FBI spied on hippies

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Oct 27 14:31:31 PDT 1999


[From Sam Smith's Progressive Review. Touring with the Dead, how painfully dull that must have been! "Counterculture expert Todd Gitlin" is the funniest thing I've read all week.]

APB NEWS: FBI and CIA documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act indicate the bureau and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration monitored performances of groups such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. APBnews.com has obtained files the FBI maintained on both bands .... When those suspected to be FBI agents appeared at Jefferson Airplane gatherings, they would sometimes wind up on an unwitting LSD trip after being handed a spiked drink, said Paul Kantner, lead singer of Jefferson Airplane .... Back then, it wasn't hard to pick out the informers, said Todd Gitlin, a professor at New York University and counterculture expert. "The FBI guys traditionally wore black shoes and looked like G-men from the '50s," said Gitlin. "And the informants were always too gung-ho" .... Another band that caught the government's eye was the Kingsmen, the 1960s pop quintet whose hit Louie Louie was suspected of being obscene. Hoover's agents spent hours playing the record backward and forward, slow and fast, trying to decipher the song's garbled lyrics.

APB NEWS http://www.apbnews.com/media/gfiles/dead/index.html



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