Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

[American Dream]

"Great" Moments in LSD Research

From Storming Heaven, by Jay Stephens:

By the early Fifties there were a dozen pockets of LSD research
around the country. Most followed Rinkel's work with model psychoses,
although a few confined themselves to animal toxicology studies, and
at least one was pursuing Sandoz's other suggestion and using LSD in a
therapeutic setting. But all were impressed by the drug's sheer power
and the astonishing effects it produced, not just in normal folks, but
in crazy people as well. Startling things happened when you gave LSD
to mental patients. One catatonic took the drug and three and a half
hours later began bouncing around the ward, laughing uproariously. In
the afternoon she played basketball. That night she danced. But the
next morning she was her old catatonic self again. Or there was the
case of the hebrephenic schizophrenic that usually spent her days
giggling and chattering inanities about the birds and the flowers.

Thirty minutes after receiving 100 micrograms of LSD she became dead
serious, all the laughter gone from her voice. "This is serious
business," she told her ward doctor. "We are pathetic people. Don't
play with us." Later she assaulted the hospital aides and made sexual
overtures to the chief nurse.

[American Dream]

http://www.umsl.edu/~thomaskp/nother.htm

Beats

by Adam Gorightly

On another note, there are those who would suggest that the Beat Movement was part of a grand conspiracy; and the Beats themselves unwitting pawns in this game. In one of his many broadsheets self-published over the years, Kerry Thornley once posited this theory, without actually elaborating on exactly what this conspiracy entailed. Perhaps what Thornley was alluding to is the same theme found in Todd Brendan Fahey's Wisdom's Maw, which suggests that Ken Kesey as well as the Beats were part of an elaborate scheme concocted by the American Intelligence Community to infiltrate and supply the sixties counterculture with mind altering drugs, ostensibly to test their reactions, and--long range--to influence widespread social control. Theoretically, this was all conducted under the covert auspices of such infamous CIA mind control projects as Artichoke and MK-ULTRA. Such countercultural icons as Kesey and Leary--Fahey suggests--were chosen by the CIA and Military Intelligence as facilitators of this grand experiment, whose powerful side effects are still lingering to this day in the collective craniums of it's unwitting participants.

Kerouac--toward the tail-end of this life--was also of the impression that the sixties counterculture had been co-opted by sinister forces. Soddened by liquor, and dismayed by what he felt was the unpatriotic posture assumed by these long haired freaks (who, adding insult to injury, had credited his books for their hippie dippie philosophy) Kerouac feared a Communist Conspiracy was behind the tumultuous events of that era. One also gets the impression in later comments that he believed the Jews played a part in these behind the scenes manipulations. Kerouac--one of the more open-minded and tolerant souls of his generation--by the end of the sixties had turned into a slurring, often incoherent, commie bashing rummy, whose literary output dwindled as his intake of hard liquor increased. The last thing Kerouac wrote before his death was a screed directed at the hippies and the anti-war movement entitled, "After Me, the Deluge."

In a poem dedicated to his passing, Gregory Corso compared Kerouac's destruction by alcohol to the disastrous effects that Fire Water had exacted upon the Native American culture. This in retrospect is a fitting metaphor. The same forces that nearly drove the America Indian to extinction, were in fact the same powers that delivered Kerouac to an early grave. He drank for the same reasons the Indians did; to bury the pain, and to escape from the tragedy of a self-destructive civilization teetering on the edge of ruin.

Ginsberg, on the other hand, passionately embraced the sixties counterculture, growing long his hair and beard, donning lovebeads, and participating in love-ins, acid tests and anti-war demonstrations. At the outset of the decade, he participated in Tim Leary's psilocybin research at Harvard. On the momentous night of November 26, 1960, Ginsberg received a vision from on high instructing the mad poet that he would be The Messiah to herald in a psychedelic revolution. Under Leary's supportive guidance--and 36 milligrams of psilocybin--Ginsberg wandered downstairs naked, determined to alert the world's leaders that a new epoch was at hand: Instead of nuclear mushroom clouds, mushrooms of an entirely different nature would intervene, bringing love and illumination to a world on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Ginsberg got on the phone and started placing calls to the Kremlin and White House, identifying himself to the telephone operator as God (he spelled it out for her, G-O-D). Unsuccessful in his attempts to reach Kennedy or Kruschev, Ginsberg got ahold of Kerouac and informed The King o' the Beats that: "I am high and naked and I am King of the Universe. Get on a plane. It is time!" It was the wish of both Leary and Ginsberg that the world's leaders get together in a United Nations type setting, and drop psilocybin all at one time. This, they agreed, would cause "...Everyone to plug in at once and announce the Coming Union of All Consciousness."

This wasn't the first time Ginsberg had attained a mystical state under the influence of mind altering drugs. But in the company of Dr. Leary a great plan started to form--in Ginsberg's mushrooming mind--of a psychedelic revolution, with the likes of Leary and himself leading the charge, spearheading a mass movement that would transform the planet, sending spores around the world. Leary, later on, turned on Kerouac and Burroughs, as well, though each had mixed emotions regarding their respective experiences. Ken Kesey, with his own huge stash of Owsley manufactured LSD, shared the same chemical illumination with Neal Cassady. Whether or not Leary and Kesey were witting members of the aforementioned MK-ULTRA mind control programs, we may never positively ascertain, though their respective participations in LSD proliferation were monumental in promoting the sixties psychedelic scene.

Ginsberg first became acquainted with LSD in 1959, through government sponsored research at the Menlo Research Institute in Palo Alto. Kesey and Jerry Garcia were also early volunteers for these mind-bending experiments, which many connect directly to MK-ULTRA. This before the term psychedelic was in the popular lexicon. At this time psychedelics were referred to as 'psychomimetic' drugs; drugs that reportedly brought about temporary psychosis. Kesey and the other adventurous souls who volunteered their brains for science received 75 dollars a day. Due to a bad trip courtesy of the Menlo Research Institute, Ginsberg composed a poem under the influence of LSD, aptly titled, "Lysergic Acid" of which the following is an excerpt: It is a multiple million eyed monster it is hidden in all it's elephants and selves it hummeth in the electric typewriter it is electricity connected to itself, if it hath wires it is a vast Spiderweb... I, as well, have beheld this multiple million eyed monster, hidden--as it is--in all elephants and selves. Like Ginsberg, acid brought about this nightmarish vision, on the full-size Technicolor viewing screen behind my closed eyelids. Whether or not this monstrous, Bosch-like archetype is inherent exclusively to practitioners of Guerrilla Khundalini, I can not authoritatively address. Nevertheless, I find it interesting that Ginsberg's description of this demonic entity--viewed under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide--matches almost perfectly my own temporary psychedelic psychosis, producing what would appear to be a shared thematic experience linking the drug experimentation of the Beat subculture with my own generation of Guerrilla Khundalini adepts, forming--one might conjecture--a metaphysical conspiracy that bridges generations; that of a religion of elitists waving no particular banner (except maybe, a "freak flag"), dedicated to the principle of discovering "GOD" on their own terms, without benefit of a mediating agency, or dogmatic agenda. Robert Anton Wilson summed it up best in his intro to Cosmic Trigger when categorizing this new age of holy mad men:

"We are all evolving into the use of new neurological circuits, which will make us superhuman in comparison to our present average state. The activation of these new circuits creates a great deal of temporary weirdness until we learn to use them properly..."

This concept of 'evolving...new neurological circuits' (or whatever you want to call it) is not something entirely novel to the human experience. This neurological expansion of consciousness--which opens the figurative "door of perception"--has long been ajar, allowing only an initiated few to glimpse through it's cosmic crack. The Beats just pushed the door open further, placing their New Vision more prominently before the masses, albeit projected through the distorted lens of The Media. What followed a decade later totally blew "the door" off it's hinges, with the subsequent psychedelic/neurological revolution fostered by the likes of such sixties luminaries as Kesey, Leary, R.A. Wilson, and more recently, The Brothers McKenna.

While some might find my personal multiple-million-eyed-monster-made-manifest-by-LSD experience--this so-called "bridge between generations"--a bit tenuous, a more obvious and enduring case could be made for Cassady, who steered his karmic wheel across two cultural phenomenons, starting on the road with Kerouac in the late forties/early fifties in his role as the infant terrible of the Beats, and then later in the mid-sixties with Kesey and the Pranksters, as the elder statesman of lunatic psychedelia. These respective pilgrimages set the tone for what was to follow, first with the Beat Movement, then afterwards with the sixties counterculture. Both of these movements exhibited religious attributes and inward yearnings that led to mass societal movements, though admittedly short-lived in a wide spread sense.

Delving even deeper into this line of reasoning, another obvious link connecting countercultural movements was the tragic figure of Bill Cannastra, who actualized the punk ethic a quarter of a century before it's pierced nipple metamorph. An intimate of Kerouac's, Cannastra--known for dancing naked to Bach fugues on shattered glass--was another model of life teetering on the edge; a practitioner of self abuse and suicidal tendencies. A law school dropout, he spearheaded a core group of "subterraneans" as Kerouac would later dub them. This New York school of societal misfits often gathered for drunken all night debaucheries at Cannastra's infamous downtown loft, gutted as it was of any semblance of rational decor, littered with broken records, stained mattresses, and slashed car seats. In this manner, the "Church of Bill" served as an early blueprint of the Punk ethic. As a character in John Clellon Holmes' Go, rhapsodized,"Don't you know that people who can't believe in anything else always believe in Bill?"

In nothing less than the dramatic fashion Cannastra conducted his life, with equal theatrics it ended. In 1950 The Church of Bill officially closed it's doors for good when it's unholy architect attempted to climb out of a subway window as it was leaving a New York train station and was immediately, and ceremoniously decapitated. Thus brought the physical manifestation of the Church of Bill to a grand and grisly finale.

* * *

Situating himself in the company of intellectual bohemians, Neal Cassady's sparkling intellect burned with primal intensity, dedicated as he was to living in the Now. Unfortunately--in a world of everyday responsibilities--some suffered needlessly due to Neal's psychotic spur of the moment recklessness. What with his unbridled libido and voracious appetite for speed, both chemical and automotive, he left in his wake a slew of ruined relationships and demolished cars, with dirty bandage wrappings dangling from his thumb. But I think it was this primal energy that so enraptured the imaginations of Kerouac, Ginsberg, et al. As Ken Kesey once upon a moment of clarity stated, "I saw that Cassady did everything a novel does, except that he did it better because he was living it and not writing about it."

When he first crossed Cassady's off-centered path, Kesey was considered one of the up and coming talents on the American literary scene. Having experienced critical acclaim and success with One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey's second novel Sometimes a Great Notion, was released soon after. Many found it unusual then, that--after these two early triumphs--his next work of fiction was decades in the making. It was as if he'd put a hold to his literary career to follow the lead of Cassady, by turning his life into a novel, which is exactly what it became with the release of Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, detailing the zany antics of Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, with Sir Speed Limit--as Cassady was called in later years--at the helm of Intrepid.

The Pranksters themselves felt as if they were tuned into certain paranormal frequencies, picking up on the very same etheric energies that Cassady had so finely dialed in. Often times, when they had misplaced a certain object, at just the point in time when they needed it most, the item in question--whatever it may have been, a roach clip or wrench--would mysteriously appear, as if they had willed it into being with their collective and chemically influenced thought-waves. As a group, they also developed an uncanny ability to find things in the dark, as if their cumulative ingestion of acid had precipitated a new facility within their tuned-in heads. As Mountain Girl said of these off-the-wall abilities,"We were blind, but we had eyes in our feet. It set our heads swimming."

Literally overnight a monumental paradigm shift had swept away old worlds for new, blossoming rainbows of possibilities. LSD had lifted the veil, enabling a new way of seeing, to use the vernacular of Carlos Castaneda. For the Pranksters, Cassady was a role model of how to relate to the beautiful madness of a post-LSD world. From him, the Merry Pranksters took their lead. Quoth the cosmic clown, Wavy Gravy, "Neal was so far ahead of his time, that he'd point for those of us just struggling to be with the moment."

Neal's psychic powers manifested themselves in multifarious manners; some in the form of paranormal parlor tricks, similar to those performed by Bill Burroughs in Mexico. One such showbiz like routine of Neal's was where he'd rattle off the serial number of a dollar bill whenever anyone pulled one from their pockets. Often times he'd get the entire number correct, all ten digits. Other precognitive feats Neal consistently performed were in the form of predicting when a person would enter a room, what their gender and physical appearance would be, and what type of mission they were on. On long lonely stretches of road Neal often performed a similar feat, predicting correctly time and again the make of the next vehicle that would pass them by in the night, and any particulars regarding the vehicle, such as a missing headlight, or body damage. Another peculiar mechanization of the 'Fastestmanalive!' (as Neal was also knighted) was his legendary tossing of the hammer, a four pound sledge that he wielded with all the skill and authority of the mighty Thor. Many felt that Neal's incessant hammer tossing was some sort of holy chore, like a zen monk chanting, or a saint's meditation. But once again, these were different mystics, using different methods to initiate enlightenment. Ken Kesey--in all his unconventional wisdom--believed that whenever the sure handed Cassady dropped his hammer, it was due to bad vibrations in the room, and that Cassady had purposely dropped the hammer to break up those negative vibes. To Kesey, there were no 'accidents' as far as Cassady was concerned. Cassady drove like a maniac all his life, though never once was he ever involved in a traffic accident. Many ascribed this good fortune to his remarkable relationship with time, able to live on the edge but in the same instance foresee coming changes in fractions of seconds.

