Leary community in Mexico, and then continued on with them through

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their Caribbean adventures, ultimately ending up at Millbrook. And over the years, I’d had quite a

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few conversations with Gary about those days, a few of which I recorded and podcast segments of,

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and I’ve also spoken with his oldest daughter about them. So now it is, for me at least,

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oldest daughter about them. So now it is, for me at least, a closing of the circle to hear Timothy Leary’s own account in his own voice of those same times. I hope that you’re going to enjoy this as

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much as I have when I previewed it, and I’m going to join you right now, and we’ll sit back and

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listen to the one and only Timothy Leary read a bit to us from his own autobiography, appropriately titled Flashbacks.

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Chapter 19, Farewell to Harvard. Back at Harvard, we moved into a three-story,

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six-bedroom house which Richard Alpert purchased one afternoon. It was in Newton Center, a few

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blocks from the house which served as our headquarters the preceding year.

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In the tradition of Brook Farm, we tried something that seemed natural to us,

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but turned out to be some kind of declaration of cultural deviancy.

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We lived as a multifamily community.

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Trouble immediately raised its head.

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Some of our suburban neighbors filed a suit with the city

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claiming that we were in violation of the zoning laws

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that limited occupancy to single families.

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We were ordered to appear at a formal eviction hearing

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in front of the city council.

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Not to worry, said Dick Alpert as he picked up the phone.

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Our case, as it turns out, was represented by none other than George Alpert,

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president of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad,

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flanked by several company attorneys.

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Dick’s father presented a masterful summary,

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citing the Bible, the Mayflower Compact, and several amendments to the Constitution.

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There were headlines in the paper when our extended household

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was officially designated a single family.

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Our kitchen became a busy intersection of philosophic and scientific traffic.

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Alan Watts and Jano, his wife, lived in Cambridge that fall and used to come by evenings.

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The wizard hell court, drinking heavily, spinning out tales about fabled consciousness expanders of the past. And here was the true oral tradition of spiritual education in action.

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Alan used to tell us stories about the great mystics of history,

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such as the Russian occultist Madame Blavatsky,

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who studied with the spiritual masters in Tibet,

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Annie Besant, the teacher of Hindu mysticism,

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and the so-called

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secret doctrines

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Krishnamurti

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the handsome young Brahmin

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who was selected by Besant

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to be the next Messiah

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and who at the height

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of his popularity

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had the common sense

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to renounce

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the dubious honor

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I was fascinated

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fascinated by

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but skeptical of these occultists

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who claim magic and miracle

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and who love secrecy

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and who seem to rely on gullibility

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and also seem to avoid science

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Alan was most instructive in another sense

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he gave us a model of the gentleman philosopher

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who belonged to no bureaucracy

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or academic institution

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Alan Watts had published more influential books

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than any Orientalist of our time, and although he could teach rings around any tenured professor,

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he had avoided faculty status, remaining always a wandering, independent sage, supporting

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himself with the immediate fruits of his plentiful brain. Alan Watts was a full-time,

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all-out philosopher in his words

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and in his actions.

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Alan Watts taught us to divide mystics

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into two groups,

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the serious lugubrious and the witty.

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And ever since then,

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I’ve remained unenthusiastic

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about pious teachers

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who set up schools, hierarchies,

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and special rituals

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that mimic organized religions.

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The Western scientific yoga which we would help create

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would avoid secrecy, bureaucracy, masters, followers,

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dogma, and fixed ritual.

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We would use the experimental method

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to make accessible to anyone

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what had for centuries been shrouded in elitist occultism.

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While home life blossomed in our multifamily household,

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things at the office were not as cheerful.

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Most of our colleagues in the psychology department

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still couldn’t take the brain change work seriously.

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It wasn’t a question of professional credibility.

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Our research group,

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all PhDs,

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had mastered the Puritan tradition

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of American education.

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We had played the game

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of academic degrees

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and we had honored

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the traditional subject matter.

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Personally, they liked us

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and respected us,

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but they could not admit

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that our new subject matter

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even existed.

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Moreover, the professional language used by psychologists

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lacked concepts for the types of data our experiments were producing.

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Altered states of consciousness simply didn’t exist as a category in the psychology of that time.

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It was the familiar tunnel vision that has always narrowed the academic mind.

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It was the familiar tunnel vision that has always narrowed the academic mind.

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Oh yes, it probably didn’t help our image that the project began adapting adepts and teachers of the more esoteric disciplines.

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One of our guests, Swami Vishnudhananda, conducted a magnificent demonstration of hatha yoga and psychomotor efficiency in the seminar room at the Center for Personality Research,

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performing a headstand

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on the conference table

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while clad in a loincloth.

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That was definitely a first

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for Harvard University.

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And Gayatri Devi,

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the Vedanta guru,

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dropped by periodically

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to exchange darshan,

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sometimes bringing along

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a few of her wealthy

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back-bay devotees who seemed as titillated by our breezy brand of experimental yoga up by periodically to exchange Darshan, sometimes bringing along a few of her wealthy backbay

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devotees, who seemed as titillated by our breezy brand of experimental yoga as our conservative

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colleagues were aghast.

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Meanwhile, our researchers were doing fine. We were busy publishing articles in scientific

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journals, delivering papers at scientific conferences.

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Experimenters from around the world were coming to observe our work.

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Indeed, our project had become

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the center of consciousness alteration research in the world.

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There was a problem, though.

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The drug enthusiasm of Harvard undergraduates continued to haunt us.

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In this, the third year of our research,

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the Harvard yard was seething with drug consciousness.

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And if we refused to turn students on, no big deal.

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They scored supplies from Boston or New York.

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Suggie duck drugs were, of course, legal, legal, legal at the time.

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Several enterprising chemistry students

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constructed home labs to make the stuff themselves.

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For the most part, the drug epidemic

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sweeping Cambridge seemed benign.

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Hundreds of Harvard students expanded their minds,

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had visions, read mystical literature,

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and wrote intelligent essays about their experiences.

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It seemed to us they were, for the most part, benefiting.

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Inevitably, the occasional mishaps caught the attention of the authorities.

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A few fellows ran to the psychiatric clinic to gasp about their trips.

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Their flamboyant stories about altered states

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usually shocked the inexperienced medics

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what?

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you felt your body dissolve in a pool of honey?

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well, that’s psychotic thinking

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some students quit school and pilgrimed eastward

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to study yoga on the banks of the Yangis

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not necessarily a bad development from our point of view

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but understandably upsetting to parents

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who did not send their kids to Harvard to become Buddhas.

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Dozens of enthusiastic bright youths phoned home

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to announce that they’d found God

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and discovered the secret of the universe.

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The deans became edgy about complaints from parents.

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The Harvard administration was caught in a bind. They were solidly in support of our

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research, which was winning international attention, but they were hard-pressed to

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defend us against the anti-drug backlash, even though we had nothing to do with it.

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There were other problems. Our graduate students and young instructors were picking up an amiss

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signal from the more conservative faculty members that their careers could be ruined if they remain associated with our

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research.

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Since the academic profession operates on an

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old-boy network and reference letters,

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this threat was serious.

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Under the old-boy tenure system,

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graduate students who didn’t fall in line,

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who manifested interest in non-approved frontier

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questions, were quickly labeled

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flaky.

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As Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,

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almost all intellectual breakthroughs

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have been produced by mavericks

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pushed out of and operating independently

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of established knowledge systems.

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The older members of our group,

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Alan Watts, Houston Smith, Walter Clark, Dick, and I,

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were disturbed by this threat to our younger friends.

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We called a meeting of everyone involved in the research, families included.

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More than 30 crowded into the big kitchen at our house.

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People sat on the stove, the refrigerator, the counters, the floor.

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Dick Alpert outlined the problem.

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We agreed that as much as we loved and respected Harvard University, this finishing school for Fortune 500 executives was not the place

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for philosophic activists bent on changing practically everything. The honorable thing

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to do was to dissociate from Harvard and form a new organization.

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Dick Alpert would stay on at Harvard.

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He had skillfully wangled a joint appointment in the education department, which kept the door open for a ten-year post.

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I personally felt little emotion at leaving, beyond a nostalgic regret.

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Exits were becoming one of my areas of expertise. I remained on friendly terms with Professor McClellan and the faculty

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and everyone seemed pleased that my departure would be courteous and dignified.

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We knew that our program to teach the intelligent use of psychedelic drugs

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was as threatening in 1963

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as the notion of sex education had been a generation before.

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as the notion of sex education had been a generation before.

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But we were convinced that society would eventually come to terms with this responsibility,

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just as it had, out of common sense, with sex education.

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It was only logical that people would ultimately demand instruction

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in how to use psychedelic drugs

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and brain-change chemicals intelligently.

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In the next two decades, billions,

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hundreds of billions of dollars would be spent

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in futile law enforcement and anti-drug disinformation programs.

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We knew back then, in the early 60s,

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that training in responsible use is the only way to prevent abuse.

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Chapter 20, Earthly Paradise, May 1963, Mexico.

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I arrived in Mexico City loaded with if-if money, ready to activate our plans. Step one,

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I found a lawyer who specialized in handling the affairs of chemical companies. Step two,

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I met with Dr. Carl Jirasi,

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Stanford biochemist, who gave me useful advice.

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Step three, my chemist and I spent several days

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visiting large pharmaceutical companies.

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My chemist knew their stuff,

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and they knocked the socks off the local drug experts.

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The factory owners were even more impressed

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with the forecasted profit

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of our proposals. As it turned out, our projections were extremely conservative, just a fraction

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of the $100 billion that the non-addictive Revelation recreation drugs would generate

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annually by 1982. The basic goal we kept repeating to everyone was responsible distribution

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only doctors trained at if-if centers

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could prescribe the new drugs

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and only to our members

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our prudence was all the more virtuous

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since in 1963 psychedelic drugs were legal

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anyone could buy unlimited quantities of them

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Mexico City as a matter of fact

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was ringed with American and Swiss pharmaceutical firms

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manufacturing all sorts of amphetamines and narcotic drugs

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The owner of the Hotel Catalina, which we had leased for our research center

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agreed to stay around long enough to teach me the operation

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and then we’ll be on our own for the summer

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Within a few days, students and staff began arriving

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and we started the training routine.

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One afternoon, as I was getting organized,

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a jeep raced into the compound, driven by the captain of the port.

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It seemed that I was being called on shortwave radio from Mexico City.

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Urgent, urgent.

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He drove me to his office,

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and there, crackling with static,

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came the voice of a Newsweek reporter saying that Richard Alpert and I had been fired by Harvard University.

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Did I have any comments?

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I said something brash to the effect that I was honored, and it couldn’t have happened to two nicer guys.

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It happens to be against the rules of the Association of College Professors to fire a faculty member without a hearing.

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And although civil liberties groups and this association

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expressed a willingness to file suit against Harvard,

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hey, we didn’t want to waste our time in litigation.

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I never wanted to be a professor anyway.

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The Harvard firing was very painful for me

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for one reason, because of my mother.

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She claimed that it wasn’t the disgrace

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of the firing that hurt her,

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but the fact that I hadn’t told her myself,

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and she hadn’t learned the news from neighbors.

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This distressing event marked the end of our 43-year-old friendship.

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My mom had always supported me in my escapades and rejoiced in my comebacks,

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but the Harvard firing and the scandals that followed

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just couldn’t be explained away to her circle of retired Irish Catholic schoolteachers.

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During the last decade of her life,

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when the ladies gathered for tea to gossip about their families,

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no one, no one ever mentioned the name of her son, the doctor.

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My concern with the Harvard firing was swept away anyway

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by the rapid influx of guests.

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Within a few days, we realized that, hey, we were developing the ultimate destination resort, Hotel Nirvana.

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We had doctors and lawyers and professors and writers and no one, no one wanted to leave.

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Folks who came down for a week or two started signing up for the whole summer.

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Meanwhile, the global publicity continued.

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Life magazine arranged to send a reporter and photographer down for July.

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CBS, NBC, and the BBC, as well as several European networks, planned stories on us.

