Apostles of Non-Violence and Racial Harmony Viewed As Political Enemies?

maebrussell |   Why were Hippies such a threat, from the President on down to local levels, objects for surveillance and disruptions?

Many of the musicians had the potential to become political. There were racial overtones to the black-white sounds, the harmony between people like Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, and Jimi Hendrix. Black music was the impetus that got the Rolling Stones into composing and performing.

The war in Vietnam was escalating. What if they stopped protesting the war in Southeast Asia and turned to expose domestic policies at home with the same energy? One of the Byrds stopped singing at Monterey Pop to question the official Warren Report conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a "lone assassin."
  

Bob Dylan's "Bringing it All Back Home" album has a picture of Lyndon Johnson on the cover of Time.
    

By 1966, LBJ had ordered all writers and critics of his Commission Report on the JFK murder to be under surveillance.
    

That research was hurting him. Rock concerts and Oswald. What next?

While preacher preach of evil fates
teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
to stand naked.

Bob Dylan
"It's Alright Ma"
Bringing it All Back Home album

John and Yoko Lennon were protesting the Vietnam war. The State Department wrote documents describing them as "highly political and unfavorable to the administration." It was recommended their citizenship be denied, and they be put under surveillance.
   

Mick Jagger, before he was offered Hollywood's choicest women and heavy drugs, was concerned about the youth protests in Paris, 1968, and the anti-war demonstrations at the London Embassy.

"War stems from power-mad politicians and patriots. Some new master plan would end all these mindless men from seats of power and replace them with real people, people of compassion."

Mick Jagger

July, 1968, the FBI's counterintelligence operations attacked law abiding American individual's and groups.
    

The stated purpose of these assaults was to disrupt large gatherings, expose and discredit the enemy, and neutralize their selected targets.
    

Neutralization included killing the leaders,if necessary. Preferably, turn two opposing segments of society against each other to do the dirty work for them.
   

Remember that among these dangers to the security of the United States were persons with "different lifestyles" and also "apostles of non-violence and racial harmony."
    

CIA Director Richard Helms warned National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Feb. 18, 1969, that their study on "Restless youth" was "extremely sensitive" and "would prove most embarrassing for all concerned if word got out the CIA was involved in domestic matters."
    

The FBI sent out a list of suggestions on how to achieve their goals. They can all be applied to what happened to musicians, youngsters at folk rock festivals, and hippies along the highway.

Gather information on their immorality. Show them as scurrilous and depraved. Call attention to their habits and living conditions. Explore every possible embarrassment. Send in women and sex, break up marriages. Have members arrested on marijuana charges. Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them. Send articles to the newspapers showing their depravity. Use narcotics and free sex to entrap. Use misinformation to confuse and disrupt. Get records of their bank accounts. Obtain specimens of handwriting. Provoke target groups into rivalries that may result in death.

"Intelligence Activities and Rights of Americans"
Book II, April 26, 1976
Senate Committee Study with Respect to Intelligence