Of course, some answers lead straight into Dave McGowan and his “research.” For those who want to swallow the lies that the hippies were invented by the CIA (and base it all on McGowan’s writings), please consider McGowan also wrote about how we never landed on the moon, and about how nobody got hurt in the Boston Marathon bombing. In fact, McGowan was behind many of the biggest crackpot conspiracy stories ever unleashed on the American population, which is why nothing he says should ever be taken seriously.

The real avatar of the hippie culture was Johnny Griggs. Tim Leary moved in with him and adopted his style. The CIA had zero to do with inspiring Griggs, unless of course, it was the CIA that put a vial of LSD into a Hollywood producer’s refrigerator, where it was discovered and stolen by Griggs. After his first LSD experience, Griggs threw away his weapons and became a peacenik for the remainder of his short life.

He was killed a few years later after building the biggest cannabis distribution network in the country. After his death, his group was likely infested by intel ops. The leading candidate for an intel penetration would have been Ron Stark, who later in life got released from an Italian jail after convincing the judge he worked for the CIA.

So yeah, the CIA and FBI had informants and undercover operatives placed strategically throughout the hippie movement, but this was almost entirely about getting their fingers into the flow of money from illegal drugs. They were not driving the hippie zeitgeist as McGowan claims.

The hippies were a direct result of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The rise of the middle class led to a lot of teens with spendable income and an interest in Eastern enlightenment. Their ranks were increased greatly as the war in Vietnam expanded and many became vulnerable to the draft. As soon as the draft ended, the movement began to dissolve.

Hippies were anti-capitalistic, anti-racist, apolitical, back-to-the-land, pot-smoking and interested in alternative forms of spirituality. While there was a lot of experimentation with LSD early on, there were also a lot of LSD casualties. It was not the sort of substance people could use daily for years without experiencing some negative psychological impacts. Also impacting this was the fact that few people had any idea who the chemists were that were manufacturing the LSD, or even if it was LSD. There were certainly chemists flooding the market with dangerous drugs, some of whom may have been knowingly working for intel.

After Kesey realized people were taking too much acid, he arranged a “graduation event” to help steer people towards responsible use. Unfortunately, the message was lost on many.

Tim Leary was a product of West Point and moved freely through the upper realms of the oligarchy, so he had a much better idea of the machinations than anyone else. However, he was hounded by law enforcement (as were Kesey and Cassady). After being jailed, he decided to tell everything he knew about the violent Weather Underground that had seized control of the previously non-violent SDS. They had busted Leary out of the country and encouraged him to support violence, something he relented to only briefly in their press release.

But Leary’s testimony against the Weather Underground amounted to nada. Leary didn’t realize the violent side of the counterculture was a CIA operation, and those leaders were working for intel, which is why their slates were wiped clean and the leaders ended up teaching at prestigious universities, and getting tenure and pensions.

Hippies were non-violent. They were a natural emanation of a zeitgeist towards peace. The violent revolutionaries like the Weather Underground and the Symbionise Liberation Army were intel-sponsored stooges headed in the opposite direction.

Because intel feared a revolution, they did what they know best: outflank the movement on both sides, and foster as much violence and confusion as possible, while flooding the markets with cheap synthetic psychedelics.

Don’t fall for the hoodwinks. Calling Leary and Kesey CIA stooges is an op.