Give me con- give me -spire The Complot that I desire

[neon imposter]

Weird Scenes inside the Canyon - Laurel Canyon, covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream

David McGowan

Αρχίζω την παρουσίαση του εν λόγω βιβλίου, όπου ο συγγραφέας παραθέτει κάποιες συμπτώσεις που αν κανείς ακολουθήσει υπό μία ορισμένη προοπτική μπορεί να δει στην άκρη του τούνελ ότι οι κοπρίτες χίπηδες και η σκατομουσική τους δεν ήταν παρά ένα κατασκεύασμα της CIA. Δεν με ενδιαφέρει φυσικά τι κάνει αυτή η οργάνωση όσο το γεγονός ότι πράγματι αποκαθηλώνει κάτι χαμένα κορμιά, άχρηστους, που παρίσταναν τους καλλιτέχνες.

Το Laurel Canyon ήταν μία εποχή που μαζεύτηκαν τα μεγάλα μυαλά της εποχής ( ) για να κάνουν την επανάστασή τους ενάντια στο Βιετνάμ κλπ κλπ. Δεν είχε κάτι που θα τους τραβούσε εκεί, απλώς ήταν the space and time κλπ μαλακίες.



ΕΙΣΑΓΩΓΗ

Ήχοι μυδραλιοβόλου

What was this about secret underground tunnels connecting some of the iconic Laurel Canyon properties? And what about all those mysterious fires that wiped away the homes of a number of prominent singers and musicians? And why were there so many violent deaths so closely associated with a scene that was supposed to be all about peace and love? And what of Walker’s throwaway mention of a “secret fortified” military installation sitting right smackdab in the middle of hippiedom? And why did at least a few of America’s new minstrels seem to come from career military families and from the world of covert intelligence operations? And how exactly do the casual allusions to pedophilia fit into this increasingly curious scene? (τι είχες Γιάννη τι είχα πάντα; Κόβεται η παιδεραστία; κλπ)

Sometime those bits and pieces end up being no more than interesting anomalies, but past experience has taught me that if those divergent facts are properly assembled, a new picture often begins to emerge that is strikingly at odds with what is widely accepted as our consensus reality

In our celebrity-driven culture, calling into question the character and motivations of so many widely admired and respected figures from the entertainment community is never a good way to win popularity contestes. And when those revered figures are overwhelmingly viewed as icons of various leftist causes, it is definitely not the way to win fans among those who consider themselves to be liberals, progressives or leftist

[neon imposter]

ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΟ 1 - VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED - BY WAY OF AN INTRODUCTION

Το μόνο εκ των ων ουκ άνευ κεφάλαιο του βιβλίου

[...] US warships under the command of US Navy Admiral George Stephen Morrison [ ] have allegedly come under attack while patrolling Vietnam’s Tonkin Gulf. This event, subsequently dubbed the ‘Tonkin Gulf Incident,’ [...] actually was, as it turns out, is an ‘attack’ that never took place at all

[...] the infamous Operation Rolling Thunder will commence.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world in 1965, a new ‘scene’ is just beginning to take shape in the city of Los Angeles. Canyon—a heavily wooded, rustic, serene, yet vaguely ominous slice of LA nestled in the hills that separate the Los Angeles basin from the San Fernando Valley—musicians, singers and songwriters suddenly begin to gather as though summoned there by some unseen Pied Piper



And so it is that, even while the father is actively conspiring to fabricate an incident that will be used to massively accelerate an illegal
war, the son is positioning himself to become an icon of the ‘hippie’/anti-war [ ] crowd. Nothing unusual about that, I suppose. It is, you know, a small world and all. And it is not as if Jim Morrison’s story is in any way unique

Laurel Canyon’s father figure is the rather eccentric personality known as Frank Zappa. Though he and his various Mothers of Invention lineups will never attain the commercial success of the band headed by the admiral’s son, Frank will be a hugely influential figure among his contemporaries

Nevertheless, Zappa will never really make a secret of the fact that he has nothing but contempt for the hippie culture that he will help create and with which he will surround himself [ ]

And it is probably safe to say that Frank’s dad also would have had little regard for the youth culture of the 1960s, given that Francis Zappa was, in case you were wondering, a chemical warfare specialist assigned to—where else?—the Edgewood Arsenal near Baltimore, Maryland. Edgewood is, of course, the longtime home of America’s chemical warfare program, as well as a facility frequently cited as being deeply enmeshed in MKULTRA operation

Zappa’s manager is a shadowy character by the name of Herb Cohen [...] a former US Marine [...] Those travels, curiously, had taken him to
the Congo in 1961, at the very time that leftist Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was being tortured and killed by our very own CIA

