Home · Book Reports · 2017 · Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon - Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops and the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream

designates my notes. / designates important.

Thoughts

While there is no direct connections made between particular actors and particular intelligence operations in the book, it gives a much needed background for approaching the idea that the intelligence community has most likely been using music (and film) for generations to influence culture.

This work leads directly into the work of Jan Irvin of Gnostic Media. Jan makes much more concrete, primary citation backed, connections between the psychedelic and new age movements, Gordon Wasson, Aldous Huxley, and intelligence operations like MKULTRA.

Jan interviewed the author of this book in a two part series on the Gnostic Media podcast episodes 186 and 198. These are available on youtube at the previous links and are archived as mp3s here (186) and here (198).

Less directly connected, but very worthy of inspection, is the work of Hans Utter. He has done research into the nuts and bolts of how music can be used to alter conciousness.

It would have been nice to have footnotes provided, but at least there is a bibliography that can be dug into for further understanding and confirming. Again, I would move from this to Irvin’s work if you want a deeper look.

The research like that found in this book and Gnostic Media have led me to almost completely abandon listening to almost any modern (post 1850/Wagner) music and movies. After seeing how cultural programming (see: Cultural Patterns and Technical Change) works, you become much more aware its vacuousness as entertainment. A corollary begin the avoidance of its deleterious effects.

page 6:

page 18:

• 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?,” I can assure you that if you plug those names in over at Wikipedia, you can spend a pretty fair amount of time reading up on the power wielded by this clan for the last, oh, two-and-a-quarter centuries or so.

page 22:

• (as Carl Gottlieb noted in David Crosby’s co-written autobiography, “the unprecedented mass appeal of the new rock’n’roll gave the singers a voice in public affairs”).

page 24:

• As Barry Miles has written in his coffee-table book, Hippie, there were some hippies involved in anti-war protests, “particularly after the police riot in Chicago in 1968 when so many people got injured, but on the whole the movement activists looked on hippies with disdain.” Peter Coyote, narrating the documentary Hippies on the History Channel, added that, “Some on the left even theorized that the hippies were the end result of a plot by the CIA to neutralize the anti-war movement with LSD, turning potential protesters into self-absorbed naval-gazers.” An exasperated Abbie Hoffman once described the scene as he remembered it thusly: “There were all these activists, you know, Berkeley radicals, White Panthers… all trying to stop the war and change things for the better. Then we got flooded with all these ‘flower children’ who were into drugs and sex. Where the hell did the hippies come from?!”

page 28:

• To partially illustrate that point: Diane Linkletter (daughter of famed entertainer Art Linkletter), legendary comedian Lenny Bruce, screen idol Sal Mineo, starlet Inger Stevens, and silent film star Ramon Novarro, all have something in common—all were found dead in their homes, either in or at the mouth of Laurel Canyon, in the decade between 1966 and 1976. And all five were, in all likelihood, murdered in those Laurel Canyon homes.

page 29:

• Diane Linkletter, according to legend, sailed out the window of her Shoreham Towers apartment because, in her LSD-addled state, she thought she could fly. We know this because Art himself told us that it was so, and because the story was retold throughout the 1970s as a cautionary tale about the dangers of drugs.

page 54:

• The Secret Life of Houdini was published, challenging the conventional wisdom on Houdini’s death. Far more compelling than the revelations about Houdini’s death, however, was something else about the illusionist that the book revealed for the first time: Harry Houdini was engaged in doing intelligence work for both the US Secret Service and Scotland Yard.

page 58:

• Another famous resident of Laurel Canyon was science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein, who resided at 8775 Lookout Mountain Avenue. Like so many other characters in this story, Heinlein was a graduate of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and he had served as a naval officer. After that, he embarked on a successful writing career. And despite the fact that he was, by any objective measure, a rabid right-winger, his work was warmly embraced by the flower-power generation. If that capsule biography sounds vaguely familiar, by the way, it is probably because it is virtually identical to the biography of a guy named L. Ron Hubbard, whom you may have heard of. Heinlein’s best-known work is the novel Stranger in a Strange Land, which many in the Laurel Canyon scene found to be hugely influential. Ed Sanders has written, in The Family, that the book “helped provide a theoretical basis for Manson’s Family.” Charlie frequently used Strange Land terminology when addressing his flock, and he named his first Family-born son Valentine Michael Manson in honor of the book’s lead character.

page 59:

• David Crosby was a big Heinlein fan as well. In his autobiography, he references Heinlein on more than one occasion, and proclaims that, “In a society where people can go armed, it makes everybody a little more polite, as Robert Heinlein says in his books.” Frank Zappa was also a member of the Robert Heinlein fan club. Barry Miles notes in his biography of the rock icon that his home contained “a copy of Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince and other essential sixties reading, including Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi classic, Stranger in a Strange Land, from which Zappa borrowed the word ‘discorporate’ for [the song] Absolutely Free.”