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Everyone was interested because we were turning the world onto something brand new.

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See, at this point, we were well on our way to setting up a totally responsible social structure

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for the manufacture, distribution,

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and use of psychoactive drugs in a non-profit context. How naive. Today, when the American

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market for psychoactive drugs is the economic mainstay of at least 12 third world countries,

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and when the American law enforcement bureaucracies

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are fed more than $100 billion a year in tax funds

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to support their adventures,

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we can look back and see how Boy Scout, naive,

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and innocent our plans were.

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We were on the threshold of setting up a system

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for responsible, practical, non-profit distribution

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of these educational substances.

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At this point, we received a new variety of uninvited guests,

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two agents of the federal police.

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Buenos dias, comandantes.

00:20:16 ► §

Jorge Garcia was a youngish, good-looking and amused guy.

00:20:19 ► §

The other was older and sour-faced, Juan Blisiro.

00:20:24 ► §

The two federales sat down in our dining area

00:20:26 ► §

and summoned me to a meeting.

00:20:28 ► §

They didn’t waste words.

00:20:29 ► §

We were being closed down by the federales.

00:20:32 ► §

Why? Por qué?

00:20:34 ► §

Why?

00:20:35 ► §

Because we were bespirching the name of Mexico

00:20:37 ► §

with all this bad publicity.

00:20:39 ► §

Juan pulled out a Mexican newspaper.

00:20:42 ► §

The headline,

00:20:43 ► §

Harvard drug orgy blamed for decomposing body.

00:20:46 ► §

What decomposing body, I gasped.

00:20:49 ► §

Hey, it turned out a corpse had been found a village 100 miles away.

00:20:53 ► §

What does that have to do with us?

00:20:55 ► §

Well, it’s very clear, senor, the press blames you,

00:20:58 ► §

and that sort of public scandal is intolerable.

00:21:01 ► §

They showed me another newspaper article based upon reports

00:21:04 ► §

from some people we

00:21:05 ► §

had turned away. They accused us of marijuana orgies and hairy women and black magic and

00:21:11 ► §

venereal disease and profiteering. Hey, I said, ask anyone here. Ask the staff. Ask the mayor.

00:21:17 ► §

Ask the chief of police. Ask the governor. They know we’re good people. No problem, doctor. We

00:21:24 ► §

know that, said Jorge Garcia, the younger policeman.

00:21:27 ► §

The real reason that you must go is that you have a tourist visa

00:21:30 ► §

and are not authorized to run a business in Mexico.

00:21:34 ► §

The retreat back to Newton Center from Zihuatanea was an inglorious route.

00:21:39 ► §

Dick and I had suddenly become very, very notorious.

00:21:43 ► §

The expulsion from Harvard and then the deportation from Mexico

00:21:46 ► §

resulted in our being disgraced.

00:21:49 ► §

Our reputations and our credibility

00:21:51 ► §

were forever forfeited.

00:21:55 ► §

Suddenly, we were outcasts.

00:21:58 ► §

Hey, it was lonely on the frontier,

00:22:00 ► §

because like everybody else,

00:22:01 ► §

I hungered for acceptance.

00:22:04 ► §

Walking around Harvard Yard,

00:22:06 ► §

surrounded by the stately monuments of hive tradition,

00:22:09 ► §

I felt a distress.

00:22:11 ► §

I realized that the trajectory of my life

00:22:14 ► §

was pushing me irrevocably to a position

00:22:16 ► §

where I could never receive the comfort of normal social approval,

00:22:21 ► §

never obtain the security of institutional support.

00:22:26 ► §

This sorrow has often returned, but, but frankly has never lasted very long. Chapter 22, Life on a Grounded Space Colony,

00:22:34 ► §

September 1963, Millbrook, New York.

00:22:40 ► §

Well, no matter how you look at it, the preceding three years had been very busy.

00:22:44 ► §

First, we administered LSD to more than 1,500 persons,

00:22:48 ► §

directed a large research project, struggled with endless political problems.

00:22:52 ► §

Hey, by this time I was falling victim to burnout.

00:22:55 ► §

Philosophy and history be damned.

00:22:58 ► §

I really wanted just to move to a deserted island

00:23:01 ► §

where the trade winds rippled from tropic seas.

00:23:06 ► §

Peggy Hitchcock,

00:23:07 ► §

always resourceful,

00:23:08 ► §

at this point arranged for Dick

00:23:09 ► §

to give acid to her younger brother Billy,

00:23:12 ► §

then a budding stockbroker

00:23:13 ► §

in the prestigious Lehman Brothers firm.

00:23:18 ► §

Billy reacted with enthusiasm.

00:23:21 ► §

It figured

00:23:21 ► §

he was an intelligent, restless,

00:23:23 ► §

exciting, craving melon air

00:23:25 ► §

and a true son of Thomas Hitchcock, legendary American flying ace and top polo player.

00:23:33 ► §

Billy and his twin Tommy had just purchased a large estate in Millbrook, New York,

00:23:37 ► §

two hours’ drive up the Hudson River from Manhattan.

00:23:41 ► §

It was a magical location, twice five miles of fertile ground with an imposing gatehouse complete with sally port and a huge portcullis.

00:23:52 ► §

From the gatehouse, a mile-long drive under rows of maple trees led to the mansion, four stories high with two towers.

00:24:01 ► §

Gleaming white with 64 rooms inside, it was surrounded by elegant lawns

00:24:05 ► §

stables and an ornate two-story chalet

00:24:08 ► §

which held a bowling alley

00:24:09 ► §

Billy and Tommy, now spirited supporters of our work

00:24:12 ► §

suggested that we establish our research center

00:24:14 ► §

in the vacant main house

00:24:16 ► §

the plan to start local centers around the country would be scrapped

00:24:21 ► §

we would go low profile and in secluded isolation

00:24:24 ► §

continue our legal

00:24:26 ► §

and totally authorized research into altered states. We were pleased to be in Fitzhugh-Ludlow

00:24:33 ► §

neighborhood, the same area where the French Jesuit mystic Traillard de Chardin was buried.

00:24:40 ► §

We called ourselves the Castellier Foundation, emulating the fellowship of mystic scientists

00:24:45 ► §

in Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.

00:24:48 ► §

Once a week, we engage in a programmed LSD session.

00:24:52 ► §

Typically, one crew member would be responsible

00:24:54 ► §

for arranging the environment and the stimuli.

00:24:57 ► §

The guide would read from philosophic or poetic works

00:25:01 ► §

and select the music, all important in directing thought.

00:25:05 ► §

Often, the guide would prepare special tapes

00:25:07 ► §

to take us on specific ontological adventures.

00:25:11 ► §

We saw ourselves as anthropologists

00:25:13 ► §

from, say, the 21st century,

00:25:15 ► §

inhabiting a time module set somewhere

00:25:18 ► §

in the dark ages of the 1960s.

00:25:21 ► §

On this little space colony in upstate New York,

00:25:24 ► §

we were attempting to create a new paganism

00:25:26 ► §

and a new dedication to life as art. It felt right and was, come to think of it, my boyhood dream come

00:25:34 ► §

true. The world of conflict and political struggle seemed far removed, but trouble was lurking

00:25:41 ► §

outside, grim and unrelenting. One night in November, I received a phone call from Laura Huxley.

00:25:49 ► §

She said that Aldous was dying

00:25:50 ► §

and that he particularly wanted to see me about the manual

00:25:55 ► §

we were adapting from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

00:25:58 ► §

The next day, I flew to Los Angeles.

00:26:02 ► §

Since their house had been destroyed in the Hollywood fire,

00:26:06 ► §

Aldous and Laura were living with a friend near Mulholland Drive. When I arrived, Laura took me aside, pressing

00:26:10 ► §

my hand. Aldous, she feared, seemed unwilling to face the certainty of his death. Just that

00:26:18 ► §

afternoon, he had spoken cheerfully about the inconvenience they were causing their

00:26:21 ► §

friend and had mentioned renting a house when he recovered.

00:26:30 ► §

Alice was upstairs in a hospital bed, motionless and weak.

00:26:34 ► §

He smiled when I greeted him and began asking questions in a quiet voice

00:26:36 ► §

about what we were doing,

00:26:38 ► §

nodding with approval and chuckling softly at my jokes.

00:26:42 ► §

Then he motioned me conspiratorially close.

00:26:46 ► §

He said he didn’t want to worry Laura,

00:26:48 ► §

who couldn’t face the fact

00:26:49 ► §

that he was dying.

00:26:51 ► §

He said he had known

00:26:52 ► §

of his terminal illness

00:26:53 ► §

when he wrote the scene

00:26:54 ► §

in Island, his last book,

00:26:57 ► §

where the dying grandmother

00:26:58 ► §

was guided through the bardos.

00:27:01 ► §

Aldous asked him

00:27:02 ► §

if I would guide him

00:27:03 ► §

through an LSD session

00:27:04 ► §

with a psychedelic version of the Book of the Dead

00:27:07 ► §

I suggested it would be much better

00:27:09 ► §

if Laura guided the session

00:27:11 ► §

and read him the instructions

00:27:13 ► §

for reaching the white light

00:27:14 ► §

No, he said

00:27:17 ► §

I don’t want to put any more emotional pressure on her

00:27:20 ► §

I plan to transfer my body

00:27:22 ► §

during the trip after all

00:27:24 ► §

The nurse entered

00:27:27 ► §

wheeling an oxygen tank

00:27:29 ► §

so I stepped out into the room

00:27:30 ► §

where Laura was waiting

00:27:31 ► §

I told her about our conversation

00:27:35 ► §

she was more than willing

00:27:38 ► §

to guide Aldous through an acid session

00:27:39 ► §

when his moment of death approached

00:27:41 ► §

we discussed the research being done with Dr. Kast in Chicago,

00:27:47 ► §

in which acid contributed dramatically

00:27:49 ► §

to the serenity of terminal patients.

00:27:54 ► §

As I said goodbye, Aldous whispered,

00:27:57 ► §

Be gentle with them, Timothy.

00:28:00 ► §

They want to be free, but they don’t know how.

00:28:04 ► §

Teach them. Reassure them.

00:28:10 ► §

Well, everyone remembers exactly where they were on November 22, 1963,

00:28:16 ► §

when the dreadful news hit.

00:28:20 ► §

Television created a mass imprint in a hundred million brains,

00:28:25 ► §

a sudden loss of innocence.

00:28:28 ► §

The assassination of Jack Kennedy was especially brutal

00:28:31 ► §

to those born after 1946.

00:28:35 ► §

It was their first intimation that dirty work was afoot,

00:28:38 ► §

that the world wasn’t the nice, safe place we parents

00:28:42 ► §

and Dr. Spock had prepared them for.

00:28:44 ► §

of the nice, safe place we parents and Dr. Spock had prepared them for.

00:28:50 ► §

That evening, a friend at the Associated Press in New York called with an item he’d just pulled off the wire.

00:28:54 ► §

Aldous Huxley had died.

00:28:56 ► §

In the grief for Kennedy, almost no one noticed.

00:29:00 ► §

That night, we held a long candlelight vigil for both of our departed guides.

00:29:06 ► §

Chapter 27, Dissipative Structures, June 1965, Millbrook, New York.

00:29:17 ► §

My jangled nerves were not soothed by six months of changes that had converted Millbrook

00:29:21 ► §

from a community of scholars and scientists into a playground

00:29:25 ► §

for rowdy omnisexuals.

00:29:30 ► §

When I tried to talk to Dick Alpert

00:29:32 ► §

about the future, he was not that interested.

00:29:35 ► §

He had shrewdly decided

00:29:36 ► §

to take a long vacation.

00:29:40 ► §

He had held down the home front

00:29:42 ► §

while Ralph and Annette and I were traipsing

00:29:43 ► §

around the world, and that was his turn. He had held down the home front while Ralph and Annette and I were traipsing around the world.

00:29:45 ► §

Now it was his turn.

00:29:51 ► §

He had accepted an invitation to summer in France at the beach house of some famous jet-set prince.

