COMMENTARY | Lyndon B. Johnson was a politician who served as a Representative, a Senator, Vice President and the President of the United States. Before that he had a lifetime in Texas politics. With ambitions like that, it’s a small wonder that he found his way to the top office. He was most famous for leaning on other politicians to get them to see his point of view. He is remembered as one of the most liberal Presidents, with his programs for the Great Society and the War on Poverty.
It’s another war, though, where LBJ had the most influence. Under his administration, involvement in the Vietnam conflict grew from less than 20,000 American troops to over half a million. It has recently come to light that the Vietnam War was escalated to such heights by a “False Flag” operation known as the Bay of Tonkin incident. Supposedly, U.S. naval forces were attacked by North Vietnam gunboats, but it was later admitted by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that the whole thing never happened. The Commander of the U.S. Naval forces was Admiral George Morrison, who just happened to be the dad of a future rock star.
The growing antiwar movement had become a concern for President Johnson. Veterans were returning disillusioned from the conflict and the college campus became a place of demonstrations. Members of the intelligence agencies had learned many lessons from World War II and the prolonged Cold War. One of their tricks was to become a part the opposition by infiltrating and steering the public perception. The mind control research of the Manchurian Candidate, known as the MK-Ultra program, with its hypnotism and powerful drugs like LSD became part of the arsenal rolled out. It has been theorized that Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and even Charles Manson were programmed for their missions of terror and assassination.
It was a time when intelligence agents had become moles in the fields of broadcasting, journalism, and the music business.This was a post-Beatles world where television bands like “The Monkees” were created from scratch and most music recording involved studio musicians like Phil Spector’s “Wrecking Crew.” Into this fertile field went Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, following the Grateful Dead’s touring bus, spreading LSD provided through CIA connections.
Many musicians converged upon the Laurel Canyon vicinity who had direct connections to military intelligence or chemical warfare bases.This gathering was close by the top secret Lookout Mountain movie studio. Frank Zappa, Stephen Stills, John Phillips, the Wilson Brothers of the Beach Boys and many others were essential promoters of the new hippie culture that invaded and diluted the anti-war movement. Was an entire generation of youth derailed and steered into the tunnel of a monstrous media construction? It’s all hard to believe to baby boomers who grew up in that era. It’s only when you start to factor in the mysterious deaths of Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and assorted other rock stars that a pattern begins to emerge.
Today we can watch the laughable manipulation attempts by the mainstream media being exposed by Jon Stewart. We can see clearly when the status quo of the corporations, who own the broadcast networks, try to black out a presidential candidate that they don’t approve of. The theory of the highjacking of the “Love Generation” seems less unbelievable. It begs the question that might be hard to answer. How long has this been going on?
