Press enter after choosing selection

Tim Leary

Tim Leary image Tim Leary image
Parent Issue
Day
25
Month
October
Year
1974
Additional Text

The SUN has presented only a few short pieces on the phenomenon of Tim Leary turning stat's evidence. The articles were skimpy and left the reader with many questions. We were alerted to this by a letter from Ken Kelley, who is a co-coordinator of PILL (People Investigating Leary's Lies), a group operating out of San Francisco to investigate the real story behind the various news items the government has leaked to the press not to mention the sea of rumor surrounding those leaks. 

Anyone reading this article will no doubt be left with many unanswered questions and until his friends get to personally question Tim Leary we will probably not have access to the entire story, and, indeed we may never know. But we do know this-Tim Leary is indeed cooperating with the Justice Department, and two people have already suffered due to his cooperation. No one knows the extent and ramifications of his testimony. We hope that this article may help in the process of alerting people to a potential danger and discrediting any testimony which may be forthcoming, due to his cooperation.

There is increasing evidence that Timothy Leary, once the high priest of the LSD generation and now imprisoned in federal penitentiaries for almost two years on a 25 year sentence, is testifying before grand juries about the activities of many of his former associates, reportedly to gain his own freedom. So far his former lawyer has been charged with smuggling marijuana to him in jail, he has refused to testify in a case where he could have cleared a friend of LSD charges, and he has made a video tape denouncing the left, gays and dope. 

There is a debate among Leary's friends as to his motivation in spilling the age-old beans. Allen Ginsberg asked, "Is he a Russian model prisoner brought into courtroom news conferences blinking in daylight after years & months incommunicado in solitary cells with nobody to talk to but thought engineers," while Leary's son Jack stated, "It would not surprise me that he would lie to get out of jail...while his public image was at peace, love and do your own thing, I knew him as a selfish, egotistical and power-crazy man." 

As rumors and new reports of Leary's actions increased over the past few months a group called PILL (People Investigating Leary's Lies) organized to compute the facts about Leary and to dispel rumor, speculation and government propaganda. In September they called a press conference in San Francisco where Allen Ginsberg, Leary's son Jack, Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert in the days when he was Leary's associate & fellow experimenter at Harvard), and Jerry Rubin (coming from retirement after four years out of the media limelight) revealed the story of Leary's capture following his prison escape in 1970 and evidence of Leary's cooperation with the Justice Department since his incarceration.

A New Witch Hunt For The Justice Department

Ken Kelley, former editor of the Ann Arbor Argus, Sundance Magazine & the Berkeley Barb, now a PILL co-ordinator, explained,"By settling Tim Leary up as a government agent, the Justice Department is using the same old divide-and conquer, red-baiting ploys it has used in the Palmer Raids, the McCarthy hearings, the Rosenberg case and the Watergate Plumbers."

"Now with Tim Leary's cooperation, the government's biggest fish to date, the Justice Department feels that it is in a position to finally go after leftist lawyers. No one who has had any contact with Leary over the years should be surprised if an FBI agent comes a-knocking at their door early some morning with a subpoena to spill his or her guts...Nor should anyone be surprised if sweeping indictments come down charging a score of leftist attorneys from coast to coast with everything from aiding Leary's escape from prison to running nuclear submarines in Albania."

It looks like the same old scenario that the Justice Dept. has been attempting to pull for years. While some of the top dogs like Robert Mardian and his man Gordon Liddy have gone down in flames during the Watergate revelations, others like Guy Goodwin, who has led the department's Special Litigation Division and the reign of grand jury terror against leftist since 1969, are still out on the prowl. His first big case was Leslie Bacon and May Day, and he lists as credits Gainsville, Harrisburg, the Detroit Weatherpeople, not to mention those in Tucson and Kansas City.

For those who are not familiar with the grand jury mechanism, a grand jury of Joe Citizens is created, you can be called before it, and if you refuse to cooperate in answering all the questions, you go to jail. Guy Goodwin has not been successful in actually making any of the indictments from these grand juries stick, but he has caused confusion, fear, incredible legal expenses for those indicted and has put a number of people in jail.

What Happened To Leary In Prison?

