Mae Brussell: Operation Chaos

[Peter Lemkin]

Mae Brussell turned us on to a lot of things, but often to a depth that she herself could not master. Robbie Macintosh of AWB - hardly a political - snorted too much heroin while drinking and could not be revived. Gran Parsons - not a political - mainlined morphine while drinking and demanded a second hit. Jack Kerouac - not a political - drank all day for years until his liver hemorrhaged, and was never in life the cultural figure he became in death. Vinnie Taylor of Sha Na Na - an act as incendiary as The Muppets? Oh, please.

You could go on with Mae's list for some time, reducing it to a definitely suspicious few. It wouldn't be hard to imagine who wanted Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix dead, and who would want Phil Ochs silenced.

Don't forget, too, that corporations with ties to the MIC were involved. For instance, at the time of her death, Columbia Records was trying to break Janis Joplin as a solo act, backed by studio pros instead of the too-counterculture Big Brother & the Holding Company. Her death spiked sales, but another couple of albums in the can would have increased revenues. On the other hand, Hendrix's very disputed exit was good for his management and the record label.

Operation Chaos did exist, and is mentioned as a domestic "surveillance" program in Douglas Valentine's The CIA and Organized Crime.

I think you're very wrong if one looks at the larger picture. While not every person named by Mae might have been a target, when one looks at who the alternative culture and alternative political culture had as their idols and heroes, they were decimated - and certainly NOT all by their own overindulgence. It was a targeted program to remove the political leaders and groups through infiltration and provocation - sometimes by assassination; ditto the cultural leaders in music and other fields. The same goes on today, but more 'quietly' and with more sophisticated electronic snooping. Mae was a giant. That is not to say that she may have gotten a few things wrong, but she saw the patterns and gave the warnings. She saw things and spoke of things - saw the patterns most could or would not see - things you seem also not to want to see or to convince us we don't see. I'll side with Mae and against your viewpoint to try to put her down, anytime. Who killed the '60's' movement? It did not self-destruct. It was targeted for destruction, which was handled in a variety of ways, up to and including assassination, getting people hooked on deadly drugs, spiking their drugs, infiltration, provocations, etc. et al. Look at the lyrics of some who died if you want to see a motive. Again, perhaps not everyone was murdered, but taken as a whole, the picture to me is clear - we were targeted and the movement and thinkers - even the musicians and artists of all kinds who threatened the established order were done away with and destroyed in a coordinated effort from CIA, FBI, NSA, M.I. and other quarters. It still goes on. Occupy was targeted, for example. The 911-truth movement has been. Those against the War OF Terror have been, Black Lives Matter is...and on and on and on....following the CHAOS and COINTELPRO patterns which were modeled after the Phoenix program. Try reading Valentine's CIA as Organized Crime again.