00:29:58 ► §

Then he would visit the London Playboy scene to run LSD sessions for the infamous Victor Lowndes.

00:30:03 ► §

All this made my guru chasing in India seem pretty conventional.

00:30:09 ► §

For the next few days I circled the field aimlessly,

00:30:12 ► §

trying to figure out where to land with the rest of my life.

00:30:16 ► §

I retreated to a small bedroom in the servant’s wing,

00:30:18 ► §

devoting my life to the Taoist poems and meditating on the thought that everything changes,

00:30:22 ► §

this too will pass, lay low, walk slow.

00:30:25 ► §

I planted a garden behind the meditation house

00:30:27 ► §

with seeds and cuttings from a nearby Rudolf Steiner farm.

00:30:32 ► §

Dick Alpert left triumphantly for Europe.

00:30:36 ► §

One by one, the punksters became discouraged

00:30:38 ► §

by the monastic atmosphere and drifted away.

00:30:41 ► §

Soon, there remained only a small cadre of ex-Harvard loyalists.

00:30:45 ► §

Ralph Metzner,

00:30:47 ► §

Michael Hollingshead,

00:30:48 ► §

and his lovely bookish mistress.

00:30:51 ► §

The lovelorn summer of 1965

00:30:54 ► §

crept on painfully.

00:30:56 ► §

My pals were the two mansion dogs,

00:30:58 ► §

short-haired setters

00:30:59 ► §

named Fang and O’Brien.

00:31:02 ► §

At Ralph Metzner’s suggestion,

00:31:04 ► §

we set out to produce a sound and light show

00:31:06 ► §

that we hoped could simulate

00:31:08 ► §

an LSD session.

00:31:10 ► §

Perhaps,

00:31:12 ► §

maybe, we could activate the same

00:31:14 ► §

circuits without drugs.

00:31:16 ► §

And then there came a visitor

00:31:18 ► §

who was to change everything.

00:31:22 ► §

I remember so clearly

00:31:24 ► §

that summer morning when I walked out to the Portico Terrace

00:31:26 ► §

and there she was

00:31:28 ► §

the next seven years of my life

00:31:31 ► §

a cloud of pharanomes

00:31:35 ► §

floating from her body

00:31:37 ► §

awakened my lazy off-duty hormones

00:31:39 ► §

my knees wobbled

00:31:41 ► §

her name was Rosemary Woodruff

00:31:43 ► §

age 30

00:31:44 ► §

in her hand was a book by Wittgenstein My knees wobbled. Her name was Rosemary Woodruff, age 30.

00:31:47 ► §

In her hand was a book by Wittgenstein.

00:31:50 ► §

She had come up for the weekend with some friends.

00:31:55 ► §

But Rosemary needed help.

00:31:59 ► §

She had brought a bottle of French wine, but no corkscrew.

00:32:04 ► §

I led her to the kitchen, popped the cork, and poured her a glass.

00:32:08 ► §

You are the kindest man in the world, she said.

00:32:12 ► §

Her moves were fluid and graceful.

00:32:15 ► §

She was wearing tight jeans bound by a silver chain.

00:32:19 ► §

Her boy’s shirt was tied above the navel.

00:32:23 ► §

I poured some wine in my glass, and we toasted our meeting.

00:32:26 ► §

She wore tennis shoes.

00:32:28 ► §

That was the genetic signal.

00:32:30 ► §

And she read Wittgenstein.

00:32:34 ► §

I wondered idly if she was an intelligence agent assigned to my case.

00:32:38 ► §

If so, the psych-tech boy sure had my number.

00:32:42 ► §

That afternoon I took her for a walk.

00:32:45 ► §

I felt painfully shy.

00:32:48 ► §

I’d like to come back, she said.

00:32:51 ► §

Any time, I replied.

00:32:54 ► §

One night after a light show,

00:32:55 ► §

while I was relaxing in a friend’s apartment,

00:32:57 ► §

Rosemary phoned.

00:32:59 ► §

Bored with life in New York,

00:33:01 ► §

she was about to split for California and was wondering if she could spend a few days at Millbrook

00:33:04 ► §

before she left.

00:33:04 ► §

to split for California, and I was wondering if she could spend a few days at Millbrook before she left.

00:33:09 ► §

Within seconds, I was out the door on my way to meet her.

00:33:12 ► §

Within minutes, I was carrying her suitcases up to my car.

00:33:16 ► §

I bought a bottle of champagne, and we headed north on the beautiful grass-bordered Taconic

00:33:21 ► §

Parkway.

00:33:23 ► §

The sky sparkled with stars above us.

00:33:27 ► §

Rosemary sat in the lotus position on the front seat,

00:33:30 ► §

stretching her arms over her head,

00:33:32 ► §

turning now and then to fill my glass.

00:33:36 ► §

What do you want to happen at Millbrook, I asked her.

00:33:40 ► §

I want to fall in love with you, she said.

00:33:46 ► §

The next day we did yoga in the large front room.

00:33:50 ► §

We went for a long walk around the estate.

00:33:53 ► §

That afternoon we moved our bed to the meditation house

00:33:56 ► §

and took acid together.

00:33:59 ► §

There I courted Rosemary in her 10,000 forms.

00:34:14 ► §

Chapter 28. Busted at Laredo.

00:34:19 ► §

After Thanksgiving, the climate around Millbrook became threatening.

00:34:26 ► §

Strangers in the uniforms of telephone repairmen made unannounced visits, claiming to check wires.

00:34:29 ► §

The owner of the plumbing shop in town confided that federal agents had asked to borrow uniforms from him

00:34:31 ► §

to gain access to our house.

00:34:34 ► §

He had thrown them out of his office.

00:34:37 ► §

Unmarked cars were seen driving through the property.

00:34:41 ► §

There were men with binoculars.

00:34:43 ► §

There were rumors from Poughkeepsie, the county seat,

00:34:46 ► §

that the district attorney was planning a raid.

00:34:49 ► §

An ambitious assistant district attorney with a poetic flair

00:34:52 ► §

told the local Kiwanis that, quote,

00:34:55 ► §

the patties were dropping faster than the acid in Larry’s lair.

00:34:59 ► §

The name of this DA was, of course, G. Gordon Liddy.

00:35:04 ► §

Richard Alpert came back from Europe in the fall.

00:35:07 ► §

Ralph and I met him at the Poughkeepsie station,

00:35:09 ► §

and we convened a cheerless conference in a restaurant.

00:35:12 ► §

We agreed that we had gone about as far as we could go at Millbrook.

00:35:15 ► §

The fun had stopped.

00:35:17 ► §

The money, energy, able bodies,

00:35:18 ► §

and the utopian idealism needed to maintain a 64-room castle

00:35:23 ► §

had been dissipated.

00:35:26 ► §

Like knights saddling up,

00:35:31 ► §

we three resolved to pursue our separate quests and illuminate our respective realms.

00:35:38 ► §

So, on December 20th, 1965, the 45th anniversary of my conception, we turned off the power and water, locked the doors, and piled into the new leased station wagon. Rosemary, Susan, Jack, and Timothy headed for the Yucatan,

00:35:47 ► §

a month-long vacation in Mexico for the four of us to get to know each other.

00:35:52 ► §

We arrived at Laredo at mid-afternoon.

00:35:56 ► §

I knew the procedures of crossing the border having driven this same route

00:35:59 ► §

with Jack the summer of 1960 en route to the mushrooms.

00:36:03 ► §

We bought auto insurance and drove across the bridge to Nuevo Laredo at 7 p.m.

00:36:08 ► §

We stopped at the Mexican immigration to get our tourist cards.

00:36:15 ► §

Timoteo!

00:36:16 ► §

The policeman’s greeting was full of warmth.

00:36:19 ► §

Timoteo, don’t you remember me?

00:36:22 ► §

It was Jorge Garcia, the friendly police agent

00:36:24 ► §

who had tried to help me in Zihuatanejo in 1963.

00:36:28 ► §

Jorge, of course we shook hands.

00:36:32 ► §

Then he frowned.

00:36:34 ► §

But Timoteo, you cannot enter Mexico.

00:36:37 ► §

It is prohibido.

00:36:39 ► §

Nuevo Laredo is a free zone border town that does not require tourist visas.

00:36:43 ► §

We did not have to cross the border into America.

00:36:46 ► §

Hey, we could have checked into a hotel,

00:36:49 ► §

wandered the streets, had a festive dinner,

00:36:52 ► §

watched the hustlers and mariachis and tourists,

00:36:55 ► §

and in the morning, returned to the immigration office.

00:37:00 ► §

But I robotically turned the car around,

00:37:03 ► §

and it dawned on me about halfway across the International Bridge,

00:37:07 ► §

that even though I had not entered Mexico,

00:37:10 ► §

I would still have to pass through customs,

00:37:12 ► §

just like the VW buses from Purple Michoacan

00:37:17 ► §

or Golden Acapulco or Seedless Guadalajara.

00:37:25 ► §

All the grass is out of the car, right?

00:37:28 ► §

Rosemary,

00:37:29 ► §

foaming around her baggage in the back seat,

00:37:31 ► §

said in a worried voice,

00:37:32 ► §

Well, no, I couldn’t get to my silver box

00:37:35 ► §

because there were two uniformed porters

00:37:37 ► §

leaning against the car.

00:37:38 ► §

Here it is.

00:37:40 ► §

She handed it to Susan.

00:37:43 ► §

The car rolled relentlessly towards the custom station.

00:37:47 ► §

I’ll hide it in my dress, said Susan, sitting next to me in the front seat.

00:37:52 ► §

Hey, we couldn’t throw the silver box out of the car, could we?

00:37:55 ► §

Bang, bang, blam, metallic flash in the middle of the bridge.

00:37:59 ► §

Could we? Should we? Could we?

00:38:02 ► §

When the customs officer walked up, I handed over our unused Mexican papers.

00:38:07 ► §

We didn’t enter Mexico, officer.

00:38:10 ► §

He didn’t seem to listen to what I’d said.

00:38:13 ► §

There were two other agents standing behind him.

00:38:16 ► §

Everyone out of the car.

00:38:19 ► §

Hey, look at my papers, officer. We haven’t been in Mexico.

00:38:23 ► §

The officer leaned in the front door, reached down by my feet,

00:38:26 ► §

and came up with something between his fingers.

00:38:29 ► §

What’s this seed I found in your car floor?

00:38:32 ► §

The car was surrounded by agents.

00:38:34 ► §

Remove all the baggage.

00:38:37 ► §

Well, we were bundled into a police car and brought to the Laredo jail,

00:38:40 ► §

where we were fingerprinted and mugged.

00:38:42 ► §

Jack was taken to the juvenile section,

00:38:45 ► §

Rosemary and Susan to the women’s wing. I was ushered to the third floor. The jailer unlocked two

00:38:52 ► §

barred doors and motioned me to walk ahead down the runway. When I got to the fifth cell,

00:38:58 ► §

he pressed the button and the metal door slid open. I entered. It shut behind me.

00:39:06 ► §

Clang!

00:39:08 ► §

My first jail cell.

00:39:14 ► §

I spent that night in confused thought.

00:39:17 ► §

The agent had produced some marijuana before they searched Susan.

00:39:20 ► §

We’d been set up.

00:39:22 ► §

Surely they couldn’t make a big deal

00:39:24 ► §

about the tiny pinch of grass found in the silver box.

00:39:30 ► §

Bale was set at $100,000for$10 worth of weed.

00:39:37 ► §

On the way back to the jail, a guard gave me the name of the best Bales bondman in town,

00:39:41 ► §

who happened to be waiting for us at the jail.

00:39:44 ► §

He in turn gave me the name of the best lawyer in town

00:39:46 ► §

who showed up immediately.

00:39:50 ► §

The lawyer was reassuring about our release on bail.

00:39:53 ► §

I had about $3,000 in cash

00:39:55 ► §

and miraculously he worked it out

00:39:56 ► §

that we still had enough money for tickets to New York

00:39:59 ► §

after paying him and the bondsman.

