John Lennon on the LSD-CIA Connection
Thanks to James for turning me on to this 1975 Playboy interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in which Lennon blames/thanks the CIA for LSD.
We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. That’s what people forget. Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn’t it, Harry? So get out the bottle, boy — and relax. They invented LSD to control people and what they did was give us freedom. Sometimes it works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform. If you look in the Government reports on acid, the ones who jumped out the window or killed themselves because of it, I think even with Art Linkletter’s daughter, it happened to her years later. So, let’s face it, she wasn’t really on acid when she jumped out the window. And I’ve never met anybody who’s had a flashback on acid. I’ve never had a flashback in my life and I took millions of trips in the Sixties.
Not exactly the most conclusive bit of information, but interesting nonetheless. Also interesting is that Lennon supposedly had an alien/UFO encounter that same year. Uri Geller also finds his way into (or may be the source of) that tale.
- Connections between Philip K. Dick & John Lennon
- “Ah! Bowakawa, pousse, pousse”
- Origin of “acid test”
- Burqa & Bagism
- More Leary CIA Stuff
- Prev: Consciousness & Matter
- Next: Mind Beside Itself




![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg)
July 12th, 2005 at 3:08 am
more great stuff tim! i dunno what happened with that whole art linkletter’s daughter thing (i think no drugs were found in her system) but it was also part of the whole lame ‘celebrity’ aspect (along with elvis & sammy davis jr) of nixon’s phony war on drugs. yet another quote from ed epstein’s agency of fear :
& look who makes a cameo a bit later in the psychodrama:
i think linkletter was a bohemian grover. i wonder what the backstory on that one is.
July 12th, 2005 at 6:52 am
Speaking of Bohemian Grovers.. Sasha Shulgin, the master (al)chemist, is also a member by his own admission.
http://www.erowid.org/culture/characte...er/shulgin_alexander_interview1.shtml
July 12th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
Anyone ever seen that Harry Shearer movie “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic” (aka “Call O’ The Glen”)? It’s a satire of Bohemian Grove. Never seen it myself, but being a Shearer fan, I think I might dig it.
July 13th, 2005 at 7:02 am
my opinion, on an intuitive level, since i was a teenager, was and still is that john lennon was a communist, or at least a paid agitator for the left. i have always been suspicious of unwashed millionaires that sleep with thier mother.