Sunday, November 01, 2009

Dick Cheney On Acid

I suppose it was a coincidence that both the National Geographic and Discovery Channels broadcast back to back documentaries about the CIA's experiments in mind control on successive nights. There was nothing new that had not been previously revealed during the Church Committee Congressional hearings of 1975, where the entire ghoulish laundry list of CIA abuses was unfurled before the public, but one inadvertent piece of evidence made my jaw drop. Both shows focused on the CIA's MK ULTRA program, begun in the fifties, which examined the effects of LSD on subjects both witting and unwitting, in an attempt to create new ways to brainwash potential adversaries. Among the early volunteers for the program was Stanford University student Ken Kesey. The whole sordid story is easily researched online or in library, but here's the short version.

In 1953, the CIA killed one of their own and covered it up. An agency biochemist named Frank Olson, who was critical of the program, was surreptitiously given a large dose of Lysergic Acid in his coffee by fellow agents and observed through a two-way mirror. Soon, Olson was debating the weather on Mount Olympus with Zeus and had a severe psychotic break which required sedation and observation by CIA doctors. Claiming Olson was suicidal, he was secretly checked into a tenth floor New York hotel room to be supervised by an agent entrusted with his care, but before morning, the chemist allegedly leaped from a window to his death while his trustee slept. The CIA declared it a suicide. After Senator Frank Church's committee determined that Olson was a forced participant in the CIA's LSD experiments, his family filed a civil suit against the U.S. Government for wrongful death. President Gerald Ford invited the Olson family to the White House and convinced them, for reasons of national security, not to pursue the case. This is where my eyes widened, since this was not a new film, nor one with a political purpose. The official, contractual papers were shown where the family agreed to settle with the government for $7000 (Seven Thousand Dollars). The author of the deal and the signatory for the United States was the president's Chief of Staff, Richard Cheney.

When someone says "Cheney knows where all the bodies are buried," they are not speaking figuratively. Dirty Dick has been covering up for the CIA's illegal nastiness since the seventies. No wonder he was able to go to Langley as Vice President and rifle through the files with impunity to cook the intelligence for the Iraq War buildup. They owe him, and his access goes back to the Nixon years when he coat-tailed his pal Donald Rumsfeld into the White House. Under Gerald Ford, Cheney and Rumsfeld staged what became known as the "Halloween Massacre," usurping the powers of Nixon holdovers Henry Kissinger and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to become Ford's Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense, respectively. From his new position of power, Cheney urged Ford not to cooperate with the Church Committee, arguing that airing the CIA atrocities could only damage the intelligence community. And when the terrible truths became public testimony, Cheney and Rumsfeld engineered the ouster of acting CIA Director William Colby, and had him replaced with George H.W. "Poppy" Bush. The Secret Service's codename for Cheney was "Backseat."

And what a putrid list of illegal activities it was that Cheney wished to protect. From the assassination attempts; Lumumba in the Congo, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers in Vietnam, and the Mafia sub-contract to kill Castro; to the domestic spying and infiltration of the peace movement; to attempts to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King and destroy the Black Panther movement, the CIA was so blatantly beyond the law that congress passed legislation to reign them in. The FISA laws (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) came from the Church Committee recommendations, a law that Cheney obviously disdained then as now. When Ford lost the presidency, with Cheney as his campaign manager, to Jimmy Carter in 1976, the Wyoming native ran for Congress in 1978, serving as the Republican leader on the House Intelligence Committee before "Poppy" Bush tapped him as his Secretary of Defense for payback.

In exile at Halliburton during the Clinton years, Dick Cheney enriched himself as Chairman and CEO of the international conglomerate until the uncanny opportunity presented itself for him to screen the Vice Presidential prospects for "Poppy's" clueless boy Georgie's new administration. We know how Cheney spent the next eight years, trying to revive the Nixon presidency and attempting to concentrate power in the Executive Branch. CIA director George Tenant genuflected before him and Cheney became the de-facto head of government and chief protector of manipulated intelligence. He invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, Halliburton and KBR became bloated with war profits, and the CIA was marginalized by the mercenaries from Blackwater. His understudy, Scooter Libby, pleaded guilty to outing a covert agent, and George Tenant was given the Medal of Honor. Everything he warned of or predicted, from the spectre of mushroom clouds to the effectiveness of state sanctioned torture, has been proven dead wrong; yet he still has the temerity to stick around the Capitol like the ghost of Strom Thurmond, and criticize the military strategy of Secretary Gates and the President.

I believe Cheney is hanging around just to scream "National Security!" if any legal entity should dig too deeply into his resume. Anyone who places a value on the life of an intelligence agent who died in service to his country at $7000, has no qualms about exposing the identity of an undercover CIA analyst who crossed him over the veracity of reports that advanced his imperialist agenda. In 1994, the family of Frank Olson requested an exhumation of the body for further examination. A new autopsy showed that Olson suffered "severe cranial injuries delivered by a blunt object," and was most likely "knocked out" before being tossed from the window. Since Dick Cheney was intimately familiar with the case and prepared the original settlement, and considering his influence with the CIA was sufficient to put his man "Poppy" in the directorship, why do I get the nagging suspicion that he knew about Olson all along and bought his family off with pennies and patriotism? Now that his multi-year, century spanning, executive office-holding marathon is over, there is only one additional governmental agency that Dick Cheney truly deserves to be a part of; the Federal prison system.

11 comments:

JimBob said...

There are some vague connections here, but I still think the entire Nixon Administration was on acid.

Anonymous said...

Amen.

Anonymous said...