One of the more remarkable statements from On The Road is when the Dean Moriarty/Cassady character animatedly proclaims, "We all know time!" The meaning of this pronouncement can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but my take on it is one of the observer perceiving time in terms of a Quantum Physics model; of several realities existing side by side, concurrent in time and space.

In all of Neal's frenzied and spasmodic actions, intimates were well aware of his innate and mind-blowing ability to carry on several conversations--with two or more people--simultaneously, gear-shifting his focus from one conversation level to the next with rapid fire precision, driving high speed through a telepathic traffic of souls switching lanes in stream of consciousness, oftentimes anticipating where each respective conversation was rolling well before arriving at it's destination, in an amphetamine fueled brainstorm of neurologic activity, spark-plug synapses firing at breakneck speed, steering through the highways and byways of the full tilt, locomotive high octane mind of 'Sir Speed Limit'.

When Neal was a young lad, his older half brother Jimmy often bullied him. It was Jimmy's habit to throw Neal onto a bed that pulled out from beneath a cupboard, then deposit bed and brother back into the wall. Unable to defend himself against his older brother's merciless thumpings--and afraid to shout out for help because it would cause Jimmy to attack him even more aggressively--Neal discovered a transformative method of turning his fear into a visionary experience, and in fact rather grew to enjoy the sensation he self-induced while trapped in the claustrophobic darkness. This sensation was akin to sensory deprivation effects produced in an isolation tank, as sometimes Neal would be locked in the pitch blackness of the wall for upwards to an hour. Trapped in this narrow passage with less than a foot of clearance, a disorientation of the senses would begin, like an "off balanced wheel whirling" in his skull, as Neal experienced a sensation that time was moving at triple speed, in "a loose fan-like vibration as it rotated into an ever-tightening flutter." The result was "strangely pleasant, yet disturbing enough to frighten, quickening the brain's action which resisted any rigorous attempt to throw it off and return to normal-headedness." Neal would recapture this feeling of psychic dislocation in later years under the influence of LSD and pot.

Sir Speed Limit's supranormal relationship with time would eventually exhibit itself most notably behind the wheel of a car, which he used as a physical extension for his free-wheeling Psyche, so in tune was the man with the combustive music of the road and rolling machines. All who rode with Neal would agree that something special was going on there, with his mind/body&soul in perpetual motion, communing with the automotive and holyboy road. As Mountain Girl once explained,"Neal felt when he was at the wheel of a car that his eyes were registering events ahead of the car at a certain rate and he was perceiving them at a certain rate and it takes a certain number of microseconds for the impulses to travel from the eyes to the brain and get processed and get down to the hand to turn the wheel. He was very sensitive to those tiny fragments of time. He was intimate with time."

It didn't take long for Kerouac to recognize Cassady's special talents. Through Cassady he was able to see the possibilities of a whole generation in the wide open balls to the wall revelatory search discovered on the road, stretching vast lonesome highways of the night, stealing gas and getting laid in the mad rush of his reeling senses, high on speed, blowing gage and ejaculatory wads from sea to frothy sea. From California to New York to New Orleans, then Texas and on to Mexico where Jack fell delirious with dysentery, as wayward Neal abandoned his old buddy for the call of the road, repeating his personal manic mantra of "Go-go-go!!" and vanishing in a cloud of dust, leaving behind lonesome Jack cold-sweating in his Mexican sickbed, beat.

One night, prior to his bout with dysentery (and Neal's sudden departure from Mexico) Kerouac beheld a spectral vision in the mexican jungle. Just before dawn, as Neal slept soundly by the roadside, a white horse trotted by, directly toward Neal, passing right beside where his sleep-filled head rested in slumber. The horse whinnied softly and continued on down that old road, into the city beyond. Thus Kerouac beheld a pale horse, the symbol of destruction, and the ending of time as we know it, symbolically representing an epoch that was already in it's death throes by the time the marketing geniuses of Madison Avenue got around to tagging a name to the best minds of Ginsberg's generation: Beatniks. (Like, cool, daddy-o.) So the writing was on the wall for both these kindred souls of the open road, instructing them that even though their impact would be felt for generations to come, their physical manifestations on the earth would be short-lived, with Neal coming to absolute ruin a decade and a half later in the same Mexican landscape of the mind, where--making good on a bet to count all the railroad ties between San Miguel and Celaya--he met his fate. Stoned on seconal and booze, Neal collapsed, dying of exposure to the elements. As apocryphal legend has it, his last words were, "64,928."

Kerouac--devastated by Cassady's passing--died a couple years later, due to severe extinction of the liver. Too many years of hitting the sauce had taken their toll on the once mighty King o' the Beats.



Selected Bibliography

Burroughs, William. Naked Lunch. Olympia Press, 1959.

ibid. Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict. Ace Books, 1953

ibid. Queer. Viking, 1985

ibid. with Allen Ginsberg. The Yage Letters. City Lights. 1963

Fahey, Todd Brendan. Wisdom's Maw. Far Gone Books, 1996.

Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. City Lights, 1956

Kerouac, Jack. On The Road. Viking Press, 1955, 1957.

ibid. The Dharma Bums. Viking Press, 1958.

Leary, Timothy. Flashbacks: An Autobiography. J.P. Tarcher, 1983.

Plummer, William . The Holy Goof:A Biography of Neal Cassady. Paragon House, 1990.

Stevens, Jay. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. Perrennial Library, 1988.

Watson, Steven . The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944-1960. Pantheon, 1995.

Wolfe, Tom . The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968.

[American Dream]

http://www.tripzine.com/listing.php?smlid=469

Lysergic, by K.A. Cole

James Kent

The epic tale of an exotic dancer, an LSD chemist and DEA informant, a missle silo, and one of the largest LSD busts in history


Lysergic is the tale of Krystle Cole, a small-town Kansas girl looking for a way out of her stultifying midwestern misery. While working as an exotic dancer to pay the tuition bills, she meets Gordon Todd Wilson -- a mysterious older man with a suitcase full of psychedelic drugs -- who picks her up, doses her with MDMA, and invites her to live with him in an abandonded missle silo. Little did Krystle know that the mysterious Todd was actually an LSD chemist and DEA informant, and that she was sitting on top of what has come to be known as one of the the largest LSD busts in history.

Krystle is quickly swept up in a runaway adventure of money, travel, and lots and lots of drugs, as Todd introduces her to a wide variety of rare designer psychedelic compounds. With each trip Krystle learns more about herself and the people leading her on this adventure, and soon finds that everything is not as it seems. When Todd delivers William Leonard Pickard and the dismantled LSD labratory to the DEA, a global network of underground smuggling and money-laundering is exposed, and Pickard becomes caught in the crossfire, nothing more than a sacrificial lamb slaughtered in service to the larger cause.

And times both funny and sad, Lysergic charts Krystle's spiritual journey through these chaotic times, offering a peek into the hidden lives and motivations of big-time LSD chemists, untouchable DEA informants, and the blurry lines between the good guys and the bad guys the closer you get to the top. Managing to skate through it all with her freedom and sanity was quite a trick, but Krystle somehow lives to tell the tale, and what a tale it is. A true page turner with new psychedelic accounts and spiritual insights in almost every chapter, including DMT enimas, naked mescaline freakouts, candyflip telepathy, Ergot wine thought loops, and many more. You'll wonder how so few people found so much time to do so many drugs.

You can find more of Krystle's thoughts on the book in this exclusive tripzine.com interview:


James Kent: How old were you when Todd picked you up at the exotic dance club. How old was he? Is this really how you two met?

K.C. Cole: I was eighteen and Todd was thirty-five. Yes, this really is how we met.

JK: I know you were just a naive girl from Kansas, but didn't you think it was a little strange that Todd was living in a decomissioned missile silo when you met him?

KC: Not really, it was one month after the millennium. Todd seemed to me exactly like he said, an eccentric business man that was prepared for the worst to happen when it hit the year 2000. He had flats of canned food, water, batteries, and other supplies inside to support his story.

Also, there are around 90 of these decommissioned missile sites in a circle throughout the Midwest. It is not uncommon to see them on the News getting auctioned off to different people.

JK: Considering that you two just met -- and what Todd was up to -- don't you think he was taking quite a risk leaving you alone at the missile base while he took off for weeks at a time to take care of business? Or did he even think twice about it?

KC: Well, it actually wasn't a risk at all for him. The Lab was not in operation at his site. As I said in the book, it was in operation at another missile site. It had been moved to Todd's for storage after it was broken down.

I was never taken to where it was operational. The first time I even saw any of it at all, was after he had already made a deal with the DEA for complete immunity.

JK: When Todd finally came back, it sounds like you got totally swept up in the underground lifestyle of fast times and fast money: parties, drug deals, suitcases full of cash, car crashes, having to flee for your lives... Did you ever stop to think the party would actually spin out of control and get ugly, or did Todd really have you convinced that everything was under control and you were all somehow above the law?

KC: In a way, we were above the law. The DEA covered up local busts for us. They also warned us when our networks were under investigation.

I remember one time that I was caught up in the middle of a sticky situation. A man in a ski mask walked in and released me with no questions asked.

JK: When Todd turned William Leonard Pickard -- a new friend of yours -- over to the DEA as part of an immunity deal, you began to discover the larger picture of who these guys were and the kinds of complicated alliances they had forged with the DEA, the CIA, opium warlords in Afghanistan, federal prosecutors, not to mention the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Did you begin to feel like you were suddenly in over your head? What was going on in your mind as you figured out what kind of figure Todd actually was? How did you come to grips with all of this?

KC: First of all, I was the only one around Todd who always believed he was wrong for what he did to Len (William L. Pickard).

Todd's reasons to stop the production and sale of LSD were: 1) That violence occurred when Len supposedly had a narc (on the Ergot Tartrate supplier) killed or badly injured and sent to Guatemala. And

The second was that LSD is a sacrament and should not be sold, especially not for profits such as hookers and dancers from the Opheral theater.

I was so in love with Todd that I stuck with him even when I disagreed with what he did.

I never really felt in over my head because I was tripping most of the time and having fun with all the action.

JK: From reading the book, it sounds like Todd was always ready to stick more drugs in you whichever way he could, and you always went along with him. Did you ever get the feeling he was trying to manipulate you with an ever wider range of psychedelic drugs, or did you really have absolute faith in him to take whatever pill or powder he offered?

KC: I had absolute faith in him until I tried to leave him at the end of our relationship. It resulted in him dosing me with all sorts of psychedelics against my will. He tried desperately to change my mind about him. After three years of being with Todd, I finally realized he was manipulating me with psychedelics all along. He tried to appear to me as a spiritual person when he really wasn't that spiritual at all. Despite his reasons for giving them to me, they still taught me more than I could ever have hoped for or conceptualized.

I didn't write too extensively about his abuse toward me in the book because of two reasons: a current kidnapping case that is still pending and I wanted to show the good parts about psychedelics, the spirituality.

JK: After the silo bust there was a lot of running from potential payback and lengthy legal proceedings to deal with. I assume these were not the greatest times, but you wound up staying with Todd, even at his mother's house, until Todd got arrested after Burning Man, 2003. Although you report Todd was giving away large quantities of psychedelics for free at Burning Man, I heard that a bunch of people in the community were angry that he would dare show his face there, and that the whole scene was very weird. You were right in the middle of it and decided to leave, you even said you were afraid Todd was going to far, that something bad was going to happen. What was going on with you then? Did you realize this was the end? How heavy was that for you?

Todd was out of control. So much so that it was dangerous for everyone around him.

At Burning Man he knowingly gave away a really bad batch of LSD; you know the muddy black stuff. It caused several people to go into convulsions.

He even brought a girl to our RV that was having one of these bad reactions. He asked me to help her saying that he was to high to do anything. She was completely naked and had been running around like that for I don't know how long in the cold night air. She was shaking constantly. I think she could have been close to hypothermia. He thought the nudity was entertaining. Two hours after she went to sleep and I knew she was alright, I hitchhiked out of there. I was not going to be responsible for someone dying.

Also, he was running around dosed and telling everyone he was a chemist. In my mind, that is just a bust waiting to happen. We weren't that protected.

JK: Along your journey you were exposed to many different drugs that inspired some profound mystical states, including states of cosmic unity and telepathy. How was it to be in the midst of a spiritual awakening as the lives of the people who had brought you into the fold were crashing down?