"The context of what's going on must be placed within an understanding of the American prison system," explained Jerry Rubin at the press conference. "Human beings are placed in sub-human conditions, kept day and night behind bars like animals, given unhealthy food, deprived of adequate health care, cheated of their humanity. The entire jail system in America is geared not to rehabilitation and not to the ending of crime, but to the creation of such barbarous conditions that prisoners are forced into turning on each other in order to save their own individual skins."

While many of Leary's friends contend that the anticipation of spending 25 years behind bars had broken Leary, there are other more chilling and puzzling reports on his activities. Dr. Wesley Hiler, Leary's psychiatrist at Vacaville, who has since been fired by the California prison system for his attempts to change prison conditions, has testified that Leary was living a relatively easy life there-playing tennis, eating ice cream, having access to rock music and even having an affair with a woman psychologist. Dr. Hiler has testified that Leary is a psychopathic liar-bragging about his ability to lie in order to manipulate others. Unfortunately for Leary, ratting is probably not a way out of the clothes of the feds, Once the get a source they are likely to go after as much information as they can and once you start to talk there is no end to what they want to know.

Leary's Capture

Perhaps one of the strangest pieces to this story is Leary's relationship two a woman named Joanne Harcourt-Smith, whom he met in Switzerland only two weeks before his capture. She reportedly convinced him to fly with her to Afghanistan in January 1973along with a long time friend of Leary's named Dennis Martino. When their plane landed a U.S. Federal agent named Burke from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) boarded the plane, arrested Leary and had in his possession three plane tickets to Los Angeles. They were made out in Burke's, Harcourt-Smith's and Leary's names.

The Plot Thickens

As soon as they arrived in Los Angeles Joanna got busy. With Leary back behind bars, she declared in newspaper reports that Leary would not remain there long. She told Evan Maxwell of the L.A. Times that Leary was going to try and secure his freedom by "assisting the U.S. government in combating the problems of drug abuse." A few weeks later she sent a telegram to a BNDD agent reading, "I have information you would be interested in; please contact me." She signed Tim Leary's name. Next she formed the Leary Defense Committee along with Dennis Martino, who had been apprehended with them in Afghanistan. Martino had admitted acting as a government collaborator. In an affidavit filed in San Francisco court on January 2, 1974, Martino stated, "Mr. Burke (of the BNDD) indicated that I would be permitted to return to the U.S. (from Afghanistan) if I consented to become an informant for the BNDD. I consented to this relationship and was assigned a 'contact agent' in L.A. " He also revealed that the BNDD had a plan to keep Leary in prison "for as long as possible."

Meanwhile, in April 1973, Leary was convicted of escaping from CMC-West in September 1970. He was sent to Folsom Prison facing a maximum of 25 years (5 years for escape and 10 years each on two earlier convictions ). Since his return to prison, Leary had been held in solitary confinement; and according to visitors, including one medical doctor, he had been given heavy doses of thorazine. In the summer of 1973 Leary told friends that he "would do anything to get out of prison" because he was afraid he would die if he were to stay. His formal contacts with agents with the FBI and BNDD began during this period. Soon after, Folsom Prison authors heard reports that people inside the prison were ready to kill Leary because of his collaboration with federal agents and they transferred him to Vacaville.

The Evidence

The first evidence of Leary's collaboration came when he was subpoenaed by the defense in a case against Nick Sand, who was charged in a conspiracy to make and sell large quantities of LSD. According to the defense, Leary could have cleared Sand and Leary had initially agreed to testify. But then, after an all day meeting with assistant U.S. attorney Leary informed the defense he would not testify for Sand. It was about this same time that 29 pending counts of conspiracy against Leary were dropped, interpreted by some as part of a deal worked out on the Sand testimony.

In June 1974, Leary was transferred to Terminal Island penitentiary in L.A. Soon after he made a two hour video tape denouncing the left, gays and dope, and claiming that government agents were the only people who had not ripped him off. Reports of this tape were first published in the Village Voice by a woman with BNDD connections.

Part of the governments's game is a media campaign where only certain privileged news people are let in on the information that Leary is leaking. Another tape, accusing a prominent San Francisco attorney of master-minding Leary's escape in 1970, was also leaked. Supposedly it was made in Switzerland after the escape but evidence points to the contrary. This taped version is at odds with sworn testimony from BNDD Agent Burke that Leary told him that his daughter and her husband had helped him escape. In addition Leary has said, "I have written seventeen version of the the escape." (Many of these have already been published in his books.)

