The Most Dangerous Man in America by Bill Minutaglio

Author:Bill Minutaglio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2017-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

SUPREME SERVANTS

Early February 1971

On February 1, Cleaver’s broadcast from the heart of the Algerian outpost—detailing how Timothy Leary’s mind was “blown by acid”—is aired on radio stations around America. Front-page newspaper headlines ricochet: LEARY’S MIND BLOWN, LEARY VICTIM OF LSD, LEARY’S MIND GONE.

A San Francisco radio station phones Cleaver to find out more. The reporter asks how Leary is reacting to being detained by his Black Panther protectors. Cleaver responds: “Well, he went through various [stages] of unbelief, you know, shock, surprise, and slowly the truth seeped into his acid-soaked brain and he began, after two or three days, to get the message and to understand.”

The counterculture is reacting with outrage. In New York, Yippies spray-paint messages around the city: ELDRIDGE IS A PIG. FREE TIM LEARY. The underground press is denouncing Cleaver and anti-Cleaver petitions are circulating while calls rise to boycott Black Panther fundraisers. Jerry Rubin, one of the mainstays of the Yippie party, announces that Cleaver’s own mind has been blown—by exile. “I think we should rise to the defense of Tim Leary. When he got locked up by Eldridge for ego reasons, and for Stalinist reasons, it’s outrageous. Eldridge putting down the psychedelic culture is very bad.”

At the FBI, COINTELPRO agents are exchanging congratulations. Cleaver, all by himself, is doing a better job splintering the left than an entire army of FBI agents could ever dream of. All over America, the very pigs Eldridge Cleaver wants to kill are lifting their glasses and toasting him.

Inside the White House, Nixon’s operatives are carefully studying the stories about the schism between Cleaver and Leary. If the drug guru’s own host can’t stand to have him, it should be a simple enough matter now to convince the Algerians to squeeze Leary out of the country.

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