KC: I learned that almost every dealer gets busted, its only a matter of time. This caused me to keep to myself. I didn't want to get hurt by seeing any more family members go to prison.

It was very hard not to think about all the stressful times. In result, I had to learn to tune it all out and concentrate on the good parts in life, the spirituality.

JK: You stated many times that you felt embarrassed by the people around you, that they were making fun of you or thought you chanting was silly. Did you ever feel a disconnect between what you were feeling in that spiritual place and how the people who were supposed to be the "experts" were treating you?

KC: Sometimes I felt that way, and now upon reflection I realize it to be true. At times, I felt like I was leading the trip with my chants. This has always seemed kind of strange to me, seeing that I was the youngest one there.

JK: Are you still in contact with Todd? How does he feel about this book?

KC: Todd sends letters to me, even though I rarely give him a response. He feels I bashed him too hard. When in reality, it was really hard for me to be as easy on him as I was and still tell the truth.

JK: You learned a lot about psychedelics in a very short amount of time under very extreme circumstances. Do you have any advice for someone who may find themselves swept up in a similar situation?

KC: This is a difficult one because I barely made it through it all alive and not in prison.

I always followed the path that my heart lead me down. However, I didn't realize it would take me across a very thin tight rope. My only advice is to not look down, and try, with everything in you, to keep your balance. The end goal is more worth the journey than just about anything I can think of, yet a fall could mean life in prison.

JK: Thanks for answering these questions. The book was a very fascinating read. Any partig thoughts?

KC: Please be sure to take a look at this page of my site: http://www.lysergicbook.com/hope.html

Love and light,

Krystle

[American Dream]

http://www.neurosoup.com/questions_abou ... d_case.htm




Questions about the Pickard LSD Case

by Krystle Cole - 3/2/2008



I receive large numbers of e-mails from people asking me questions about all sorts of different topics. I will share the answers to this particular e-mail because many people are interested in the details of the Pickard LSD bust. If you don’t know about this case by name, it was the largest LSD lab ever busted in the United States. Pickard and Skinner had the lab in a missile silo in Kansas. When it was busted by the DEA (with Skinner as their primary informant), it was reported to have been producing 90% of the world's supply. Jacob asked me the following questions:

J: First, I am curious as to your opinion regarding the legitimacy of the Pickard case. From reading your post on the neurosoup forum regarding it, as well as the description on your neurosoup bio, you quite clearly admit to having been associated with these men and having consumed the "fruits of their labor". My question mainly has to do with your view on Pickard's having (in Shulgin's words) "pulled a Leary", ie sacrificing his reputation and credibility in order to make the psychedelic experience more widely known. Though he was a well respected chemist and policy analyst, he also had a record dating back decades for false identity, concealed weapons, LSD manufacture, forgery, etc. I have no fundamental objection to any of these charges per say (except the concealed weapons charge...you yourself even said you oppose all violence), but it's hard to argue he went about his business in the proper manner when so much evidence opposes his account. You even admitted to sampling his drugs. His defense was that he was not operating a lab, though he clearly was (this should not be a crime, yada yada) yet even you say he was.

K: To clarify, I will refer to Pickard by his middle name, which is Leonard; I will also refer to Skinner by his middle name, which is Todd. They always went by their middle names, or the first initials of their middle names, so any eavesdroppers or acquaintances would be confused about their identities. In my opinion Leonard and Todd both were involved in the LSD lab. However, it is difficult to be able to pinpoint the level of either of their involvement. This is because you can’t tell when they are lying or when they are telling the truth. I will tell you what I know, and then you can draw conclusions for yourself. Here are the conflicting stories:

Leonard officially contends that he was basically framed by Todd and that he had no part in the lab. (I believe that he was involved to some extent in the lab; he’s saying this to defend himself.)

Todd told me different stories at different times. Right after the bust occurred, he said that he was the head of security for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. His duties were to find and protect the locations of lab; and to figure out ways to launder the millions of dollars that they made off of the sale of each kilo of LSD. (I believe this statement is partially true. I saw evidence of him being in charge of both duties, yet I thought he could have been more involved. At that time he was trying to position himself so that he appeared to have less involvement then he really did.) Later on he revealed to me that the lab was his and that he and Leonard shared it. He explained to me that Leonard put out the type of crystalline LSD called lavender, which was low quality, turned out in mass production, and sold to the masses. He claimed to put out smaller batches of very pure, high quality LSD that was given away for free, called white fluff. He also claimed to synthesize batches of DMT and other designer tryptamines that were given away for free.

Another part of the story was filled in for me when I interviewed a person fairly high up in their distribution network. According to this person, who will remain anonymous, Todd and Leonard were introduced because neither of them could get the synthesis right when they tried to make it by themselves. They were introduced so that they could work together to come up with a suitable product. (I always question the validity of the word on the street. However, in this situation I lend it some credibility. I remember one time when Todd told me that each chemist knows their part of the synthesis, this way they can work in the lab in shifts. It also keeps them secure in their position within the organization. This statement seems to support this account of how and why they were introduced.)


J: Second, with regards to Skinner, it's obvious to anyone with half a brain knew that he was the "bad apple" in this whole situation. Pickard was a policy wonk/respected chemist. Skinner kidnapped, tortured, gave shitty drugs, etc. I've read your affidavit and stuff. I have no protest or criticism with your handling of that situation. My only question is WHY a mostly decent person like Pickard would even share the same room as Skinner? If it was not known until later, fine, but again it begs the question, was Pickard so legit in the first place? I only say this because, I look at someone like Owsley or Nick Sand or Tim Scully or even Casey Hardison. They all made LSD, admitted to doing so, and never dealt with shady characters or committed any significant "crimes" other than that. What was different about Pickard?

K: I don’t want to bash Leonard here, yet I will try to answer your question in the most respectful way towards him possible. I don’t believe Leonard is a “bad apple” like Todd; however he wasn’t an innocent either. Leonard was not a saint back then; he had flaws, like we all do. He and Todd had a shady past of working with the government before they met (Leonard had done work for/had connections within the CIA and the DEA; Todd had done work for/had connections within the DEA, FBI, DOD, and IRS). This caused them to have a lot in common. I think that, by partnering up, they both thought that they could gain a lot by being able to exploit each other’s government connections and provide a broader shield against getting busted. Plus, if Leonard was in charge, he would have needed smart, cunning, and experienced people to work with; Todd was extremely intelligent and very good at conning people into believing he was something that he really wasn't.



J: You have said yourself that you oppose violence, that you believe money spent on entheogens should not reach the hands of shady dealers, that we should purify ourselves from any evil/money-grubbing sources of entheogens, etc. Where does Skinner fit in all this? Where does Pickard fit in all this?

K: Todd was the one that introduced me to the idea that entheogens should not be sold. He insisted upon never selling an entheogen; he would only give them away for free. I’m sure this creates more questions in your mind, like how did he have so much of the money from the profit of the sale of LSD? He said that Leonard sold the LSD and he got a cut from wandering the money, this way his conscience was clean. (This was a standard practice of Todd’s, to weasel around an ethical issue in this way.) He would also sell entactogens; he didn’t believe that they were spiritual in the same way as entheogens.

One time, while I spoke to Leonard over the phone while he was in prison awaiting appeal, I mentioned the idea to him that entheogens should not be sold. He said to me that the concept sounded nice but it wasn’t possible to put it into action. He said that there are too many inherent costs to ever be able to give it away for free.



*For More Information on the Pickard Case and my life after the bust check out my books Lysergic: 2nd Edition and After the Trip: Thoughts on Entheogens, Spirituality, and Daily Life.

[American Dream]

http://www.neurosoup.com/krystle_cole_k ... a_narc.htm



Krystle Cole, Kidnapping Charges, and Involvement with the DEA

by Krystle Cole - June 10, 2009



During the past month, spammers have been targeting NeuroSoup with all sorts of different allegations. The main allegations are:

NeuroSoup is funded and ran by the DEA

I kidnapped and tortured a teenager

In this article I intend to address these issues so that we will be able to put them to rest. I have not hidden anything in my past, in fact, I wrote a book about it. Lysergic was published several years before I even started doing NeuroSoup or YouTube videos. Because of this, I thought most people knew my back story. Since the spammers started targeting me, I have realized that many people don't know the real story. I feel that everyone should be informed, so here goes...

I'm sure you have already heard some of the spammers' side of the story, but here it is once again:

Government informant Gordon Todd Skinner, along with his wife Krystle Ann Cole Skinner and William Ernest Hauck, an Oklahoma truck driver, have been charged with kidnapping, conspiracy to kidnap, torture of a teenager, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and drug trafficking. Allegedly the trio kidnapped a Broken Arrow 18 year old from a Tulsa hotel on or about July 4th. The teenager was a former companion of Ms. Skinner while she and her husband Gordon Todd Skinner were separated. The teen was held captive for 6 days in Oklahoma and Texas, beaten and injected with drugs as an act of revenge.

Just as a refresher, who is Gordon Todd Skinner? Todd was the DEA informant that turned in William Leonard Pickard and the largest LSD lab ever busted in history. Todd was also charged with murder at one time but he got off those charges because of his immunity for narcing out Pickard. Beyond that, Todd was a con man that swindled every person he came across.

As a side note: I want to make it clear that I did not testify against William Leonard Pickard, Todd did. I was subpoenaed to go to trial, I pled the fifth and left the courtroom. Since then, I have signed several affidavits for William Leonard Pickard to help with his appeals. I realize these affidavits sort of make me look bad, especially if read in the wrong context; I signed them for the purpose of helping him. I could care less what they make me look like. His freedom is much more important than my reputation.

Who is William Hauck in all of this? Todd introduced him to me as an old Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) buddy that worked for him as a part time hit man. Todd explained to me that I had never met him before because he was only brought in, in case of an emergency. Todd hadn’t seen him for eight years, and then he just showed up two weeks before Brad [changed victims name for his privacy] was kidnapped. I was scared to death of Hauck. His emotionless demeanor totally freaked me out. He carried a gun that had a metal military seal on the side of it, so at the time I tried to stay out of his way. During court Hauck claimed that he was only a truck driver. Defense Intelligence Agency, Truck Driver, or Both? Who knows... All I can say is that William Hauck knew way too much about medical procedures, torture techniques, how the government operated, and other things that out of fear for my safety I'm afraid to talk about. All I can say is that I truly believe that he was/is not just a truck driver.

* * *

Todd was physically abusive to me for the last year we were together. This is the main reason why I tried to get away from him. I was living away from Todd in a house by myself, when I started dating Brad. Brad was one of Todd's 18 year old MDMA dealers. I would also like to make it clear that I was 21 years old at the time when all of this happened. So, when Todd found out that we were dating, it made him jealous and angry.

Todd tried several things to get me back. First, he drugged me against my will. On several different occasions he dosed my house with a hallucinogen that made me trip really hard. He then tried to convince everyone around me at the time that I was perma-fried. He tried to convince everyone that I was crazy and that I was spontaneously tripping for no reason. When this didn't work, he went to my boyfriend's house, took me by my neck, and dragged me into his car by force. Then he threatened to drive us both off a bridge if I did not stay with him. I escaped from the car and went to the police. I filed a police report about how he kidnapped and assaulted me. Then the police took photos of the bruises on my neck, arms, and legs. Brad came there and also gave a police report about what Todd had been doing to me. After this, we both went down and got temporary restraining orders against Todd. The sheriffs could never find Todd to serve him; the only thing the temporary restraining orders did was make Todd more angry. Things started to escalate and my boyfriend and I were scared.

During the time period before the kidnapping, I was also raped and sodomized by Todd (after he drugged me against my will). I wouldn't even remember any of it, if Todd hadn't bragged to me about it later when I was sober.

Because of Todd's behavior, I was afraid for my life and I was also afraid for the lives of many of the people Todd was coming in contact with. He was very violent and out of control. Because we felt the we had no better choice, Brad and I went to the DEA and told them about Todd’s activities. Todd was out of control in more ways than just abusing me; he had set up a lab and was putting out a really bad form of “black tar” LSD that gave everyone that tried it seizures. I tried to reason with Todd, but his behavior only got worse. I honestly thought he could kill me or kill someone else with the bad acid. Also, when Todd's MDMA dealers came up short he started putting them down with sedatives and robbing them. One of them was knocked out for three days and ended up in the hospital. It turns out that this dealer of his went to the DEA about Todd, but no one new about it until trial. Despite all my reasoning, walking in to that DEA office was still one of the hardest things I have ever done. Even though I knew that I was just narcing out a narc, it was still a very difficult thing to do.

Of course, within days somehow Todd found out that we had gone in. I think the DEA must have told him about it. They never ended up doing anything to stop Todd. If the DEA would have listened to my warnings, Brad never would have gotten kidnapped. You see, there were two reasons Todd kidnapped and tortured Brad in front of me. Todd wanted me back under his control and, more importantly, Todd wanted me to understand what happens to people when they narc on him.