00:40:01 ► §

The lawyer was not optimistic

00:40:02 ► §

about the long-range prospects.

00:40:06 ► §

Rosemary and Jack would walk free and he was sure the grand jury would not indict Susan because of her age, who would get

00:40:11 ► §

probation. But I was in trouble. A U.S. attorney in Houston was flying down a crew of prosecutors

00:40:17 ► §

and investigators. This was a big case for them. The way they were encouraging publicity suggested they wanted to make it an example of me. Well, how much can I get? I asked the lawyer. Well, he said, if you fight the charges,

00:40:32 ► §

then you’ll get hit with all three felony counts. They had up to a lot of prison time. How much?

00:40:38 ► §

Well, let’s see. 20 years for smuggling, that’s a five-year mandatory minimum.

00:40:43 ► §

Another 20 years for transportation, that also’s a five-year mandatory minimum. Another 20 years for transportation, that also carries a five-year mandatory minimum.

00:40:48 ► §

And I’d say up to 10 years for the tax count.

00:40:51 ► §

Well, you’re talking a mandatory minimum of 10 years,

00:40:54 ► §

and if they’re really mad at you, as I gather they are, up to 50 years.

00:40:58 ► §

Plus a $55,000 fine.

00:41:02 ► §

You mean I could go to prison for a life for $10 of marijuana that wasn’t my own?

00:41:10 ► §

The lawyer looked down at his papers unhappily

00:41:11 ► §

It’s terrible, I know

00:41:13 ► §

All I can do is get you the best deal available

00:41:15 ► §

The system is pretty set in its ways

00:41:18 ► §

I wouldn’t advise you to fight it

00:41:19 ► §

The jailer escorted me back to my cell

00:41:22 ► §

And I heard that sound of iron gates closing again.

00:41:26 ► §

Clang.

00:41:27 ► §

It was dark in the cell.

00:41:30 ► §

I sat on the bunk and thought.

00:41:34 ► §

So here it was, the moment of political truth.

00:41:38 ► §

The lawyer said, they want to make an example of you.

00:41:41 ► §

Well, fuck it, I’ll make an example of them.

00:41:46 ► §

I couldn’t plead guilty because I felt no guilt. And I couldn’t lie about the harmlessness of giggly little marijuana.

00:41:53 ► §

And I couldn’t throw myself in the mercies of a crusty old Texas judge and Texas probation

00:41:59 ► §

officers. I wasn’t going to submit passively to the role of scapegoat,

00:42:06 ► §

the Harvard psychologist who got in that trouble over drugs.

00:42:11 ► §

Liberty was at stake here.

00:42:13 ► §

Freedom of access to your own body and your own brain,

00:42:16 ► §

a right I believed was protected by the Constitution.

00:42:20 ► §

You must remember, in that primitive period,

00:42:23 ► §

two or three decades ago,

00:42:24 ► §

it was not yet understood that the human mind is the first and most basic frontier of freedom.

00:42:31 ► §

Sitting in a dark jail cell on Christmas Eve 1965, flushed with virtuous indignation about the wickedness of the marijuana laws,

00:42:56 ► §

I resolved to fight this case in the courts of the land, to mobilize legal teams, to devise courtroom tactics, to file appeals, motions, briefs, depositions, to speak in defense of the right of the American citizen to manage his own body and brain.

00:43:00 ► §

Now, the fatal word in my naive program was fight.

00:43:05 ► §

The adversary nature of the judicial process has never been favorable to philosophers and scientists. Would I? Would I choose this arena of battle again? Frankly, I don’t know.

00:43:15 ► §

It was obviously a stage that I had to go through, and go through it I did.

00:43:30 ► §

it, I did. 29, the Pete Moss caper. Winter, 1965. The federal indictments came down in January. Susan and I were charged with three felony counts. Rosemary and Jack were cut

00:43:37 ► §

loose. Susan and I went to trial in Laredo in April. Billy Hitchcock hired as a hot shot Texas lawyer

00:43:45 ► §

who was busy at the time with a murder trial.

00:43:48 ► §

The judge refused to grant a postponement,

00:43:51 ► §

so he straggled into the courtroom with a makeshift legal team

00:43:54 ► §

led by the hometown Laredo lawyer.

00:43:57 ► §

He liked me well enough,

00:43:58 ► §

but he had no intention of attacking the marijuana laws,

00:44:02 ► §

which provided the infrastructure

00:44:04 ► §

for one of the largest

00:44:05 ► §

local industries. I took the stand to defend my First Amendment right as a scientist and

00:44:12 ► §

as an initiated Hindu to use marijuana as a research tool and as a religious sacrament.

00:44:21 ► §

To authenticate my stature as a drug researcher, we introduced in evidence letters of support

00:44:26 ► §

from Massachusetts prison officials.

00:44:29 ► §

To reaffirm the religious use of grass,

00:44:33 ► §

we produced dozens of letters from theologians,

00:44:35 ► §

plus Exhibit G, a snapshot of Nanette and me

00:44:39 ► §

standing in front of a legal marijuana shop in Calcutta.

00:44:45 ► §

At my prodding, my lawyer

00:44:48 ► §

reluctantly cross-examined the chief agent

00:44:50 ► §

about the Mexican official

00:44:51 ► §

who had intercepted me at the border.

00:44:55 ► §

The agent admitted that Garcia

00:44:57 ► §

was normally stationed in Mexico City.

00:45:02 ► §

Funny thing, though, my lawyer

00:45:03 ► §

wouldn’t press this line of questioning

00:45:05 ► §

Which would have revealed how my arrest had been set up

00:45:09 ► §

By the Mexican and American governments using Garcia as a decoy

00:45:13 ► §

After the jury retired, Susan and I walked out to the corridor with the lawyers

00:45:18 ► §

Susan clung to my hand fearfully

00:45:21 ► §

Shall we go outside to get some air, I suggested.

00:45:26 ► §

The Laredo lawyer glanced at his watch and shook his head.

00:45:29 ► §

Not enough time.

00:45:32 ► §

It’ll take them five minutes to elect a jury chairman.

00:45:36 ► §

Five minutes to pour the coffee.

00:45:38 ► §

One minute to vote.

00:45:40 ► §

And three minutes to notify the bailiffs.

00:45:43 ► §

They’ll be back with the verdict in a quarter of an hour.

00:45:47 ► §

How right he was.

00:45:51 ► §

The judge.

00:45:54 ► §

Dr. Larry, you and your counsel will step up here, please.

00:45:58 ► §

Your case, the situation in which you find yourself here,

00:46:03 ► §

gives a great deal of concern

00:46:05 ► §

you are of course

00:46:07 ► §

as I am sure you’ll recognize

00:46:09 ► §

an unusual type of personality

00:46:11 ► §

unconventional in many respects

00:46:14 ► §

it is my duty

00:46:16 ► §

in due course

00:46:17 ► §

to impose sentence for these offenses

00:46:19 ► §

is there anything you would like to tell me

00:46:22 ► §

at this time in your own behalf

00:46:23 ► §

or in mitigation or extenuation?

00:46:26 ► §

Defendant Larry.

00:46:28 ► §

No, sir.

00:46:29 ► §

The court.

00:46:31 ► §

In that case, under count two, transportation of marijuana, I impose a period of confinement of 20 years and a fine of $20,000.

00:46:41 ► §

On count three, failure to pay the tax, I impose a period of confinement of ten years and a fine of $20,000.

00:46:50 ► §

Susan, will you step forward?

00:46:53 ► §

In sentencing you, the court will take into account the fact that you have had an unusual home background.

00:47:00 ► §

Our lawyers assured us that Susan would not do a day in jail.

00:47:04 ► §

The judge would give her probation and her record would be scrubbed when she was 21.

00:47:11 ► §

These promises did not raise Susan’s morale.

00:47:15 ► §

She had always been a dutiful, conforming child, eager for approval and affection.

00:47:21 ► §

The national publicity weighed heavily on her.

00:47:24 ► §

A picture that showed her looking up at me with mystified devotion

00:47:27 ► §

was published in Life magazine

00:47:29 ► §

and in newspapers throughout the country.

00:47:34 ► §

After she returned to her boarding school,

00:47:36 ► §

the headmaster called me several times during the spring

00:47:38 ► §

to express his concern about her.

00:47:42 ► §

Susan couldn’t be happy about anything after this event. I was slow to realize how

00:47:48 ► §

much she suffered, but what she felt to be a public disgrace. Back at Millbrook, it was

00:47:55 ► §

almost time for summer school again. We rounded up a talented staff, psychologists, biologists,

00:48:05 ► §

Psychologists, biologists, adepts in yoga, meditation, light artists and filmmakers.

00:48:12 ► §

Staff members came to Millbrook each weekend for planning sessions.

00:48:21 ► §

Then, one Saturday in May, we received a couple of warning phone calls from friends in the courthouse about preparations for a raid on Millbrook.

00:48:26 ► §

County deputies were being ordered to overtime duty for Saturday night.

00:48:29 ► §

District attorneys were running around trying to get a search warrant

00:48:31 ► §

signed by a cooperative judge.

00:48:35 ► §

The local law enforcement agency,

00:48:37 ► §

like many others in the land,

00:48:38 ► §

employed clerks and officers

00:48:40 ► §

who smoked a bit of weed themselves,

00:48:42 ► §

liked the new music,

00:48:43 ► §

and were happy to undermine their old-line bosses.

00:48:47 ► §

Our informant said tonight would be the night.

00:48:50 ► §

Our dinner was festive.

00:48:52 ► §

About 30 guests were present,

00:48:54 ► §

including some prominent journalists.

00:48:56 ► §

Our pal Prince Oblinsky had sent up a case of mums.

00:49:01 ► §

Gourmet delicacies.

00:49:04 ► §

After issuing red alert warnings

00:49:06 ► §

that no illegal drug should be on the premise,

00:49:09 ► §

I sat on silken pillows and low tables

00:49:11 ► §

in the baronial dining room

00:49:12 ► §

and we popped the corks awaiting for the raid.

00:49:18 ► §

It was ten o’clock before the light wizards

00:49:20 ► §

got the images flowing on the screens

00:49:22 ► §

and walls of the dining room.

00:49:24 ► §

As the room exploded

00:49:26 ► §

with kaleidoscopic images,

00:49:28 ► §

Jack reported on activities at the gate.

00:49:31 ► §

It’s the comic book scene, he said.

00:49:33 ► §

There are two cops crouching in the bushes down

00:49:35 ► §

by the meditation house with binoculars

00:49:37 ► §

and two patrol guards

00:49:39 ► §

heading for the cow barns with their lights

00:49:41 ► §

off.

00:49:45 ► §

By midnight, the light show was over.

00:49:47 ► §

Everyone drifted off to their rooms.

00:49:49 ► §

Rosemary and I retired to our mirrored alcove.

00:49:52 ► §

Jack knocked and ended with his final report.

00:49:55 ► §

I guess they called off the raid

00:49:57 ► §

when the party broke up downstairs.

00:50:00 ► §

How about a nightcap?

00:50:02 ► §

Jack produced a glass hookah

00:50:04 ► §

and filled the bowl with scented tobacco.

00:50:08 ► §

This is DMT that Nicky sent up from Brooklyn.

00:50:10 ► §

It’s strong stuff and it’s legal.

00:50:14 ► §

Strong.

00:50:17 ► §

Rosemary and I floated on the bed while Jack sprawled on the floor.

00:50:21 ► §

Suddenly the door burst open and in marched a man with a short, trim mustache,

00:50:27 ► §

obviously a stand-in for Inspector Clouseau. Beside him was an obese individual in a sheriff’s

00:50:33 ► §

uniform, followed by 12 armed deputies with wide campaign hats. They seemed to be suffering

00:50:41 ► §

from an astonishing rash or badly applied clown makeup.

00:50:49 ► §

The hookah in the middle of the bed looked at everyone with a glassy eye.

00:50:54 ► §

With Wonder Woman reflex, Rosemary flicked the blanket over the evidence.

