Note: Originally, FE special correspondent Kellie Button valiantly embedded herself with a group of anarchist LSD enthusiasts (represented here by the initials “HO”, “KG.”, and “AJ”) in order to report on recreational drug use for this issue’s special “Escape” feature. Unfortunately, a very long weekend in southeastern Minnesota among these self-described “anarcho-acidheads” yielded very little usable material, but something that did come up that has a bearing on the anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist anti-RNC and anti-DNC actions currently under preparation. The relevant portion of one morning’s recorded discussion is excerpted here. Clarifying information provided by the editors appears in brackets.
FIFTH ESTATE [FE]: Have you heard the rumors of a plot to dose unsuspecting delegates at the Twin Cities RNC convention this summer?
HO: I was in Duluth last week and I heard somebody call it the “Operation: Blue Star Tattoo.” I’m not sure what the people in Denver are calling it.
FE: There’s a similar action being planned for Denver?!
HO: Oh, I’m not sure, but there ought to be. It would be easy enough. There’s a lot of acid being made in Denver and Boulder.
FE: I think that’s a terrible idea. This has got to be a hoax. It’s a terrible thing to do to someone. It’s coercive and violent and harmful.
HO: Well, yeah, but that didn’t stop the Army from drugging civilians and soldiers with it without warning throughout the ’50s and ’60s, and …
KG: Hey, there’s all this talk about “diversity of tactics” [among the anti-convention organizing teams], so this can be the acidhead consulta, right? Intersections, bridges, on-ramps are going to be red zones, yellow zones, green zones-why not one big paisley zone inside of a couple hundred skulls?
FE: That’s stupid! What could possibly be gained by this?
HO: OK, if the objective is to shut the city down, then a few tabs dropped here and there ought to really do the trick.
FE : Oh, you’re not serious…
Aj: Wait–for the record, we’ve got nothing to do with this. We’re just telling you about the rumors we’ve heard around town.
FE: Oh, yeah, OK, fine…you’re just commenting on rumors you’ve heard. Someone else is planning to do this. No one in this room is involved. But it sounds like you’re defending it, aren’t you?
KG: I understand why someone thinks that this is an effective tactic. I’m not saying that I support it or agree with it, exactly. I just get it.
FE: So what’s supposed to happen? A bunch of innocent visitors to the convention get zapped-then what? Is slipping trips to Giuliani supposed to make him more mellow or something?
KG: No, that’s a bunch of hippie bullshit. That just doesn’t happen. Hitler and the Nazis were experimenting with mescaline and that didn’t turn them into hippies, right? No one believes that acid is a magical love drug …
AJ: …no, that’s X [ecstasy]! (laughs).
KG: – it’s just “shock and awe,” right? The difference is that it comes with a drop in your coffee at the convention center instead of in your living room in downtown Baghdad with a Cruise missile. Did you ever hear the story about [former Jefferson Airplane vocalist] Grace Slick being invited to a White House tea party by accident? She planned to go with Abbie Hoffman and put a hit of blotter in Nixon’s tea cup when no one was looking. The guards recognized her and wouldn’t let her through the gate. It wouldn’t have stopped the war in Vietnam, but it would’ve spanked Nixon good.
FE: Wait-Hitler was on mescaline?
KG: He tried it a couple times. It was also tested on prisoners in the concentration camps as weapons research. When the formula for LSD was first made, the pharmaceutical company that he was working for in Switzerland was owned by that big Nazi drug company [I.G. Farben].
HO: My favorite JFK assassination conspiracy theory was that the CIA found out he was doing LSD with one of his girlfriends and it had changed him…he started rethinking US policy towards Cuba and the escalation of war in Vietnam and all this and that and the other thing. So they had him shot in order to keep the plans going forward.
FE: What??
HO: Yeah, look it up…guys have written about it. Leary talks about it in his autobiography. What was the name of that mistress of JFK’s?
KG: Mary [Pinchot] Meyers. Her husband was in the CIA. She was sleeping with Kennedy and they used to do drugs together that she used to get from Timothy Leary. A year after Kennedy was assassinated, Meyers was shot in the back of the head execution-style in a park in DC. The murder was never solved.
HO: Anyways, I don’t think that the plan is to turn on Mitt Romney into changing his views; dosing the RNC isn’t supposed to turn the Xcel Center into Woodstock. The point is to send the message that people are fighting back against the government and everyone who supports it. None of us are safe while those assholes are in charge-we live with that idea in the back of our heads every day. They should start thinking how un-safe they are, too. “Operation: Blue Star Tattoo” is anti-government resistance
KG: …psychedelic sabotage…
HO: -but instead of using guns, they’re going to use LSD-25.
FE: So how is this supposed to work, exactly? How do you get Republican Party delegates from Mississippi to accidentally swallow LSD in the convention hall?
KG: People don’t have to be dosed in the Xcel Center. Think of all the working-stiff service staff in Starbucks, restaurants, bars, hotels-
HO: ..churches…
AJ: …airport men’s room stalls… ( laughs )
KG: (laughing) A friend of mine worked turning tricks in Philadelphia for the 2000 Republican convention-he said that he’s never worked so hard. He made enough money to take a three-week vacation afterwards. Think about it: it would be easy for a pro to slip a john a little something when he least suspected it. Forty minutes later, just when things start getting interesting, he’s in his seat at the Xcel listening to a speech by Huckabee.
AJ: Payback’s a bitch: the CIA recruited hookers in San Francisco to slip random guys LSD in the ’60s just to secretly film the results. They wanted to know if it was a good interrogation drug.
KG: With my luck, I’d just get water-boarded… ( laughs ). I was reading just the other day about how one of Nixon’s fixers [G. Gordon Liddy] had a plan for the [1972] national Democratic Party convention that involved kidnapping delegates, blackmailing them with hookers and hidden cameras, and having special “mugger squads” attack them in the street at night to terrorize them.
FE: So then how is this “Blue Star” plot any different than what Nixon wanted to do? Zapping the Republican Party’s presidential nominee is the same thing that fascist assholes like Nixon were trying to do. This is what you want.
HO: No! You’re not getting it! No one guy is the key to the government’s power-it’s this big machine that everyone who works for or supports the government is part of. Who cares if you dose the candidate–the guy probably has access to better and more powerful drugs, anyway…
AJ: Politicians always have the best stash.
KG: Presidents could get a morphine drip from a personal physician in the name of national security. LSD won’t affect those full-time junkies.
HO: …that’s why you dose everyone else. If Giuliani started tripping on stage in the middle of a speech, someone could just throw a blanket over him and blame “stress” or some such shit. But what if CNN’s cameras cut to the audience to see a bunch of people wandering around in their seats like it was some nasty [Grateful] Dead show?
FE: Where’s all this acid going to come from?
HO: Well, I don’t know, but plans to organize against the conventions started a year and a half ago. That’s plenty of time to start stocking up, and plenty of time to make contact with a busboy who fills the water glasses at the bar at the Graves 601 hotel or whatever. When you know what you’re doing, acid is ridiculously cheap to make. And you don’t need a lot-a tiny amount is going to do the trick, right? Just a drip or two from an eyedropper or a torn tab of paper and you’re done. It’s delivered orally and it’s colorless and it’s tasteless. What could be easier?