I want to make it clear that I never kidnapped or tortured Brad and I was not convicted of kidnapping or torturing Brad. I also was never charged for "torture of a teenager, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and drug trafficking". My crime was that I was there when Brad was being tortured and that I did not call 911. I had no options; Todd told me that if I did not do exactly what he said he would inject Brad with something that would make him permanently mentally handicapped. He then said that he (or one of his employees) would find me and do the same thing to me. I was afraid, and I knew that Todd meant what he said.

At the time, I also felt that calling the police wouldn't do any good. I mean, I had already went the police when Todd kidnapped me and I had already went to the DEA. My efforts at involving law enforcement in this whole mess had done absolutely nothing. I was trying to maneuver through a mine field and there were no good options available to me. So I tried to keep Brad calm and quiet so that way Todd wouldn't inject him with more drugs. I also tried to make sure Brad had fluids like Gatorade to drink to keep his strength up. I did the best I could with what was available to me at the time. And I go to sleep each night knowing that we both made it out of this ordeal alive. I truly believe that if I would have called 911 neither of us would be able to speak out about this situation today. I wish I would've had the foresight to not have gotten Brad involved with Todd at all and for that I am sorry. I'm also deeply sorry that Todd kidnapped and tortured Brad; I wish I could have done more to prevent it.

Because I did not call 911, I pled no contest to Felony Accessory After the Fact and received a diversion and $52,000 fine for restitution. After jury trial, Todd was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for what he did to Brad. Hauck was given a suspended sentence with no fine. The sad thing is, Todd was never charged for kidnapping me, assaulting me, or drugging me against my will. It's like law enforcement didn't care what happened to me or that I was a victim also. They only cared about their conviction; they knew they had Todd on kidnapping Brad so there was no point in charging him for kidnapping and assaulting me.

I haven't done a video about the kidnapping because it is really hard for me to talk about. I have been diagnosed with PTSD because of the things Todd did to me. Ever since these people have been spamming me, I have started having nightmares again. Even though this stuff happened to me six years ago. It's like, the more I think about how Todd abused me the more it comes to the surface in my dreams. So, hopefully this article will suffice and we can put this whole thing to rest.

Now I need to address the fact that NeuroSoup is not funded or ran by the DEA. I absolutely hate the DEA, the hypocrisy of DEA agents, and the fundamental premise under which the DEA operates. There is no way that I will ever work with them or even speak to them again. I went to them for help when I really needed it and they turned their back on me. The one time that they actually could have done some good, they chose not to. They should have busted Todd when they had the chance because Brad would have never gotten kidnapped and three years of my life would have never gotten ruined by having a court case hanging over my head. Just think about it, after the DEA chose not to help me - why would I help them or work with them on a project? THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL I WILL EVER EVEN TALK TO THE DEA AGAIN, if they ever contact me I will lawyer up.

Now back to the spammers: I try to look at their motives; I can't figure out why any individual person would waste the kind of time that they are by emailing individual people, emailing NeuroSoup sponsors, spamming all of my comments sections on my videos, flagging my videos, etc. I think they must be DEA/narcs trying to put a stop to what I am doing. Whatever their motives, I can assuredly say that they are not doing it for the greater good.

[American Dream]

WATCH: Getting High on Krystle.

http://www.vice.com/read/life-is-a-cosm ... -803-v18n5

Life Is a Cosmic Giggle on the Breath of the Universe

A Tour of Gordon Todd Skinner’s Subterranean LSD Palace

By Hamilton Morris

Photos by David Feinberg and Santiago Stelley
Archival photos courtesy of Krystle Cole


Krystle stands inside the silo tunnel where she spent countless hours tripping on various psychedelics.

There is no facile synthesis of the events that transpired at the Wamego missile silo between October 1 and November 4, 2000. The available information is a viscous solution of truths, half-lies, three-quarter truths, and outright lies, the fractionation of which yields no pure product. The dramatis personae are many and varied. The chemicals in question often obscure and untested. What is known is that in 1997, a virtuosic organic chemist named Leonard Pickard joined forces with Gordon Todd Skinner, the heir to a spring-manufacturing fortune, to organize what would later become the world’s most productive LSD laboratory. A laboratory that, according to some sources, produced 90 percent of the LSD in circulation, in addition to unknown quantities of MDMA, ALD-52, ergot wine, and quite possibly LSZ... but I’ll get to that later.

Leonard Pickard is an anomaly among clandestine chemists—one of very few who was able to achieve great success in academia. He studied at Harvard, Purdue, and UCLA while producing kilos of MDA and LSD in secret laboratories under the auspices of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. He was charismatic and gentlemanly, with excellent posture (he would advise slouchers to let their vertebrae fall vertically, like “a beautiful string of pearls”). A notable photo depicts Leonard at a scientific conference in Sussex, gently appreciating the scent of a long-stemmed rose. He was like that.

Gordon Todd Skinner (known by friends as Todd) is an autodidact chemist of uncertain ability; indeed, whether he is a chemist at all is subject to debate. He allegedly performed his first mescaline extraction from L. williamsii at the age of 19. By 25, he was incarcerated and facing life in a New Jersey prison for trafficking 42 pounds of marijuana. In order to beat the charges, he began a long and fruitful career as a government informant. In 1996, he purchased a decommissioned Atlas E nuclear-missile silo in Wamego, Kansas, and transformed it into a subterranean psychedelic palace. Three years later, he purchased a second silo to house an LSD superlab. The laboratory, however, only operated for a short time, and by October 2000 Todd was providing DEA agents with a guided tour of the premises. Simply dismissing Todd as a snitch would ignore the fact that he seemed to possess a deep and honest commitment to the distribution of psychedelic drugs for the betterment of mankind, which makes what he did all the more complex.

Lastly, there is Krystle Cole, a former goth stripper from Kansas, who fell in love with Todd and was ushered into his private circle of chemists and dealers. Krystle met Todd in February 2000, and they shared six months of lysergic bliss in the silo before things began to catabolize into chaos. By August 2000, Todd was afraid the LSD laboratory was under government surveillance and decided to preempt any criminal charges he might face by turning in Leonard. He furtively began recording conversations and compiling evidence. This led to Leonard’s arrest, and a nationwide (and possibly global) LSD drought that lasted throughout the early 2000s.

In October 2000, Todd formally contacted the DEA and declared, “I have what I believe is the world’s largest LSD conspiracy… and I would like to try to work something out.” Todd received total immunity for his involvement with the laboratory and walked away a free man, while Leonard was given two concurrent life sentences without parole. In the wake of the trial, Todd and Krystle traveled across America, dealing kilos of crystalline MDMA to survive. As time passed, Todd became increasing violent and paranoid, and in September 2003 he was arrested and began a protracted legal battle that culminated with a sentence of life in prison for assault with a dangerous weapon (a hypodermic needle) and kidnapping.

In the years since the arrests, Krystle has parlayed her experience into a series of books and YouTube videos, the most popular of which involves an in-depth discussion of an intrarectal DMT-administration technique termed “the shamanic colonic.” Apparently, it burns. Krystle is one of very few people who participated in the LSD operation who is not currently incarcerated, and so I flew to Kansas to meet her, ask some questions, and pay a visit to the legendary missile silo. Despite all she has gone through, Krystle is an ebullient bundle of entheogenic energy. When I picked her up to drive to Wamego she was wearing a tie-dyed shirt that read “.&.”

At one time, the silo was a testament to Todd’s unrestrained profligacy. The main missile bay was filled with fine Persian carpets and luxurious leather couches. He owned a $120,000 stereo system, which he used to listen to Deep Forest and Sarah McLachlan at high volumes. The bathroom alone contained a shower with three heads and a bathtub that could easily accommodate half a dozen people. Krystle said it was fun. After the bust, the silo was gutted, and everything of value was sold. The space was vandalized and abandoned, it flooded with water, and eventually Todd’s henchmen broke inside to steal a cache of MDMA, LSD, and DMT hidden within the varicose pink marble walls. Today, very little of the original silo is intact, and the property is owned by a military-vehicle fanatic, who uses the missile bay to store a collection of WWII-era Soviet T-34 tanks. After leaving the silo, I sat down with Krystle for a chat.



Krystle and Hamilton cut loose with a steamed-vegetable platter at Houlihan’s.


Vice: How did you and Gordon Todd Skinner meet and subsequently fall in love?
Krystle Cole: I was stripping at a place called Club Orleans. Todd didn’t frequent strip clubs, but his employees did, and one of them saw my act and told Todd, “There’s this girl down there you should really see.” I did an interesting act—a bondage act. I certainly stood out for the Kansas crowd that was in there. I was really goth because I hated Kansas. I would play death-metal music and have this chain that I would wrap around the pole, and then I would whip myself with the chain. I wanted to rebel against everything Kansas was about. When Todd came in, he wasn’t like the other customers, he didn’t want lap dances or anything like that. He would just sit in the VIP room and hand me lots and lots of money. Eventually, he asked if I wanted to see where he lived. At strip clubs they always preach a rule: “Never go home with a customer; you’ll be chopped into pieces and raped.” So I was nervous, but I said, “OK, I’ll go.” After driving for hours we arrived at these huge metal gates with barbed wire along the top. He had at least ten security cameras outside, as well as these motion-sensing floodlights. There were no other buildings in sight, and the door to the missile silo was large enough to accommodate a semitruck. As he led me inside, I was freaking out.

Why did Todd choose to live in a decommissioned nuclear-missile silo as opposed to, say, a house?
When I first met Leonard and Todd, their story was that they were eccentric investment bankers, and Todd said he had been stockpiling food and machine guns to prepare for Y2K—we met right after the millennium. Todd had everything you would need to survive the apocalypse in the silo. They explained that they carried briefcases stacked with foreign currency and $1,000 bills because they thought the US financial system was on the verge of collapse. They threw around money, drove Porsches, bought me Armani clothes, and I didn’t have to work at the strip club anymore. Here in Kansas you aren’t raised to scrutinize people about whether they are lying to you or not, you know?

So Todd said he was an investment banker-cum-survivalist preparing for post-Y2K financial collapse, but how did he explain the kilos of MDMA?
Todd very much hid it. When I first met him, I never got to see anything like that. I had virtually no experience with drugs. I did the basic drinking alcohol and smoking pot, but I had never even heard of MDMA. He said, “Try it just once, you’ll like it.” And boy did I… but I only got to see this small amount. Eventually, I began to suspect something was going on, but I didn’t know exactly what. Everyone was so nervous. If you talked about drugs on the phone, or visited drug-related websites, there would be a major chew-out session. It was only later that I was shown the stockpiles of drugs and I found out they had an LSD lab in addition to the MDMA lab, but it never got busted.

I’ve read that he told people he was using the missile silo to manufacture high-performance springs for NASA.
Technically, at one time, they had springs being made out at the missile silo. Some of his employees said they had tried to make a few springs, but it was mainly just a cover.

Did you see any springs at all?
No, I never saw a single spring at the silo, but Todd’s mother actually does own a spring factory in Tulsa, and they do make springs for NASA.


An apparatus consisting of 182 batteries Todd claimed to have designed for experimental electrochemical MDMA synthesis.

So once you figured out that Todd and Leonard were involved in an LSD-manufacturing ring, did you want to end your involvement with them?
As I started to figure it out, I didn’t, I wanted to get more involved! I didn’t find out exactly what was going on until after Leonard had been busted. I was on a lot of drugs, and I was only 18. I didn’t have enough foresight or world experience to be able to discern the things that were happening around me. Before I was just like, “Hey, let’s party.” I didn’t think about the consequences or the future or anything, really.

What were some of the substances that the group synthesized and experimented with?
Todd’s specialty was tryptamines. He would perform Mimosa hostilis extractions but could also produce synthetic DMT. He was very proud of all the different chemicals he had. If you got close enough to him, you would get to see this huge “library” of different substances—hundreds of different drugs. This was back in 2000 before most of these substances could be purchased online as research chemicals. Todd would go around giving everybody stuff, and we were like, “Give me!” I don’t know what most of the things were. Back then I was on so many different substances, it was like living in an entheogenic monastery. I didn’t have to work. I didn’t have to worry about paying bills. I didn’t have to do anything other than take psychedelics. I had the opportunity to use all kinds of unusual things like ALD-52 and ergot wine, as well as some totally novel things that I have not heard of before or since.

What were some of the novel substances?
Well, I couldn’t talk about a lot of this stuff before, but I can now because the statute of limitations has expired. Specifically, there was one substance that nobody had ever tried before. It was something completely new, and what I experienced on it was above and beyond anything I can describe. Because it was like looking... It was like it turned reality into this whole… I mean, it was reality, but like a layer over reality. It’s hard to explain, but afterward I felt like it taught my brain that there was a neurological switch I could just flip and enter an altered state at will.

What was the name of this substance?
Todd didn’t name most of the chemicals he created, but this was a novel analog of 5-MeO-αMT. He sent me a number of letters from prison describing the synthesis in coded language; apparently it could be made with electrified rhodium foil in a 20-gallon fish tank.1 There were lots of new things, but that one was particularly crazy. He also said it was an especially sensitive molecule that was prone to degradation, and so when storing that particular “book” in one of his “libraries” it had to be “bound” with a “light-blocked book cover.” There were other novel substances as well. Leonard made a new LSD analog called “diazedine,” though I don’t know exactly what that was either.