00:50:56 ► §

It looked like modesty.

00:51:02 ► §

All police eyes were on what Gordon Liddy later called her diaphanous gown.

00:51:05 ► §

Don’t move, said one deputy.

00:51:07 ► §

On your feet, added another.

00:51:09 ► §

Hands up.

00:51:11 ► §

G. Gordon Liddy stood in military posture,

00:51:14 ► §

speaking his well-rehearsed lines in a clipped voice.

00:51:18 ► §

I have in my hand a warrant commanding me to search these premises.

00:51:24 ► §

Rosemary, holding her arms above her breasts, pointed across the room.

00:51:27 ► §

Don’t touch that pot. That’s my sacrament.

00:51:32 ► §

Twenty-two law enforcement eyes panned to the P.O.T.

00:51:35 ► §

G. Gordon Liddy bounded across the room and picked up a handful of dried vegetable substance from the pot

00:51:38 ► §

and said with curt professionalism,

00:51:41 ► §

Obviously a high-grade brand of marijuana.

00:51:45 ► §

Confiscate this and label for evidence.

00:51:47 ► §

Rosemary’s Pete Moss Gambit had worked.

00:51:52 ► §

Chapter 30, Altered States.

00:51:55 ► §

Summer 1966.

00:51:57 ► §

The spirit of the times.

00:51:59 ► §

General Motors hired investigators

00:52:01 ► §

to question over 50 friends of Ralph Nader,

00:52:05 ► §

seeking to discredit the young consumer advocate.

00:52:09 ► §

Down in Georgia, the legislature refused to seat Julian Bond,

00:52:12 ► §

a 25-year-old black activist whose election platform included opposition to the Vietnam War.

00:52:22 ► §

Anti-war Senator Fulbright of Arkansas

00:52:25 ► §

was accused by Republican Party leader Barry Goldwater

00:52:28 ► §

of giving, quote, aid and comfort to the enemy.

00:52:33 ► §

Now this confused many of us who assumed

00:52:35 ► §

and firmly believed that the Republican Party was the enemy.

00:52:40 ► §

During August, 4,000 Chicago whites attacked 600 blacks

00:52:44 ► §

marching with Dr. Martin Luther King to end segregation.

00:52:49 ► §

The publicity attending these events, and hundreds like them,

00:52:54 ► §

contributed to a climate of controversy.

00:52:57 ► §

Throughout the land, anti-drug people, politicians, police officers, psychiatrists,

00:53:03 ► §

popped up to denounce LSD and marijuana as the most dangerous threats ever confronted by the human race.

00:53:11 ► §

This sort of propaganda was guaranteed to create mass hysteria and to sow the seeds of bad setting and set.

00:53:32 ► §

I flew into corrective action, giving published lectures and interviews and writing magazine articles that outlined the need for guidance, preparation, protected settings, and knowledge of centering techniques to deal with trip confusions.

00:53:36 ► §

Few of these communications reached the national press.

00:53:41 ► §

Some counseling in understanding media was clearly indicated.

00:53:45 ► §

My lunch with Marsha McLuhan at the plaza was informative.

00:53:49 ► §

He said,

00:53:50 ► §

Drury, Senate hearings and courtrooms

00:53:52 ► §

are not the platforms for your message, Timothy.

00:53:54 ► §

You think of yourself as a philosopher.

00:53:57 ► §

Fine.

00:53:58 ► §

But the key to your work is advertising.

00:54:01 ► §

You are promoting a product.

00:54:03 ► §

Your product is the new and improved accelerated brain.

00:54:09 ► §

You must use the most current tactics for arousing consumer interest.

00:54:14 ► §

Associate LSD with all the good things that the brain can produce.

00:54:18 ► §

Beauty.

00:54:19 ► §

Enlightenment.

00:54:20 ► §

Fun.

00:54:21 ► §

Philosophic wonder.

00:54:23 ► §

Religious revelation.

00:54:24 ► §

Increased intelligence. Mystical romance. fun, philosophic wonder religious revelation increased intelligence

00:54:25 ► §

mystical romance

00:54:27 ► §

word of mouth from satisfied consumers

00:54:30 ► §

will help, but get your rock and roll

00:54:32 ► §

friends to write jingles about the brain

00:54:35 ► §

then Marshall McLuhan hummed

00:54:37 ► §

lysergic acid

00:54:38 ► §

hits the spot, 90 billion neurons

00:54:41 ► §

that’s a lot

00:54:41 ► §

get the idea, Timothy?

00:54:46 ► §

the problem is tricky, I said.

00:54:49 ► §

The opposition beats us to the punch.

00:54:51 ► §

The psychiatrists and the police propagandists

00:54:53 ► §

have already stressed the negative.

00:54:56 ► §

Now, this can be dangerous

00:54:57 ► §

when the mind is re-imprinting under LSD.

00:55:00 ► §

These anti-drug people

00:55:01 ► §

are deliberately provoking bad trips.

00:55:05 ► §

They never mention the 99 good experiences.

00:55:08 ► §

They keep repeating, LSD, jump out a window.

00:55:12 ► §

Now, when some ill-prepared person goes spinning into new realms,

00:55:15 ► §

he or she wonders, hey, what happens now?

00:55:19 ► §

Oh, yeah, jump out a window.

00:55:22 ► §

It’s like the over-solicitous mother who warns her kids not to push peanuts up their noses.

00:55:28 ► §

Exactly agreed, McLuhan. That’s why your advertising must stress the religious.

00:55:34 ► §

Find the God within. You know, this is all frightfully interesting. Your competitors

00:55:40 ► §

are naturally denouncing the brain as an instrument of the devil. That’s priceless.

00:55:46 ► §

Timothy, to dispel fear, you must use your public image. You are the basic product endorser.

00:55:53 ► §

Whenever you are photographed, smile, wave reassuringly, radiate courage, never complain

00:56:00 ► §

or appear angry. It’s all right if you come off as flamboyant and eccentric.

00:56:05 ► §

You’re a professor, after all.

00:56:08 ► §

But a confident attitude is the best advertisement.

00:56:11 ► §

You must be known for your smile.

00:56:16 ► §

The waiter, who seemed to be hanging on McLuhan’s words,

00:56:19 ► §

knocked my champagne glass into my lap.

00:56:22 ► §

McLuhan looked at me expectantly.

00:56:24 ► §

So what did I do? I smiled.

00:56:29 ► §

You’re going to win the war, Timothy, eventually, but you’re going to lose some major battles on

00:56:34 ► §

the way. You are not going to overthrow the Protestant ethic in a couple of years.

00:56:40 ► §

This culture knows how to sell and profit from fear and pain.

00:56:44 ► §

This culture knows how to sell and profit from fear and pain.

00:56:49 ► §

Drugs that accelerate the brain can’t be accepted until the population is geared to computers.

00:56:52 ► §

Psychedelic drugs are food for the brains of the information world.

00:56:56 ► §

So you’re ahead of your time.

00:56:58 ► §

They’ll attempt to destroy your credibility.

00:57:02 ► §

It’s in credibility that I’m after, I replied.

00:57:07 ► §

And so that’s how it’s happened.

00:57:09 ► §

Step by step, from the Harvard firing to the deportations,

00:57:14 ► §

from Laredo to the Liddy raid,

00:57:16 ► §

I was pushed from scientific detachment and scholarly retirement

00:57:20 ► §

into public opposition to the policies of the ruling regime.

00:57:24 ► §

into public opposition to the policies of the ruling regime.

00:57:31 ► §

By this time, I no longer regretted being an outcast.

00:57:33 ► §

As a matter of fact, I was beginning to enjoy the fray,

00:57:36 ► §

and I was not alone in the rebellion.

00:57:40 ► §

Millions of Americans, exactly at this time,

00:57:44 ► §

were also pushed to open resistance to the group that had taken over Washington after the Kennedy assassination.

00:57:47 ► §

A cultural revolution was brewing.

00:57:50 ► §

My understanding of the situation was this.

00:57:53 ► §

America was experiencing a quantum jump in intelligence.

00:57:57 ► §

For the first time in our history,

00:57:58 ► §

a large and influential sector of the populace

00:58:01 ► §

was coming to openly disrespect institutional authority,

00:58:05 ► §

not as members of organized dissident groups or partisan political groups, but as intelligent

00:58:11 ► §

individuals, highly selective political consumers who demanded responsive and effective leadership,

00:58:18 ► §

which no existing party, no religion, no labor union seemed able to provide.

00:58:28 ► §

party, no religion, no labor union seemed able to provide. Thus a conflict between the old industrial society and the new information society was to be played out in the new arena of power, the media,

00:58:35 ► §

communications. Those who understood this would create the future. One morning while I was

00:58:41 ► §

ruminating in the shower about what kind of slogan would succinctly summarize the tactics for increasing intelligence, six words came to mind.

00:58:51 ► §

Dripping wet with a towel around my waist, I walked to the study and wrote down this phrase, turn on, tune in, drop out.

00:59:00 ► §

Later, this motto became very useful in my function as a cheerleader for change.

00:59:07 ► §

Turn on meant to go within, to activate your neural and genetic equipment,

00:59:12 ► §

become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness

00:59:15 ► §

and the specific triggers that engage them.

00:59:18 ► §

Drugs were one way to accomplish the end of turning on.

00:59:22 ► §

Tune in meant interact harmoniously with the world around you. Radiate,

00:59:26 ► §

shine on, externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives.

00:59:35 ► §

Dropout suggested an active, selective, graceful process of detachment. Detachment from involuntary

00:59:41 ► §

or unconscious commitments. Dropout meant self-reliance,

00:59:45 ► §

a discovery of one’s own singularity,

00:59:47 ► §

a commitment to mobility, choice, and change.

00:59:51 ► §

In public statements,

00:59:52 ► §

I stress that the turn-on, tune-in, dropout process

00:59:56 ► §

must be continually repeated

00:59:58 ► §

if one wished to live a life of growth.

01:00:02 ► §

Unhappily, my explanations of this sequence of personal development

01:00:06 ► §

were often misinterpreted to mean

01:00:09 ► §

get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.

01:00:15 ► §

The Canadian Broadcasting Company invited me to Toronto

01:00:18 ► §

for a nationwide talk show.

01:00:21 ► §

After the taping, I went to Marsha McLuhan’s for a long, genial dinner.

01:00:27 ► §

He was very proud of what I was doing but the next day

01:00:29 ► §

as I walked off the return plane at LaGuardia

01:00:32 ► §

two federal agents were waiting for me

01:00:33 ► §

they informed me

01:00:35 ► §

that narcotics offenders

01:00:37 ► §

were required to fill out a special form

01:00:39 ► §

upon leaving the country

01:00:40 ► §

more nationwide publicity

01:00:42 ► §

and another five yearyear sentence to contest.

01:00:47 ► §

Chapter 31.

01:00:51 ► §

Christmas 1968.

01:00:53 ► §

Family and friends assembled at the ranch for an old-fashioned holiday reunion.

01:00:58 ► §

Susan and Jack, who were working at the Mystic Arts bookstore in Laguna, came up for the

01:01:02 ► §

festival and stayed in our cottage.

01:01:01 ► §

at the Mystic Arts bookstore in Laguna came up for the festival and stayed in our cottage.

01:01:06 ► §

The high mountains were sunbatable

01:01:08 ► §

when the sky was blue,

01:01:10 ► §

but that week was cloudy and chilly.

01:01:13 ► §

The day after Christmas, we got cabin fever.

01:01:16 ► §

Rosemary and I decided to drive to Berkeley

01:01:17 ► §

and enjoy civilization for a week

01:01:20 ► §

before the winter lecture tour.

01:01:24 ► §

We dropped Susan off at her apartment in Laguna Beach

01:01:26 ► §

and headed into the canyon

01:01:28 ► §

where Jack was staying in John Griggs’ house.

01:01:31 ► §

I noticed that we were being followed by an unmarked car.

01:01:35 ► §

As I parked in front of the house,

01:01:37 ► §

a policeman appeared on the driver’s side

01:01:39 ► §

and asked for my ID.