page 65:

• She appears to have gone by many names at different times in her life, including Eva Paul, Eva Paul Sears, Barbara Paul, Barbara Paul Sears, and “Bobo” Rockefeller. …she was born Jievute Paulekiute in a coal patch near Noblestown, Pa.

page 66:

• In her parents’ homeland, “Paulekiute” is the feminine version of “Paulekas.” Eva Paul’s father, as it turns out, just happened to be the brother of Vito Paulekas’ father. (A fact verified by—and brought to my attention by—a member of the Paulekas family.) I’m no genealogist, but I’m pretty sure that that means that the self-styled “King of the Hippies” was, improbably enough, a first cousin of Bobo Rockefeller and a cousin-in-law (for lack of a better term) of Winthrop Rockefeller himself.

page 73:

• “I have said for years that there are some similarities between Vito and Manson… Vito was sort of like a pimp. He was welcome as a VIP with the emerging rock crowd because he always showed up with these free thinking fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls that would be happy to satisfy their needs.” A member of the Paulekas family, in e-mail correspondence with the author.

page 78:

• Vito believed in introducing children to sexuality at a very young age, while in the Manson Family, as Sanders has noted, “Infant sexuality was encouraged.”

page 79:

• Vito apparently liked to stage live sex shows for his followers involving underage participants, which was also a specialty of Charles Milles Manson.

page 80:

• Barry Miles noted in his Zappa biography, Frank’s daughter Moon “recalls men with straggling beards, body odour and bad posture who crouched naked near her playthings…” Also, the “Zappa children watched porn with their parents and were encouraged in their own sexuality as soon as they reached puberty. When they became teenag- ers, Gail insisted they shower with their overnight guests in order to conserve water.”

page 81:

• The Gong Show, of course, was the brainchild of Chuck Barris, who famously claimed that during the days when he appeared to be working as a mild-mannered game show producer, he was actually on the payroll of the CIA, and that while he was ostensibly serving as a chaperone to the couples who had won trips on The Dating Game, what he was really doing was carrying out assassinations.

page 103:

• Augustus Owsley Stanley III was the son, naturally enough, of Augustus Owsley Stanley II, who served as a military officer during WWII aboard the USS Lexington and thereafter found work in Washington, DC as a government attorney. He raised his son primarily in Arlington, Virginia. Young Owsley’s grandfather was Augustus Owsley Stanley, who served as a member of the US House of Representatives from 1903 through 1915, as the Governor of Kentucky from 1915 through 1919, and as a US Senator from 1919 through 1925; Senator Stanley’s father, a minister with the Disciples of Christ, served as a judge advocate with the Confederate Army. Owsley’s mother was a niece of William Owsley, who also served as a Governor of Kentucky, from 1844 through 1848, and who lent his name to Owsley County, Kentucky.

• Much more on Owsley in the following pages.

page 108:

• Phil Spector (Nitzsche was one of the architects of Spector’s famed “wall of sound”).

• I thought it was Owsley’s wall of sound.

page 112:

• Researcher/writer Charles Higham, however, has cast Errol Flynn as a Western intelligence asset, and if true, then it is far more likely that the home was built not so much for Flynn’s personal pleasure but rather as a means of compromising prominent public figures.

page 121:

• Lower Rustic Canyon soon gives way to Upper Rustic Canyon, and all signs of human civilization abruptly vanish. The land remains wild and undeveloped save for an old, unpaved fire road that winds along the summit between Rustic Canyon and a neighboring canyon. That road is closed to the public and vehicle traffic is nonexistent. Aside from an occasional hiker wandering in from near-by Will Rogers State Park, there is nary a human to be seen. The farther in one hikes, the more wild and untamed it becomes. Along with the sights of the city, the sounds and the scents quickly disappear as well. Within a very short time, it is surprisingly easy to forget that one is still within the confines of the city of Los Angeles. And in its fall splendor, the canyon looks nothing like the Los Angeles that most Angelenos know and don’t quite love. It is beautiful… serene… pastoral. And yet, filled with mist and heavily overgrown, it is also vaguely ominous. If one knows where to look, there is a narrow concrete stairway that is accessible from the fire road. That stairway descends down to the floor of the canyon, …

page 122:

• Reaching the canyon floor, one finds that, though the native flora has struggled mightily to reclaim the land, remnants of a past civilization can be seen everywhere. Some structures remain largely intact—a nearly 400,000 gallon, spring-fed reservoir serving a sophisticated potable water system; a concrete-walled structure that once housed twin electrical generators capable of lighting a small town; more concrete stairways, hundreds of steps long, each snaking its way up the canyon walls; weathered livestock stables; professionally graded and paved roads; countless stone retaining walls; an incinerator; concrete foundations and skeletal remains of former dwellings; the rusting carcass of a Mansonesque VW bus; and, at the former entrance, an imposing set of electronically controlled, wrought iron security gates.

