Posted by Campbell on August 26, 1998 at 10:27:07 PM EDT:
Lobster - Journal of Parapolitics
Summer 1998
ACID The secret history of LSD, David Black, Vision, London, 1998, £9.99 pb ISBN 1901250113
Phil Edwards
I enjoyed this book hugely, and I'd recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the politics of psychedelia - apart from anything else, there are stories here you almost certainly won't have heard. However, overall it aspires to more than it can deliver. As the title implies, the book aims to provid a parapolitical analysis of the manufacture and distribution of lysergic acid diethylamide (hereafter 'acid') in the 1960s and 1970s, with particular attention to the area between radical politics, terrorism and state provocation. An extraordinary range of more or less peripherally involved people and ornaisations swim briefly into focus, from R.D. Laing to the Merry Pranksters; there are two chapters on the CIA's research into psychedelics and one each on the Weather Underground and the Situationist International (SI).
The extraordinary Mr Stark
It is unified - or, I'd argue, fails to be unified - by the extraordinary story of Ron Stark, acid mogul, self-professed Palestinian terrorist, suspected US state asset. However, it is not a biography: too little is known, and Black's organisation of what he does know is capricious. About half the book revolves around Stark's activities in 1969 and 1970, when he made links with the acid-dealing Brotherhood of Eternal Love in the US and set up a shifting network of psychedelic chemists in Britain, France and Belgium. Before and afterwards detail is scarce. Stark became an overnight millionaire between 1967 and 1968 (chapter 2); Stark was involved in 'a scam to hijack control of the [Ghanian] state pharmaceutical company' in 1967, which left him with 'almost a controlling interest' (chapters 10 and 5) - this was presumably part of carve-up of state assets which followed the CIA-sponsored coup against Nkrumah. In 1969 Stark was spoken of as a man with a 'million-dollar inheritance' and could call on contacts in 'Parisian radical circles' (chapter 9); on his own account he had spent the early sixties working on 'top secret projects' at the US Department of Defence (chapter 2). To all intents and purposes, Stark appeared out of nowhere in 1969.
Details are equally thin after 1970. Stark was arrested in Italy in 1975 on drugs charges; at his trial he refused to recognise the court and claimed to be a political prisoner. In prison, Stark gave the authorities what appeared to be accurate warnings of future Brigate Rossa actions; he is also alleged to have persuaded a member of the small terrorist group Azione Rivoluzionara to claim responsibility for a forged BR communique, now thought to be the work of the Italian secret services. Appealing against his sentence in 1978, Stark addressed the court in Arabic and claimed to be 'Khouri Ali', a Palestinian revolutionary. The following year he was released on bail: the judge's summing up described him as US intelligence asset working under cover in the Middle East. Stark jumped bail and disappeared. In 1982 he was arrested in the Netherlands, once again on drugs charges. He was deported back to the US in 1983 and pronounced dead in 1984. (Black regards this as just another disappearing act).
The problem with all this is that, the bizarre Italian episode apart, nothing that Stark is reported to have done is out of line with what one would expect from a major-league dealer (or any other international businessman working partly outside the law). What Stark is reported to have said, meanwhile, is entirely in line with what one would expect from someone 'who invented and reinvented himself from day to day' (or a world-class bullshitter, to put it slightly less kindly). This clearly, is not how Black sees Stark. As the book progresses, its extraordinarily diverse subject matter starts to seem like a jigsaw with one missing piece - a unifying project, personified by Stark.
Black's final chapter duly suggests that Stark was a long-term asset of the CIA, who infiltrated the world of illicit pharmaceuticals and radical politics in order to... what? Keep tabs (no pun intended) on hippie radicals, or provoke them into more violent action? Make money for the agency? Continue the agency's research into psychedelics, using the entire counter-culture as an experimental subject? Black canvasses the first two explanations - which both fit part, but only part, of Stark's story - and hints at the mind-bogglingly vast implications of the third. This would have the merits and drawbacks of paranoia: anything which explains everything explains nothing.