01:01:42 ► §

He talked on his radio.

01:01:45 ► §

In minutes, two more black and whites pulled up to the scene,

01:01:48 ► §

red lights flashing.

01:01:50 ► §

Four cops stood by my window.

01:01:53 ► §

The first cop said,

01:01:54 ► §

you get out of your car on your own or we’ll use force.

01:01:59 ► §

I stepped out, protesting the illegality of the search.

01:02:03 ► §

The policeman leaned over the driver’s seat,

01:02:06 ► §

fumbled with the ashtray, and then said,

01:02:08 ► §

You’re under arrest.

01:02:10 ► §

Word for word, it was repeated my encounter with G. Gordon Liddy.

01:02:15 ► §

Arrest? For what?

01:02:18 ► §

The officer reached in his right trouser pocket

01:02:21 ► §

and pulled out two crumbled half-smoked roaches.

01:02:24 ► §

With this handy evidence as

01:02:26 ► §

justification, the other officers searched Rosemary and Jack, who were both holding, handcuffed us all

01:02:32 ► §

and whirled us off to jail. There, we were forced to submit to the familiar routine, fingerprints,

01:02:40 ► §

mug shots, holding cell. The Brotherhood’s lawyer had us out in bail in an hour.

01:02:47 ► §

The next day, my attorney had reassuring news.

01:02:50 ► §

Hey, everybody around the courthouse knows what happened.

01:02:53 ► §

The officer that busted you is notorious for planting evidence.

01:02:56 ► §

We’ll get the case thrown out in the preliminary hearings.

01:03:01 ► §

That sounds great, I said, but just out of curiosity,

01:03:07 ► §

what’s the penalty for possession of two roaches?

01:03:13 ► §

Well, you can get up to ten years, said the lawyer, but don’t worry.

01:03:16 ► §

We’ll beat it if we have to take it to the Supreme Court.

01:03:22 ► §

Won’t this give the government the excuse to pull my appeal bond on the Laredo case?

01:03:27 ► §

My lawyer replied, hey, they don’t need any excuses. When they watch you jugged, they’ll do it.

01:03:32 ► §

Chapter 33, Cultural Evolution versus Political Revolution.

01:03:45 ► §

By the time 1968 came to a close,

01:03:50 ► §

555,000 young Americans had been sent to fight in Vietnam.

01:03:55 ► §

Over 30,000 had already died in this Asian misadventure,

01:04:01 ► §

a war which continued to be popular among those born before 1930 and extremely unpopular among those born after 1946.

01:04:07 ► §

Within four months of Nixon’s inauguration,

01:04:09 ► §

the American regime was feverishly waging two wars,

01:04:13 ► §

one abroad and one at home.

01:04:17 ► §

While the Air Force ran secret bombing raids in Cambodia,

01:04:21 ► §

the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, by this time certifiably senile, launched the Contel

01:04:27 ► §

Pro-Operation, infiltration and provocation of anti-war black and student groups. To avoid

01:04:35 ► §

being yanked back in prison for violation of parole, Eldridge Cleaver fled to Cuba and

01:04:40 ► §

subsequently set up the unity of political exiles in Algeria.

01:04:46 ► §

Campuses throughout the country,

01:04:50 ► §

even state old Harvard, seethed with open rebellion.

01:04:54 ► §

One Richard Kleindienst, assistant attorney general, publicly called for a campaign of repression and suppression

01:04:58 ► §

against ideological criminals.

01:05:01 ► §

That means criminal ideas.

01:05:04 ► §

There were enemies without and enemies within.

01:05:08 ► §

When the college is closed in June, Rosemary and I headed back to the ranch to review

01:05:12 ► §

and restore. The hot fashion trend that spring was teepee chic.

01:05:18 ► §

Rosemary and I erected our Art Nouveau wigwam in the blossoming apple orchard.

01:05:27 ► §

nouveau wigwam in the blossoming apple orchard. I wrote a chapter about nonviolence for a book published by Time Life and filled a notebook on the future of American politics. I was toying

01:05:33 ► §

with the idea that I might run for public office if I could stay out of prison. Who could deny that

01:05:41 ► §

the old system of republican government spelled out in Philadelphia in 1776 and in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had been outmoded by rapid transportation and instant communication?

01:06:02 ► §

in an age when the capital was no longer eight days’ ride by horse carriage from Boston or Atlanta.

01:06:06 ► §

As we moved into the era of computers and electronics,

01:06:09 ► §

intelligence rather than territory

01:06:11 ► §

was the central concern of government.

01:06:14 ► §

In the information age, the function of the state

01:06:17 ► §

was to facilitate education, communication, innovation,

01:06:21 ► §

entertainment, to raise the intelligence of the populace.

01:06:25 ► §

I jotted down a political platform that would be considered moderate

01:06:28 ► §

by 21st century standards and thought about how to publicize it.

01:06:34 ► §

One Monday morning, we woke to the barking of dogs.

01:06:38 ► §

First, the warning cries of Fang,

01:06:40 ► §

and then Finnegan, our new Australian dingo.

01:06:44 ► §

Then came the answering bays

01:06:47 ► §

of the dogs of the approaching party from the main camp.

01:06:52 ► §

Rosemary slipped into the diaphanous gown

01:06:54 ► §

made famous by G. Gordon Liddy.

01:06:57 ► §

It’s Monday, isn’t it? she said apprehensively.

01:07:01 ► §

For six months we had been awaiting the Supreme Court verdict

01:07:04 ► §

on the Laredo

01:07:05 ► §

case. Decisions came down on Monday morning. The voice of John Griggs could be heard above the din.

01:07:13 ► §

He appeared at the teepee opening with the members of the Brotherhood. They were smiling broadly.

01:07:19 ► §

We just heard it on the radio. The Supreme Court cut you loose. Nine to nothing. They ruled that the marijuana law is

01:07:25 ► §

unconstitutional. Rosemary and I looked in each other’s eyes and kissed. It was one of those great

01:07:32 ► §

moments. Someone was shouting. Down by the entrance road were three strange cars.

01:07:41 ► §

Looks like police, said John with reflex caution. It’s reporters, said Rosemary.

01:07:47 ► §

The men started walking up the slope to the teepee,

01:07:49 ► §

some carrying cases of photographic equipment.

01:07:52 ► §

ABC, CBS, NBC.

01:07:56 ► §

Rosemary and I stood in front of the teepee while the TV cameras whirled.

01:08:01 ► §

What’s your next move?

01:08:03 ► §

I’m going to run for governor of California I said

01:08:05 ► §

the reporters seemed to like the idea

01:08:08 ► §

the incumbent governor was an

01:08:10 ► §

undistinguished movie actor

01:08:12 ► §

Brezhnev type

01:08:14 ► §

hardliner who did not conceal his

01:08:16 ► §

disdain for the poor, the blacks

01:08:18 ► §

the hip, the Latinos

01:08:20 ► §

the women, the students, the liberals

01:08:22 ► §

the young and the journalists

01:08:24 ► §

his name of course was Ronald Reagan what’s your platform Latinos, the women, the students, the liberals, the young, and the journalists.

01:08:27 ► §

His name, of course, was Ronald Reagan.

01:08:30 ► §

What’s your platform going to be, said one reporter.

01:08:36 ► §

The state of California, I said, should be run like a successful business enterprise.

01:08:42 ► §

Instead of extorting taxes from the citizens, a well-run state should return a profit.

01:08:46 ► §

Anyone smart enough to live in California should be paid a dividend.

01:08:54 ► §

I handed out a three-page political program for eliminating all taxes, licensing frivolities,

01:08:58 ► §

and converting high schools, colleges, prisons into profitable institutions.

01:09:06 ► §

Direct electronic voting would replace elected representatives, leading to decentralization and more local autonomy.

01:09:13 ► §

You know, you could stir up a lot of people with these ideas, said one TV cameraman.

01:09:17 ► §

Rosemary said, yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.

01:09:23 ► §

Our euphoria was damped a bit the next day at my lawyer’s office.

01:09:26 ► §

It seemed that if the government had its way,

01:09:28 ► §

I wouldn’t be around to campaign for office.

01:09:33 ► §

I’ve been on the phone talking to the prosecutors of your cases around the country, said my lawyer.

01:09:37 ► §

Hey, they got you booked for a busy winter schedule.

01:09:40 ► §

For starters, you were such a hit in Laredo,

01:09:43 ► §

now they want you back for a repeat performance in December.

01:09:47 ► §

Laredo, I said. Hey, we won that case in the Supreme Court.

01:09:53 ► §

That’s true, but the feds have refiled on a technicality.

01:09:57 ► §

You’re going to be tried this time on the charge of transportation of marijuana,

01:10:01 ► §

specifically driving a car for a distance of 100 yards from the center

01:10:05 ► §

of the International Bridge to the customs checkpoint.

01:10:09 ► §

The maximum sentence is 20 years

01:10:11 ► §

and a $10,000 fine.

01:10:15 ► §

You’ve got to be kidding, I said.

01:10:19 ► §

And that’s just the beginning.

01:10:21 ► §

You’re billed for a personal appearance later in December

01:10:23 ► §

for the Laguna Beach

01:10:25 ► §

case. And after the first of the year, you go back to Poughkeepsie for the 11 Millbrook indictments.

01:10:32 ► §

My guess is that with local juries, you’ll be found guilty. It’s almost certain you’ll get

01:10:38 ► §

these convictions reversed in appeals court, but that may take two years. Meanwhile, they can hold you in county jail

01:10:46 ► §

without a bond.

01:10:50 ► §

So I’m facing 20 plus 10 plus 11 years

01:10:53 ► §

for a half ounce of marijuana and two roaches,

01:10:56 ► §

none of which were mine.

01:10:58 ► §

Affirmative.

01:11:00 ► §

And even if I fight the cases successfully,

01:11:03 ► §

I’ll still spend time in jail awaiting the appeal verdicts.

01:11:08 ► §

Yep, and you’ll spend plenty of money, too.

01:11:12 ► §

What’s happening is the Nixon administration

01:11:14 ► §

has announced an all-out war on drugs.

01:11:18 ► §

They know they can’t stop people from using dope,

01:11:21 ► §

so the best they can do is jail the symbol,

01:11:26 ► §

and you’re the symbol,

01:11:31 ► §

and they have this three-prong offensive moving in on you. And they can keep arresting you on phony charges whenever and wherever they want.

01:11:36 ► §

What can I do? You better run like hell to get nominated for governor.

01:11:42 ► §

Public outcry is the only protection you have.

01:11:41 ► §

to get nominated for governor.

01:11:44 ► §

Public outcry is the only protection you have.

01:11:48 ► §

There’s another direction to run, said I.

01:11:51 ► §

I’m going right down now to apply for a passport.

01:11:53 ► §

I have no intention of becoming a martyr.

01:11:57 ► §

The last weeks of 1969,

01:12:01 ► §

which were the last weeks of the decade of the 60s,

01:12:03 ► §

involved a dismal round of court appearances,

01:12:06 ► §

preliminary hearings, pre-trial motions, all draining of time, energy, and money. In December, I was retried in Laredo for the silver

01:12:12 ► §

box. If I had taken the stand and truthfully denied knowledge of the grass, I would have,

01:12:19 ► §

could have, been acquitted. My lawyers, one local and one Manhattan, seemed at a loss.

01:12:24 ► §

They waived any defense and I

01:12:25 ► §

was found guilty in 10 minutes. Don’t worry, we’ll win on appeal, said the lawyers. Next, it was back

01:12:33 ► §

to Orange County for the Two Roaches trial. Here, the problem was complicated by the fact that

01:12:39 ► §

Rosemary and Jack were clearly guilty of possessing illegal drugs. If I fought my case and won, my wife and

01:12:45 ► §

son would get hit with prison terms. If I was found guilty, then Rosemary and Jack would get

01:12:50 ► §

off their probation. Chapter 34, 24 Steps to Freedom, January 1970, Orange County, California.

01:13:02 ► §

1970, Orange County, California.