Are you familiar with lysergic acid 2,4-dimethylazetidide?2
No, but they were calling this diazedine. It was also crazy, but nothing earth-shattering. Leonard gave it to Todd in a bottle of Everclear for testing, and we would dose a capful at a time. Apparently, diazedine failed to be doable on a large scale because the production costs were too high and the yields too low. Diazedine caused a lot of stress between Todd and Leonard, because they had high expectations for it as an LSD alternative.


1 In Todd’s letters from prison, he describes using both 5-Fluoro-αMT and 6-Fluoro-αMT. The former is commercially available in small quantities, and the latter was distributed by Leonard’s group and is said to be a “beast.” Both are active psychedelics, but neither could be produced with the precursors and electrified rhodium-foil fish-tank apparatus Todd described.

2 Lysergic acid 2,4-dimethylazetidide (aka LSZ) belongs to a very small group of serotonergic psychedelics that surpass LSD in potency. Aside from the fact that “diazedine” is a lexical clipping of dimethylazetidine (diazedine<dimethylazetidine), the first paper describing the chemistry and pharmacology of LSZ came out of a laboratory at Purdue University, where Leonard had previously studied under the renowned chemist David Nichols. Though the paper was published after Leonard’s arrest, it is still quite likely he was aware of the preliminary research. When I asked Dr. Nichols whether he thought Pickard may have produced LSZ, he replied, “Leonard knew of our work, of that I am certain.” Rumors of LSZ distributed on blotter paper (purportedly under the name λ) have circulated for years, though there are few confirmed reports of its existence. Of course, the name diazedine is ambiguous and could be referring to just about anything, but I would bet a kilo of benzotriazole-1-yl-oxy-tris-pyrrolidino-phosphonium hexafluorophosphate that LSZ and diazedine are one and the same.



Holes drilled by Todd’s henchmen in order to check out the “books” in his “library” that contained popular titles such as 500g MDMA, 100g DMT, 1g LSD, $10,000 American, $10,000 Canadian, and ƒ10,000 Dutch guilder.


So at what point in all of this did Todd become an informant for the DEA and turn Leonard in?
As the time of the bust approached, Todd began to tell me various things about Leonard: that he was involved in the heroin trade and the trade of Stinger missiles in Afghanistan, and that he had contracted the murder of a man who was supplying them with an LSD precursor. I don’t know if I believe Todd now, but I certainly did at the time. I was completely in love with him, and anything that he said I took as the truth. Now I can look back and see that he was such a liar a lot of the time.

I’ve exchanged letters with Leonard, and he seems like a gentlemanly and kind man.
You have to realize that he’s not that innocent in all of this. I mean, it’s horrible that he is serving a life sentence for committing a nonviolent crime, which is not even a crime but a service that has had a profoundly positive effect on humanity, but Leonard was not an angel either. A lot of people try to paint him as this Buddhist-monk-like guy who would never do anything bad. Both Todd and Leonard were drug dealers at the top level; neither of them was good. On the flip side, I don’t think Leonard was a murderer.

Did Leonard seem like someone who would be involved with the heroin trade?
Probably not, but he didn’t seem like someone who would be involved with the LSD trade either! Leonard was so good at acting the part. I never once saw him use a drug or even speak of a drug. The only thing he ever said to me was, “You should go to raves. You will like them.” That’s the only remotely drug-related thing he ever said before the bust.

Did Todd ever allow you to observe the synthesis of any drugs?
Well, I saw kilo upon kilo of indole. I saw glassware and lab equipment and things that were in the last stages of synthesis or purification. I saw glass jugs filled with wine made from ergot cultures, but I never once entered one of the labs or observed any syntheses. I think I knew Todd better than anybody, but he still didn’t trust me enough to take me into his lab.


Todd pensively stares off into space while massaging a sore shoulder.

I was always confused about Todd’s role. Clearly Leonard had a specific purpose—he is a highly educated organic chemist, a student of Alexander Shulgin—but why was Gordon Todd Skinner involved?
Well, Todd told me many different versions over the years. According to official reports, he was there to launder money and take care of other cash-flow-related things. Initially, he told me he was the head of security for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, but then later, when he began to trust me more, Todd explained that he was an LSD chemist as well. He said that he was responsible for making “white fluff” LSD, while Leonard would make large amounts of “lavender” LSD for sale.3 From what I can deduce, I think that Leonard was making the bulk majority of the LSD. Todd was just making these small batches, and also Todd would make the DMT.

You once wrote that Todd synthesized something called “Black Tar Acid,” which gave people seizures. Why was he giving this to people?
Yeah, I don’t know what it was. It looked really bad. Instead of being crystalline, it was this black, inky tar. When you would try to dissolve it in solution, it would turn this really dark color. This was toward the end, when he began to unravel. He was making a lot of really poisonous tryptamines that gave people seizures. All the stress of the court cases, years of running, and years of shady dealings with the government began to take their toll. As for why he gave it to people, why did Todd do anything he did? He was mentally ill. I really think he is a sociopath. I mean, at the time I didn’t know what a sociopath was. Now having gone to school for psychology and understanding the definition of what that is, I realize there is a very small percentage of the population who are sociopaths.

At one point, Todd claimed to invent an HIV vaccine and was offering free injections to all of your neighbors, correct?
Yes, the bigger his lies, the more likely he was to get away with them. I had been doing so much MDMA that I was afraid I had brain damage, so I went to a naturopathic doctor for treatment. The doctor prescribed a number of different IV vitamin infusions. When Todd saw me with the IV, he wanted to experiment with his own vitamin infusions by adding psychedelics to the mixture. He would go to this naturopathic doctor’s office—if you can imagine, there are all these old people in there undergoing chelation therapy in the same room—and he would put a DMT solution in the IV bottle. He would adjust the flow so he would start tripping more and then restrict the flow to cool down. He was surfing the DMT high. He would just sit like that with the old people, tripping his ass off for hours while everyone thought he was undergoing chelation. But he could totally keep it together. I wouldn’t do that.

Nor would I…
It’s one thing to smoke DMT and then be done with it, but having a multihour DMT trip with a needle in your vein does not sound appealing to me. Although once you do it enough, you can make almost any trip a pleasant experience regardless of the environment. For example, when Todd became violent he knew I would try to escape, and so he began booby-trapping my house with various psychedelics. He wanted other people to think I was going insane, or maybe he wanted me to doubt my own sanity. Leonard told me that Todd must have coated my doorknobs with psychedelics. As a result of these booby traps, I tripped for three days in a row, each day stronger than the day preceding it. Whatever this substance was, it was the strongest thing I have ever taken. It’s very off-putting to be going about your daily business and then find yourself inexplicably plunged into a +++ trip.4 Totally slammed beyond belief. Yet, it was also a really good experience in some ways. I just remembered that life is a cosmic giggle on the breath of the universe. So like I said, any psychedelic experience has the potential to be good unless there is a person literally standing above you and stabbing you with needles, strangling you, and screaming, which is what Todd did the second time around. So that was hard to get through, you know? There’s no way to make that good.


3 “White fluff” and “lavender” are terms used to denote different grades of LSD, with the former being of high purity and the latter being of medium to low purity. These names are derived from the appearance of the crystalline LSD, but it should be noted that this is acidhead nomenclature and is not rooted in any kind of formal chemical analysis. Whether Todd was actually capable of producing white fluff is unclear. In his court testimony, he said he could not synthesize LSD despite the fact that he had total immunity. Accordingly, I have always wondered whether Todd simply liked the image of being a patriarchal Alexander Shulgin figure and his entire chemist persona was an elaborate hoax. Todd considered Dennis McKenna a personal friend, and so I asked McKenna for his thoughts on the matter. He replied, “Skinner claimed to be many things that he was not. As far as I’m aware, a chemist was one of them!”

4 Alexander Shulgin developed a five-point rating scale, ranging from +/- to ++++, with +++ indicating, “Not only are the chronology and the nature of a drug’s action quite clear, but ignoring its action is no longer an option. The subject is totally engaged in the experience, for better or worse.”



Krystle dons a gas mask and G-string, nay LSD-string.

I’ve read that Leonard was also working as a DEA informant. I find it amazing that two of the world’s most powerful drug dealers were both working for the DEA independently, unbeknownst to each other. Did Todd give you the impression that the DEA is closely involved with the distribution of Schedule I drugs?
Yes, absolutely. He would say those exact words. At the top of the pyramid there is no division between drug distribution and drug enforcement. Fifty-four percent of the prison population are sentenced for drug-related offenses. The assets of those prisoners, and the money they draw through the court system, is absolutely enormous. Without chemists to produce drugs, the DEA cannot profit off busts. If they bust people at the lower echelons while retaining the production at the top, they can sustain the agency. Without these chemists, the entire organization would disintegrate.

So if they were working with Todd and Leonard while profiting off lower-level busts, why would they arrest Leonard?
I have no evidence that they were working with Leonard during the silo bust, but I know they had worked with him in the past from time to time. I think the reason they busted Leonard and didn’t give him a chance was because Todd went directly to the head of the DEA in Washington, DC, and got these immunity agreements. So at that point it had all become too big. Leonard had no way to get out of it.

Todd received immunity for absolutely everything related to the silo bust. It seems as if his government connections were so strong that he was almost invincible. What he got caught for in the end was unrelated to LSD distribution, but rather for torturing your ex-boyfriend, correct?
Yes, that’s true. I think his legal immunity started to drive him insane; he thought he could get away with murder. He’s now serving life for what he did to my ex-boyfriend Brad. After the trial, I was trying to get away from Todd because he was falling apart psychologically. He wanted me back and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Todd dragged me into his car and strangled me while threatening to drive us both off a bridge. I knew that if I didn’t get help I was going to die. First I went to the local police and got a temporary restraining order, but that only made Todd angrier, so I had no choice but to go to the DEA. The DEA knew that I had dated Todd, and so they were willing to meet with me. I walked into the office with Brad, and we confessed everything. I told them I was an MDMA dealer, the location of one of Todd’s MDMA labs, and about his abuse and the forced druggings. It turned out there were other people Todd had drugged who had gone to the DEA as well, so they had more than enough evidence for a case. I told the agents, “I don’t care if I go to prison for a few years for incriminating myself; at least nothing else will happen to me or anyone else.” It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I had no other options, Todd was either going to kill me or someone else. But the agents didn’t do anything. Conveniently, two days later, Todd called me up and told me that he knew we had met with the DEA. He was enraged, and that is why he kidnapped me and Brad.

What happened during the kidnapping?
It started with Todd offering Brad communion wafers laced with a psilocin analog. I have no idea why Brad agreed to eat the wafers. Then Todd offered Brad a drug that he claimed would amplify the effects of the psychedelic wafers. It was a really big white pill, and after Brad took it he fell unconscious for 12 hours. Todd would do that to people sometimes if he didn’t want them at a party; he would trick them into taking a pill that would knock them unconscious. He was like a pharmacological puppeteer, pulling everybody’s strings with these different chemicals. Then he repeatedly injected Brad with psychedelics, kicked him in the penis, and interrogated him about what, exactly, we had told the DEA.


Krystle and Hamilton are two lysergic peas in an entheogenic pod.

Was he using the psychedelics as a truth serum?
Yes, that was his plan, at least. He was giving Brad IV DMT injections and interrogating him and psychologically tormenting him. Todd would say, “We can keep him, we can make him trust us again.” And I said, “No, we can’t. He has to go to the hospital!” He was injecting me as well with what he said was sodium pentothal. I was so afraid. To think that someone would use psychedelics for the types of things he used them for. It was really horrible. After it was over, Brad had to go to hospital to recuperate from the damage done to his penis, but I had to stay with Todd for a whole month. He drugged me, he raped me, he sodomized me. He did horrible things to me.

Where is Brad now?
I don’t know. I haven’t had contact with him since then. He slowly became convinced I was a Satanist, and after a few weeks in the hospital he was making statements like, “Krystle was performing satanic séances over my dying body.” I assume that he hates me and if he ever got a chance to voice his side of the story he would probably say I was this Satan-worshipping devil woman who was in cahoots with Todd to do horrible things to him from day 1.

Were you performing satanic séances over his dying body?
No, I was giving him CPR! He was on enormous doses of psychedelics and barbiturates so his memory of the ordeal is seriously distorted. He was on the verge of death. I would have called the cops, but Todd had needles filled with some drug and said, “If you call the cops, I’m injecting him with this, and he’ll be dead long before anyone gets here.” I did everything I could in order to get him out of that situation, and Brad is still alive now as a result.

