Involvement in Exposing CIA's Drug Trafficking
Through his own drug use, and the drug use of his friends and associates, Ginsberg became more and more preoccupied with the American government's relationship to drug use within and outside the nation (see Demystification of drugs) He worked closely with Alfred W. McCoy who was writing The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia which tracked the history of the American government's involvement in illegal opium dealing around the world. This would affirm Allen's suspicions that the government and the CIA were involved in drug trafficking. In addition to working with McCoy, Allen personally confronted Richard Helms, the director of the CIA in 1970s, but he was simply brushed off as being "full of beans". Allen worked relentlessly writing essays and articles, researching and compiling evidence of CIA's involvement, but it would take ten years, and the publication of McCoy's book in 1972, before anyone took him seriously. In 1978 Allen received a note from the chief editor of the New York Times, apologizing for not taking his allegations seriously so many years previous.
The subject is dealt with in the song/poem CIA Dope calypso.
Read more about this topic: Allen Ginsberg
Famous quotes containing the words involvement in, involvement, exposing, cia and/or drug:
“Juggling produces both practical and psychological benefits.... A woman’s involvement in one role can enhance her functioning in another. Being a wife can make it easier to work outside the home. Being a mother can facilitate the activities and foster the skills of the efficient wife or of the effective worker. And employment outside the home can contribute in substantial, practical ways to how one works within the home, as a spouse and as a parent.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“I recommend limiting one’s involvement in other people’s lives to a pleasantly scant minimum. This may seem too stoical a position in these madly passionate times, but madly passionate people rarely make good on their madly passionate promises.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
—Bible: New Testament John 8:32.
These words of Jesus are inscribed on the wall of the main lobby at the CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia.
“Upon entering my vein, the drug would start a warm edge that would surge along until the brain consumed it in a gentle explosion. It began in the back of the neck and rose rapidly until I felt such pleasure that the world sympathizing took on a soft, lofty appeal.”
—Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)