01:13:09 ► §

Personally, I find everything about courtrooms dreary and unscientific.

01:13:12 ► §

And this particular jury did not give out promising signals.

01:13:16 ► §

Orange County is the home

01:13:18 ► §

of Richard Nixon and the John Birch Society.

01:13:21 ► §

My 12 peers were sternly conservative

01:13:24 ► §

in dress and demeanor. The evidence

01:13:26 ► §

brought against me included the arresting officers’ two weather-beaten roaches and a few flakes of

01:13:32 ► §

marijuana which were vacuumed from the pocket of a jacket found in the front seat of the station wagon.

01:13:40 ► §

I could have taken a stand and denied possession of the two roaches, truthfully and perhaps convincingly.

01:13:46 ► §

By introducing the seven flakes of marijuana, the state was admitting the flimsiness of the case against me.

01:13:55 ► §

The jury came back quickly with a verdict.

01:14:00 ► §

Rosemary, Jack, and I, we were all guilty of the wizard crime, possession.

01:14:06 ► §

Then the judge pulled the shocker.

01:14:09 ► §

I was remanded to jail immediately without appeal bond.

01:14:13 ► §

Unheard of and clearly unconstitutional.

01:14:18 ► §

The shaved head of his honor glistened under the fluorescent lights

01:14:21 ► §

as he quoted from an article I had written for Playboy magazine,

01:14:27 ► §

ridiculing the marijuana laws.

01:14:35 ► §

For you, said the jailer, as the steel doors slammed shut, we throw away the keys.

01:14:41 ► §

The next day I talked with Rosemary in the visiting room, through the glass.

01:14:42 ► §

She wept.

01:14:47 ► §

The lawyers were helpless. The judge, basking in community approval, was adamant. It looked like ten years for two roaches, plus the federal

01:14:53 ► §

ten, plus the eleven Millbrook counts looming in the future. The trap had snapped shut.

01:15:01 ► §

I spent five weeks in a solitary confinement cell in the Orange County Jail awaiting sentence.

01:15:08 ► §

My term was set at ten years maximum.

01:15:11 ► §

Rosemary and Jack received probation.

01:15:14 ► §

It was a joy to be transferred to the relative freedom of state prison.

01:15:17 ► §

In contrast with a county jail, Chino Prison was a glamorous resort with access to a large yard equipped with

01:15:25 ► §

sunshine blue sky and a grassy baseball field prisoners were allowed the use of

01:15:32 ► §

handball courts and weightlifting facilities plus the precious liberty to

01:15:36 ► §

visit the library and other cell blocks

01:15:42 ► §

Chino functioned as a reception center

01:15:45 ► §

where new prisoners were tested, interviewed, and classified

01:15:49 ► §

for transfer to a long-term joint.

01:15:52 ► §

On the third day, I was ticketed to report to the psychological testing room.

01:15:57 ► §

The trustee in charge smiled apologetically.

01:16:02 ► §

Seems we got a little problem here, Doc.

01:16:04 ► §

The classification program here is based mainly on psychological tests that you developed.

01:16:11 ► §

Oh, that’ll teach me to mind my own business, I said.

01:16:14 ► §

We have to give you the test. That’s the rules.

01:16:16 ► §

Okay, let’s go.

01:16:19 ► §

Now, the test of intelligence is to get the highest possible score.

01:16:23 ► §

Now the test of intelligence is to get the highest possible score.

01:16:33 ► §

My answers to the personality tests were calculated to make me appear normal, non-impulsive, docile, conforming.

01:16:41 ► §

My vocational tests reveal aptitudes in forestry and farming, together with a hopeless incompetence in clerical tasks.

01:16:46 ► §

I was angling for a transfer to a minimum security prison where escape might be possible. It was shocking to me to discover in later months that many

01:16:53 ► §

Americans, indeed many of my liberal friends, were offended when I took the Midnight Express

01:16:59 ► §

out of prison. Why, they considered escape to be a criminal act an anti-social act more heinous than any of my crimes

01:17:06 ► §

well it just goes to show

01:17:09 ► §

how separate realities can develop

01:17:11 ► §

even among friends

01:17:12 ► §

but hey consider my situation

01:17:15 ► §

I was a 49 year old man

01:17:17 ► §

facing life in prison

01:17:18 ► §

for encouraging people to face up to new options

01:17:21 ► §

with courage and intelligence

01:17:23 ► §

the American government at that time was being run by Richard Nixon to face up to new options with courage and intelligence.

01:17:29 ► §

The American government at that time was being run by Richard Nixon,

01:17:35 ► §

Spiro Agnew, John Ehrlichman, Robert Haldeman, G. Gordon Liddy,

01:17:38 ► §

John Mitchell, J. Edgar Hoover,

01:17:42 ► §

and many other cynical flouters of the democratic process.

01:17:46 ► §

There was no question in my mind it was my duty to escape.

01:17:49 ► §

Would you have let men like these

01:17:51 ► §

keep you in prison for life for your ideas?

01:17:58 ► §

Orders soon came down transferring me

01:18:00 ► §

to the men’s colony west at San Luis Obispo.

01:18:03 ► §

In this minimum security prison,

01:18:06 ► §

all I had to face was a 15-foot barbed wire fence

01:18:09 ► §

and gun trucks manned by sharpshooters.

01:18:15 ► §

I was assigned to work mornings in the captain’s office

01:18:18 ► §

where the custody people could keep their eye on me.

01:18:24 ► §

Afternoons I devoted to physical exercise

01:18:26 ► §

in preparation for my escape,

01:18:28 ► §

weightlifting and workouts in the gym.

01:18:31 ► §

I was in the best physical shape

01:18:33 ► §

I’d been in since West Point.

01:18:38 ► §

After settling into the prison routine

01:18:40 ► §

and learning who were the snitches to avoid,

01:18:43 ► §

I sounded out some veteran convicts about escape

01:18:46 ► §

routes. There was one good possibility. From the second story roof of a cell block near mine,

01:18:53 ► §

a cable ran above the fence to a telephone pole just outside the compound. Now the floodlights

01:19:01 ► §

were all mounted below the height of the cable.

01:19:10 ► §

My advisor thought that a man pulling himself along the cable would be invisible,

01:19:13 ► §

even to the gun truck stationed about 70 feet away.

01:19:18 ► §

The problem was that nobody had ever been willing to take the risk.

01:19:24 ► §

Rosemary and I discussed the plan on the lawn during her Sunday visit.

01:19:29 ► §

She was to arrange a car to meet me out on the highway near the prison.

01:19:33 ► §

Members of the Brotherhood were eager to manage the getaway.

01:19:37 ► §

Other sympathizers offered to provide outside help,

01:19:41 ► §

train criminals who would spirit me out of the country for $25,000.

01:19:45 ► §

We went along with this tactic because these friends had connections with Cuba

01:19:48 ► §

and other third-world countries

01:19:50 ► §

where I could receive political asylum.

01:19:55 ► §

The escape had to be postponed for five months.

01:19:58 ► §

My advisors urged that I wait until the September fogs.

01:20:02 ► §

One of my convict mentors insisted that I wait until he got paroled,

01:20:07 ► §

fearing that he’d be blamed

01:20:08 ► §

if I took the red-eye special.

01:20:11 ► §

So Rosemary lined up a job for him on the outside

01:20:13 ► §

to accelerate his parole.

01:20:17 ► §

Rosemary, by the way,

01:20:19 ► §

was totally committed to my release,

01:20:21 ► §

working tirelessly with lawyers,

01:20:23 ► §

journalists, politicians.

01:20:29 ► §

She was there every visiting day bringing messages. One of Rosemary’s tasks in preparing for the escape was to pack up our personal belongings at the

01:20:33 ► §

Berkeley house. The main problem was what to do with the 20 filing cabinets

01:20:39 ► §

containing my archives from kindergarten to the present. There was some fear that

01:20:44 ► §

the government might seize both the house and the records.

01:20:48 ► §

Saturday morning, September 12, 1970,

01:20:51 ► §

my cellmate Angelo woke me at 10.

01:20:55 ► §

I sprang to the window to see soft, gray, lovely clouds,

01:21:00 ► §

my security blanket.

01:21:02 ► §

Good weather for a night flight.

01:21:05 ► §

Angelo complained,

01:21:06 ► §

Fucking clouds, we won’t be able to see our wives on the lawn tomorrow.

01:21:12 ► §

I lay in bed shuffling the 24 escape cards.

01:21:16 ► §

One, moonless night.

01:21:18 ► §

Two, fog.

01:21:21 ► §

Three, a Saturday night.

01:21:23 ► §

Wait until the parole car returns from the CMC East with a snack bar trustees around 8.30.

01:21:30 ► §

Four.

01:21:31 ► §

Paint white trim on sneakers black.

01:21:34 ► §

Five.

01:21:35 ► §

Write farewell note and leave in locker.

01:21:37 ► §

Six.

01:21:38 ► §

Leave cell block before or after the 9 o’clock break.

01:21:42 ► §

When prisoners flood the hallway.

01:21:45 ► §

Seven. before or after the 9 o’clock break, when prisoners flood the hallway. Seven, wait until the central corridor is empty

01:21:48 ► §

or all prisoners are walking with their back to the side door.

01:21:54 ► §

Eight, slip outside door and walk to the tree.

01:21:57 ► §

Five seconds.

01:21:59 ► §

Nine, climb tree.

01:22:02 ► §

Five seconds.

01:22:04 ► §

Ten, leap to roof, silently.

01:22:08 ► §

Eleven, remove sneakers.

01:22:11 ► §

Twelve, lie down on roof to check locations of guards and patrol cars.

01:22:18 ► §

Thirteen, if seen, be prepared to make a desperate break.

01:22:24 ► §

Fourteen, crawl along the roof of the connecting corridor to cell block 324.

01:22:30 ► §

Sixty seconds.

01:22:32 ► §

Fifteen, creep to the end of the roof of 324, avoiding the TV antenna wires.

01:22:37 ► §

Sixty seconds.

01:22:39 ► §

Sixteen, put on sneakers and handball gloves.

01:22:44 ► §

Seventeen, wrap hands and feet around the cable and pull self across.

01:22:49 ► §

90 seconds.

01:22:50 ► §

18. Slide down pole on the other side of fence.

01:22:54 ► §

5 seconds.

01:22:55 ► §

19. Climb down bank and cross outer perimeter, avoiding barracks.

01:23:01 ► §

Be alert for the fire watch.

01:23:03 ► §

To reach highway, 4 minutes.

01:23:08 ► §

barracks. Be alert for the fire watch. To reach highway, four minutes. Twenty, run half mile north along highway one to turn off with three trees. Four minutes. Twenty-one, wait for a pickup car

01:23:17 ► §

with right blinker flashing. Twenty-two, my contact is Kelly. My name is Nino. Twenty-three,

01:23:21 ► §

My contact is Kelly My name is Nino

01:23:23 ► §

23

01:23:24 ► §

Flee the country

01:23:26 ► §

24

01:23:27 ► §

Live happily ever after

01:23:29 ► §

At two o’clock in the afternoon

01:23:35 ► §

The sun broke through

01:23:36 ► §

But friendly clouds were waiting off the coast

01:23:39 ► §

I paced the yard

01:23:41 ► §

Counting out seconds

01:23:42 ► §

Rehearsing

01:23:43 ► §

Four minutes to the highway Four four minutes to the three trees.

01:23:47 ► §

I joined the line for early chow, my last supper on metal plates.

01:23:53 ► §

Back to the cell block, where I sat in a darkened TV room

01:23:56 ► §

watching the Stanford-Arkansas football game.

01:24:02 ► §

I lay in my bunk for the five o’clock count.

01:24:05 ► §

The seconds were moving fast now.

01:24:07 ► §

The count clear whistle sounded, tramping feet to chow.

01:24:11 ► §

Combing his hair, Angelo said.

01:24:13 ► §

Coming to dinner?

01:24:14 ► §

I ate on the early line, I said.

01:24:18 ► §

Waiting for the cell block to clear.