After listening to all of these stories about Todd as a sociopathic, controlling megalomaniac—I wonder, how did you fall so deeply in love with him?
Well, at first he was so nice. He seemed like the most spiritual person you would ever meet. Tripping with him was different than anyone I have ever tripped with. We experienced telepathy together. We experienced God together. I wholeheartedly believed that he was the most spiritual and the most perfect person out there, and I fell in love with him completely. After that, I was willing to overlook some of the bad stuff that I started to see in the first couple of years. I would tell myself that underneath all of the insanity he was a good person. Looking back on it, he was just manipulating me. I was a stupid girl. I have some major psychological scars from what happened. That’s why Todd’s serving life––what he did was not a good thing. That’s not what psychedelics should be for. So I wrote Lysergic to teach people to be careful about who they decide to trip with, so hopefully people don’t make the same mistakes I did. Because I really chose the wrong tripping partner when it came to Todd.


WATCH: Getting High on Krystle.

[Simulist]

Life Is a Cosmic Giggle on the Breath of the Universe

The "cosmic giggle" I can handle… But that breath!

[American Dream]

MAY BE TRIGGERING TO ABUSE/TORTURE SURVIVORS

Compare Todd Skinner's torture techniques, as given in Krystle's accounting above, with the "Artichoke Treatment", as practiced in the milieu around Camp King in Germany:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_K._Beecher

In July 2007 the public German TV-channel SWR claimed that Beecher was involved as scientific expert with CIA studies on human drug experiments in the 1950s and may have contributed with his work in the United States and in secret CIA-prisons in Western-Germany to the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation document of 1963.[7]

According to these recent reports, and also according to US-historian Alfred W. McCoy, Dr. Beecher was scientifically responsible for human experiments with drugs (e.g.mescaline) conducted by the CIA in post-war Germany. They took place in a secret CIA-prison located in "Villa Schuster" (later renamed to "Haus Waldhof") in Kronberg nearFrankfurt, which was related to the nearby US-interrogation center Camp King (West-Germany). According to a witness, during these experiments, several interrogated individuals died. This report states that since September 1951, Beecher was frequently in Camp King and prepared human experiments, deliberated with the interrogation-staff of the CIA (called "rough boys") and recommended the test of various drugs. Several times he allegedly met with former Nazi-physician Walter Schreiber (at Camp King respectively in Villa Schuster) to an "exchange of ideas". Later Beecher described Schreiber in a report as "intelligent and cooperative."

The documents presented in the TV-documentation state that the US-army had sent reports about Nazi-experiments in concentration camps like Dachau concentration camp to Dr. Beecher for evaluation. The library of Harvard Medical School still possesses a report of the US-army about these Nazi-experiments that it inherited from Dr. Beecher, a report which he evaluated.[8]

According to Koch, in January 1953, a depressive patient at the New York State Psychatric Institute and Hospital got—upon recommendation of Dr. Beecher—a mescaline-injection at 9:53, fell in a deep coma at 11:45 and died within half an hour.[7]

http://www.campking.net/gehlen_organization.htm

Although at first appearance it may seem that General Gehlen had betrayed the German people, this idea cannot be further from the truth. General Gehlen planned his surrender to the Americans once it was clear that the war was lost. He also obtained permission, once the war ended, from the last leader of the Reich, Admiral Donitz, in a prison camp, to continue with his plans. His vision was that once the new German Government was established, an intelligence agency would be needed. To this end, he had the vision that the Soviets, then an American ally, would rapidly become an enemy. His decision was to take intelligence files and nets with him when he was dismissed from his post on April 9, 1945 and use them as an enticement to the Americans to cooperate with him.

He surrendered to the Americans on May 12, 1945. Shortly after capture, August 26, 1945, he was flown to the United States, Fort Hunt, (PO Box 1142, Camp 1142 was how the camp was referred to by the Americans), Virginia, at which time negotiations with the Pentagon began. It was decided that his services could be used; therefore, he was shipped back to Germany, via a liberty ship, On July 1, 1946. Once he arrived in France, he was flown to Frankfurt via airplane and then driven to Camp King, known then as Camp Siebert. A small collection of his personnel were already working on the post in the "Blue Buildings" which were surrounded by barbed wire. The operation soon grew and the organizations headquarters was moved to Pullach, a city in Bavaria five miles south of Munich, in December 1947. In the Spring of 1949 his organization was co-opted by the CIA and the link with the US Army Intelligence diminished. (Gehlen)

http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Articu ... choke.html

Voice of Norman Cournoyer/Friend of Frank Olson:

“He was a member of the CIA. I only found this out after he told me about it. To me he was a Captain. That's all I knew about it at first. It turned out that he was a CIA agent. And stayed on, right on through to 1953.”


22.28

Pictures taken in Frankfurt and Heidelberg will later turn up among Olson’s slides. These cities were home to the US Army’s most important facilities in Germany. There is also a picture of the top secret CIA headquarters in Germany, located in the building of IG Farben in the heart of Frankfurt.

22.56

What is Olson’s new assignment? He is now working in an area that has nothing to do with biological weapons. Here, in the German offices of the CIA, the biochemist is conducting important conversations with US intelligence officers.

23.17

Increasingly, he can be found in the company of other CIA agents, including a certain John McNulty. It has to do with a top secret project to use chemicals, drugs and torture on human beings in order to break their will and make them submissive. Brainwashing.

23.35

The code name for this operation: Artichoke.

23.43

(Visual text!)

“The (...) team would enjoy the opportunity of applying

“Artichoke” techniques to individuals of dubious loyalty, suspected agents or plants and subjects having known reasons for deception.”

23.56

In Oberursel, in the Taunus hills north of Frankfurt, hidden in old half-timbered houses, the US Army led a quiet interrogation center: “Camp King”. It was primarily Soviet agents and defectors from East Germany who were kept here, people the CIA considered to be communist spies. Special teams, the so-called “rough boys”, interrogated the prisoners.

24.23

Former SS member Franz Gajdosch was hired just after the war by the Americans to tend the bar in the officers’ mess at Camp King. Sometime in the year of 1952, in the top secret interrogation center, Gajdosch runs across another German: Professor Kurt Blome.


24.42 Voice of Franz Gajdosch-dt./ Former barkeeper at “Camp King”:

“For a long time, Blome was a doctor at Camp King, he also ran the clinic. He was a protégé of the Americans, and had been a concentration camp doctor. He conducted experiments.”

25.03

The American officers who lived the good life at Camp King aren’t disturbed about Blome’s past. Was the former concentration camp doctor expected to lend his experience for their own planned experiments on human beings? A CIA consultant began planning the Artichoke experiments as early as September of 1951.

25.24

(Visual text!)

“The conversations at Oberursel pointed up (...) signs

and symptoms of drugs that might be used (...) We should look into the use of amnesia-producing drugs.”

25.34 Voice of Franz Gajdosch-dt./ Former barkeeper at "Camp King":

“Of course their methods were not humane, they exerted a lot of pressure. There are ways of breaking people. At Camp King, they were notorious, the “rough boys” – anything somebody didn’t want to reveal, they would try to get it out of them.”

26.01

There are many indications that the cruel experiments involving human beings – “Operation Artichoke” – took place in this isolated CIA safe house near Camp King, at the edge of a town called Kronberg.

26.17

The former “Schuster Villa”, now called “Haus Waldhof", was built shortly after the turn of the century as the summer residence of a Jewish banking family from Frankfurt. The Nazis confiscated it in 1934, and the Americans took it over after the war.

26.33 Voice of Franz Gajdosch-dt./Former bartender at “Camp King”:

“The neighbors, the community didn’t know who it was, what this place was, because the military personnel going in and out of the house weren’t in uniform, they wore civilian clothing. The vehicles had no license tags, so the community wasn’t even aware it was an American facility.”

26.58

At “House Waldhof,” in June 1952, the CIA begins conducting brain-washing experiments, using various drugs, hypnosis, and probably torture. One of the top secret protocols documents a Russian agent being pumped full of medication.

27.19

The goal of the experiments is to manipulate the human mind in order to extract secrets from its subjects. And then to erase their memory, so they can’t remember what happened to them.

27.38

Dr. Frank Olson arrived in Frankfurt on June 12, 1952, from Hendon Military Airport near London. He left the Rhine-Main region three days later, on June 15.

27.53

On June 13, experiments are conducted with “Patient No. 2”, a suspected Soviet double-agent.

28.03 Voice of Norm Cournoyer

“He was troubled after he came back from Germany one time. He came back and told me and he said Norm, I tell you right now you and I never talked about this, but we were both grown-ups and this was rough. He said ‘Norm, you would be stunned by the techniques that they used.’

They made people talk! They brainwashed people! They used all kinds of drugs, they used all kinds of torture.”

28.32

The CIA’s unscrupulous experiments on human beings continued the Nazi drug experiments they learned of during the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp.

28.43 Voice of Norman Cournoyer

“They were using Nazis, they were using prisoners, they were using Russians, and they didn't care whether they got out of that or not.”

29.17

Meanwhile, the US army was conducting extensive experiments with a new miracle drug: LSD. Here, for example, a soldier was expected to assemble a rifle while under the influence of the hallucinogen.

29.35

The army’s LSD experiments took place on the campus of the Chemical Corps in Edgewood Arsenal. The scientists who worked in these laboratories in the early fifties, and who collaborated closely with Frank Olson, were looking for new hallucinogenic substances. They hoped to find a way to use the drugs on the battle ground.

30.04

Dr. Fritz Hoffmann, a chemist from former Nazi Germany, had been hired a few years earlier to spur the search for new behavior-modifying substances. Immediately after the war he courted the Americans, seeking to ensure a job in the United States.

30:21 Voice of Bennie E. Hackley/Chemical Corps US Army:

“There was an interest in the U.S. during that time in looking at mood-altering drugs from LSD to BZ and other possible mood-altering drugs. Fritz was interested in that area as well.”

[American Dream]

Moving back towards Tibet:

Tibetan guerrillas and the CIA

In the fifties and with the support of the USA, a guerilla army was developed in Tibet which over many years undertook military action against the Chinese occupation forces. A broad scale anti-Communist offensive was planned together with Taiwanese special units and indirect support from the Indian secret service. At the head of the rebellion stood the proud and “cruel” Khampas. These nomads had been feared as brigands for centuries, so that the word Khampa in Tibet is a synonym for robber. In the mid-fifties the American secret service (CIA) had brought several groups of the wild tribe to Taiwan via eastern Pakistan and later to Camp Hale in the USA. There they received training in guerilla tactics. Afterwards the majority of them were dropped back into Tibet with parachutes. Some of them made contact with the government in Lhasa at that stage. Others did not shy away from their traditional trade of robbery and became a real nuisance for the rural population whom they were actually supposed to liberate from the Chinese and not drive into further misery through pillaging.

Despite the Dalai Lama’s constant affirmations, still repeated today, that his flight took place without any external influence, it was in fact played out months in advance in Washington by high military officials. Everything went as planned. In 1959, the American-trained guerillas collected His Holiness from his summer residence (in Lhasa). During the long trek to the Indian border the underground fighters were in constant radio contact with the Americans and were supplied with food and equipment by aircraft. We learn from an “initiate” that “this fantastic escape and its major significance have been buried in the lore of the CIA as one of the successes that are not talked about. The Dalai Lama would never have been saved without the CIA” (Grunfeld, 1996, pp. 155-156).

In addition, the Chinese were not particularly interested in pursuing the refugees since they believed they would be better able to deal with the rebellion in Tibet if the Kundun was out of the country. Mao Zedong is thus said to have personally approved of the flight of the Dalai Lama after the fact (Tibetan Review, January 1995, p. 10). Yes — Beijing was convinced for months after the exodus that His Holiness had been kidnapped by the Khampas.

In fact, the Chinese had every reason to make such an assumption, as becomes apparent from a piece of correspondence between the Kundun and the Chinese military commander of Lhasa, General Tan Guansan. Only a few days before the god-king was able to flee the town, he had turned to the General with the most urgent appeal to protect him from the “reactionary, evil elements “ who “are carrying out activities endangering me under the pretext of protecting my safety” (Grunfeld, 1996, p. 135). What he meant by these “evil elements” were hundreds of Tibetans who had surrounded his summer palace day and night to cheer him on. This crowd was called upon a number of times by the Dalai Lama’s political staff to abandon their “siege” since it was provoking the Chinese and there was a real danger that they would answer with artillery fire at the illegal rally and in so doing quite possibly threaten the life of the Kundun. But the people nevertheless remained, on the pretext of caring for the security of their “god-king”. Thereupon the latter wrote the above request to General Tan Guansan. But in a furtive maneuver he was secretly collected by a group of Khampas and brought to the Indian border unharmed.