Either the whole Nixon administration was on acid or I was on acid for the whole Nixon administration. I forget.

Alan said...

So you think there can be conspiracies at high levels of the government that can control and do illegal actions. Do you also only think it can happen from the right and not also from the left? What is the old quote "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Keep your mind and opinions open and don’t be caught up in the moment!

Leon said...

Dear Randy,
Thank you for your revealing article about the past abuses at the CIA. We always take a personal interest when a private citizen speaks publicly about the Agency, and you can be assured that your objections will be noted.

We'll try to do better in the future and look forward to your continued correspondence.

Sincerely Yours,

Leon Panetta
Langley, VA

Unk G. said...

While I admire and respect Leon Panetta, it seems "spooky" that the CIA would be reading your blog.

Unknown said...

Um, Unk, that might not have really been Leon Pannetta. Don't take the brown acid any more, okay?

Anonymous said...

You can get the inside skinny on MK-ULTRA and everything else you ever wanted to know about LSD from 'Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History Of LSD, The CIA, The Sixties, And Beyond' by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain. Another great book on the subject is 'Storming Heaven: LSD And The American Dream' by Jay Stevens. By the way, what is so bad about trashing the Black Panther movement? If you are in political bed with those animals, then the CIA and a good shrink should be checking you out. By the way, why don't you turn your x-ray vision on Obama and all of his extremely far left, Marxist, whacko czars. I am sure that if you were to get to the bottom of what they are all about, like the overthrow of America, you would really raise some eyebrows. You are naieve, Randy. There have been a lot of seedy, underhanded things perpetrated by both political parties over the years. Anyone who is overly trusting of either political party needs a reality check. These days, building and maintaining nations is not for the overly scrupulous or namby pambies. It is hardball and likely to make the likes of you and your kind sqeamish. I am not making excuses for underhanded dealings, but that is why most men of true integrity avoid political involvement. You have to be able to lie like a dog and make unconscionable compromises amongst lot of other less than righteous things. If you were to put all of the integrity of Congress in one man he would be the equivalent of Charles Manson. Our government is criminal and both parties are involved. Unfortunately for us, the Founding Fathers (whom I feel sure that you loathe) said that our Constitution would not protect the freedom of an immoral people. An immoral people are fit only for tyranny...which is what we are coming to. First, they are bound within by their own corruption, then they are bound by tyrants from without. The election of Obama and the far left to office is proof of this. Just wait till they get through with us. You won't recognize America. But then he did say that he was going to fundamentally transform it. The folks just didn't know that he was going to overthrow free, self-ruling, free-market America, and replace it with something closer to the USSR. Wait and see. Even the likes of you will soon have to admit to the truth of all of this. But then I suspect that that is what you want. Your Marxist views are hard to conceal. I just hope that you are not too strung out on freedom, because that is swifty becoming a thing of the past...wait and see.

Anonymous said...

Today, Nov. 3, is a portent of what is to come in Nov. 2010. The 'sleeping giant' has been awakened, is organizing, and is going to rid Congress and ultimately the White House of the Marxists and subversives who are dismantling America and morphing it into the USSR...actually something even worse. Obama has surrounded himself with some of the most immoral and scurrilous characters imaginable. His czars are reminiscent of a scene from the Island of Dr. Moreau...freaks, perverts, and totalitarians of the worst kind, and that is putting it mildly. Actually, I believe that some of them may be practicing Satanists. Real Americans will vanquish the Bolsheviks and take the country back. Then they will go after the supreme shyster, shape-shifter, liar extraordinaire, communist, atheist, and abomination of desolation Barack Hussein Obama...mmmm,mmmm,mmmm. He will be consigned to the trash heap of history to which he belongs, and will remain an example to all clear thinking Americans of the dangers inherent in the election of someone just to atone for our past sins. 'Sweet Willie Wine' couldn't have been any more incompetent. At least he would have had more humility, probably more veracity, and would be capable of expressing his own thoughts without having them scripted by someone else and read from a teleprompter. Surely none of you voted for this clown. I feel that most of you would have more intelligence and integrity than to do such damage to your own country.

Anonymous said...

A good commentary on the recently passed Obama/Pelosi Health Care Bill : http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/16636
Why do you folks feel that deconstructing America (the world's last best hope) and converting it into a Marxist state is so wonderful? Are you so dependent on the nanny state that you find freedom a threat? Freedom produces inequality. Therefore, are you so covetous that you can't bear the sight of someone who has made more of himself than you or who may have more than you? Are you aware at all of where Marxism leads to? Slaughter and slavery and control of every facet of life. Why would you chose such a prospect for yourselves and your children? It is ok for you to have a death wish, but must you impose that death wish on the entire country? In your naievity you think that this has been over-stated, but just wait and see. What happened to Cuba, Venezuela (the mass killing hasn't started there, but just wait and see) and every other country that has become Marxist? Is America so horrible that you feel it must be consigned to death?

Anonymous said...

Or, you can read the two recommended books on acid and learn just about ALL there is to know about LSD from its synthesis by Dr. Hoffmann through the course of the whole phenonenon. Together, the books tell the whole story of psychedelia and the hippie movement from the standpoint of LSD. Another interesting read on the subject is the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. This book is about the original Southern California biker gang that grew into the largest world-wide web of LSD (also weed, etc.) distribution. They worked out of Laguna Beach, Ca. from a New Age paraphenalia shop. They were very close to Leary and had a number of underground chemists throughout the world manufacturing the stuff for global distribution. Just think, much if not most of the acid that we took back in the day came from these guys.