01:24:21 ► §

Now, I moved to my locker,

01:24:23 ► §

ripped white laces from sneakers and rethreaded them brown.

01:24:27 ► §

Crouched facing the locker, newspaper in my lap, unscrewed the black paint tube,

01:24:32 ► §

squished pigment over white striping on sneakers. Steps, jangle of guard keys,

01:24:39 ► §

shoved shoes back in locker. Waiting, guard gone Sweaty hands black from spearing pigment on smooth rubber.

01:24:48 ► §

Put on hand gloves. Brushed black on backs. Paint leaking onto hands. Toss gloves in locker to dry

01:24:55 ► §

and shut door. I scrubbed my hands with a coarse bristle brush and mopped paint off the floor with a towel. I stowed the towel and the brush under the mattress.

01:25:13 ► §

The count clear whistle sounded again at 8.30. Angelo split to play bridge.

01:25:23 ► §

Now, put on black sneakers, dark blue denim jacket, eyeglasses. I shoved her letters, prison ID, and meditation beads in pocket.

01:25:28 ► §

Now it was time. I walked to the end of the cell block, out to the corridor, praying the

01:25:36 ► §

coast was clear. Uh-oh, two cons watched me pass. I went up the hallway and you turned back. They were still watching me. I went

01:25:48 ► §

on beyond them around the corner casually and made a pass to a neighboring cell block.

01:25:53 ► §

I stood indecisive. I’m trapped. The clock is moving. Have to hurry or I’ll miss the highway pickup. It’s suspicious standing.

01:26:06 ► §

Down the hall again.

01:26:07 ► §

Look left.

01:26:10 ► §

God damn it.

01:26:11 ► §

Two cons still there.

01:26:14 ► §

Kept moving along the side corridor.

01:26:15 ► §

Circle back.

01:26:18 ► §

Time is wasting.

01:26:19 ► §

Hit corner.

01:26:20 ► §

They’re gone.

01:26:22 ► §

Move towards side door.

01:26:23 ► §

Look right.

01:26:26 ► §

Inside the cell block, three cons were talking.

01:26:27 ► §

Shit!

01:26:29 ► §

One is Metcalf, a snitch.

01:26:31 ► §

They felt my hesitation.

01:26:32 ► §

They looked up.

01:26:33 ► §

I walked on.

01:26:34 ► §

You turn.

01:26:37 ► §

I gotta bluff it through.

01:26:42 ► §

If I move smoothly to the door, maybe I’ll be invisible. At the last second before reaching the door handle, I flicked a

01:26:45 ► §

glance to the cell block. Three heads turned to look. Shit. I walked past the side door.

01:26:53 ► §

Blew it. Should have slipped through. I turned north. There’s another door to the exercise yard

01:27:01 ► §

down the corridor. I would have to walk across the yard.

01:27:05 ► §

Walk across the yard at night?

01:27:09 ► §

Hey, it’s strictly off limits.

01:27:11 ► §

If seen, they’ll sound the alarm.

01:27:14 ► §

I took a deep breath and opened the door

01:27:17 ► §

and walked onto the prison yard, lit by floodlights.

01:27:21 ► §

No one walks the yard in the dead of night, not even the guards. I stood in front of

01:27:28 ► §

the tree, directly in front of a window. God damn it. Inside, facing the window, is Metcalfe,

01:27:35 ► §

braying at two cons. How can I climb the tree two feet in front of the snitch?

01:27:49 ► §

snitch. I sat on the steps. I was exposed by the spotlight. If a guard saw me, I’d get my ass busted with blackened handball gloves in my pocket and farewell notes in my locker.

01:27:58 ► §

Time froze. I watched the glistening leaves and listened to the muffled sounds of Metcalf’s voice.

01:28:07 ► §

Well, it was now or never.

01:28:10 ► §

Now, I walked to the tree.

01:28:13 ► §

I’d have to climb right in front of Metcalf.

01:28:14 ► §

So what?

01:28:18 ► §

It would take a few minutes to sound the alarm and another five minutes for the two-man gun trucks to get on the road.

01:28:21 ► §

Metcalf’s voice boomed goodnight.

01:28:23 ► §

He turned away from the window.

01:28:26 ► §

Then, my neurology shifted into some ancient, dreamy survival pattern. I grabbed a branch, wrapped a foot around it, swung upward,

01:28:34 ► §

foot, hand, foot, hand, balanced on a drooping branch, leaned across the void, and dropped

01:28:40 ► §

forefoot onto the roof of the connecting corridor. I sat quietly on the tar-papered slant,

01:28:46 ► §

listening to voices and the trampling in the hallway below.

01:28:50 ► §

Now I could look over the entire prison,

01:28:53 ► §

across to the custody office, where guards were lounging.

01:28:57 ► §

In the shadows, above the searchlights,

01:29:00 ► §

I was a forest creature scanning the camp of humans.

01:29:05 ► §

I crept along the roof to the end of the corridor,

01:29:08 ► §

climbed up the ridge and down to the roof of 324.

01:29:12 ► §

I bumped into the TV antenna wires.

01:29:15 ► §

I froze.

01:29:17 ► §

I could look down at either side into neighboring cell blocks.

01:29:22 ► §

My silhouette was exposed against the sky.

01:29:21 ► §

into neighboring cell blocks.

01:29:24 ► §

My silhouette was exposed against the sky.

01:29:31 ► §

At the end of the roof, I could see over the fence to lights on the highway below.

01:29:34 ► §

I pulled on the handball gloves

01:29:36 ► §

and lay on the angled roof just under the cable.

01:29:39 ► §

I hooked my ankles over the wire,

01:29:41 ► §

reached out my hands, and pulled out headfirst.

01:29:46 ► §

It was hard going.

01:29:48 ► §

Every ten inches there was a loop that held the telephone cord below the cable.

01:29:52 ► §

My legs bumped and tangled in the cord.

01:29:56 ► §

Easy sweeping pulls were impossible.

01:29:58 ► §

I had to reach, then wrench ten inches.

01:30:02 ► §

Hands out, pull body, haul legs, 10 inches. The cable bounced

01:30:09 ► §

and swung. It was a strain to hang on. Weird wrestling motions, my body swinging, clinging

01:30:16 ► §

to the swaying wire, sweating, heaving awkwardly. After 50 pulls, a pause. A horrid discovery. I was completely exhausted. Lungs

01:30:31 ► §

gasping, arms drained, body limp and weak. I can’t go another foot. I’m only one-third

01:30:38 ► §

across the wire. I haven’t even reached the road. Exha exhausted. My hands can’t hold the weight of my body.

01:30:47 ► §

With desperate sexual writhing, I embrace the cable with my elbows and knees and rest it.

01:30:54 ► §

The cable swinging slowed.

01:30:57 ► §

Then came the nightmare thoughts.

01:31:01 ► §

Well, what are you doing this time, Professor?

01:31:04 ► §

Inefficient wizard dangling 20 feet high in full view of two gun trucks.

01:31:11 ► §

I would say that once again the little experiment has gotten out of hand, Professor.

01:31:18 ► §

The interior light snapped on in the nearest gun truck.

01:31:22 ► §

Uh-oh, he’s seen me.

01:31:23 ► §

He’s going to put out the light now to

01:31:25 ► §

sound the alarm. The word is flashing. I waited for patrol cars to scream up. Will they poke

01:31:32 ► §

me down like a wild raccoon with sticks? I squirm forward again, five more wrenching

01:31:39 ► §

feet. Stop. Wrists and arms exhausted. Panting. God damn it, I should have quit smoking. I should have pumped more iron. It had seemed so easy.

01:31:51 ► §

Well, now I knew why no cons had escaped this way. It was fucking Olympic gymnastics up there in the highway on the gun sites.

01:32:01 ► §

I should have waited until the winter fog.

01:32:06 ► §

Maybe the cable strung temptingly over the fence was a trap.

01:32:09 ► §

Maybe the hunters were waiting in trucks,

01:32:11 ► §

rifles cradled on knees.

01:32:18 ► §

With a desperate lunge, I pulled my body along in clumsy crab motions.

01:32:20 ► §

I stopped to rest.

01:32:24 ► §

I could look back down into rooms where cons were watching television.

01:32:29 ► §

A sudden glare of light.

01:32:34 ► §

Forty feet away, a patrol car turned from the compound road towards me.

01:32:36 ► §

Shit, I’m caught.

01:32:39 ► §

The car rolled closer, crunching gravel.

01:32:43 ► §

My denim arms turned lavender in the headlight.

01:32:46 ► §

The driver leaned over to crush a cigarette in the ashtray.

01:32:48 ► §

The car passed under me and disappeared.

01:32:54 ► §

Now, I tumbled into some sort of delirium.

01:32:59 ► §

Arms crossed, I inched along the wire like a caterpillar, my mind fixed on reaching the fence,

01:33:02 ► §

so I’d fall to freedom outside the perimeter.

01:33:05 ► §

My hand kept getting tangled in the phone wire loops.

01:33:09 ► §

A compulsive wrench to free my hand set the cable bouncing wildly.

01:33:14 ► §

Mouth gasping, face bulging, glasses dripping, sweat twisted.

01:33:19 ► §

I wanted Errol Flynn and out came Harold Lloyd.

01:33:24 ► §

I felt very alone.

01:33:27 ► §

49 years and 325 days of my life built up to this ordeal.

01:33:33 ► §

There was no fear, only a nagging embarrassment.

01:33:38 ► §

Such an undignified way to die, nailed like a sloth on a branch.

01:33:44 ► §

Hey, no more thoughts. From some inner reservoir came

01:33:51 ► §

live, survive, a flow of energy and a curious erotic lightness. Neck arching, shoulders thrusting, body wiggling, legs kicking, shoulders pushing, propelled by uterine

01:34:08 ► §

squeeze. My glasses fell, but my arms smoothly reeled cable. Thus I budded, head first, sweating,

01:34:18 ► §

wet, into a new life. Hand over hand till my fingers hit the pole. Hanging by my legs, I practiced it a thousand

01:34:27 ► §

times in my bunk. I reached and grabbed the spike on the pole, dropped my body, wrapped legs round

01:34:34 ► §

the splintery wood, slid down, down. My exultant feet had liberated ground. Free.

01:34:41 ► §

the ground. Free!

01:34:49 ► §

You’re listening to the Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:34:52 ► §

Freedom. Freedom. But, of course, now that we know the rest of the story, we also know

01:35:00 ► §

that Leary’s new sense of freedom didn’t last very long. If some of this old, yet I guess

01:35:07 ► §

essentially modern, history of the tribe is of interest to you, then I highly recommend listening

01:35:13 ► §

to some of our earlier podcasts, particularly the ones featuring Myron Stolaroff and Gary Fisher,

01:35:19 ► §

where you can listen to some of these same stories, but from a somewhat different perspective than that of Dr.

01:35:31 ► §

Leary. But all in all, they all seem to agree on the basic facts of what went down, even though the many participants in these early dramas may have different interpretations of them.

01:35:37 ► §

Now before I go today, I want to give a shout out to Arrowid, and that’s E-R-O-W-I-D dot O-R-G, Arrowid dot org, which is the number

01:35:48 ► §

one place to go on the web when you’re researching psychoactive substances and the cultures that

01:35:53 ► §

surround them. I’ve known Earth and Fire and most of the Arrowid crew for quite a long time now,

01:35:59 ► §

and as always, I find them to be the most reliable and forthright source of this information that you’re going to find.

01:36:07 ► §

And so it really warmed my heart when I learned the other day that in the recent edition of Arrowwood Extracts,

01:36:13 ► §

that’s their publication that’s sent to their contributors,

01:36:18 ► §

well, they recently plugged both the upcoming Palenque Norte talks and the little MDMA documentary that I was in,

01:36:25 ► §

and is titled Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate.

01:36:30 ► §

So, hey, thanks for the plugs, you guys,

01:36:32 ► §

and thanks again for the great work that you’ve undertaken.

01:36:35 ► §

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:36:39 ► §

Be well, my friends.