The flight, organized by the CIA and tolerated by the Chinese, was later mythologized by the western press and the Dalai Lama himself into a divine exodus. There was mysterious talk of a “mystic cloud” which was supposed to have veiled the column of refugees during the long trek to India and protected them from the view of and attack by the Chinese enemy. The CIA airplanes which gave the refugees air cover and provided them with supplies of food became Chinese “reconnaissance” flights which circled above the fleeing god-king but, thanks to wondrous providence and the “mystic cloud”, were unable to discern anything.

http://www.naatanet.org/shadowcircus/shang4.html: “Resistance fighters escorted the Dalai Lama through guerrilla-held territory. The two CIA-trained men met up with the escape party halfway on their journey and accompanied them to the Indian border, keeping the Americans updated about their progress. The Dalai Lama’s escape triggered a massive military operation by the Chinese who brutally quelled the revolt in Lhasa and went on the offensive against the resistance bases in southern Tibet. The guerrillas suffered major setbacks. Andrug Gompo Tashi and the remainder of his force had no choice but to join the exodus of Tibetans who were streaming across the Himalaya, following their leader into exile.” (From the Film The Shadow Circus – The CIA in Tibet)

Even if the Kundun has for years publicly distanced himself from the Tibetan guerillas, he always showed great sympathy in the community of Tibetans in exile for “his” underground fighters. His Holiness has also valued the services of his guerillas in exile and on a number of occasions since 1959 publicly stood by them. “Despite my belief”, he says in his autobiography published in 1964 “I much admire their courage and their determination to take on the fierce struggle which they began for our freedom, our culture, and religion. I thank them for their strength and their daring, and also personally for the protection which they gave me. ... Hence I could not honorably give them the advice to avoid violence. In order to fight they had sacrificed their homes and all the comforts and advantages of a peaceful life. Now they could not see any alternative to continuing to struggle and I had nothing to oppose that with” (Dalai Lama XIV, 1964, p. 190). In the new edition of the autobiography of the in the meantime winner of the Nobel peace prize which appeared in 1990 (Freedom in Exile), this passage is no longer mentioned. It is too obvious a contradiction of the current image of the Kundun as “the supreme prince of peace of the century”.

Another statement, which can be read in the biography, The Last Dalai Lama by Michael Harris Goodman, shows even more clearly the god-king’s two-facedness concerning nonviolence: “In [the message]", he is supposed to have said, “I called the guerillas 'reactionaries', stated that the Tibetan people should not support them. At the same time the delegation was instructed to tell the guerillas to keep on fighting. We spoke in two tongues, the official and the unofficial. Officially we regarded their act as rebellion, and unofficially we regard them as heroes and told them so” (Goodman, 1986, p. 271).

Already in exile, at the beginning of the sixties the Dalai Lama bestowed on a distinguished rebel leader the same honors which normally accompany an appointment to the rank of general (Grunfeld, 1996, p. 142). At the same time a number of volunteer exile Tibetans flew to the USA in order to once again be trained in guerilla warfare under the supervision of the CIA. The action was mediated by Gyalo Thondup, a elder brother of the Dalai Lama.

Parallel to this, together with the Indian secret service Thondup established the Special Frontier Force (SFF) in 1962 with exile Tibetan recruits, a powerful and well-equipped mountain army which could be dropped into Tibet by parachute at any moment. It had 10,500 men under arms and its own officer corps. At the same time the “National Volunteer Defence Army” was founded. It can hardly be assumed that the Kundun was not very well informed about these ambitious military projects of his brother. Nonetheless it continues to be officially denied up to the present day. His Holiness is also not supposed to have known anything about the $1.7 million which the CIA provided annually to the Tibetans for military activities in the sixties.

The armed struggle of the Tibetans was prepared for at the highest political levels, primarily in Washington, Delhi, and Taipei. The only reason it was not brought into action was that at the start of the seventies Richard Nixon began with his pro-China politics and cancelled all military support for the Tibetans. But without American support the outlook for a guerilla war was completely hopeless, and from this point on the Dalai Lama publicly distanced himself from any use of violence.

Military action now no longer had any chance of success and in Dharamsala the work began of effectively reformulating the history of the Tibetan guerillas „in that one encouraged the fiction that the popular resistance had been nonviolent”, as Jamyan Norbu writes, before continuing, Tibetan officials, Buddhist followers, Western supporters and intellectuals […] regard the resistance movement as an embarrassment [...] because it somehow detracts from the preferred peace-loving image of Tibet as a Shangri-La” (Huber, 2001, p. 369).

The Nobel peace prize winner’s statements on the armed struggle of the Tibetans are most contradictory and were in the past more oriented to the political situation and constellations of power than fundamental principles. At times the Dalai Lama expressed the view that “it is quite appropriate to fight for a just cause and even to kill” (Levenson, 1992, p. 135). In an interview in 1980 he answered the question of whether violence and religion did not exclude one another as follows: „They can be combined. It depends on the motivation and the result. With good motivation and result, and if under the circumstances there is no other alternative, then violence is permissible” (Avedon, 1980, p. 34).

Only since 1989, after he was awarded the Nobel peace prize, has the god-king cultivated an exclusively pacifist retrospective on the violent history of his country. A few years ago one still heard from His Holiness that there was much which was aggressive in the Tibet of old, about which one could not exactly be happy. From 1989 on, the stereotypical message is that there had only been “peace and happiness” in the Land of Snows’ past. [4] Earlier, the Kundun had stated that “the Tibetans are predisposed to be fairly aggressive and warlike” and could only be tamed by Buddhism (Dalai Lama XIV, 1993a, p. 18). Today, we read from the same author that “The Tibetan people are of an upright, gentle, and friendly nature” (Dalai Lama XIV, 1993b, p. 34), whilst at the same time the Indian press describes Tibetan youths in Dharamsala as “militant”, “violent”, “impatient” and “restless” (Tibetan Review, May 1991, p. 19). In 1994 a Tibetan youth stabbed a young Indian which led to violence breaking out against the exile Tibetan community.

http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-2-09.htm#CIA

[Hammer of Los]

...

If I become a guru, do I get a hot stripper too?

I probably shouldn't have said that.




ps I read something from the current Dalai Lama once. I thought it was a load of predictable tosh. I'm not a fan.

...

[undead]

If I become a guru, do I get a hot stripper too?

Of course you do! In fact that's the main reason for becoming a guru. Not only a hot stripper. You get to "have" lots of hot chicks, and you get to drink beer while you rape them and give them diseases.

That's crazy about the neuro soup girl. I always wondered about the Pickard case and what was going on there. In the psychedelic community the Neurosoup girl will be forever known as "the girl who made a video about how she took DMT by putting it up her ass". It used to be on youtube, but now you have to pay her to watch it. I never watched her shit because, well, why? She's just some hippie who somehow (I wonder how!) is able to make all these videos and has all the time in the world to have this website. What does she do for living now that she's not...

1. Stripping
2. The husband of a DEA agent
3. In trouble with the law

I don't think she's living off of fees from her website or books.

This is interesting:



Also, for perspective:

1. She makes money off of selling information about psychedelics that can be gotten freely elsewhere.

This is a reason to not buy her services. It's not a reason to hate her. Many people regurgitate in published form information that can be found elsewhere. Some of these are still worthwhile to read or consult because perhaps they have uniquely organized or presented the information in a useful way. As long as she has not openly plagiarized from other sources, I see no reason to fault her for attempting to repackage information on psychedelics in an accessible way for a wider audience.

2. Her contributions are unoriginal, and she seems not that bright.

Once again, these are reasons for not personally buying her services, and for recommending that others do the same. I don't see how this constitutes reason to hate her.

3. She is publishing information on psychedelics on youtube and elsewhere vocally, which is dangerous to our movement.

This is a point on which I suspect I have a fundamental disagreement with others on this board. Many here, it seems, are perfectly content to maintain the status quo--remaining as a maligned, persecuted minority using substances and practices that, nevertheless, for the time being are able to fly mostly under the radar of the authorities. I am not content with this status-quo. To be sure, I'm not calling for a second Timothy Leary-style fanatical crusade to spread the psychedelic gospel. That didn't work. Nevertheless, I continue to hope and expect that we can slowly and patiently educate larger and larger swaths of the public (starting with our non-psychedelic-using immediate family and friends) and eventually achieve a greater degree of social and legal acceptance for our practices. Therefore, I welcome any public discussion of psychedelics that is conducted in an accurate and sympathetic manner. I understand that people worry that it will cause us to lose things like MHRB, HBWR seeds, shroom spores, etc. I share that worry as well, but in the long run I consider it counter-productive cowardice to retreat from this battle. If we remain silent, mainstream opinion on psychedelics will become even more firmly entrenched, not being challenged, and we will have nobody to appeal to if/when the government closes these options down on a whim.

To orient one's long-term strategy around the ignorance and/or benevolence of the government is foolishness, in my opinion. I really have no idea why the government doesn't ban stuff like MHRB or shroom spores already (it would be consistent with the rest of their idiotic and totalitarian policies). Every day that stuff like MHRB or shroom spores remain legal, I count as a day that we dodged the bullet. I consider it in our interest to obtain a climate of public opinion in our favor as soon as possible. The longer we delay, the more of an opportunity we give the government to following through with the logical endpoint of their drug policy, which would be banning currently grey-area alternatives like MHRB and shroom spores. The only stable solution in which we can find some peace of mind is if we develop the strength of public opinion necessary to uphold our right to these substances when challenged. Perhaps others feel differently, but I just can't remain content allowing stuff like MHRB or shroom spores to remain at the caprice of the government. It would be like removing constitutional protection for freedom of speech and allowing it remain at the caprice of the government. "Oh, maybe if we are really quiet and underground, the government won't persecute us for what we say." No, even if that strategy appears to work for a certain time, it is not a sustainable solution, or one that provides for peace of mind.

To clarify as well, I'm not saying that we need disclose to the public every little thing about our practices. I even think it is somewhat fitting if psychedelics remain a largely underground phenomenon, culturally speaking, in the West. I very much think that the template of the ancient "mystery religion" could very well fit with psychedelics--something tolerated by the broader public, but only really practiced and developed by a certain underground of self-chosen initiates. Do I want to see LSD being sold next to the Four-Loko's and 5-hour energys in the gas station? No, of course not. But do I want to face legal repercussions for manufacturing and using psychedelics? No, I do not. The public just needs to be informed about psychedelics enough to dispel government propaganda and make intelligent policy decisions.

4. She tortured someone.

See the link to her side of the story above. I find it very plausible that she was largely at the mercy of Skinner, and that there was little she could do in that situation to prevent the torture of her boyfriend. Clearly, she made some bad choices associating herself with Skinner, but so did Pickard.

5. She narc'd on Pickard.

This is perhaps the most convoluted of the points. I won't go into detail here. I'll just say that, even assuming that this is true, then this is very disappointing, but this still does not make her THE DEVIL. I understand that psychedelics are supposed to transform us into pearly-white holy spirits without any selfish impulse in our bones, but how many of us would be truly unmoved by the prospect of a life in prison? I'd like to think that I'd never narc on someone, but to be perfectly honest with myself, I'd have to say that it would depend on how loyal I was to them, and to a lesser extent, how severe the penalties for me would be otherwise. If that person was my soul mate, in whom I believed wholeheartedly, then no, you could not get me to narc, regardless of the threats to myself. Did Pickard fit these qualities? From what I have read about him, not quite. To be sure, we are grateful to anyone willing to risk his/her life to put out a persecuted sacrament onto the market. But it doesn't appear that Pickard was operating entirely from altruistic motives, which is fine, except that it is unreasonable to expect others to sacrifice everything for him when he was NOT entirely NOT in it for himself.

6. She kept on going back again and again to the DEA willingly.

This does seem a puzzle. To me, it sounds like the neurosoup girl was motivated partly out of revenge. Revenge for what? We might never fully know. Was this impulse for revenge somewhat understandable, or entirely unreasonable? Again, we don't know. It is, in any case, highly uncool to turn someone over to the DEA because of a personal vendetta, but human relationships are complicated.

Conclusion:

Here's the sense I get from her: that she knows she made some bad choices in the past and is trying to find a way to move on, make a living (her books and website), and still do a little bit of good in the process by speading information and awareness about psychedelics. Is that so unreasonable? I'm sure *some* (not all) LSD dealers are far more unscrupulous about abusing the psychedelic movement for their own material gain than she seems to be doing. At $10 a hit, there's a lot of profit somewhere down the line. In comparison, someone who tries to "cash-in" on information about psychedelics and personal experiences with psychedelics and the psychedelic movement is little worse than how someone like Terence Mckenna made a living. Was he a sell-out because he scratched a modest living from a few books on these topics? (Granted, his might have been a bit more original, but you don't have to buy the neurosoup girl's book if you don't want to).

For the record, I don't agree with what she says about not selling entheogens. Yes, it is wrong to sell Native American ceremonies for money. I do agree with what she says about the negativity that can be involved in lucrative drug trafficking. However, who the fuck is she to be making pronouncements about what other people should do? I support people who sell psychedelics in order to elevate themselves in life. Many people sell mushrooms and cannabis to pay for a college education. Most of the original radical environmental work that happened before the total co-optation of the environmental movement was financed by cannabis sales, and this is a reason why it was made illegal - so that only the pharmaceutical industry can profit from it.