John Doyle, a former Justice Department official who is best known for handling Guy Goodwin's witch hunts against New York radicals in 1971, became Leary's lawyer. Doyle has a reputation for defending other government informers since he has entered private practice. The Justice Department will not reveal Leary's present location, except to say he is "somewhere in the federal prison system." News reports place him in Chicago, testifying before a grand jury there.

The most obvious example of Leary's collaboration occurred this September 4th when an Orange County grand jury indicted George Chula, a lawyer who defended Leary in 1969 and 1970, for smuggling drugs in to Leary while he was in jail. The indictment was mostly based on Joanna Harcourt-Smith's testimony; Leary is reportedly being saved for the trial.

The press conference held by PILL was an attempt to fight back through the media before any more indictments come down as a result of Leary's testimony. So far they say that John Doyle has withdrawn as Leary's attorney and they hope their efforts will put Leary's testimony in question before the government attempts any more trials.

PILL collected hundreds of names on a quickly drawn petition that condemned the terrible pressures brought to bear by the government on people in the prisons of this country and denounced Tim Leary for turning state's evidence. Among the signers are Philip Berrigan, Judy Collins, Ben Gazzara, Dick Gregory, Tom Hayden, Jonathan Kozol, Rosemary Leary, Country Joe McDonald, Jack Nicholson, Phil Ochs, and Leonard Weinglass. 

Jerry Rubin summed up the message of the press conference saying, "I feel sick for the death of Tim Leary's soul...while in prison he lost his physical freedom, now he is giving away his spiritual freedom." Allen Ginsberg ended with a poem titled, "Forty Four Questions on Dr. Leary." Eleven of them are below.

7. No L.S.D. Cactus mushroom teacher's needed now in cities, isn't Lady Psychedelia big enough to teach by herself with all her Granny-Wisdom? 

8. Is it Deja-vue Leary's forced confession so outrageous-are all my serious prefaces to his books and imperious anti-thought control declarations reduced to rubbish?

16. Are not the police especially the drug police, corrupt and scandal ridden Watergate persons like Liddy & marina connected with his long persecution, with urban narcs stealing and peddling heroin?

18. What of the rumors and messages heard last spring that brain conditioner drugs were to be administered to Leary in Vacaville prison, where such experiments were common? 

19. Isn't it clear that no friend has spoken either to Leary personally recently, he's been shifted from prison to prison, his lawyers can't reach him, he's been incommunicado sequestered for "confession." Surrounded by government agents and informers and no one else hears from him?

20. Is Joanna Harcourt-Smith his one contact spokes-agent a sex spy, agent provocateuse, double-agent, CIA hysteric, jealous tigress, or what?

21. What was Joanna's role, isolating him from decade old supporters and friends, using up all his crucial legal defense money? Remember when I suggested to Leary that she might be some sort of police agent he turned to her asking, "What do you say?" She looked at him and answered, "He hates women." 

22. Shouldn't police give up their case as preposterous and remember that 410,000 Americans were busted for pot in1973?

26. Is Leary exaggerating and lying to build such confused cases and conspiracies that the authorities will lose all the trials he witnesses, and he'll be let go in the confusion?

28. Will it end all the victims of his song are his lawyers?

29. Will there be more political trials like those of Spock, Berrigan, Chicago 7, Ellsberg, collapsible conspiracy entrapments of bohemian left by right-wing government, fanatics leftover Watergate conspiracy? More domestic police violence against non-alcoholic teaheads? Government prosecutors who have Leary by the balls for smoking pot, like Guy Goodwin, do they drink cocktails?

32. Will Leary's documentary confession film be seen by friends in theatre or courtroom?

34. Prosecutors like Goodwin to whom Leary sings, have conducted witch-hunts with False Witnesses before, is it not true?

37. Wasn't it amazing to begin with prophetic mix of Liddy and Leary at Millbrook in mid-sixties and LIddy's dozens of illegal raids? (Liddy was the prosecutor there at the time)

38. Are there any police here at the press conference?

39. What will Kissinger say? Will he also be arrested for conspiring "more than 8 million dollars" Chile subversion lying and Allende killed?

44. Doesn't the old cry "Free Tim Leary" apply now urgent as ever?

-Linda Ross

(The SUN would like to thank the various sources of this article including PILL, Ken Kelley, and Tom Thompson for his article in the LA Free Press.)