Making up the other half of Laurel Canyon’s First Family is Frank’s wife, Gail Zappa, known formerly as Adelaide Sloatman. Gail hails from
a long line of career Naval officers, including her father, who spent his life working on classified nuclear weapons research for the US Navy

“Papa” John Phillips, more so than probably any of the other illustrious residents of Laurel Canyon, will play a major role in spreading the
emerging youth ‘counterculture’ across America [...] he will co-organize the famed Monterey Pop Festival [...] will pen an insipid song known as San
Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair), which will quickly rise to the top of the charts

Before arriving in Laurel Canyon and opening the doors of his home to the soon-to-be famous, the already famous, and the infamous (such as Charlie Manson, whose ‘Family’ also spent time at the Log Cabin and at the Laurel Canyon home of “Mama” Cass Elliot, which, in case you
didn’t know, sat right across the road from the Laurel Canyon home of Abigail Folger and Voytek Frykowski) John Edmund Andrew Phillips was, shockingly enough, yet another child of the military/intelligence complex. The son of US Marine Corp Captain Claude Andrew Phillips and a mother who claimed to have psychic and telekinetic powers

After leaving Annapolis, John married Susie Adams, a direct descendant of Founding Father John Adams. Susie’s father, James Adams, Jr., had been involved in covert intelligence operations. Susie herself would later find employment at the Pentagon, alongside John Phillips’ older sister, Rosie [...] John’s mother, “Dene” Phillips, also worked for most of her life for the federal government in some unspecified capacity. And John’s older brother, Tommy, was a battle-scarred former US Marine

John Phillips, of course—though surrounded throughout his life by military/intelligence personnel—did not involve himself in such matters. Or so we are to believe. Before succeeding in his musical career, however, John did seem to find himself, quite innocently of course, in some rather unusual places. [...] Phillips has claimed that he went to Havana as nothing more than a concerned private citizen, with the intention of—you’re going to
love this one—“fighting for Castro.” Because, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of folks in those days traveled abroad to thwart CIA operations be
fore taking up residence in Laurel Canyon and joining the ‘hippie’ generation

Anyway, let’s move on to yet another of Laurel Canyon’s earliest and brightest stars, Mr. Stephen Stills

Stephen Stills was the product of yet another career military family

Stephen will later tell anyone who will sit and listen that he had served time for Uncle Sam in the jungles of Vietnam. These tales will be universally dismissed by chroniclers of the era as nothing more than drug-induced delusions

David Crosby, founding member of the seminal Laurel Canyon band the Byrds, as well as, of course, Crosby, Stills & Nash

Crosby is, not surprisingly, the son of an Annapolis graduate and WWII military intelligence officer [ ]

But David Crosby is much more than just the son of Major Floyd Delafield Crosby. David Van Cortlandt Crosby, as it turns out, is a scion of the closely intertwined van Cortlandt, van Schuyler and van Rensselaer families. And while you’re probably thinking, “the Van Who families?,” [...] Suffice it to say that the Crosby family tree includes a truly dizzying array of US senators and congressmen, state senators and assemblymen, governors, mayors, judges, Supreme Court justices, Revolutionary and Civil War generals, signers of the Declaration of Independence, and members of the Continental Congress. It also includes, I should hasten to add—for those of you with a taste for such things—more than a few high-ranking Masons. Stephen van Rensselaer III, for example, reportedly served as Grand Master of Masons for New York. And if all that isn’t impressive enough, according to the New England Genealogical Society, David Van Cortlandt Crosby is also a direct descendant of Founding Fathers and Federalist Papers authors Alexander Hamilton and John Jay [ ]

Jackson Browne, who is—are you getting as with this as I am?—the product of a career military family. Browne’s father was assigned to postwar reconstruction work in Germany, which very likely means that he was in the employ of the OSS, precursor to the CIA

other Laurel Canyon vocalists who will rise to dizzying heights of fame and fortune: Gerry Beckley, Dan Peek and Dewey Bunnell. Individually, these three names are probably unknown to virtually all readers, but collectively, as the band America, the three will score huge hits in the early seventies with such songs as Ventura Highway, A Horse With No Name, and the Wizard of Oz-themed The Tin Man. I guess I probably don’t need to add here that all three of these lads were products of the military/intelligence community

What one finds, far more often than not, are the sons and daughters of the military/intelligence complex and the sons and daughters
of extreme wealth and privilege—oftentimes, you’ll find both rolled into one convenient package

All these folks gathered nearly simultaneously along the narrow, winding roads of Laurel Canyon [...] They came even though, at the time, there
was no music industry in Los Angeles They came even though, at the time, there was no live music scene to speak of. They came even though,
in retrospect, there was no discernible reason for them to do so

What was it that inspired them all to head out west? Perhaps Neil Young said it best when he told an interviewer that he couldn’t really
say why he headed out to LA circa 1966; he and others “were just going like Lemmings.”