page 125:

• Murphy Ranch

page 154:

• John Phillips, busted for wholesale trafficking of pharmaceuticals, was, by his own account, “looking at forty-five years and got thirty days.” He began serving his sentence on April 20, appropriately enough, and served just twenty-four days in a minimum security prison that offered “residents” such activities as “basketball, aerobics, softball, tennis, archery, and golf,” and that featured a “delicious kosher kitchen, an elaborate salad bar, and a tasty brunch on Sundays.”

page 182:

• “Altamont was drenched in acid. And as was also the custom at that time, that acid was provided free-of-charge by Mr. Augustus Owsley Stanley III, also known as The Bear. At the so-called “Human Be-In” staged in January of 1967, for ex- ample, Owsley had kindly distributed 10,000 tabs of potent LSD. For the Monterey Pop Festival just five months later, he had cooked up and distributed 14,000 tabs.”

page 188:

• Tipton was founded by Mr. William Tipton Seely, a rather wealthy and influential gent who opened a general store circa 1830. A community soon sprang up around his store, as tended to happen in those days, and Seely named his new little fiefdom Round Hill.

page 214:

• …Ron Jeremy, who is not your run-of-the- mill “porn guy,” and not just because he is arguably the world’s most famous porn star. He is also a very well-connected porn star. His mother, for example, was an asset of the OSS, precursor to the CIA. His uncle had ties to notorious gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. And he attend- ed high school with none other than future CIA director George Tenet.

page 223:

• Zappa’s associate, Captain Beefheart, kept his band locked up in a small house for months. He abused them and took all the credit for their work. It was described as “positively Mansonesque.” Zappa was also said to have Mason like qualities. Odd names he gave to those around him, throngs of young girls, a totalitarian way of running “his” commune and band.

page 224:

• David Anderle of MGM Records perhaps summed up Zappa best: “I always felt there was something a little totalitarian about Frank… I was awed by the clarity of the vision and his ability to make it happen… but it was without warmth.”

page 225:

• In September 1985, Frank testified before the Senate Commerce, Technology and Transportation Committee, taking Tipper Gore’s PMRC committee to task over the issue of record album labeling. This is said to have ignited in Zappa a passion for politics, to such an extent that he dabbled with the idea of running for president. What he ultimately decided to do instead was serve as something of a front man for organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.

page 239:

• …playing the Brave New World club…

page 247:

• …the ‘New Age’ mecca of Sedona, Arizona.

page 266:

• …Abraham Lincoln had recruited an eighteen-year-old magician named Horatio G. Cooke to serve as a Civil War spy.

• Later, near the end of his life, Cooke became a close friend of Harry Houdini.

page 272:

• For the rest of his years, Houdini devoted a considerable amount of time to investigating and debunking the spiritualist movement, which flourished in the post-WWI years as legions of fake ‘mediums’ preyed upon the grief of those who had lost loved ones in the war. By design or otherwise, Houdini’s crusade served primarily to publicize the movement, which included among its members a number of Harry’s friends, most notably and prominently Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and possible perpetrator of the infamous Piltdown Hoax of 1912.

page 274:

• “Adopted” boys disappearing?

page 278:

• Sex Pistols, the Clash, Buzzcocks, the Cramps, Generation X, Cherry Vanilla, General Public, the (English) Beat, Public Image Ltd., the Fleshtones, the B-52s, the Cure, the Police, Blondie, Television, REM, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, John Cale, Magazine, Simple Minds, the Specials, Wall of Voodoo, the Go-Gos, the Bangles, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Psychedelic Furs, Joy Division, Bow Wow Wow, Gang of Four, Squeeze, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Oingo Boingo, Adam Ant, Gary Numan, the Smiths, the Fixx, A Flock of Seagulls, Bananarama, Sting, Thompson Twins, Katrina and the Waves, Lords of the New Church, Midnight Oil, Steel Pulse, Dread Zeppelin, Social Distortion, Human League, Soft Cell, Timbuk 3, Camper Van Beethoven, Circle Jerks, dada, the Alarm, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Plimsouls, the Ramones, the Stranglers, UB40, Suburban Lawns, Stan Ridgeway, XTC, Concrete Blonde, Ultravox, and the Fine Young Cannibals. All of the acts listed above had something in common: In addition to being among the most critically acclaimed and commercially viable of the new artists, all of them owed their success at least in part to their association with one or more members of the Copeland clan. The patriarch of that clan, Miles Axe Copeland, Jr., born in 1916, was something of a legend in Western intelligence circles.

• Very interesting connections in the Copeland clan. Companies with acronyms IRS and FBI. The band The Police. The obligatory military and intelligence community involvement.