And like the crazy hippie said - no people selling drugs basically means no drugs to be had by the general public. And I do love more than anything else to give psychedelics away for free, but he's right, you can't expect a person to take that risk just to give it away. Also - cannabis is an entheogen. People shouldn't buy cannabis? What about medical marijuana patients? What about the industry that makes the California the cannabis capital of the world. Yes, it has problems like other industries, but lots of people who are served by it need the product to stay alive, and this model is thus far the only one that makes medicinal grade cannabis available.

So I don't know if she's an agent or not. Maybe she's just another hippie who wants to be like Terence? I haven't read her book. Maybe I would download it for free and read it if I had a lot of time on my hands. She is definitely a person of interest, though. Nice bikini, that probably goes a long way selling the books. She is like Pinchbeck in that way - trying to sell her life story, albeit in a slightly more tasteful way.

I'll look around and see if I can find anything else.

[American Dream]

That's crazy about the neuro soup girl. I always wondered about the Pickard case and what was going on there. In the psychedelic community the Neurosoup girl will be forever known as "the girl who made a video about how she took DMT by putting it up her ass". It used to be on youtube, but now you have to pay her to watch it. I never watched her shit because, well, why? She's just some hippie who somehow (I wonder how!) is able to make all these videos and has all the time in the world to have this website. What does she do for living now that she's not...

1. Stripping
2. The husband of a DEA agent
3. In trouble with the law

I don't think she's living off of fees from her website or books.

1. She makes money off of selling information about psychedelics that can be gotten freely elsewhere.

This is a reason to not buy her services. It's not a reason to hate her. Many people regurgitate in published form information that can be found elsewhere. Some of these are still worthwhile to read or consult because perhaps they have uniquely organized or presented the information in a useful way. As long as she has not openly plagiarized from other sources, I see no reason to fault her for attempting to repackage information on psychedelics in an accessible way for a wider audience.

2. Her contributions are unoriginal, and she seems not that bright.

Once again, these are reasons for not personally buying her services, and for recommending that others do the same. I don't see how this constitutes reason to hate her.

3. She is publishing information on psychedelics on youtube and elsewhere vocally, which is dangerous to our movement.

This is a point on which I suspect I have a fundamental disagreement with others on this board. Many here, it seems, are perfectly content to maintain the status quo--remaining as a maligned, persecuted minority using substances and practices that, nevertheless, for the time being are able to fly mostly under the radar of the authorities. I am not content with this status-quo. To be sure, I'm not calling for a second Timothy Leary-style fanatical crusade to spread the psychedelic gospel. That didn't work. Nevertheless, I continue to hope and expect that we can slowly and patiently educate larger and larger swaths of the public (starting with our non-psychedelic-using immediate family and friends) and eventually achieve a greater degree of social and legal acceptance for our practices. Therefore, I welcome any public discussion of psychedelics that is conducted in an accurate and sympathetic manner. I understand that people worry that it will cause us to lose things like MHRB, HBWR seeds, shroom spores, etc. I share that worry as well, but in the long run I consider it counter-productive cowardice to retreat from this battle. If we remain silent, mainstream opinion on psychedelics will become even more firmly entrenched, not being challenged, and we will have nobody to appeal to if/when the government closes these options down on a whim.

To orient one's long-term strategy around the ignorance and/or benevolence of the government is foolishness, in my opinion. I really have no idea why the government doesn't ban stuff like MHRB or shroom spores already (it would be consistent with the rest of their idiotic and totalitarian policies). Every day that stuff like MHRB or shroom spores remain legal, I count as a day that we dodged the bullet. I consider it in our interest to obtain a climate of public opinion in our favor as soon as possible. The longer we delay, the more of an opportunity we give the government to following through with the logical endpoint of their drug policy, which would be banning currently grey-area alternatives like MHRB and shroom spores. The only stable solution in which we can find some peace of mind is if we develop the strength of public opinion necessary to uphold our right to these substances when challenged. Perhaps others feel differently, but I just can't remain content allowing stuff like MHRB or shroom spores to remain at the caprice of the government. It would be like removing constitutional protection for freedom of speech and allowing it remain at the caprice of the government. "Oh, maybe if we are really quiet and underground, the government won't persecute us for what we say." No, even if that strategy appears to work for a certain time, it is not a sustainable solution, or one that provides for peace of mind.

To clarify as well, I'm not saying that we need disclose to the public every little thing about our practices. I even think it is somewhat fitting if psychedelics remain a largely underground phenomenon, culturally speaking, in the West. I very much think that the template of the ancient "mystery religion" could very well fit with psychedelics--something tolerated by the broader public, but only really practiced and developed by a certain underground of self-chosen initiates. Do I want to see LSD being sold next to the Four-Loko's and 5-hour energys in the gas station? No, of course not. But do I want to face legal repercussions for manufacturing and using psychedelics? No, I do not. The public just needs to be informed about psychedelics enough to dispel government propaganda and make intelligent policy decisions.

4. She tortured someone.

See the link to her side of the story above. I find it very plausible that she was largely at the mercy of Skinner, and that there was little she could do in that situation to prevent the torture of her boyfriend. Clearly, she made some bad choices associating herself with Skinner, but so did Pickard.

5. She narc'd on Pickard.

This is perhaps the most convoluted of the points. I won't go into detail here. I'll just say that, even assuming that this is true, then this is very disappointing, but this still does not make her THE DEVIL. I understand that psychedelics are supposed to transform us into pearly-white holy spirits without any selfish impulse in our bones, but how many of us would be truly unmoved by the prospect of a life in prison? I'd like to think that I'd never narc on someone, but to be perfectly honest with myself, I'd have to say that it would depend on how loyal I was to them, and to a lesser extent, how severe the penalties for me would be otherwise. If that person was my soul mate, in whom I believed wholeheartedly, then no, you could not get me to narc, regardless of the threats to myself. Did Pickard fit these qualities? From what I have read about him, not quite. To be sure, we are grateful to anyone willing to risk his/her life to put out a persecuted sacrament onto the market. But it doesn't appear that Pickard was operating entirely from altruistic motives, which is fine, except that it is unreasonable to expect others to sacrifice everything for him when he was NOT entirely NOT in it for himself.

6. She kept on going back again and again to the DEA willingly.

This does seem a puzzle. To me, it sounds like the neurosoup girl was motivated partly out of revenge. Revenge for what? We might never fully know. Was this impulse for revenge somewhat understandable, or entirely unreasonable? Again, we don't know. It is, in any case, highly uncool to turn someone over to the DEA because of a personal vendetta, but human relationships are complicated.

Conclusion:

Here's the sense I get from her: that she knows she made some bad choices in the past and is trying to find a way to move on, make a living (her books and website), and still do a little bit of good in the process by speading information and awareness about psychedelics. Is that so unreasonable? I'm sure *some* (not all) LSD dealers are far more unscrupulous about abusing the psychedelic movement for their own material gain than she seems to be doing. At $10 a hit, there's a lot of profit somewhere down the line. In comparison, someone who tries to "cash-in" on information about psychedelics and personal experiences with psychedelics and the psychedelic movement is little worse than how someone like Terence Mckenna made a living. Was he a sell-out because he scratched a modest living from a few books on these topics? (Granted, his might have been a bit more original, but you don't have to buy the neurosoup girl's book if you don't want to).

For the record, I don't agree with what she says about not selling entheogens. Yes, it is wrong to sell Native American ceremonies for money. I do agree with what she says about the negativity that can be involved in lucrative drug trafficking. However, who the fuck is she to be making pronouncements about what other people should do? I support people who sell psychedelics in order to elevate themselves in life. Many people sell mushrooms and cannabis to pay for a college education. Most of the original radical environmental work that happened before the total co-optation of the environmental movement was financed by cannabis sales, and this is a reason why it was made illegal - so that only the pharmaceutical industry can profit from it.

And like the crazy hippie said - no people selling drugs basically means no drugs to be had by the general public. And I do love more than anything else to give psychedelics away for free, but he's right, you can't expect a person to take that risk just to give it away. Also - cannabis is an entheogen. People shouldn't buy cannabis? What about medical marijuana patients? What about the industry that makes the California the cannabis capital of the world. Yes, it has problems like other industries, but lots of people who are served by it need the product to stay alive, and this model is thus far the only one that makes medicinal grade cannabis available.

So I don't know if she's an agent or not. Maybe she's just another hippie who wants to be like Terence? I haven't read her book. Maybe I would download it for free and read it if I had a lot of time on my hands. She is definitely a person of interest, though. Nice bikini, that probably goes a long way selling the books. She is like Pinchbeck in that way - trying to sell her life story, albeit in a slightly more tasteful way.

I'll look around and see if I can find anything else.

[/quote]

All this stuff about the personal qualities of Krystle is interesting but somewhat beside the most important points to me.


A few of those points:


Both Pickard and Skinner had long and documented histories as government informants, yet were somehow involved with manufacturing and distributing the largest amount of black market LSD ever known.

Skinner practiced OPERATION ARTICHOKE style torture, allegedly with a DIA spook/paramilitary as his consultant. The human rights abuses described by Krstle and in the court transcripts are truly beyond the pale.

Skinner operated with an apparent sense of impunity, distributing large quantities of drugs at Burning Man and other places.

There are allegations that Pickard commissioned a murder.

Pickard had ties to an Assistant Secretary of State, a major Afghan heroin trafficker and other highly-connected characters.

Skinner knowingly distributed badly made drugs, which put people at great risk.

While Skinner was exempted from the acid lab case, the governemnt stayed firmly away from anything having to do with the distribution network. Everything about distribution was put on the (unidentified) "Petaluma Al". End of story...

Likewise, the government stayed form the precursor supply source of incredibly large quantities of Ergotamine Tartrate, procured from pharmaceutical corporations.

Pickard and Skinner seemed to have enjoyed an amazing degree of protection, prior to the Wamego bust.


There's much more to the case than this but the implications of the above raise very, very important issues, which deserve our serious attention...



.

[undead]

There's much more to the case than this but the implications of the above raise very, very important issues, which deserve our serious attention...

Yes, one implication being that the government has an interest in keeping the black market supplied with LSD and all kinds of other drugs, including unknown chemicals. What else? Recreational LSD use plays into the government's plan to disrupt legitimate and effective resistance - yes, definitely. Anything else you want to add?

Edit to add: Oh yeah, I forgot - The DEA is the main trafficker of drugs worldwide, competing or collaborating with the CIA. We know this from Evo Morales, who kicked them out of Bolivia for encouraging the drug trade.

[American Dream]

There's much more to the case than this but the implications of the above raise very, very important issues, which deserve our serious attention...

Yes, one implication being that the government has an interest in keeping the black market supplied with LSD and all kinds of other drugs, including unknown chemicals. What else? Recreational LSD use plays into the government's plan to disrupt legitimate and effective resistance - yes, definitely. Anything else you want to add?

Edit to add: Oh yeah, I forgot - The DEA is the main trafficker of drugs worldwide, competing or collaborating with the CIA. We know this from Evo Morales, who kicked them out of Bolivia for encouraging the drug trade.

The biggest concern I can think of is that "sting operations" (i.e. entrapment) may be much more common and on a much higher level than commonly understood.

The implications of this are incredibly important.

[undead]

The biggest concern I can think of is that "sting operations" (i.e. entrapment) may be much more common and on a much higher level than commonly understood.

The implications of this are incredibly important.
[/size]

Well this is basically the MO for all of the War on Terror as well as the narco-conflict in the Americas, right? Flood everywhere with drugs (using the products of pharmaceutical and chemical companies), keep track of everything, and use that information to take out potential threats. Same thing with guns, as in the Fast and Furious momentary exposure incident. Except for the guns its more just letting the various players wipe themselves out. Like selling weapons to Iraq and Iran simultaneously. Or supporting Moktada Sadr one year against "sunni extremists" or "Baathists", and then the next year calling him the king terrorist after he gains too much power.

There is a conspiracy to control the world with drugs that is dictated from the highest levels of the government and beyond. But this is evident from a lot of other incidents, and this is just another point on that list. Except this has to do with hallucinogens, which makes it different and suggests that MKULTRA / ARTICHOKE is still active. I agree that people need to know this. It's too bad that most people just can't conceive of it, or at least the details. It's easy to conceive of a centralized conspiracy to control everything - I think a lot of people are having that thought now with the economic crisis. But how deep it really goes - most people just can't understand, or if they can they don't want to know.

The drug conspiracy is blatantly evident to the teenager or child who is on psychiatric drugs and wants to commit suicide because the effects are so heinous. However, the mechanics of how on Earth their parents were led to poison them, and why nobody believes what they have to say about it - that is difficult for an adult to understand, never mind a child. I think that most psychiatry that is practiced on children amounts to torture, especially when they don't want it. Not that I want to insert my pet subject into the conversation, but it just reminded me. Ritalin entraps people in meth addiction later in life, when they loose insurance coverage and are forced to turn to meth or other drugs to satisfy their addiction that they carried from childhood.

Yes, this is a really important subject.