Black's argument is weakened by the weight he puts on some thin and non-existent links. This is particularly apparent in the crucial area of the cross-over between psychedelic activism and urban guerrilla warfare; it's essential to Black's thesis that there is some such crossover and that Stark is involved in it. On the American front, Black quotes Tendler and May - historians of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love - asserting that Stark began working with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love 'at just the time when they were involved with the Weathermen'. Correlation is not causality; in any case Black notes that Tendler and May do not document any contact between the Weathermen and the Brotherhoo, let alone Stark. As it stands the assertion is worthless, in other words.
Friends, Frendz, the IRA, Howard Marks and...
In Britain, according to Black, Stark's social contact was with 'the ex-Situationist Friends magazine'; a nexus of psychedelia, polical radicalism and armed struggle. Black quotes Steve Abrams:
'Dick Pountain takes Stark of to Friends magazine. It appears that Stark takes over the funding... [ellipsis in original] there's an overpaid editor, a staff of seventeen, a fleet of hire cars and they never sold more than 5000 copies an issue. Now you this magazine acting as spokesman for the Angry Brigade and involved with Jim McCann, who is close to the IRA. Enter at beginning of 1971, Howard Marks, who's doing some dope business with Alan Marcuson and Charles Radcliffe of Friends magazine.'
This is worth going into in some detail. Friends, in the first place, was in no sense 'ex-Situationist': in fact (as Black states earlier) it had grown out of the short-lived british edition of Rolling Stone. Its situationist connection consisted of two writers, Pountain and Charles Radcliffe. Pountain, a situationist sympathiser in the late 1960s, was moving towards the Leninist left by 1971; Radcliffe, who a member of the Situationist International for a matter of months in 1967, was a dope dealer and a personal friend of Friends' editor Alan Marcuson. As for the state of Friends, a number of more or less consistent accounts are given in Jonathan Green's Days in the Life (Green himself was one of the witnesses). The magazine hit a crisis early in 1971, owing in part to expenses cited; it had been funded by Marcuson's father but was now hugely in depbt. Marcuson walked off the magazine, which reopened - without liability for Friends' debts - as Frendz.
According to Marcuson, 'the Angry Brigade were sending in letters wanting us to be their magazine', but this led nowhere. (The Angry Brigade did in effect run Frendz for one issue late in 1971: the Friends 'women's issue' was spearheaded by Angela Weir and Hilary Creek, two of the 'Stoke Newington Eight'.) Perhaps the closest thing to a verifiable underground/parapolitical crossover in the Friends story was the involvement of Jim McCann - in Marcuson's words, 'an Irish revolutionary and hustler some to the left of the provos, who'd apparently thrown him out' - who persuaded most most of the group around Friends that the revoltion had begun in the north of Ireland. However, McCann's involvement with Marcuson - and the dope-smuggling operation he set up with Radcliffe and Marks - had little to do with Friends (or the Angry Brigade for that matter). The idea that McCann was 'close to the IRA' is also extremely dubious; he himself claimed to be part of a (probably imaginary) libertarian republican movement called 'Free Belfast'. A more persuasive characterisation is that of Friends writer Richard Trench: 'James McCann was a conman, a dangerous person, and he was mad.'
On the other hand...
A more friendly account of the situationist/Friends/Stark/terrorism nexus which Black attempts to establish could be given. Black notes that Radcliffe and his fellow English Situationists wrote an essay advocating the revolutionary use of psychedelics to undo contempory social conditioning; he also refers to Stark, in 1969, meeting 'associates of the Black Mask/Motherfuckers group in New York' at Frendz (sic). (The New York Motherfuckers' views on revolutionary violence can be inferred from their statement in praise of Valerie Solanas' shooting of Andy Warhol.) These associates were, presumably, Radcliffe and Pountain; Ben Morea, of Black Mask and subsequently the Motherfuckers, was in contact with the English Situationists and with King Mob, a group formed after their exclusion from the Sitautionist International. Black also adduces the situationist language used in the Angry Brigade's 'Communique 1', which declares war on 'High Pigs, Spectacles, Judges, Property'. (The 'spectacle', according to the Situationists, is the fundamental condition of modern society - although they never suggested blowing it up). However, none of this ultimately matters. The jigsaw pieces refuse to meet. The Angry Brigae was not Friends, Friends was not situationist, the Situationist were not terrorists; Radcliffe was an ex-Situationist and a dope dealer, Marcuson was a hippie and an Irish republican sympathiser, McCann was a hustler with a 'radical' pitch; and Stark didn't get anywhere trying to foment urban guerrilla warfare, if that is what he was doing - and there seems to be no reason to believe that it was.
...MK-Ultra
Black's argument is also weakened by his use of word of mouth testimony. Surprisingly, Black treats Stark himself as a reliable witness. Stark's 'top secret projects' claim is treated with respect: 'Almost certainly he was referring to a secret CIA projectcalled MK-Ultra', Black comments. (MK-Ultra was the CIA's psychological warfare research program, some of which involved experiments with acid.) Black even comes close to endorsing the 'Khouri Ali' persona, commenting: 'There is no doubt Stark had access to guerrilla camps in the Lebanon.'
However, a larger problem than Stark himself is Steve Abrams, whose own - bizarre - story runs alongside the Stark narrative. Abrams, described by Green as 'England's Timothy Leary', was an early user of acid and an academic researcher into ESP. He was a prime mover of SOMA, an organisation campaigning for the decriminalisation fo cannabis, and generally someone with connections an the alternative scene (he arranged for Stark to be analysed by R.D. Laing). The style of Abrams' testimony can be inferred from his comments on Friends and statement (in Green's book) that 'to all inents and purposes LSD is a CIA invention, put about by CIA agents.' Abrams talks a good game, in other words; I couldn't share Black's unwavering trust in his account.
Tripping with Laing, man
Apart from anything else, a lot of what Abrams recalls seems... odd, Stark first approached Abrams in 1969; it was through Abrams that Stark met Pountain, who was SOMA's chemist. Abrams 'became suspicious about Stark for no particular reason; eventually he contacted Bing Spear of the Home Office drugs inspectorate, 'He's not a drug dealer; he's Mafia or CIA or both, but it's the heavy mob.' The following year Stark shared a house for some time with Abrams (among other people), whereupon Abrams found himself - accidently - listening in on Stark's phone calls. From the types of chemical Stark appeared to be trading in Abrams concluded ' he seemed to be involved in arms trading, there were indications of terroist connections.' Later that same year came Stark's analysis with R.D Laing, which concluded after Stark, Laing and Utta Laing took acid together. While tripping, Stark offered to elevate Laing to the position of psychedelic guru hithertoo occupied by Leary (who was then on the run after being sprung from prison by the Weather Underground); Laing would also be given complete control over Stark's business empire. Thrown out of the house by Laing, Stark went to see Abrams - who 'pumped him for information' which he subsequently shared with Bing Spear. Abrams adds for good measure, 'Stark had told me... that he was seconded to the White House under Kennedy so he may have been there at the time of Kennedy Assassination.' (Damn, not that again).
Perhaps the weirdest single episode in Abrams' story - and the one which casts most doubt on his Stark-watching career - predates his first contact with Stark by seven years. In 1962 Abrams, who had been in touch with Czech researchers into the paranormal, travelled to the US to discuss a funding application with the Human Ecology Foundation - which he later discovered to be a CIA front. During an airport stopover, 'Just for a laugh, because I'm me, I picked up the phone, rang the CIA and asked to speak to Allen Dulles... I said I had information about secret Russian research on telepathy.' Abrams was duly met at the airport by a CIA official - in fact, a participant in MK-Ultra - who subsequently blew the Human Ecolgy Foundation's cover. The man phoned the CIA 'for a laugh'?
I don't want to sound too dismissive of this book. While I am inclined, on the weight of the hard evidence Black has gathered, to accept Stark as an ordinary, decent, international drugs baron, there are enough odd leads and loose ends assembled here to make that judgement extremely provisional. Steve Abrams' story was also well worth the telling - if only for the sake of its own odd leads and loose ends.
Where I part company with Black is on what he's managed to make of those loose ends. 'The secret history of LSD'? Not by a long chalk.
ENDS